Who Will Stand For Freedom
May 21st, 2014 // 11:10 am @ Oliver DeMille
The Destiny of Freedom
In 1961 the great legal scholar Bruno Leoni wrote about freedom in modern times.
He said:
“It seems to be the destiny of individual freedom at the present time to be defended mainly be economists rather than by lawyers or political scientists.”
Why? Leoni’s answer was intriguing:
“As far as lawyers are concerned, perhaps the reason is that they are in some way forced to speak on the basis of their professional knowledge and therefore in terms of contemporary law.”
As a result, since modern law is too often in the business of reducing freedom rather than supporting it, most of today’s attorneys have become experts on the opposite of freedom.
How They Speak
As Lord Bacon would have said, “They speak as if they were bound.” Over fifty years later, the same is true of nearly all today’s economists, teachers and professors. Sad.
The modern intelligentsia has become a body of experts on force. Their expertise is usually focused on how to reduce freedom—though few use these specific words to describe their careers.
Leoni continued: “Political scientists, on the other hand, often to appear to be inclined to think of politics as a sort of technique, comparable, say, to engineering, which involves the idea that people should be dealt with by political scientists approximately in the same way as machines or factories are dealt with by engineers.
“The engineering idea of political science has, in fact, little, if anything, in common with the cause of individual freedom” just as “the contemporary legal systems to which [attorneys are now] bound seem to leave an ever-shrinking area to individual freedom.”
Leoni’s words cut right to the heart of the matter.
When I was in college in the late 1980s, I heard a speaker tell a group of young student leaders how to influence society. I don’t remember his exact words, but his meaning was clear.
He told us, “If you want to make the nation and world more committed to liberal ideals, become a journalist, professor, teacher, or attorney. If you want to promote conservative goals in society, go to business school and become an executive.”
It was a shallow, but prophetic, suggestion. In the three decades since, his recommendation has proven accurate for two whole generations, and today it is part of the rising generation’s culture.
Pushing the Wrong Direction
But what profession(s), if any, stand today for individual freedom? The economists have mostly gone the direction of law—bound too often by their profession’s expertise in how to reduce freedom.
The days when Leoni spoke on the same podium with Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek are long gone.
Likewise gone to the dustbin of history is the era when many business executives advanced the cause of liberty as one of their main goals. Now the drive is to survive in the global economy, usually by expanding one’s company outside of North America and Europe.
This is the overarching focus of most boards and executives.
The economy now rewards growth, not promotion of freedom—just like the professions tend to promote young people who support the push for more institutional controls and power, not more liberty for the masses.
As the divide between the rich and the rest widens, the pressure to impress the Establishment grows. Youthful ideals (such as freedom) are the last thing on today’s executive agenda.
The Factory Model
In the midst of the Charter School movement of the mid-1990s, I spoke on the same stage as a courageous woman who had founded a successful East Coast inner city Charter high school. In a moment together in the Green Room, I asked her how long she thought she could keep teaching the principles of freedom in her cutting-edge school.
She replied that, given the pace of intrusive government regulation over Charter schools (and schools in general), she thought she had 5-10 years before she would have to reject state funds and turn the school private.
Today, over 15 years later, the school has grown into a lucrative business, regulation has shut down the original curriculum and replaced it with one practically identical to the public schools in the same city, and this lady still runs her Charter school.
But where her school once stood for freedom against the mediocrity of the public conveyor belt, it has now joined the factory model.
And she is now “respectable,” not an educational reformer or freedom thought leader any more, but just another of the city’s high school principals—professionally reined in, committed to “the system.”
She has even stopped teaching the freedom classics that convinced her to start the Charter school in the first place.
This professional caving in to institutional pressure is what Leoni lamented in 1961 about his beloved profession of law. But today it is much more widespread.
The “civilizing decline and fall of the professions” is nearly complete. Now most (not all) lawyers, teachers, professors, economists, journalists and executives fight for the same side—big institutions, the Wall Street-White House nexus, the Ivy League-Federal Government connection, the Boston/New York City/Washington D.C. corridor, the big business/big government power elite. The Establishment.
In all this, who will stand against elite rule?
Who will stand for freedom?
Unheeded Messages
Leoni’s book, Freedom and the Law, a fantastic classic, was written in an attempt to convince the legal profession to take a stand for liberty, not slip into the easier current of seeking benefits from big government. Leoni predicted that his outcry would fail to convince enough people to turn down such lucrative promises, but he felt he had to try anyway.
Freedom was worth it.
Leoni made it clear that every loss of freedom is an increase in constraint, and constraint by government is always autocratic. No exceptions. Therefore, every minor decrease of freedom is an attack on the very roots of liberty.
In a sense, Leoni did the same thing Virgil tried to do centuries ago when he saw Rome falling. Virgil warned that a loss of individual freedom here and there would trigger a loss of freedom for everyone in the nation. But he was basically ignored.
In fact, his great work on this topic, entitled Georgics, is still hardly even read or studied today.
Sadly, the message of warning about losing freedom seems forever destined to go unheeded—until it is lost, at which point people get very interested in the topic.
Leoni’s view of freedom takes us back to the basics. He argued that freedom is ultimately nothing more than the Golden Rule, the idea that we should only do unto others what we would be happy having them do to us. To the extent that this is followed in a society, it is genuinely free.
To the level it is ignored, for whatever reason (private or governmental), freedom declines.
Important Questions
To understand freedom, using this definition, just ask yourself: “Who would I give the power to make all my decisions for me?”
Your answer tells where you stand for freedom. If you say, “nobody,” or “God, and nobody else,” you are adamantly a supporter of freedom. If you say “the government,” you are adamantly against freedom. If you say, “my employer, and government, and local committees and boards,” you are choosing socialism.
Note that the question was who would you give the power to make ALL your decisions, not some of them, or a few of them, or certain decisions, or even a lot of them. All of them. The answer tells you where you stand on the freedom question.
Leoni expands this one question into several:
- How do you want to be treated?
- Are you willing to treat others the way you want to be treated?
- Are you willing to voluntarily sacrifice to create and maintain a society where everyone is treated this way?
- Who will rule in such a society, who will choose these rulers, and how can these rulers be kept from using their power to treat people in wrong ways?
- Why do you allow society and rulers to treat you and others in wrong ways?
- What are you doing to ensure that everyone is treated the right way?
These are the questions of freedom.
What are your answers?
The future belongs to innovation,
not conformity.
Oliver DeMille is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling co-author of LeaderShift: A Call for Americans to Finally Stand Up and Lead, the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.
Among many other works, he is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, The Coming Aristocracy, and FreedomShift: 3 Choices to Reclaim America’s Destiny.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
Category : Blog &Citizenship &Constitution &Current Events &Economics &Education &Entrepreneurship &Generations &Government &History &Leadership &Liberty &Mini-Factories
Corruption By Any Other Name – Oliver DeMille
April 25th, 2014 // 10:41 am @ Oliver DeMille
Another Domino Falling
JP Morgan recently settled a case brought by the government, agreeing to pay Washington $13 billion for its role in the mortgage bubble meltdown.
This creates a very dangerous standard. When something bad happens, Washington will naturally seek to find fault in a place that brings it a lot of extra cash—the most profitable businesses.
As Ken Kurson put it:
“This settlement sets a terrible precedent. Companies with strong balance sheets can expect to become targets of the government…”[i]
This is another domino in the decline of our freedoms, and it’s a big one. This new approach allows, even incentivizes, government corruption. Let’s review how this process works:
- The federal government passes laws that require or incentivize businesses to give loans or offer services/products to people who can’t actually afford them. Businesses that refuse are penalized.
- As a result of this kind of bad policy, many businesses fail. Businesses that comply, but only make middling profits, are left alone.
- Businesses that comply, and make big profits, are targeted by the federal government and end up paying huge sums of money to the government.
Godfather Over Again
This is a great racket. It’s akin to a mafia protection scheme: “You need protection from us. We’ll provide it, for a fee. The fee will be set by us, without appeal or negotiation. If you don’t pay it, we’ll hurt you and/or your business—thus proving that you really did need protection.”
An official term for this new precedent is “corruption.” Except that the Supreme Court gets to determine the actual definition of the word. And who gave the Court the power to do this?
The Supreme Court did, in a string of cases starting in 1803 through 1936.
Is this recurring pattern starting to make sense?
“Wait,” the critics say. “The crash was real! And JP Morgan and other companies that participated need to pay! Right?”
As Kurson wrote:
“Of course, most of JP Morgan’s wrongdoing—70 to 80 percent of the exposure—was committed by two companies, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, it acquired in 2008 at the request, to the point of command, of then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. JPM acquired those companies as acts of mercy during a crisis.”[ii]
Let’s get this straight. The economy was tanking, so the government demanded that JP Morgan buy two flailing firms—to help save the economy. Then, when the fall came, the government targeted JP Morgan for the mistakes of these two firms and made it pay for them.
Godfather corruption indeed.
Who It Hurts
How are businesses responding to this emerging new economy? Many are closing. Others are going abroad, to China, India, Brazil, etc. Those that make enough from the U.S. economy simply pay the fines, settlements, and fees—it’s the cost of doing business.
The real problem is for American workers and families. JP Morgan has increased its litigation reserve up to $23 billion (from $3 billion in 2010).[iii] Other companies are learning to do the same.
What happens when the extra billions are refocused this way? Money moves away from salaries and purchases, the economy is hurt, private sector jobs are cut or curtailed.
The government is currently seeking similar payoffs from a number of other big companies. As this precedent sends its ripples through the economy, it will harm a lot of families.
More firms will move operations and jobs abroad, and others will shift more money from jobs and put it to litigation and fees.
Old Pattern, New Cloth
Oh, and just re-read the government’s pattern outlined above for the mortgage bubble, but this time read it with Obamacare in mind:
- The federal government passes laws that require or incentivize businesses to offer services/products to people who can’t actually afford them. Businesses that refuse are penalized.
- As a result of these bad policies, many businesses fail. Businesses that comply, but only make middling profits, are left alone.
- Businesses that comply, but make big profits, are targeted by the federal government and end up paying huge sums of money to the government.
This really is as shocking as it sounds. Yes, this really is happening in the United States.
The worst news in all this is that most people will do nothing about it, because this kind of financial news is considered technical mumbo jumbo.
Citizens usually just ignore it. “What can I do, after all?” is the typical response.
This is how freedoms decline: slowly for a while–then all at once. The amazing part is that when the “all at once” crash comes, almost everyone acts surprised.
But what can a regular person do? Really? It’s not like you can stop government overspending, party bickering, or a growing culture of corruption with a call to your Congressman or a letter to the editor.
The answer to this major post-modern question (What can a regular person do?) is interesting: We can start with not being surprised.
Problems and Solutions
We can know what is coming. A government addicted to spending and borrowing, and constantly increasing its spending and borrowing, is going to cause problems for the economy and for its citizens.[iv]
A government addicted to increased regulations is going to cause problems.[v]
A government that demands official secrecy from its own people while increasing how it spies on its own citizens is going to cause problems.[vi]
A government that inflates its currency and borrows from its biggest enemies and competitors is going to cause problems.[vii]
A government whose top officials routinely make promises during elections or to pass big agendas and then break them once they win is going to cause problems.[viii]
A government that uses statistics it knows distort reality (just revising them a few months later once decisions have been made), in order to support its continued ideological course, is going to cause problems.[ix]
A citizenry that turns a collective blind eye to these realities is enabling the very problems it fears. Then the people claims surprise when the crash comes.
Anyone who is surprised by the next crash has been lying to themselves for a long time.
False Recovery
As Allan Greenspan wrote in November 2013:
“One can hope that in a future financial crisis—and there will surely be one…”[x]
Calomiris and Haber noted that banking crises should be expected:
“The banking system in the United States has been highly crisis-prone, suffering no fewer than 14 major crisis in the past 180 years.”[xi]
The question isn’t if, but when, the next one will come.
Or consider what J. Bradford DeLong wrote in a piece in Foreign Affairs titled “The Second Great Depression: Why the Economic Crisis is Worse Than You Think”:
“The U.S. economy has enjoyed a recovery [since 2009] only in the sense that conditions haven’t gotten worse…. But it is unlikely that the economic downturn will be over by 2017…”[xii]
Greenspan suggested the second thing people can do. He wrote:
“Financial firms could have protected themselves…if…they had prepared for a rainy day.”[xiii]
Though he addressed this belated counsel to companies, it certainly applies to regular people as well.
Time and Two Steps
To summarize, we have covered two things a regular person can do about our current problems. First, know about them. Pay attention. Keep a close eye on the government, the economy, and current events. Read the fine print and the technical mumbo jumbo put out by government.
The English word for this daily activity and focus is “citizenship.”
The second is to prepare. Look around, see what is really needed, and what is likely to be needed in the years ahead—and take action to help your community flourish.
Not just for you, but for others.
The word for this kind of initiative and foresight is “entrepreneurship.” It isn’t pessimistic, doomsayer, or extreme. In fact, effective entrepreneurialism is precisely the opposite.
It only works if it is optimistic, positive, and sustained.
Without such citizenship and entrepreneurialism, the decline of freedom is only going to accelerate. We’ve still got time for these two things to work, but time is running out.
[i] Ken Kurson, “The Portfolio,” Esquire, February 2014.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] See, for example, Edward Conard, “How to Fix America: Which Tools Should Washington Use? Unleash the Private Sector,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2013. See also: Fareed Zakaria, “Can America Be Fixed?: The New Crisis of Democracy,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2013. For example: “In 1980 the United States’ gross government debt was 42 percent of its total GDP; it is now 107 percent.”
[v] Ibid. For example, the United States is ranked 76th in the world for its “burden of government regulations.”
[vi] See Jack Shafer, “Live and Let Live,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2014. “[A]ccording to the White House review panel convened last year to examine the NSA’s surveillance practices, the bulk collection of phone records has stopped precisely zero attacks.”
[vii] See, for example, Minxin Pei, “How China and America See Each Other: And Why They Are On A Collision Course,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2014. For example: “In 2007, the United States’ economy was four times as large as that of China; by 2012, it was only twice as large.”
[viii] E.g. “If you want to keep your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” See also: Michael A. Cohen, “Hypocrisy Hype: Can Washington Still Walk and Talk Differently?” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2014.
[ix] See Zachary Karabell, “(Mis)leading Indicators: Why Our Economic Numbers Distort Reality,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2014.
[x] Allan Greenspan, “Never Saw It Coming: Why the Financial Crisis Took Economists by Surprise,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2013.
[xi] Charles W. Calomiris and Stephen H. Haber, “Why Banking Systems Succeed and Fail: The Politics Behind Financial Institutions,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2013.
[xii] J. Bradford DeLong, “The Second Great Depression: Why the Economic Crisis is Worse Than You Think,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2013.
[xiii] Op Cit., Greenspan.
Category : Blog &Business &Citizenship &Community &Current Events &Economics &Entrepreneurship &Leadership &Liberty &Mini-Factories &Mission &Politics &Uncategorized
How to Deal With the BLM (A Modest Proposal)
April 15th, 2014 // 12:53 pm @ Oliver DeMille
by Oliver DeMille
Here a -Gate, There a -Gate
The IRS targeting scandal and BLM-gate in Nevada hit the news again this week. If you missed these two huge stories, do a quick web search and catch up on the news. Both may be precursors of a Constitutional crisis. Add the shocking turn of events (and aftermath) surrounding Benghazi as well.
The truth is, there is a fundamental problem with the way our government works right now. It is structurally broken, and without a real fix things are going to continue to decline. Washington and its out-of-control agencies and branches will continue to expand—breaking the bank and reducing the freedoms of our nation with every advance.
The problem is that the President and Executive Branch are engaged in domestic policy. Period. The framers only wanted the President to deal with national security.
This is a massive change, and it creates an almost insurmountable national crisis.
As long as this is our system, national crises are going to continue. Like dominoes falling, we’ll witness once crisis after another.
People will wonder why Washington can’t get it right, but few will realize the truth: The federal government simply isn’t well designed to do what it is doing. It is designed to be tough on foreign enemies, to leave interactions with its own citizens to the state and local governments.
What’s Washington “For”?
This bears repeating until every American figures it out:
- The federal government is designed to stop foreign attackers.
- It is designed to keep the President from becoming a tyrant while he still has enough massive power to effectively repel any security threats to the nation.
- It is designed with a congress that has the power to ensure that the states help fund and support whatever it takes to stop any attacks on the nation.
- It is designed to allow the Court to settle disputes between the states in a peaceful manner.
These are, fundamentally, all the federal government is supposed to do. This is how the Constitution was written.
Today the federal government acts like these Constitutional responsibilities are just minor duties, afterthoughts really–as if funding and managing myriad federal programs in every walk of life and in every small town or valley, home and business across the nation is their real job.
As long as this is the case, America will decline.
On the one hand, we’ll decline because Washington too often uses its power stupidly—sending the BLM to shoot a rancher’s cattle or using the IRS to investigate political rivals. But this is natural to a government that was set up to fight its enemies.
The Executive Branch thinks like what it is: a national security apparatus.
And in the context of security issues, the Congress thinks like what it is: an arm to raise funds for the Executive and simultaneously keep the Executive from becoming tyrannical.
All of this is excellent when it is pointed at real threats to America. How about: use the resources of the BLM, IRS, ATF, FDA, etc. on Iran, Iraq, North Korea, China, Russia? See how Putin deals with that!
Misdirection
The truth is, the tactics used by many of our federal agencies would be much better suited against Putin’s Russia than our current international policies.
Sadly, they are used more often against our own people than against our adversaries. Sic the NSA on the phone records of China and Iran, not Burbank or Atlanta.
When the national security apparatus (which should be synonymous with “Washington D.C.”) targets Americans, it does so in the wrong way. It was never designed as a government to oversee its own people. The framers structured it specifically for national defense.
The states and local governments were supposed to do the governing of the people. Read the Constitution. Read the Federalist Papers. This focus was clear.
The second problem, the second reason our system is broken, is that in focusing on domestic governance (unconstitutionally), the federal government is less likely to do its real job—national security.
Why do we send federal agents against a rancher in Nevada or conservative groups applying to the IRS, but send nobody to protect our diplomats in Benghazi?
The federal government has forgotten why it exists.
It spies on its own people, but does nothing except bluster as Iran fails one nuclear inspection deadline after another.
Domestic policy and politics get in the way every time the Congress or the Executive Branch want to do what really should be done for national defense.
We let Putin or China get away with, literally, murder and torture because our federal leaders are afraid to take a stand that might jeopardize them politically.
Here’s a thought…
If the federal government only dealt with national defense, including mitigation of disputes between states, it wouldn’t have this concern. It would take Putin on with strength—the way the ATF and BLM deal with American citizens.
The irony here is shocking.
We putter around with true dictatorship such as North Korea and Iran, and try to make friends with raw aggression from Russia.
The federal government talks big against Putin and China, but it only actually bares its teeth when faced by a one of its own senior citizens and a few cattle.
Again, the Constitutional structure is going unheeded. Until we simply follow the Constitution, our decline is assured.
But what can we do? What are the realistic policies or changes that can fix our plight?
It’s great to talk about the ideals of the Constitution, but what about real solutions?
I agree–we need real changes. So here’s my proposal:
Let’s convince the Obama Administration and Congress to round up all agents who carry guns for the BLM, ATF, IRS, NSA, FDA and any other federal agency and ship them to the Ukraine.
This won’t consist of sending “military” forces because they’re not soldiers, they’re bureaucrats.
It won’t hurt the United States, since the absence of thousands of meddling federal officials will likely cause an economic boom in America.
It will be a real blow to Putin’s aggression, however. They U.S. bureaucrats speak his language.
They’ll cite policies, procedures, precedents, and email/phone data they’ve been secretly collecting on Ukrainians for many years. Putin’s people won’t know what hit them.
When the Russians threaten violence, our “Bureau Team Six” will just make up their own laws, agency rules, and executive orders and enforce them.
No matter how the Russian generals respond, they’ll have an answer: “Who cares what the people on the ground think?” “Who cares what the Constitution says?” “Logic and common sense? What’s that got to do with anything?” “Come on, Putin, just do what we say.”
If all else fails, Bureau Team Six will just write up some new policies and print them out on their laser printer. Then they’ll point to these “laws” and tell the Russians that this is agency policy with the full backing of the U.S. federal government.
Indeed, this Corps of Really Armed Bureaucrats (CRABs) is already highly trained in the exact tactics that will put Putin’s power grab in its place.
When they’re done in the Ukraine, let’s send them to North Korea. They should be able to shape things up quickly.
Then on to Iran.
Back at the Ranch
Meanwhile, the economy at home will be booming.
Less regulation will foster more opportunity.
Fewer dogmatic enforcers will encourage innovation and increased prosperity.
International investors will move their money to American businesses, and employment and salaries will increase.
It’s amazing how quickly things can be fixed when we simply follow good principles. The Constitution is actually a really good idea. We should consider following it.
Conclusion
Satire aside, our system really is broken, and nothing will fix it until the federal government gets out of the governing business and gets back to focusing exclusively on national security. If this is too big a change, then the U.S. cannot stand as a free nation.
For more on how “regular citizens” can preserve freedom, see Oliver’s Freedom Bundle:
- FreedomShift
- 1913
- We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident
- The Coming Aristocracy
- The Four Lost American Ideals
Click here for more information >>
Oliver DeMille is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling co-author of LeaderShift: A Call for Americans to Finally Stand Up and Lead, the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.
Among many other works, he is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, The Coming Aristocracy, and FreedomShift: 3 Choices to Reclaim America’s Destiny.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
Category : Blog &Citizenship &Constitution &Current Events &Foreign Affairs &Government &Leadership &Liberty &Mini-Factories &Politics &Statesmanship
Why Do We Keep Losing the Freedom Battle?
March 20th, 2014 // 3:00 pm @ Oliver DeMille
Two Avenues of Destruction
Why does government keep growing, no matter who we elect, no matter which party is in charge? Why do freedom lovers, those who truly want limited, Constitutional government, continue to lose the battle?
There are two answers. First, the freedom battle loses—year after year, election after election, decade after decade—because it is poorly funded. The political parties are well funded, mind you, but neither party truly stands for freedom. Freedom lovers lose because they are underfunded, pure and simple. More on this below.
Second, those who stand for freedom lose the battle to bigger government because the regular people can’t see what is happening. We don’t see armed troops in jackboots marching daily through our streets, entering our homes, and stealing our property and lives.
When the people can’t see this happening, it’s hard for them to get too excited about it. They don’t know what to fight against. They don’t know who the enemy is. They aren’t sure who to fight, or how to fight them.
The Paper Sword
We don’t realize that Soft Power attacks (certain licensing requirements, regulations, agency policies, commercial codes, revenue bills, statutory changes, executive orders, secret agency procedures, exemptions, ex post facto decisions, and court cases) are as dangerous to freedom as Hard Power attacks (invading armies, armed rebellions, political officials with their own armies, or government use of force against its own people).
In history, the regular people often respond to Hard Power attacks on freedom, but they seldom even notice Soft Power attacks until their freedoms are too far gone to recover.
Citizens of nations almost never realize it when Soft Power is attacking them. The biggest irony of this is that throughout human history Soft Power has taken away more freedom than Hard Power. In fact, Hard Power is seldom used until Soft Power has weakened a nation.
Today, we are witnessing a wholesale reduction of our freedoms—nearly all through Soft Power attacks that few people notice.
To See and Understand
As one insightful friend wrote to me in an email: “We don’t know who or what to fight against. I still believe the majority of Americans value freedom… We, as a culture, do not know how to defend freedom in this new age of information, nor do we know who or what to defend it from. All the average citizen sees—or is supposed to see—is things going a little darker, a little dirtier, a little more crowded, each day. There is, for most Westerners in any case, no force-of-state brutes-in-boots and uniforms…. We see only the results of class stratification and economic divergence…. The most dangerous enemy is the one you can’t see.”
Americans would stand up and vote to get their freedoms back, if only they understand how much they are under attack.
If they could see their freedoms being stolen by Hard Power attacks at the level that they are truly under siege from Soft Power, they’d change things—and fast.
But the regular people don’t see, because Soft Power is used behind-the-scenes, on paper.
How to Win It
This is why only a nation of voracious readers can maintain its freedoms. This brings us back to the first reason freedom is losing: underfunding.
Not only do we need a nation of voracious readers, we need a lot of successful businessmen, professionals, entrepreneurs, and others of means to fund freedom—to fund those things that help the regular people see and understand the impact of Soft Power.
This is the current battle for the future of freedom.
1. Will people of means fund effective responses to Soft Power attacks on our freedom?
2. Enough to win the battle?
3. ill enough regular people take entrepreneurial action and become people of means?
On these three questions turn our future.
Which of these three battles are you helping fight?
Oliver DeMille is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling co-author of LeaderShift: A Call for Americans to Finally Stand Up and Lead, the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.
Among many other works, he is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, The Coming Aristocracy, and FreedomShift: 3 Choices to Reclaim America’s Destiny.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
Category : Aristocracy &Business &Citizenship &Community &Constitution &Current Events &Economics &Entrepreneurship &Government &Leadership &Liberty &Mini-Factories &Mission &Politics &Statesmanship
What’s Really Happening to Our Nation?
January 17th, 2014 // 10:00 am @ Oliver DeMille
It happened on the same day.
Two people, who as far as I know don’t know each other, asked me the same question. Or, to be more precise, they asked two different questions that have the same answer.
In truth, this is a question that a lot of Americans have on their mind right now. Many of them don’t even realize it, but every time they watch the news, hear about current politics, or discuss Washington’s latest antics with friends or at work, they feel a growing sense that our government is becoming less and less likely to handle really big challenges.
The first question went something like this: “Oliver, I just don’t understand your logic in a recent article you wrote. I understand your concerns about big government, but why do you think business is any better?”
The second question was similar: “In your book, LeaderShift, you and Orrin Woodward have James Madison say that as business leaders go, so goes America. Why did you single out business leaders, instead of parents, academia, media or the government?”
This is an incredibly important question. Of course, I won’t presume to speak for Orrin — he can answer this question however he wants. His answers are always excellent. As for me, here’s my answer:
Where there is freedom, there is progress.
Where freedom is lacking, there is decline.
Yes, a little regulation can increase freedom — to the extent that it protects people and keeps contracts and agreements honest, and safe from crime. Beyond this, however, increased regulation means decreased freedom and therefore decline.
During the 1990s and 2000s, for example, the computing technology sector was probably the freest major industry in the world — and it brought us our greatest new fortunes, our major new technologies, and the biggest new advancements that drastically changed our world.
During that era, for example, most other sectors were highly regulated — and in decline as a result. Communications and media were highly regulated, banking became highly regulated after 9/11, transportation and manufacturing was highly regulated, and so was education, health care, farming, law, engineering, etc.
In fact, rewind a few decades, and note that the freedom in home construction and land development before the 1990s made real estate a major part of the economy. Huge fortunes, millions of jobs, and a lot of widespread prosperity came from this freedom. Not to mention widespread home ownership — the kind where people could actually afford their homes.
This kind of growth always happens where there is freedom.
And the increase in overbearing real estate regulation began before the housing bubble — it may well have caused it.
Remember: Where there is freedom, there is progress. Where freedom is lacking, there is decline.
Earlier in world history, America rose while Europe declined — precisely because America was free and most European nations were highly regulated. The same had happened when Greece and Rome chose high regulations while the European nations maintained relative freedom.
In the 19th century when Americans went west and found free lands to till, develop and improve, American prosperity soared. Later, when a Civil War gave a higher level of freedom to all Americans by ending slavery, prosperity skyrocketed. It took a while, but in less than eighty years the United States became the world’s leading power.
Freedom brings progress.
When industry, farming, education, and health care were only barely regulated (just enough to provide basic, obvious protections), all of these sectors made huge wealth, built a strong America, created millions of good jobs (where one working adult could support their whole family), and spurred increased innovations and technologies.
While big-government Europe watched its people live in apartments, small-government America watched its citizens build and own independent homes, often with large yards.
In big-government Europe well-to-do families owned a car; in small-government America even many lower-middle-class families owned several.
Freedom brings progress; decreasing freedom brings decline.
So many more examples from world history could be discussed. Sectors free from regulation lead a nation, at least until politicians figure this out and find ways to regulate them.
Today, there are at least five sectors that have higher-than-average levels of freedom:
- Family
- Home businesses
- Network marketing businesses
- Online businesses
- Businesses that operate across borders in many nations
Note that politicians are already scheming ways to tax online businesses, force people to buy an electronic stamp for each email or Facebook update/relationship change, charge fees for various actions of international companies, and many others.
All such attempts to increase regulation actually reduce freedom and bring decline.
But for now, business is the sector of society with the most freedom. If progress is going to come, it will happen in the entrepreneurial sectors.
Bill Gates said that
“One sign of a healthy industry is lower prices. The statistics show that the cost of computing has decreased ten million fold since 1971. That’s the equivalent of getting a Boeing 747 for the price of a pizza.”
So why can’t all of us afford a jet today, just like we afford a computer? The answer is that during the past thirty years the aerospace industry was highly regulated while the computing sector was not. You can argue that airplanes should be highly regulated; after all, they can be weapons. But, in rebuttal, so can computers.
The principle remains: Where there is freedom, there is progress. Where freedom is lacking, there is decline.
If you want to promote freedom today, think entrepreneurially — and encourage your youth and others to do the same. The future belongs to entrepreneurship, because freedom leads to progress.
This is what’s really going on in our nation, and only those who understand this realize what’s coming — and what to do about it.
Oliver DeMille is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling co-author of LeaderShift: A Call for Americans to Finally Stand Up and Lead, the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.
Among many other works, he is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, The Coming Aristocracy, and FreedomShift: 3 Choices to Reclaim America’s Destiny.
Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.
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