Prosperity

A Huge Surprise! by Oliver DeMille

July 21st, 2014 // 6:09 am @ Sara DeMille

My Eureka Moment

It was downright amazing! Surprising, in fact. Shocking. Actually, I don’t think the American founding generation would have been surprised at all. They would have expected it. But for me, raised in our modern world, it was a true Eureka!

I should have seen it coming, to tell the truth. In fact, if someone had asked me beforehand to predict what would happen, I’d have put on my forecasting cap and I…probably still wouldn’t have known. But nobody asked, and I didn’t give it a thought. I guess I’m getting ahead of the story, though, so let’s back up a bit.

Petitions and Amazing Happenings

Last summer and fall a number of people in our small town went around getting citizens to sign a petition. The city had decided to raise taxes to meet the growing demands, and some people thought this was a bad idea. The truth is, the leaders in our town are very dedicated and honest—the ones I know personally, which includes most of them, are people of deep integrity.

The same is true of the citizens who talked to me about signing the petition. I studied the issue and decided that, in my opinion, we really didn’t need the additional services the tax increase would cover. I signed the petition.

So did a lot of people, and the taxes were postponed—at least for a while.

Then came the annual 4th of July celebration. Of course, one of the great traditions of Independence Day is watching the fireworks. This was suggested by founding father John Adams, and it has been a ritual of growing up for most Americans ever since.

But fireworks were one of the things cut by postponing the tax increase. As the 4th approached, this became a topic of discussion across back fences, near mailboxes, and anywhere else neighbors met. “I voted against raising taxes,” one neighbor told me, “but I’ll sure miss the fireworks.” He shook his head sadly.

I found myself agreeing with him. I repeated his sentiment several times during the last half of June.

Time passed, as it always does, and the holiday arrived. There was a parade, snow cones, barbecues and races. When evening came, my kids asked if I wanted to drive to the neighboring town and watch the fireworks. I told them to go ahead. On the one hand I felt a bit like a hypocrite for voting against the taxes and then driving to the next town for their tax-funded fireworks. But mostly I was just worn out from the day and wanted to stay home. “If only we could just sit in our yard and watch the fireworks like every year,” I heard my voice saying in spite of myself.

The kids left, and Rachel and I sat in the yard and watched dusk turn into darkness.

Then an amazing thing happened. Our neighbors just down the road begin shooting off amazing fireworks. Because the city wasn’t providing fireworks, policies were relaxed and people were allowed to fire up the kind of fireworks usually only done by the local government.

Firework Economy

We watched in awe. Because our home is on a hill, the bursts seemed close enough to reach out and touch.

But that was just the beginning. Right after the neighbors began their display, another one started just down the road. Then another, and another. We walked the stairs to our balcony and looked out over the valley. Every neighborhood seemed to have the kind of fireworks that in past years have only been done by the city. We counted seventeen distinct places that shot off huge firework displays.

We watched them simultaneously. This went on for over two hours. The city’s usual annual display seemed to last about a half hour or so—I have no idea the actual timing, just my recollection. This one went on and on. An hour into this, three more neighborhoods started. Some ended, and new ones began.

We watched in awe.

It was by far the most amazing fireworks display I’ve ever witnessed. All provided by private citizens. As far as I know, all paid for without tax funds.

As we watched, and as it continued well into the night, I turned to Rachel and said, “I can’t believe it! The city government never did anything close to this! Look at what the people are doing, all by themselves.”

She nodded. “Government tries to do too much,” she said, “and ends up doing less than if they’d just let people exercise their freedom.”

“Can you imagine what would happen to our economy if the government would get out of the way and let free enterprise work?” I asked.

“Instead of standing on a balcony watching the best fireworks ever,” she replied, “we could stand back and watch the nation’s economy boom and blossom. There would be jobs, progress and more prosperity everywhere!”

The One Thing That Works

We sat and watched in silence for a long time. The explosions boomed against each other and echoed through the valley. Sometime close to midnight things died down, and shortly after that our kids came home. They piled out of the van laughing and talking.

“Did you see all that?” our twenty-year-old asked enthusiastically. “That was the best fireworks display ever!”

“We didn’t even leave town!” our seventeen-year-old said. “We started to go, but then all these places started shooting up fireworks. They were everywhere! In every direction…”

“So we just pulled over at the park and got out to watch them!” our fourteen-year-old interrupted. “It was so amazing!”

I looked at Rachel. “Someday the government will get out of the economy and tell the people they’re on their own…and then we’ll see what freedom can really do in America.”

“That’s what you’re here talking about?” asked our twenty-two-year-old daughter with a big smile, baby in arms.

We laughed. “Well, it is the 4th of July” I said. “Isn’t this is exactly what every American should be talking about today?”

Long after the 5th of July arrived I rested on my bed, eyes open, unable to sleep. One thought just kept coming back to me, over and over.

Freedom works.

Today’s America should give it more of a try. Deregulate and let free enterprise shine and flourish. Most people today probably can’t even imagine it, but I bet it’s amazing what the people of this nation would rise up and do if given the chance.

Freedom works.

America should try 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

Category : Blog &Citizenship &Community &Current Events &Economics &Entrepreneurship &Government &Leadership &Liberty &Politics &Prosperity

Are You Really an American

February 3rd, 2014 // 2:02 pm @ Oliver DeMille

The more I watch the news, the more I wish we had more farmers in modern America. I grew up in a small town, and when I was a boy there were lots of farmers still left in the county.

The town was small enough that I knew, at least by face and name, pretty much every man and woman — and I noticed something different about farmers. They didn’t accept the “official line” on anything, and they never tried to impress or fit in. They seemed secure in who they were, not worried about whether they were popular or not. This gave them immense strength.

For example, one day while walking to school, I noticed water spouting high into the air from a broken fire hydrant. A local grocer I knew pulled over, watched it with me and a few other kids, and then said, “I’ll call the city office and tell them to come fix it.”

We all kept walking to school — crisis averted. Later in life, while traveling in a big U.S. city, I noticed a similar spouting hydrant. This time people just walked around it and kept going, as if they had never really noticed it. “No calls to city hall here,” I remember thinking.

But the really amazing thing happened back in my hometown the same day I saw the leak. I’m not sure whether the grocer ever called the city office, but on my way home from school the hydrant was still spraying water. It was hot, so my friends and I cooled off in the free entertainment provided by the leak. In a town this small, this provided high adventure.

While we were there, an old farmer pulled up in an old pickup truck. He got out, looked over the leak, then went and puttered around in the back of his truck. He returned with several tools, and twenty minutes later the leak was fixed. The man walked back to his truck, and I asked him if the city sent him.

I’ll never forget the truly shocked look on his face. “No,” he said. “I was just driving by. The hydrant was broke, so I fixed it.” Then he got in his truck and drove away.

I hauled hay a few times for this farmer, earning some spending money during high school. Neither of us ever mentioned the incident again. It was as normal as sunrise. The hydrant was broken, so the man fixed it. He didn’t work for the city. But he lived there — and a broken hydrant needs fixing.

At least, that’s the logic for a farmer. In many modern cities today, he’d probably be issued a ticket and have to pay a fine.

That’s modern America. When we don’t encourage initiative and innovation, we naturally get less of them. When we punish self-starting entrepreneurialism, jobs go overseas. When we reward “leaving solutions to the government,” we get fewer solutions. No wonder we’re in decline while China and Brazil, among other places, are on the rise.

I once told this story to a group of students, and two of them later served as interns at a state legislature. On the last day of the session, they sat in the seats high above the legislative chamber, reading through the session program and circling the names of the legislators who had become their heroes.

They said something like, “These were the leaders who never, ever caved in on principle, who always stood firm for what they believed — never playing politics or trying to fit in, just doing their level best to serve the people who had elected them.”

After they finished, they noticed something very interesting. Next to the picture and name of every legislator was their profession — teacher, accountant, attorney, businessman, etc. Every single one of the legislators they had circled was a farmer.

The two young interns were duly impressed. They remembered my story about farmers and fire hydrants, and they shared their experience.

Not every American can be a farmer. But every citizen can be an American — one who thinks independently, takes action when it is needed, and always takes a stand for the right.

Washington will get some things right and some wrong in the years ahead, but the future of America doesn’t depend on Washington. It depends on regular people: will they think independently, will they spend their lives trying to fit in, or in standing up for what is right?

Standing up for the right things isn’t always popular. But people who do it anyway are the only ones who keep a nation free. So, sometimes I ask myself a very important question: Are you really an American? Really?

That old farmer was. If you are too, prove 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.

Category : Blog &Citizenship &Community &Entrepreneurship &Leadership &Liberty &Mission &Producers &Prosperity &Service &Statesmanship

What’s Really Happening to Our Nation?

January 17th, 2014 // 10:00 am @ Oliver DeMille

Category : Blog &Business &Constitution &Entrepreneurship &Family &Government &History &Leadership &Mini-Factories &Prosperity

Ted Cruz and Mike Lee are Heroes.

October 12th, 2013 // 3:11 pm @ Oliver DeMille

At some point, America is going to have to face reality. We can’t keep increasing government spending, debt, and borrowing without eventually paying for it. But the problem is deep:

When Americans are asked if they want to get rid of our $17 trillion debt and huge deficits, they say, “Yes.”

When they are told that we need to cut any actual government spending program, any program, they say, “No.”

What gives? Essentially, Americans want to get more from government but pay less. Ted Cruz was popular among conservatives when he stood against Obamacare, but when the media pushed back, conservative support decreased.

Mike Lee was popular in his home state when he took the same stand vocally, but his popularity decreased a little when he took real action to help slow the negative facets of Obamacare. Other leaders have seen the same thing.

Too many of the American people want our leaders to reduce our out-of-control debt and deficits, but they don’t want it to be hard. They want it to be easy. They support those who talk tough, but withdraw support when a leader takes courageous action.

Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, and others, including a number of House Republicans, who take a stand against expanding government are heroes, pure and simple. This is true of anyone, from any party, who stands for what our nation really needs. Their stand against the expansion of big government deserves a lot more support.

Our national economic problems are going to get worse and worse until leaders take a stand to reduce spending and borrowing. But when some leaders do this, popular opinion frequently turns against them. If this remains true, Americans deserve the economic difficulties that will keep growing. If we want something better, we need to stand up for it.

Instead of complaining that our leaders don’t do enough of the right things, we need to strongly support the few leaders who actually do take action. Instead of repeating the national mantra, “Why can’t everyone just get along in Washington?,” we need to be the kind of citizens who know that a better future is worth fighting for. Thank goodness some of our leaders understand this.

Lee or Cruz for president. Or, if you’re a Democrat, look up the recent speeches of Joe Manchin. Bring in Paul, Rubio, Ryan, and anyone else who is standing for common sense. We need to stand behind leaders, regardless of party, who actually see what is needed and do something about it—regardless of how it plays in the polls. Those who do this are today’s heroes.

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 &Current Events &Economics &Government &Independents &Leadership &Politics &Prosperity

Free to Learn (book review by Oliver DeMille)

June 14th, 2013 // 10:20 am @ Oliver DeMille

Peter Gray’s book Free to Learn is an excellent addition to the genre of books on restoring freedom in education.

Gray clearly states:

“Children are biologically predisposed to take charge of their own education. When they are provided with the freedom and means to pursue their own interests, in safe settings, they bloom and develop along diverse and unpredictable paths, and they acquire the skills and confidence required to meet life’s challenges. In such an environment, children ask for any help they may need from adults. There is no need for forced lessons, lectures, assignments, tests, grades, segregation by age into classrooms, or any of the other trappings of our standard, compulsory system of schooling. All of these, in fact, interfere with the children’s natural way of learning.”

So why did we create schools that so directly “interfere with the children’s natural way of learning”? Gray shows that in tribal cultures the focus of childhood was playing and learning knowledge, skills, and how to live self-sufficiently and honorably.

When the agrarian revolution increased the need for child labor on farms, the values of school turned to toil, competition and status. While Gray’s view of this is perhaps a bit idyllic, the reality is that modern schools are less concerned with student knowledge, skills, honor or abilities than with the universal goal of job training.

Certainly job training has an important place in advanced society, but Gray is focused on the education of children, and in fact the toll on children in our modern job-obsessed schools is very high. They are way more stressed than earlier generations of children and youth.

Why are we raising a generation of children and youth who are stressed, not secure? Gray’s answer, based on a great deal of research which he outlines in the book, is that we have turned learning into a chore, a task, a labor, rather than the natural result of curiosity, interest, passion to learn, and self-driven seeking of knowledge and skills. In short, we’ve taken too much play out of childhood and too much freedom out of learning.

The results are a major decline of American education in the last four decades. The solution is to put freedom back into education.

Interestingly, Gray suggests that in many of the educational studies of classrooms, schools, homes and teachers that have found a way to successfully overcome these problems and achieve much better educational results, one of the key ingredients is “free age-mixing.” Where students are allowed to freely mix with other students of various ages, without grade levels, the capacity of individuals to effectively self-educate is much higher. As for the impact on college and career success, students from free educational models excel.

This is a good book, and a must read for those who really care about education. I don’t agree with everything the author teaches, but I learned something important on almost every page.

Whether or not you read Free to Learn, all of us who have children or work in education need to do more to promote the importance of increased freedom in education. Gray is a particular fan of “unschooling,” a type of homeschooling and private schooling where parents and teachers set an example of great education, create an environment of excellent learning, and let the kids become self-learners. While this may not be the ideal learning style for every student, it is the best model for a lot of them–and for nearly every young person under age 12.

If you disagree with this conclusion, you simply must read the book. The research is impeccable. If you do agree, the book can help you get to work setting a better example for any students in your life.

Category : event &Featured &History &Leadership &Mini-Factories &Mission &Postmodernism &Prosperity &Statesmanship