Liberty

The New America

November 26th, 2010 // 4:00 am @ Oliver DeMille

The Age of Dependence

We have recently changed as a people, and as a nation. I’m not sure exactly when the change occurred, but we are living in the new reality it has created.

On the one hand, we have always been a nation dedicated to positive change. America was founded by breaking from the old world and establishing a new model of society and governance, and the progressive impulse has guided America ever since.

On the other hand, we have usually defined change in the positive sense, and when progress has come it has always been based on a nation of freethinking citizens and courageous leaders.

Today, in contrast, we have become, to a large extent, a nation of followers. For the past three generations, we have been taught to depend upon experts.

This is a stunning break from the founding and pioneering generations who raised their children to depend upon their own wisdom, initiative and grit.

This dependence on experts is as devastating to freedom and as potentially controlling as totalitarian governments, caste and class systems, and the wealthy withholding education from the masses.

It is an applicational flaw in modernism that is persistently leaching freedom from historically open nations around the world.

In addition to unhealthy dependence on experts, we have been conditioned in the West to think like reductionists—only accepting logical, concrete and proven answers.

This invalidates our “gut” feelings about right and wrong and leaves us more dependent on the accepted authority. It puts the “experts” above the citizens in determining America’s future.

But the biggest problem with our reductionism is that we are Dependent Reductionists: we consider something to be logical and proven when the experts say so.

Ironically, this kind of reductionism is actually the opposite of reductionism; it is, in fact, a personal rejection among citizens of our own logic and common sense and instead an ignorant reliance on the leadership of our “betters” in academia, the media, economics and government.

An Age of Epicurus

Add to this a third major characteristic of modern Americans: we are nearly all epicureans, meaning that we want life to feel good.

We expect childhood, youth, education, health, career, finances, romance, family, entertainment and everything else in life to basically go well for us. Always.

And if this ever fails, we angrily blame the government, our employers, our parents or someone else for not doing their job. If everyone did his part, we now believe, pretty much everything would go well for us; and if we’re not content, comfortable and at ease, someone is surely to blame.

So then, most Americans are now Epicurean Dependent Reductionists: We want the experts to make everything good for us, we instinctively believe that they will, and we expect them to use science, logic, research, planning and whatever else is necessary to ensure that all goes well.

After all, they’re the experts. And government officials are expected to do the most, since they are experts with power.

This is the New America.

Of course, there is more to America than these three characteristics, but the new influence of widespread Dependence, Dependent Reductionism and Epicureanism indicates a different kind of future than most Americans seem to want.

Time magazine chronicled Joe Klein’s visit across America in the fall of 2010. Klein talked to hundreds of regular Americans, asking them questions about America and the world and listening closely to their answers, concerns, thoughts and worries. What he discovered is a good overview of modern America.

He found voters to be more eloquent, unpredictable and candid than the candidates. He wrote: “There was a unanimous sense that Washington was broken beyond repair.”

Americans are also upset with big business, especially big finance.

They feel that Washington is out of touch. For example, the citizens mentioned concerns about China 25 times for each time they mentioned Afghanistan.

Liberals are frustrated with Obama; but surprisingly, conservatives are less angry about Obama and more disappointed.

They wanted him to succeed, to help fix the economy. But they don’t feel he has done much.

The growing nanny state drives them crazy. They hate the stimulus and bailouts, and they are confused about the health care bill.

They wonder why the Obama Administration focused on these things instead of jobs. They just don’t understand why the big things — jobs — are being ignored. This infuriates many Americans, both liberals and conservatives.

Klein called the regular Americans he met, on the whole, “rowdy and proud, ignorant and wise.”

The Lost Cartesian Age

Tocqueville said that Americans in the 1830s were nearly all Cartesians, but noted that most of them didn’t know that the word “Cartesian” means a follower of the philosophy promoted by Descartes.

This philosophy was based on not believing any of the experts, but rather thinking about things independently and reaching your own conclusions.

Indeed, a Cartesian considers himself the only real expert on things that are important to him. She listens closely to the thoughts of others and deeply considers all views, and then arrives at her own conclusions.

And for Americans, as Tocqueville witnessed, individual citizens were the highest “experts” on all things related to government.

In Europe, he wrote, the people loved the great artists. In America few idealized the great artists but nearly all youth and adults participated personally in art — paintings, plays, singing, and so on.

The same applied in politics. Instead of following great political icons or parties, the American electorate was deeply and personally involved in the ongoing issues.

The Americans of the 1830s could easily be called Independent Cartesian Innovators.

They expected life to be full of challenges, and they didn’t want their government or anyone else to solve their problems. They wanted to be adults, to meet their own challenges, to solve their own problems.

They believed that the government had its role, but they wanted the freedoms that could only come by keeping the state limited. Again (and this bears constant repeating in our times), they wanted to live life as adults, facing the challenges of the world and overcoming them on their own or with their families and communities.

If problems arose, they didn’t blame others. They were too busy getting to work on solutions.

When they failed, they suffered. Then they claimed that the lessons they had learned through suffering were worth the failure, even as they intently and optimistically went on to new and better projects.

This attitude led them across the oceans, into the wilderness, to freedom from the Monarchy and the old countries, across the plains, and to the moon itself. Along the way, they began the process of conquering the internal frontiers of slavery, chauvinism, bigotry and racism. They made mistakes, but they refused to give up. They kept trying.

A New Age Ahead?

Today, far too often, we just give up. We wait for the experts to do what needs to be done. And, unfortunately, too frequently the experts and officials want us to do nothing.

They believe in the experts as much as everyone else. They too often see citizens as children to be cared for, not adults to be left alone to deal with their own lives as they see fit.

But when a nation becomes a society of followers instead of leaders and adopts a culture of dependency and complaining instead of citizens who are at least trying, flaws and all, to innovatively make the world truly better, freedom is in danger.

We have reached a point in history when this generation must take a stand. If we want to pass on freedom and prosperity to our children and grandchildren, we need to move toward an attitude of innovation, independent thinking, responsibility, resiliency, and taking personal risk to make the world better.

It is time to stop talking so much about what kind of leaders we want, to give less lip service to what Washington or Wall Street or Hollywood should do, and to act a lot more like citizens who actually deserve freedom.

It is time for all of us in America, once again, to change. And this time the change needs to earn the kind of future we truly want.

The first step is a simple change in attitude from dependent on experts to truly thinking for ourselves and seeing regular citizens (not political or economic professionals) as the real experts on American government, freedom and the future.

***********************************

Oliver DeMille is the founderof the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Category : Citizenship &Culture &Current Events &Featured &Foreign Affairs &Government &History &Leadership &Liberty

Why Societies Decline

November 2nd, 2010 // 2:00 am @ Oliver DeMille

Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is often cited by people trying to see where America is on the long path of her place in history.

Certainly the detail of Gibbon’s work is full of specifics and nuance. But another work may be even more helpful.

Although it is more general in treatment, Arnold Toynbee’s great A Study of History covers many civilizations through history as he tries to understand the overall patterns and principles of societal successes and failures.

Neither Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization nor Paul Kennedy’s research on the rise and fall of great powers gets to the crux of things as well as Toynbee.

Why Societies Grow and Succeed

Toynbee shows that through history, certain things have helped civilizations grow and succeed, while other things haven’t had such an impact.

For example, it is neither a society’s institutions nor an economic division of labor that are responsible for success (as some historians have suggested).

Even societies that don’t grow or succeed have their institutions and divisions of labor. Nor do race or environment cause success or failure, as some have erroneously argued. Neither are religion and beliefs the cause (more on this later).

The one thing all great civilizations in history have in common, the thing which has spurred them to greatness, is adversity.

Indeed, the challenges of the world are necessary, historically, for any people to become advanced.

Sometimes such challenges spring from environment, but in such cases it is the difficulty of the environment rather than its ease which incentivizes progress.

Likewise, religions which teach of a great battle between good and evil and elicit individual involvement in this battle serve as pacers of accomplishment.

Adversity may include the stimuli of hard countries, frontier, outside aggression, external pressures, and of weaknesses or failures. And, according to Toynbee, “the greater the challenge, the greater the stimulus.”

As long as adversity doesn’t actually destroy or cause a society to burn out, it is the major spur to growth, progress and success.

Three other things can cause a civilization to slow and eventually fail.

1. First, strong slave, caste or class systems ineffectively harvest the leadership/creativity pool and lead to failure.
2. Second, little success occurs where significant specialization creates a mass of focused workers and the managers of society are political and/or financial experts.
3. Third, a major challenge or crisis just as a people is becoming powerful can at times be insuperable.

This third eventuality, however, can also be the catalyst of much greater success, wealth, growth and power.

For example, in U.S. history, the Civil War had the potential to end the American experiment or solidify the U.S. as a major world influence.

Clearly the latter occurred, positioning the New World as the greatest global power less than a century later.

Becoming Powerful

In short, societies become powerful when they avoid caste and too much specialization, and overcome the various challenges they face.

Peoples who do these things grow, and growth means that formerly disparate individuals, families and tribes become a self-determining group.

“[S]elf-determination means self-articulation,” for Toynbee, meaning that the people in a society share a common understanding of the past, unity against current challenges, and a vision of the future.

Moreover, they reform or establish their institutions to achieve the shared goals.

During the growth phase, societies go through various periods of “withdrawal and return,” sometimes focusing on themselves (like America’s isolationist periods of after the War of 1812 and World War I), and other times emphasizing major involvement with other nations (such as U.S. expansionary eras in the 1830s-40s and after World War II.)

During this long period of facing and overcoming challenges, sometimes turning inward and other times seeking broader interactions, the people grow, gain in power, and grow weary of the continual challenges.

A desire for utopia arises, and part of the shared societal vision for the future is a yearning
for a time of lasting peace, prosperity, kindness and ease.

Toynbee calls this the Second Coming motif.

Over time, a growing nation attempts to adopt many of the idealistic values of the utopian motif, and the society begins to see itself as a Great Society.

Eventually, it sees itself as the Great Society, and it starts to attempt to impose its views and models on the rest of the world.

The upside of this is that the society increasingly attempts to improve itself, adopting many positive practices and customs and serving more and more elements of society.

The downside is that during this phase people become arrogant.

If the first step of decline is arrogance, the second is “a time of troubles” where the actions of society and its institutions too often fall short of the people’s lofty ideals.

For example, consider the era when Americans saw themselves as the land of the free, the best place in the world — but they were besieged with problems like youth revolution, Vietnam, the struggles of minorities and women, Watergate and other political corruptions, and so on.

A third major step toward decline occurs when the “…creative minority degenerates into a dominant minority which attempts to retain by force a position that it has ceased to merit…”

Nurturing the Creative Minority

Societies achieve all the steps of self-determination, growth and power through a partnership of the masses and the “creative minority” — the group of leaders who envision, articulate and guide the civilization to progress and success.

In American history, for example, the creative minority included the American founders and framers, the educated class through most of the 19th century and the wealthy classes in much of the 20th century.

They are Jefferson’s “natural aristocracy.”

In times of societal growth, the creative class leads, overcomes challenges, builds institutions and
wealth, and helps pass on core values and ideals to the rising generations.

It succeeds because it is fundamentally creative, entrepreneurial, enterprising and innovative. It leads, and the masses partner with its creativity and help the nation grow.

Unfortunately, when arrogance and attachment to institutionalism set in, this leadership minority stops building through creativity and begins trying to maintain its status and dominance.

Solutions are less important than votes, and staying in power trumps overcoming our challenges.

Today this group is what Arthur Brooks has called the 30 percent elite class that rules the 70 percent in our nation.

Diagnosing the Decline

At this point in decline, the masses divide themselves into two groups: 1) those who don’t want anything to change, who want everything to go back to how it was in their youth, and 2) those who loudly and sometimes violently demand change and different leaders.

Toynbee calls this period “…the failure of administration and the ruin of the middle class.”

A next step comes when the people, masses and leaders alike, begin to “…ascribe their own failure to forces that are beyond their control.” This comforting (sort of) thought turns out to be false, but the people usually stick with it and accelerate the decline.

Despite the widespread feeling of despair a society feels at this point, Toynbee goes to great lengths to show, using numerous historical examples, that decline is not caused by Acts of God, environmental or natural disasters, failures of business or technology or even government, nor from foreign attack or dangers.

Stagnation

Decline is not a homicide, but always suicide from within the society itself, and it has two main causes.

First, the creative minority that leads the economy and government builds creative institutions which eventually become too big and unwieldy to achieve their original purposes.

Instead, they focus on bureaucratic survival and budgetary growth instead of their initial mission.

In this environment, leaders become so stifled by attachments to institutional policy, methods and personnel that they stop making effective, efficient, innovative or commonsensical decisions.

Toynbee:

“Indeed, the party that has distinguished itself in dealing with one challenge is apt to fail conspicuously in attempting to deal with the next.”

He says that leaders fail when they start to depend on the successes of past institutions and techniques. They stop being leaders and start just trying to keep their power.

As a result, problems remain unsolved even while new challenges continue to pile on.

Second, as a result of the first problem, the masses lose faith in the leadership minority and refuse to support them. The elites respond by trying even harder to maintain their power, and nearly all the energy is spent on being dominant rather than on leadership.

Of course, in this environment, the problems get worse and worse.

The next step is for the power minority to attempt to justify its own leadership existence by engaging multiple military conflicts abroad.

Since it has much greater power in military force than it does to solve its own internal challenges, the dominant minority (whatever political party it represents) energetically engages (and escalates) its international conflicts.

As the society becomes more militaristic, the government naturally begins to turn a wary eye toward its own citizens.

Internal freedom decreases, and the split increases between the dominant minority, the non-dominant minorities who wish they were in power, the masses who want to quietly leave things to the experts, and the masses who want to vocally and forcefully cause things to change.

If all this sounds familiar, remember that Toynbee outlined this scenario in the mid 1940s. It is not prophecy, scenario planning, or simply a summary of current events.

This outline is based on the patterns of history, and as Santayana famously said, if we don’t know this history we are bound to repeat it.

Six Choices For Citizens

The good news is that Toynbee’s book is widely available. We only need a citizenry that will read it, ponder, consider what does or doesn’t apply to our situation, and take appropriate action.

I don’t agree with everything in Toynbee, but there is much for our generation to learn. Specifically, Toynbee tells us that we must make six major choices if we want to turn our current challenges into a great future rather than a declining society.

Note that these are choices for the citizens—the regular people—not just for those in power.

These choices are brilliant. They really do offer a chance for us to turn our struggles into a solid foundation for a free, prosperous and happy America.

I could outline these six choices, share my views on them, and discuss how I think they apply to our world today.

Unfortunately, such commentary would probably be just one more opinion.

Next Steps

What we really need in our day is a citizenry which reads the originals, thinks about them, and applies them.

We need a new creative minority that engages wise study, deep thinking, innovation, initiative and creativity.

I am anxious to discuss the potential in Toynbee’s commentary with others who have also read the original.

His six choices are found in chapter 19, and in chapter 20 he shares several warnings that are relevant and vital in our day. The title of his great book is A Study of History. I hope you will read it.

Toynbee’s six choices offer real solutions to current challenges, and I hope that more and more regular citizens will read Toynbee and other great classics and apply their ideas to modern concerns.

Successful societies progress from strong foundations to challenging growth, and then they face a period of decline. They can come out of this decline—or not—depending on the choices of the citizens.

Note that the traditional leaders of society always stop really leading at some point during decline, and that it is then up to the citizens to restart the nation toward success.

I firmly believe we are that point.

If we, as regular citizens, choose wisely on all six decisions, or even most of them, we will help build a more free and prosperous future.

Otherwise, we are following all the historical patterns of serious national decline.

But, as Toynbee put it:

“The divine spark of creative power is still alive in us, and, if we have the grace to kindle it into flames, then the stars in their courses cannot defeat our efforts to attain the goal of human endeavor.”

The poet Shelley wrote:

The World’s great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The Earth doth like a snake renew,

Her winter weeds outworn:
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream…

To make another great and gleaming age, we need to make six important choices.

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Oliver DeMille is the founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Category : Culture &Featured &Foreign Affairs &Generations &Government &History &Leadership &Liberty

How to Fix the Government

October 27th, 2010 // 2:06 pm @ Oliver DeMille

In a recent article I asked “Is government broken??”

The simple answer is yes. Few people have confidence anymore in the likelihood of either political party fixing our nation’s problems. Nor does even a majority of our society believe that any of our major institutions–Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court–can really fix things. We’ve lost confidence in public leaders on all sides.

But the fundamental structural problem behind many of our problems is that America today is too big to be effectively governed by Washington.

One result of this is our inability to face and overcome our greatest challenges in timely and efficient ways. Ironically, this is likely the first thing the founding generation would notice about our government.

But today, a serious discussion about size is either entirely absent from the debate or, if brought up on occasion, quickly discounted as a quaint historical footnote.

Freedom requires certain structures and ingredients, just like any other result that can envisioned, planned and implemented.

The American founders understood freedom at levels rarely matched in all of history before or since: We should learn from the founding tutorials, and neither ignore nor discount their wisdom.

While new challenges often require new solutions, it is also true that little progress occurs without building on the successes of the past.

And even more importantly, the fundamental principles that govern freedom do not change.

Repairing Our Faults

Every nation faces major challenges. And, just like in individual human lives, such challenges are recurring.

The great genius of any nation is not its strengths (which can be easily lost), resources (which can be misused in myriad ways), or traditions (which can be ignored, changed or simply forgotten).

The great genius of a society–if it can be said that it has genius–is in its ability to quickly and effectively overcome the challenges that inevitably arise.

Speaking of the source of America’s greatness in Democracy in America, Tocqueville said this:

“…not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.”[i]

We are broken to the exact extent that attempts to fix our problems are generally bogged down, ineffective, weak, or, as in so many cases, actually worsen the problems. Using this standard, our government is broken indeed.

Granted, it could be worse, and we are all thankful for the successes that are achieved (and there are more than the critics usually admit).

But there are still far too many failures, and the sense that things are broken and getting worse is increasing among many Americans.

Of course, the situation is complex and no simple answers can account for all our challenges.

But when basic principles are ignored or rejected, and when the very foundations of success in free society are not applied, it is vital to fix the big things first.

The Basics of Freedom

Nothing is more relevant right now than the fact that America is too big to govern from Washington. This is the elephant in the room, no matter how much today’s politicians want to discount it.

The founders considered America too big to be governed by Washington in 1789! In fact, one of the major anti-federalist arguments against adopting the Constitution was this very point.

There were roughly 3 million Americans at that point, and the founders worried that this was too many for Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court to effectively lead.

With around 300 million citizens today, why do we seem to think that Washington should be able to fix all our major problems? What is it the founders understood about freedom and government that we don’t seem to grasp?

James Madison answered the questions of the anti-federalists who thought America was too big for a federal government by telling the American founding generation simply that the Federal government wouldn’t be governing them.[ii]

But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Let’s back up and understand the principle of governance as it relates to geographical and population sizes.

First, regarding geography, Madison said in Federalist 14 that democracies and republics have natural limits to how large a territory they can govern.

This is one reason, he argued, that the founders established the United States as a republic instead of a pure democracy.

The size of any democracy is limited to a territory small enough that all the citizens can easily assemble together and conduct the business of society in person.

In contrast, in a republic the people send their representatives. The citizens maintain small democracies in their local areas, where all adults participate, and they send elected representatives to assemble and do the business that cannot be handled at the local level.

Because of this, republics can be much larger than democracies.

In our day, given the advantages of modern transportation and communication technologies, a republic large in geographical boundaries is certainly viable and can still follow the principles of freedom.

Population, however, presents an altogether different challenge.

Regarding the ideal numerical size of a nation, the founders adopted Montesquieu’s view. Baron de Montesquieu was frequently quoted during the founding–in fact only the Bible was quoted more often.[iii]

And, indeed, Montesquieu was quoted more than any other source, including the Bible, at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.[iv]

In fact, it was Montesquieu who suggested the concepts of three branches of government, each separate and independent, and of checks and balances between each. He taught the founders the most important constitutional forms.

But there is a principle of freedom that is even more basic than three branches, separations of power, and checks and balances. Montesquieu wrote:

“If a republic is small, it is destroyed by a foreign force; if it is large, it is destroyed by internal vice.”[v]

By size here he is referring to population, and by internal vice he means not crime but rather corrupt political leaders, conflicting political parties, and a political system that is unable to overcome major challenges due to internal strife.

This concept is one of the most basic foundations of the American republic: Small republics are destroyed by foreign forces, while large republics are destroyed by internal political corruption.

In republics with only a few people, the population is neither collectively strong nor wealthy enough to protect itself from foreign aggression. And where the population is very numerous, there are more who will engage in corrupt practices.

At the same time, in a more populous nation, those who corruptly exert power and manipulate influence find it easier to hide their agendas from the regular citizens.

Constitution Writing 101

The American framers set out to establish a government that would overcome both of these problems.

They didn’t want to be destroyed by foreign forces, so they didn’t want a small republic. Neither did they want to be destroyed by internal vice, so they didn’t want a large republic.

What to do? The answer is perhaps the single most basic principle of structuring American freedom. They did what Montesquieu suggested:

“…it is very likely that ultimately men would have been obliged to live forever under the government of one alone [either weak small government or large corrupt government] if they had not devised a kind of constitution that has all the internal advantages of republican government [e.g. small, uncorrupt, free] and the external force of monarchy [strong, secure]. I speak of the federal republic.”[vi]

The founders thus set up two governments working together, a federal government and the state level of government. This is a basic principle of American history and is taught in nearly any elementary course on government.

Unfortunately, this is so basic that we have for the most part become arrogant about it. We have discounted and forgotten how central this is to freedom. We think of it (if at all) in elementary terms rather in the deep way discussed in Federalist Papers 10, 14, and 18 through 20.

Here’s the kicker, the thing which gets lost in our complex and modernized world, the vital key which holds a real answer for our modern challenges: The federal government was set up for one thing: to keep us from being destroyed by a foreign force. Period. And the states were set up to do pretty much everything else we needed government to do.

In fact, the major purpose of the states was to remain small enough and close enough to the people that their governments could not become internally corrupt.

To summarize: the primary role of the federal government is to keep us safe from foreign attacks and the primary role of the state level of government is to protect us from federal government encroachments on our lives.

When the federal government does more than this basic role, we are living in a large republic and the nature of government will always be corrupt, ineffective and dangerous to freedom.

When this happens, the most primary role of state government is to stop the federal government. No other duty of state government is nearly this important.

This is why our government is broken today–inefficient, gluttonous in spending, over-reaching in many facets of our lives, big, bloated, bureaucratic, divided by angrily opposed parties which block important progress, non-transparent, secretive, and unable to change seemingly regardless of who gets elected.

When challenges arise, solutions are weak, ineffective and costly. They often magnify rather than solve problems.

This all goes back to the most basic principles of freedom:

• Rule One of freedom is that the people must be active, involved and wise overseers of all government.
• Rule Two is that small nations are weak and easily destroyed by foreign aggression so they should combine into a federal republic that keeps them safe.
• Rule Three is that large nations are destroyed by internal vice and political corruption, so any federal republic must be divided into smaller state-level republics which handle nearly all of the governance (except national security).
• The Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Rules deal with three branches of government, separations of power, and checks and balances.

We have utterly forgotten rules one and three. And to a large extent, the federal government has become distracted from rule two by its many other areas of focus.

Twenty Specific Powers

Let me be clear, however, that the point is not that government isn’t needed.

The founding model is not at all anti-government. It strongly advocates a powerful, strong, well-funded, effective federal government whose almost sole purpose is national security. It also encourages powerful, strong, well-funded, effective state governments which take care of all the legitimate needs of society that are best accomplished by the government sector.

To all this, the principles of freedom add this warning: if the federal government ever becomes widely involved in much more than national security, it will create an inefficient, corrupt, unwieldy government and freedom will decrease.

Likewise if the state governments ever lose their strength and become mere appendages of the federal government.

If this sounds too extreme, remember that Montesquieu’s word was “destroy.” As he said, large republics are “destroyed by internal vice.”

At our peril do we assume that he was careless in his choice of words. And as Madison wrote, the solution to all this is for the federal government to be limited to only the specific, numbered powers clearly outlined in the Constitution.[vii]

These twenty powers are listed in Article I, and as long as the federal government remains limited in scope to these powers we will all be living under small (state) republics with a strong (national) defense.

This is exactly what the founders wanted, and it is the freest of all the options for government.

Some might argue that this all breaks down since the states today are much bigger in population than the entire nation at the time of the founding.

But this misses the point that there is more to the definitions of “small” and “large” than just numbers.

At the state levels, there are many more representatives per capita than at the federal level, to the point that nearly every citizen has easy access to a state representative.

Beyond that, if the scope of the federal government were limited to the twenty powers given by the Constitution — if it were indeed fundamentally dedicated to national security and little beyond that — then citizens would have limited need to contact their national representatives.

The number of needed and even desired contacts would shrink to the point that every citizen seeking direct access to his federal representative would usually be granted. And as the number of contacts with state representatives increased accordingly, the number of districts would naturally be augmented.

The people would be closer to all their representatives on all levels. This is the essence of what Montesquieu, Madison and the other founders called “small” government. This was Madison’s response to the worries of the anti-federalists.

At the same time, the focus on only the 20 constitutional powers at the federal level would increase the ability of federal officials to deal with truly national problems. This is the essence of “large” government.

The more mundane issues of society would be handled at the state and local levels, with increased numbers of representatives as required to effectively cover the needs (and increased connection to the people, as stated above).

The founders felt so strongly about this that when they outlined the Bill of Rights they wrote in the Tenth Amendment:

“The powers not delegated to the United States [federal government] by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

In short, government is broken because it isn’t following the Constitution. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone.

Repairing Freedom

Some might feel that all this has been decided long ago, that we have moved beyond the era of original intent in applying the Constitution and that the federal government now does thousands of things beyond the twenty powers outlined in the Constitution.

Moreover, they will say, this is what the American people want.

I do not dispute any of this, but let’s all be clear that these very changes in our society are the root and main reason that our government is so often ineffective, unwieldy, expensive, intrusive and simultaneously impotent to solve the major problems of our time.

As long as government itself is broken, we can’t really expect it to fix the other problems in our world.

The amazing thing is how well it actually does! Given that the foundations are cracked, that we are living under a larger government than Montesquieu or Madison or Jefferson ever came close to predicting, it is surprising just how much good is accomplished in America every day–by private citizens and groups but also by government.

Dedicated, caring, wise and hard-working public servants in government, and from all political parties, deserve the same kind of praise that our society rightly gives to excellent teachers, firemen, peace officers, soldiers and other who sacrifice for the greater good.

Still, until we fix the foundations, we are unlikely to see an era of successful, efficient, effective and free government ahead.

Challenges will arise, grow and fester, and as more and more problems pile on without being fixed, the load on government and the cost to citizens will increase.

Happily, there are solutions, though they too often are found in dusty volumes long undervalued. When a new generation begins to study and apply these solutions and others like them, we will see a new era of freedom, prosperity and progress.

Specifically, how do we address the problem of being too big for central governance from Washington? We really only have two options.

The famous economist Thomas Malthus callously argued that when nations become too big the natural result is war or pandemic–which has the side effect of reducing the population. Unfortunately, this concept has proven true in a number of cases through history.

So has the old maxim that nations which govern inefficiently and ineffectively either collapse from within in or are conquered from without.

Our modern arrogance in thinking these things can’t happen to us is actually part of the package that causes nations to fall–this has happened repeatedly in history, from ancient Israel, Athens and Rome to most recently the Soviet Union.

Whenever a nation gets so big and powerful that it becomes convinced it cannot fall, that is the very time that its status begins to crumble. History is quite adamant on this point. Western examples include Egypt, Persia, Babylon, Athens, Carthage, Rome, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, and Britain, among others.

But there is another option.

While it is true that nearly all great powers have fallen, usually because of inner decay caused by being too big in the center, the American founders taught us another way.

By voluntarily returning power to the states, vesting in them Constitutional authority to handle most of the needs of society (while maintaining national defense at the federal level), we could revitalize American strength and freedom at the most basic levels.

Conclusion

When great sports teams begin to struggle, wise coaches and managers take the players back to mastering the basics. When the fundamentals are solid and sound, these teams win a lot and often regain their earlier status.

Americans today need a return to the basics.

The regular people need to be overseers of the government, not vice versa, and the federal and state governments need to return to their constitutional roles.

We can fix ourselves from within, by returning to the most basic principles upon which freedom is based, or we can wait for inner corruption or international aggression, or a combination of both, to run its course.

We will eventually be forced to get big government under control, and we can do it either by wise choices now or by suffering the loss of blood in our young men and women in the years ahead…

Sources:
[i] Tocqueville,Democracy in America, Volume 1, Chapter XIII
[ii] Federalist 14
[iii] Donald S. Lutz, “The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought,” American Political Science Review, 1984. Cited in John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Montesquieu,The Spirit of the Laws, Cambridge University Press, translated by Cohler, Miller and Stone, 1997 reprint, page 131
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] Federalist 14.

***********************************

Oliver DeMille is the founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Category : Citizenship &Constitution &Government &Liberty

Is Government Broken?

October 26th, 2010 // 4:00 am @ Oliver DeMille

Is our government broken?

More and more people think so. The current presidential administration makes periodic claims that we are in an economic recovery, but at the same time growth is still slowing and unemployment figures stay around ten percent.

With more American deaths in Afghanistan during the last week of July than any week to date, things seem to be deteriorating at home and abroad.

To make matters worse, few people believe that the opposing Republican Party has much more to offer than the Democrats.

With neither side poised to really fix things, few Americans have a lot of hope for the future of government leadership. Here a few of the issues vexing citizens.

A Missing Recovery

First, even though many politicians have been claiming that we are experiencing an economic recovery, it doesn’t feel like it to most Americans.

The Obama White House doesn’t seem very friendly to small business.

Most of the entrepreneurs and businesses who do hold cash aren’t about to hire or expand in an environment where their taxes and regulatory burden could be increased at any point by an unfriendly Administration.

Ironically, Washington is responding by promising to increase taxes and regulations. Understandably, those who hire are skittish.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Giethner said in July that we’ve reached a point where private hiring—rather than government spending—is the answer to economic growth.

But until the government starts supporting small business, and as long as it refuses to incentivize free enterprise, the economy will struggle.

Author Arthur Brooks argues that the nation is 70% in favor of free enterprise and about 30% opposed, but that the 30% are in charge.

The 30% has gained much influence over citizens by convincing them that it was private business that caused the recession in the first place.

Somehow, this view has successfully convinced much of the public that the Bush Administration, big banks, Wall Street and all small businesses are the same group.

Those who read the fine print, however, are clear that policies from the Clinton and Bush Administrations led to the mortgage crisis.

Moreover, big government and big business together caused the recession. In the meantime, both ignored small business and continue to do so.

As a result, the 70% is confused and unable to keep the 30% in check. So more government policies hurt the economy and make it unwise or unfeasible for small businesses to hire and grow.

In the meantime, much of the Right is busy labeling Democrats as “socialists” rather than helping incentivize growth and prosperity.

Both sides seem to mean well, but one has unbounded faith in government and the other is preoccupied attacking that faith.

While the two sides posture, the plight of small business is sometimes discussed but remains unaided.

What the Citizens Want

Second, this problem is deeper than most people realize.

Since World War II, the United States has promoted a mixture of free enterprise and big government. In history, societies typically emphasized one or the other.

When big government ruled, enterprise was highly regulated and taxed; where free enterprise was the focus, taxes were small, regulations were minimal, and governments were limited in size, scope and budget.

But in modern America, no politician from any party can claim success unless he/she has “done something in office.”

And to nearly all Americans, “doing something” means increasing government action to benefit the pet cause or regional constituency.

If President Obama doesn’t pass much of his agenda, his political friends and competitors alike will label him ineffective.

Americans in general want their politicians to do a lot and are disappointed when officials fail in this.

The irony of the American voter is that “doing a lot” immediately earns most politicians a place on the voters’ list of officials to vote out.

Americans today want the impossible: low taxes and lots of government programs.

The Economist summarized it this way:

In the end, the question of whether a country is governable turns on how much government you think it needs. America’s founders injected suspicion of government not only into the constitution but also into the political DNA of its people. And even in the teeth of today’s economic woes, at least as many Americans seem to think that what ails them is too much government, not too little.

“But there is a catch. However much Americans say they want a small government, they seem wedded to the expensive benefits of the big one they actually have…With deficits running at $1 trillion a year, and in order to stay solvent, they will have at some point to cut spending, pay more taxes, or both….To balance the books, politicians have sometimes to do things the people themselves oppose—even in America. That will be the true test of whether the country is governable.”

Americans must either choose big government and be willing to pay for and submit to it, or they must move toward smaller, less intrusive government and be willing to enjoy fewer government programs.

When voters want the prosperity of freedom along with the bread and circuses of massive government, every election is a referendum on incumbents.

Eventually, though (and the day of reckoning appears to be close on the horizon), something will have to give.

Unfortunately, few societies make such hard choices until they are forced upon them by war, depression, pandemic or other major crises.

Sadly, few nations have the leadership or the fortitude to adopt the simple solution of spurring major growth and prosperity by de-regulating, de-taxing and freeing up the economy.

Freedom works, but few in history have been willing to adopt it.

Lost Leaders

We are unable to overcome these and many of our deepest challenges because of the way we distribute leadership in our society.

The American founders envisioned a truly great educational system, built around schools in every locale, to train their youth in the great ideas of mankind’s history, as well as the latest practical arts and sciences.

They built the early American schools to train empowered citizens who would protect freedom, foster prosperity, leadership, and character in all walks of American life.

They wanted an educational system that prepared their youth to become effective in their families, communities, and careers.

This vision helped create a nation that by 1946 produced over half of the world’s goods and services with only 6% of the globe’s population.

Freedom works, and the success of the American constitutional-free-enterprise model was spectacular. In the process, this system over time addressed, and — in some cases, even began to resolve its biggest negatives, including slavery and other inequities.

Unfortunately, by the late 1930s, the citizens and leaders who built this great model of success, freedom, and prosperity sent their children and grandchildren to schools which rejected this system, and instead adopted a new style of education focused mostly on career training.

Sadly, these American schools established by the our founders were replaced after World War II by the German model which was based on socio-economic class divisions.

In the “new” system, the elites still received leadership education (like all citizens had before 1939) while the middle and lower classes were educated only for jobs.

As this system grew, a Germanic-style grading system reinforced class-society advancements among the youth.

The maladies of credentialism, class divisions, and reliance on experts made their way into mainstream American culture. From 1939 to 1979, these contagions grew and infected the Founders’ classless and “free American” vision.

In such a system, the motto was: “A students work for B students.” The concept of “The Company Man” spread and Americans became addicted to big institutions.

Freedom and entrepreneurial values gave way to competing for executive positions and benefits packages. The goal of employeeship replaced the American dream.

Career became the purpose of schooling in almost everyone’s mind, and ownership and leadership values begin to literally disappear.

Eventually big institutions became truly massive, and anything except employeeship was considered inferior and backward.

In this environment, young people with a sense of leadership, idealism and ambitions to make a great impact on society split between the Left and the Right.

Those coming from traditionally conservative families tended toward majors and careers in business, while youth from more liberal backgrounds leaned towards the media and legal professions.

Most of today’s national leaders were part of this split.

The Reagan era ushered in a revolution of support for and promotion of free enterprise ideas and values.

Numerous non-traditional business models (like multi-level and network marketing) put individuals at the center of building a personal business rather than working as an employee, and eventually non-traditional educational options (from private and charter to home and online opportunities) grew in popularity.

Employeeship was still the dominant view, but a rising minority embraced the freedoms and prosperity of entrepreneurship. The dot.com boom and Roaring 90’s soon followed, and the entrepreneurial sector slowly grew.

Today a new culture of education and business is evolving out of the Great Recession and all that led up to it. A new maxim seems to be much more complex than in past generations:

• B students work for C students
• A students teach or work in government
• Those who cared little for grades and a lot about learning are building small businesses

Note that “those who cared little for grades and a lot about learning” often come from non-traditional private, charter, home and online learners, as well as from immigrants who are leading in entrepreneurial successes. And more than a few come from the traditional schools.

Since small business accounts for 80% of America’s economic growth, this is a significant development. Unfortunately, the number of people in the entrepreneurial sector is still very small.

Whether purposely or as a side effect, we are still training the overwhelming majority of our youth to believe that being A students means getting a good job and that employeeship is the greatest goal for education and even lifestyle.

Satirist P.J. O’Rourke addressed the problem this way:

America has made the mistake of letting the A student run things. It was A students who briefly took over the business world during the period of derivatives, credit swaps, and collateralized debt obligations. We’re still reeling from the effects…

“It was a bunch of A students at the Defense Department who planned the syllabus for the Iraq War….The U.S. tax code was written by A students….Now there’s health care reform—just the kind of thing that would earn an A on a term paper from that twerp of a grad student who teaches Econ 101…

“A students must do what teachers and textbooks want and do it the way the teachers and texts want it done….Such brisk apple-polishing happens to be an all-too-good preparation for politics. This is because a student’s success at education and a politician’s success at politics are measured mostly by input rather than outcome.”

Perhaps even more disturbing is that most of our Idealistic youth with ambitions to improve the world are still going after jobs in big business or big government.

The thing is, working for a big corporation or in a government job are unlikely places to really make a positive difference in the world.

We are distributing leadership in the way aristocratic and socialistic societies always have, and the future will unfold accordingly unless something changes.

We desperately need a rebirth of the entrepreneurial ideal.

The New Religion: Employeeship

Unfortunately, it’s not just the schools and universities that are continuing this outdated focus on jobs as the end-all of education and life.

Movies and television often demonize entrepreneurs while dedicating most of their time to stories about employees.

Full-time sports channels seem to dedicate as much time to the business side of athletes as to the entertainment, making sports role models as valued for their lucrative contracts as for their abilities on the playing field.

Even elected officials more typically refer to their role as a job than as public service.

Recent administrations and the media have referred to the constitutionally-titled commander in chief as the nation’s CEO. There are many other examples.

Because the “job-is-life” view is so prevalent, it has even become normal for successful entrepreneurs to see their work as done as soon as they can live comfortably.

In earlier generations (those that built and maintained American freedom), such successful entrepreneurs considered it their duty to spend the second half of their life helping society greatly improve.

Perhaps only parents and community leaders can effectively counter this trend and help more youth who want to help improve the world seek a true leadership education and seriously consider engaging in entrepreneurial careers.

Repairing the Break

So, to answer our question, yes, government is broken. The break is repairable, but it will take some major work and effort on the part of this generation.

When freedom is decreasing through constantly increasing regulations, government is broken. When the free enterprise system is under attack from our own government, government is broken.

When a tenth of our working society can’t get a job, and when the government responds by increasing taxes and regulations on those who could provide the jobs if they were free to do so, government is broken.

When two parties hold a monopoly on government, and where both increase spending and regulation no matter who is in office, government is broken.

But all of this misses the real point.

When most of society seeks employeeship above all else and every facet of life revolves around employeeship, much more than government is going to be broken.

Employeeship certainly has a place in effective nations, but it should be prioritized behind things like family leadership, citizenship, and private ownership.

Another name for these is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (or alternatively, as Jefferson originally wrote, “life, liberty and property”).

A successful society is made up of at least the following things:

• Effective parents, grandparents and other family leaders who help raise good, wise and industrious adults to take their place
• Citizens who are well-educated in freedom and leadership and who keep government, business and other officials in check so the society can remain free and prosperous
• Owners who improve the prosperity of society, in a free enterprise system where all can be owners
• A constitutionally guaranteed freedom where all are treated equally before the law and all are protected in their inalienable rights

How the President Can Repair the Economy

In the 2008 election President Obama was supported by the Left (who loved his promises of economic liberalism), but he was elected by independents who saw in him a possible end to the corruption of the Bush years and a potentially great leader for the United States.

The “Leadership Thing” swept him into office. Now, the Obama Administration could greatly boost the economy by deeply promoting entrepreneurship—both symbolically and in reduced taxes and regulations.

Such incentives would spur more hiring, investment and expansion, and a recovery would follow that Americans could really believe in.

In fact, the President could probably accomplish this without changing any policy at all, simply by warming to small business and genuinely becoming friendly to entrepreneurs.

As a friend, a member of a minority, told me about President Carter:

“I didn’t agree with his politics or policies, but I just feel that he loved me and my people and cared about us. I never felt that from Reagan or Bush, and so I voted Democratic even though I was more aligned with the politics of the Republicans.”

An old advertising proverb says that people make choices emotionally and then use logic to defend it.

No matter what Washington says, and no matter what the economic numbers show, most entrepreneurs are unlikely to increase jobs and boost the economy through investments as long as they think the man in the White House basically dislikes and mistrusts them.

Even liberal-leaning businessmen are worried that the President isn’t supportive.

The White House could drastically help the recovery simply by changing its bias against small business. If this is just a perceived dislike of business, not a real one, they can simply change their message.

If, on the other hand, the Administration really does mistrust or dislike small business, it should reconsider. After all, unlike Wall Street, big banks and big corporations, small business simply cannot be blamed for America’s economic challenges.

It has been the victim of the mistakes made by both big business and past government. Yet it keeps plugging along, keeping the recession from being much worse.

And small business certainly is the group most likely to overcome high unemployment.

Indeed, when the economy does make a serious comeback, entrepreneurs will be leading the way. Hopefully, the Obama Administration will extend its “Yes, We Can” philosophy to those who have the most potential to drastically grow our economy.

Conclusion

It is time for all Americans—from the White House to our individual living rooms—to pour out a deep, genuine and heartfelt admiration and “thank you” to those who run small businesses.

Whatever the politicians of any party do, the greatest need is for parents, grandparents and all of us to rekindle an excitement for entrepreneurship in the youth.

The future of America’s freedom and prosperity may well depend on it. As long as free enterprise isn’t flourishing, our government will be broken.

***********************************

Oliver DeMille is the founderof the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Category : Business &Constitution &Culture &Current Events &Economics &Education &Entrepreneurship &Generations &Government &History &Leadership &Liberty &Politics

Language is Destiny

October 21st, 2010 // 4:00 am @ Oliver DeMille

How a New Generation is Taking the Reins of American Leadership

In the twentieth century Richard Weaver famously taught that “ideas have consequences.”

He turned this thought into a book and eventually a philosophy, one which entered the general culture as the idea that “words mean things.”

Together these two concepts informed a society dominated and run by the Baby Boomers–those born between 1946 and 1964.

As we transition to a society run by the Latch-key or X Generation, born between 1964 and 1984, a new dominating viewpoint is gaining control.

As usual, most of media, academia and government have not yet fully caught on or understood the influence of the coming shift.

A powerful way to understand the rise of a new thought-generation is the OSA, or Over-Stated Acquiescent. This occurs where a person communicates agreement with what is being said by overstating the point.

Today’s OSAs include, “I know, right?” “Oh yeah, good point,” and “uber- ” [fill-in-the-blank].

These OSAs are sarcastic and manage to communicate irony and skepticism even as they convey assent.

This is a major shift from the past two generations, whose OSAs were nearly all positive, optimistic, guileless, and straightforward: “Groovy,” “Cool,” “Far Out,” “Rad,” “Awesome,” and so on.

Note that these older-generation OSA’s expressed a positive view of the future, a general sense that the world is good and getting better, and a naïve and infectious happiness of youth.

In contrast, the rising generation’s post-9/11 OSA’s are edgy–waiting for the other shoe to drop on our society, and just trying to get by until it does.

The older OSA’s come from a generation raised by parents, a cohesive high-school community and mostly homogenous values, while the new OSA’s express a society raised by television, factionalized and competing cliques, and conflicting diversity.

The old OSA’s were popularized by older youth (16-19) who wanted to hang on to carefree adolescence into their twenties and even thirties, where the new OSA’s reflect a younger group (10-13) who grew up too fast and were sophisticated before puberty and involved in adult issues and relationships by ages 14-16.

Destiny Lost

If you doubt how much OSA’s can teach us about generational psyches and therefore the future, consider their counterpart: the Under-Stated Denial (USDs).

The new USDs are once again ironic, skeptical, grown-up-too-fast, cosmopolitan, and sarcastic: “Not so much,” “A Little Bit,” “Shut Up!” and “-ish.”

Each is nuanced, meaning that none of these actually mean what they say. In the new language, words still mean things–but not exactly.

“Shut up,” here doesn’t mean to stop talking, but rather “totally!” Likewise, “A little bit” actually means, “Yes, a lot!” The older generation would have said, “duh!” instead of “A little bit.”

And “Not so much” would be translated by older generations as, “Of course not, stupid. How ridiculous! Isn’t this obvious? Come on, use your brain. For heaven’s sakes!”

The old generation of USDs was predictable, straightforward and obvious. “No way!” “No,” “Never,” “Negative,” “Not very much,” and other USD’s left little room for doubt as to their meaning.

In fact, they were more “stated” than “understated.” In contrast, the new USD’s are ripe with non-verbal meanings. The old way was to say what you mean, and even say it more strongly than you mean it.

The new way is to say what you don’t mean in a way that means what you mean–kind of.

If this is confusing, welcome to the future.

A: “So, do you like him?”
“He’s dreamy!”

B: “So, do you like him?”
“A little bit.”

These actually mean the same thing: the responder is smitten! But only “A” says so. In fact, “B” actually seems to say the opposite.

C: “Did you have fun on your date?”
“It was cool.”

D: “Did you have fun on your date?”
“ish.”

Again, C and D mean basically the same thing: “The date was okay, nothing great, but not terrible.”

But “cool” leans positive, just like the Boomer generation as a whole, while “ish” tends negative, glass-half-empty, like Generation X.

“Cool” means “I’m glad I went and I’d go out with him again,” while “ish” communicates the opposite.

Note that it is the expressions a generation uses in its adult years, not its youth, that carry the most weight, since language mirrors (and even, to some extent, defines) internal thoughts.

It is adult generations that wield real — as opposed to symbolic — power in businesses, governments and other major societal institutions.

So, while Gen X may have used older-style OSA’s and USD’s in its youth (“cool,” “awesome,” etc.), in adulthood it is now firmly planted in the new language used by its children (“I know, right?” “not so much,” “a little bit,” etc.). Its future will most likely follow the new model.

Interesting sidebar: it is not an anomaly that some of these phrases come from the growing Latino culture.

Business, Government, & Societal Applications

The ramifications for business, relationships, career and government are numerous.

For one, a society run by Boomers is willing to keep trying the old ways while Generation Xers won’t persist on a path they don’t trust or consider faulty.

Once Xers think something won’t work, they switch to something new. And where Boomers believe in the principles of the past and hesitate to try unproven policies, Xers are quick to try new things even when the risks are high.

The old model valued clarity, optimism and idealism, and supported progress toward the ideal–whether your ideal was Woodstock or Reagan.

In contrast, the new values are multi-layered, complex, nuanced.

They resonate with a cosmopolitan mix of pragmatic and symbolic, like American Idol or Obama. Things must be real and extremely symbolic at the same time.

In this new model, Republicans and Democrats are fake and lacking in symbolic sway, while Tea Parties and Obama are reality television and big-time icons combined.

Rush Limbaugh and Joe Biden are the old–straightforward, pushy, dogmatic, proletarian–while Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow are the new: complex, many-layered, broadly-read, cosmo, iconic. It’s George Strait and The Rolling Stones versus Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga.

The old says what it means, the new sparks the imagination.

At first blush, it may appear that the old model is fundamentally conservative–preserving values, honoring the past–while the new is wildly liberal–risking new options, and open to untried possibilities.

But that’s the view from the “words mean things” side of the fence.

On a deeper level, where things (all things, not just words mean things, the new OSA’s and USD’s signal a breath of life into the stagnant and unproductive war of words between the two major political parties and, more importantly, the two warring economic classes in our society.

We are increasingly a class society, split between uber-haves and the rest of us.

While the new “say what you don’t mean” generation may not appear to accept any of the wisdom of past generations, the opposite is actually true.

The older generations emphasized saying what you mean, and in doing so split into two rigid camps roughly understood as conservative and liberal.

These two camps then set out to beat each other in every walk of life, from the pulpit to the campus and from the big screen to the White House.

One major casualty in this battle was many of the best principles and ideas from the past. Indeed, both sides promoted their own version of what the greatest thinkers of history said, so that by the 2000’s both Democrats and Republicans could claim to be promoting Jeffersonian principles of American freedom.

Ultra-conservatives and liberal extremists carry around quotes from Plato, Jefferson, the Federalist, Tocqueville, Lincoln, Churchill and others–many taken largely out of context, each supporting some current pet viewpoint.

Both sides de-emphasized the need to go read Plato, Jefferson, the Federalist or others in depth and in total.

As a result, the great freedom principles and ideals of the past were forgotten, touted by all, and followed by none. This is the actual legacy of much that calls itself conservatism or progressivism.

Do our modern traditions preserve the best principles of the past? Not so much. (Translation for Boomers: “Not at all. And that really stinks!”)

Do they simultaneously claim the authority of the great ideas and patently fail to understand them? A little bit. (Translation for Boomers: “Totally. How ridiculous!”)

Is conservatism even conservative any more, and is progressivism even progressive? -ish. (Translation for Boomers: “A little, but not really. What’s wrong with these people, anyway?”)

Destiny Reconsidered

That said, there is much to be learned from the new destiny of language caused by the rise of Gen X.

While the obvious change is an openness to the new, even if it is untried and risky, there is a simultaneous return to the wisdom of the past.

More and more people, whatever their political or religious views, are returning to the old classics. And they are reading them in full, in depth. They are talking about them, blogging about them, and thinking about them.

As a result, they are getting a dose of quality thinking in a modern setting.

Something very interesting is coming out of this return to the great books and ideas. Conservatives are learning real conservatism and progressives are understanding real liberalism.

The potential of this renaissance is staggering. It turns out the problem of the great ideological divide was less conservatism vs. liberalism and more a reliance on superficiality.

Conservative and also progressive societies can both be greatly free, but shallow-thinking and poorly-educated societies cannot. They always deteriorate into less-than-free countries.

Indeed, when one actually reads Washington or Adams or Jefferson or the Federalist, it becomes clear that the American founders and framers were truly uber-conservative and uber-progressive.

They didn’t pick either side, but rather pulled the best conservative and also the best progressive principles and applied them all.

For example, when I first attended major home school conventions in the early 1990s there was a generally accepted viewpoint–shared by liberal hippies and right-wing evangelicals and seemingly everyone in between–that the American founders were against government-funded public schools and for privatized, parent-run schools.

In my youth, I had been taught a different view: That the founders established government-run public schools as the bastion of American strength.

When I read the collected writings of Jefferson, all twenty volumes, for the first time, I was shocked to read what he actually said about schools.

The first time I read the collected works of Washington and Adams, my surprise deepened and my views changed.

It turns out that both modern perspectives were shallow.

What the founders actually wanted was a flourishing educational environment with numerous public and private options all offering the deepest quality of education.

The founders described mentoring, the vital role of the greatest books and other works of mankind, and numerous educational ideals.

Their grasp of principles was broad, and their suggested innovations numerous. They believed in promoting the best conservative successes of the past and initiating progressive innovations to continually improve learning.

I had a similar experience as I read the original writings of the greats on numerous topics, from the Constitution to international relations to economics, and so on.

Depth always trumps shallow, and indeed many current debates between shallow conservatism and shallow liberalism are simply a problem caused by shallow understanding–when depth is added, many of these debates disappear altogether, and the rest have some actual chance of productive discourse that leads to improvement and change.

Shallow isn’t Education

The job-training focus of schooling since 1941 has, despite its admitted positives, had the negative effect of promoting shallow leadership and citizenship education.

The internet age has continued this downward trend to the extent that people have turned from books to e-surfing as a replacement for deep, quality education.

This applies to both formal youth schooling and informal, on-going adult learning.

A nation of free citizens is always a nation of adults continually learning at a deep level and thinking about new ideas in a continual national debate about the truly important things.

When only a small percentage of the adult population is engaged in this debate, freedom quickly declines, as the views and desires of the dependent masses are at odds with the principles of freedom.

In our day, the spread of the internet has significantly increased the number and percentage of the population that is actively involved in the national dialogue.

What is less obvious, but even more profound, is that we are also witnessing a growth in the number of people reading, studying and thinking about the great classics–not just limited quotes in textbooks, but in the original and complete form.

While the internet age has caused the death of the newspaper and, currently, the looming demise of many book publishers, it has coincided with a resurrection in reading the great classics.

This is a huge victory for freedom, though the consequences won’t likely be fully understood for many decades.

E: “Did Generation X get trained for jobs?
“A little bit.”

(Translation for Boomers: “Absolutely! If anything, it got more than enough. And, at the same time, other types of quality education suffered greatly.”)

F: “Did Generation X get a truly quality education for life and leadership?”
“Not so much.”

(Translation for Boomers: “Not at all. What a tragedy!”)

G: “Is Generation X prepared for the mantle of leadership now falling on its shoulders?”
“-ish.”

(Translation for Boomers: “Not really. But it’s coming anyway, so we’ll do our best. But it sucks that we weren’t educated for leadership in the first place!”)

H: “Look, Gen X isn’t any better than the Boomers and will have just as many problems.”
“I know, right?”

(Translation for Boomers: “Of course it will. In the meantime, let’s smile and make the best of it. In fact, let’s be happy about it. We might as well. Life stinks sometimes, but there is a lot of good too. Stop taking everything so seriously or you’ll die of ulcers.”)

I: “If Gen X doesn’t grow up and get serious, things will get a lot worse.”
“Oh yeah, good point.”

(Translation for Boomers: “No they won’t! Relax. I mean, yes, technically you are right. Real problems require real solutions. But stop over-stating it. Of course we’ll have to get serious. Of course we have to grow up. But in all your serious, grown-up leadership, you still managed to mess up the world a lot. Yes, you did some good things too. Thank you for those. Really, thank you. But our biggest problem with you is that you did everything with a frown on your face. We’ll deal with the real world in serious and grown-up ways, but don’t expect us to scowl our way through life. We prefer to smile, to laugh, to enjoy the journey–however difficult it may be.”)

A Boomer/Gen X Dialogue

I recently had a talk with a Boomer-age mentor who helped me a lot in my youth.

He commented on my latest book, and while he agreed with the conclusions two things baffled him.

First, why did I say, “God, or the Universe, whichever is most comfortable for you…” instead of just “God”?

Second, why did I say, “Whatever your politics, conservative or liberal or moderate or whatever, if you support freedom then we are on the same side…”?

I found myself as baffled as he was. Why wouldn’t I be inclusive instead of divisive?

I asked if my words made it sound like I don’t believe in God.

“Not at all,” he said. “But, it’s…squishy.”

“Squishy?” I asked. “I believe in God. I made that clear in the book, right?”

“Yes.”

“So, do you want me to go a step further and say that everyone who doesn’t believe in God is wrong and shouldn’t work with me on promoting freedom? Do you actually believe that?”

“Well, no,” he said. “But you should just say it like it is.”

“Okay,” I said, “here is how it is. If those who believe in God and freedom keep fighting against those who believe in freedom but not God, then will freedom win or lose?”

He just looked at me

“Or if conservatives, liberals, libertarians, environmentalists, moderates and independents who believe in freedom keep fighting against each other, does freedom gain or lose?”

He was shaking his head, so I tried a different tact.

“Is freedom losing so much ground because we’ve failed to show the evils of the other side or because we’ve failed to get more people to stand up for freedom? Which is more important?”

“Getting more to stand for freedom. That’s the whole point,” he said.

“Does freedom need more allies or less?” I asked.

“More. A lot more.”

“Do your allies have to agree with you on everything, or just on supporting freedom?”

“Well, I guess just on supporting freedom.”

“So why do you want me to argue with them on everything else? I mean, if freedom wins, we can all argue for the rest of our lives about everything from religion to politics to the Lakers. But if freedom loses, none of us will be able to stand for what we believe. I am proud of my friends who stand up for their beliefs that are different than mine. I want my grandchildren to live in a nation where all religions and political views and ideas can still believe what they want and express it openly and argue with each other. Don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said, “But it is possible to be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”

“True. It is also possible to be so closed that you make enemies of real friends.”

He pondered that, and began nodding his head.

“I can see that,” he agreed.

“Let me ask you a question,” I paused. “Is the need to attack different views actually part of your religion? Or part of your political ideals?”

“Actually,” he said after a few seconds, “my religion teaches just the opposite. For that matter, so do my political principles.”

He thought for a minute and I remained quiet. “It’s just that politics has been this way for so long, so much argument, cutting down the other side, getting them before they get you.”

I responded, “I know, right? But I have so many friends, really close friends, people I love and deeply respect, who disagree with me on religion or politics. But I’ve yet to meet someone who doesn’t really care about freedom. I just want all those who stand for freedom to at least try to work together.”

I later had an almost identical conversation (though the labels were different) with a woman who, by her account, had been raised a socialist in Brooklyn in the 1950s.

She spoke fondly of socialist summer camps as a youth and of being called a “pinko” when she went to college.

In the end, as I listened to her for over an hour, she was no socialist at all. She believed in the principles of freedom, despised government over-reach, and saw Washington D.C.’s excesses, regulations, high taxes and interventions in the economy as the great evil.

Her name for all this big-government domination was “capitalism.”

While many may disagree about the labels, she believed in freedom and deeply yearned to see the end of big-government growth.

I’m so glad I really listened to her instead of jumping to conclusions when she first called herself a “socialist.”

Once I understood what really mattered to her, I really enjoyed sharing what I thought about the current battle for freedom.

After she listened to me for a long time, she agreed that her labels were faulty and that we had a lot more in common than in disagreement.

Destiny Reborn

In the end, part of the Boomer generation’s way of doing things was to divide, label and battle. This system picked a side, gave positive names to its own side and negative labels to the other side, and went to war.

In this model, few people ever crossed the aisle or admitted good in the other side (or bad from its own side).

It put people in one camp or the other. “If you aren’t with us, you’re against us” was the operating motto.

There were many positives in this system, and perhaps coming as it did after the Hitler era it was necessary.

But this generation still runs Washington and much of the media and academia.

A new model is rising, however, with a different language and a different destiny. As the Xers increase their influence, the debate will likely be more sarcastic, ironic and complex.

This may turn off those who want politics and societal debates to be loving and kindly.

Others may be frustrated by the impact of Reality TV-style politics, and its ironic blend of reality with symbolism.

Put simply, presidential politics will likely be more and more like high school elections–too often all about appearance and popularity.

But the dialogues of the future will inject more humor and a relaxed attitude. They won’t take the political parties or candidates so seriously.

Freedom will be the serious issue, and policy, but not so much the candidates and parties.

They’ll elect Presidents like High School Prom Queens, but they’ll watch everyday government policy like Madison or Franklin.

They’ll care less about who is in the office and a lot more about what the officeholders actually do.

In a significant way, that’s a step in the right direction. And more importantly, Gen X politics is increasingly more participative–meaning that more citizens are closely involved in elections and also in everyday governance.

This is a huge step forward. Above all, the citizenry itself is slowly and consistently increasing its depth.

More regular people are reading the old classics in detail, thinking about the greatest ideas of mankind and comparing them to our modern institutions and leaders.

The old model was run by fewer, straightforwardly-involved but shallowly-engaged citizens. The future model appears to be developing toward more citizens involved and also more who are deeply engaged in the classics and great ideas.

The biggest criticism of the Xers–their skepticism–turns to a positive when applied to citizenship. Because they are skeptical they keep a closer eye on politics, stay more involved, and are less swayed by the next politician promising a grand program.

They are still second-in-command to the “Big Program” Boomers, but their day is coming.

If you want a citizenry that simply votes and then leaves everything else to Washington, you will be disappointed. The generation of “Awesome!” is being slowly replaced by a generation of uber-citizens.

If the trend continues, future Americans will be more like the American founding generation than any citizenry in nearly two centuries.

If this continues, the future of freedom is significantly brighter.

Or, to put it succinctly: “America’s future?”

“I know, right?”

***********************************

Oliver DeMille is the founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.

He is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, and The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Category : Culture &Generations &Government &Liberty &Politics