Warning: This is humor and is meant to be funny and teach some lessons before it is too late!  This is not slanted toward either Democrats or Republicans as I feel they have both let the American people down and have lost our free enterprise American Ideals!  The people need to educate themselves and this is my reason for writing the following.

I received this spoof article that got me thinking.  We would never do in sports, what we do as a matter of course in business.  Have you ever noticed how business people are portrayed in Hollywood?  Have you ever noticed that anyone that makes money in a networking community building is always passed off as greedy, selfish or worse?  Little recognition of their commitment, little celebration of their success, just criticisms for daring to win in a free enterprise business that not everyone wins at!  Free enterprise is designed to separate the wheat from the chaff.  If you are not good enough; you will fail, until you either get good enough or go into another field better suited for your gifts.  No stimulus package will change that!  This is a non-negotiable economic law.  Enjoy the article that I wrote tongue in cheek and please pass on your thoughts.  We do not help industry by artificially keeping people in the game who have not earned the favor of the customers! God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Democracy has spoken.  Sources in our all powerful government have leaked to the press that HOPE NBA is rolling out.   HOPE – Helplessly Out-skilled People Entering – NBA is an important government policy designed to give the less fortunate an opportunity to participate and share every boy’s dream of playing in the NBA.  For years selfish, greedy athletes with skills given to them through little effort of their own have taken most of the headlines and playing time in the NBA.  Our government and many American voters became concerned about this blatant inequality. What about all the overweight, out of shape weekend warrior guys like Fred Snodgrass?  Fred has never been given his fair playing chance to show the NBA what he can do. Fred played basketball in the 8^th grade and he even collected NBA cards before Magic Johnson and Larry Bird made the NBA cool again. 

It is guys like Fred who bought Cleveland season tickets year after year to support these prima donna athletes. Why can’t people cheer for Fred once in a while?  Is that so hard America?  Fred is a lifelong fan and felt something should be done!  Fred and his HOPE-NBA political action committee, CRYBABIES – (Committee to Restore Your Belief in American Basketball’s Integrity and Equality of Scores) are backed by millions of angry fans and weekend warriors who have vowed to fight until this injustice is corrected.  Anyone who can vote can now play in the NBA!

Fred and millions of CRYBABIES utilized the democratic process to vote in a government to bring HOPE and CHANGE – (Collective Handouts Allowing No Grounds for Excellence) in the NBA.  Fred believed that he could gather enough votes from other CRYBABIES to bring this type of CHANGE and HOPE to the NBA.  Fred envisioned a time sharing plan for the NBA.  This would allow the men down on their luck to experience the joy of playing in the new HOPE-NBA. The fact that the NBA players voted against this “fair play stimulus package” just proves their selfish hearts and the denial of the equality principle that America stands for today!  Fred pointed to the current NBA players 100% vote against the stimulus package as further confirmation of government’s need to get involved.   

Sources say government bureaucrats are working hard to enforce maximum playing times for the selfish All Pros.  This will allow the less gifted and committed the time sharing formula necessary to enjoy the American dream.  Pictures of Fred Snodgrass practicing with the Cleveland Cavaliers are making the rounds.  Imagine what a fairer world it will be when our American government finally limits Lebron James to a maximum of 25 minutes per game and no more than 12 points per game.  Why does any NBA player need to score more than 12 points?  When is enough, enough?  Our government must teach these selfish prima donnas a lesson in fair play. Any points in excess by the All Pros will be pooled and dispersed in a “stimulus package” to Fred Snodgrass and the other less fortunate wannabe athletes.   Imagine the dignity and self respect Fred Snodgrass will feel when he looks at the statistics and he is averaging 12 points per game just like Lebron James!  This is an America worth fighting for – results without sacrifice!

CRYBABIES around the country are elated by the latest developments, but many coaches questioned the wisdom of giving weekend warriors so much playing time.  One anonymous coach said, “We are faced with international competition that is putting the best of the best on the court night after night. How can we possibly compete when we have CRYBABIES on the court who haven’t played the game at this level?”  Government officials replied, “Winning games, while Americans CRYBABIES, who are just down on their luck, sit in the stands is not American anymore.  We have to stop the hurting for everyone, even if it means losing games to other nations to ensure equality in America.”  A gleeful Fred Snodgrass was quoted as saying, “For the first time in my life, I feel proud to be an American.  I am an NBA player regardless of my lack of basketball gifts and talents.  America is now a place where anyone without talent, training, effort, commitment, or size can play in the NBA.  All I did was dwell on my hurts and get enough other CRYBABIES who are sick of competing against those selfish winners.  We utilized the democratic process with our voting and our government did the rest!  I am so proud to be an American!” 

Season ticket holders for the Cleveland Cavalier have dropped 25%, but the government is proposing a tax on all citizens to make up the difference in lost revenue.  If the tax does not generate enough income to pay the CRYBABIES salaries, the government will quickly print new money.  In the first scrimmage against the Albanian national team, the American’s suffered their first loss ever against this small mountainous country. Fred scored his 12 points, thanks to the stimulus package collected from the excessive points of the All Pros.  Lebron James was not available for comment, but sources say that negotiations between the Irish national team and Lebron’s agent are underway.  Our government, in anticipation of the greedy athletes, has proposed a wall to be built around the entire United States.  This will keep athletes in our country to enjoy the benefits of the new HOPE and CHANGE in the NBA.  Our government was concerned that without this wall, only CRYBABIES would want to stay in the country to play American basketball. 

The Detroit Lions have taken the lead in promoting the same type of HOPE and CHANGE for the NFL.   A Detroit Lions official shared his thoughts, “We are sick and tired of attempting to compete against the Pittsburgh Steelers, (a greedy group of sports athletes & capitalist), who act like winning trophies is more important than sharing the laurels.  The Lions have never won a Super Bowl while the Steelers have six!  How is that fair?  Many of the less fortunate teams are forming groups to right this obvious wrong.  I want to thank our government for having the courage to lead the way in legitimizing this righteous maneuver.  In the American past, this was called loser’s envy, but today this is equality!  Thanks to our government, the Detroit Lions franchise and our fans will no longer be ashamed to be part of the NFL and wear a Lion’s jersey.”

The American Government is meeting with Major League baseball, the NHL, Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps later this month to review joint plans for HOPE and CHANGE.  Welcome to the new fairer, non-competitive America. 

I read a fascinating article on suggested reforms to our democratic republic.  This may be the best essay on education that I have ever read.  I am so excited by what the Team is doing in our cultures and believe we can play a vital role in the reformation of culture through education.  Read this essay that is part of the Britannica Great Books Series.  It is so relevant in our culture today.  Education seems focused on dumbing down the people.  We have more liesure time to learn than ever before, but our schools continue to lower the bar on what is acceptable learning levels in school.  I love the thoughts in this article on the responsibility of the teacher to generate interest in the material.  A teacher lights the match to the soul of the students.  The students innate hunger to learn and grow does the rest.  We need teachers to light that spark not douse it with water! 

Today's society has a strange dichotomy.  On one hand, we have the person of learning.  On the other hand, we have the person of action.  Very few people that I have met have learning and action combined which creates real leadership.  The man of action denigrates the man of learning and vice versa.  This is a false dichotomy and I do not believe that you can have true long-term leadership without learning and learning is practically worthless without action.  Our republic was predicated on the belief that the electorate would be educated and able to discern right from wrong.  This is only possible if we read and think!  This is OUR assignment: to be people of learning and action!  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Education for All

We have seen that education through the liberal arts and great books is the best education for the best. We have seen that the democratic ideal requires the attempt to help everybody get this education. We have seen that none of the great changes, the rise of experimental science, specialization, and industrialization, makes this attempt irrelevant. On the contrary, these changes make the effort to give everybody this education more necessary and urgent.

We must now return to the most important question, which is: Can everybody get this education? When an educational ideal is proposed, we are entitled to ask in what measure it can be achieved. If it cannot be achieved at all, those who propose it may properly be accused of irresponsibility or disingenuousness.

Such accusations have in fact been leveled against those who propose the ideal of liberal education for all. Many sincere democrats believe that those who propose this ideal must be antidemocratic. Some of these critics are carried away by an educational version of the doctrine of guilt by association. They say, “The ideal that you propose was put forward by and for aristocrats. Aristocrats are not democrats. Therefore neither you nor your ideal is democratic.”

The answer to this criticism has already been given. Liberal education was aristocratic in the sense that it was the education of those who enjoyed leisure and political power. If it was the right education for those who had leisure and political power, then it is the right education for everybody today.

That all should be well acquainted with and each in his measure actively and continuously engaged in the Great Conversation that man has had about what is and should be does not seem on the face of it an antidemocratic desire. It is only antidemocratic if, in the name of democracy, it is erecting an ideal for all that all cannot in fact achieve. But if this educational ideal is actually implicit in the democratic

ideal, as it seems to be, then it should not be refused because of its association with a past in which the democratic ideal was not accepted.

Many convinced believers in liberal education attack the ideal of liberal education for all on the ground that if we attempt to give liberal education to everybody we shall fail to give it to anybody. They point to the example of the United States, where liberal education has virtually disappeared, and say that this catastrophe is the inevitable result of taking the dogma of equality of educational opportunity seriously.

The two criticisms I have mentioned come to the same thing: that liberal education is too good for the

people. The first group of critics and the second unite in saying that only the few can acquire an education that was the best for the best. The difference between the two is in the estimate they place on the importance of the loss of liberal education.

The first group says that, since everybody cannot acquire a liberal education, democracy cannot require that anybody should have it. The second group says that, since everybody cannot acquire a liberal education, the attempt to give it to everybody will necessarily result in an inferior education for everybody. The remedy is to segregate the few who are capable from the many who are incapable and

see to it that the few, at least, receive a liberal education. The rest can be relegated to vocational training or any kind of activity in school that happens to interest them.

The more logical and determined members of this second group of critics will confess that they believe that the great mass of mankind is and of right ought to be condemned to a modern version of natural slavery. Hence there is no use wasting educational effort upon them. They should be given such training as will enable them to survive. Since all attempts to do more will be frustrated by the facts of life, such attempts should not be made.

Because the great bulk of mankind have never had the chance to get a liberal education, it cannot be “proved” that they can get it. Neither can it be “proved” that they cannot. The statement of the ideal, however, is of value in indicating the direction that education should take. For example, if it is admitted that the few can profit by liberal education, then we ought to make sure that they, at least,

have the chance to get it.

It is almost impossible for them to do so in the United States today. Many claims can be made for the American people; but nobody would think of claiming that they can read, write, and figure. Still less would it be maintained that they understand the tradition of the West, the tradition in which they live. The products of American high schools are illiterate; and a degree from a famous college or university

is no guarantee that the graduate is in any better case. One of the most remarkable features of  merican society is that the difference between the “uneducated” and the “educated” is so slight.

The reason for this phenomenon is, of course, that so little education takes place in American educational institutions. But we still have to wrestle with the question of why this should be so. Is there so little education in the American educational system because that system is democratic? Are democracy and education incompatible? Do we have to say that, if everybody is to go to school, the

necessary consequence is that nobody will be educated?

Since we do not know that everybody cannot get a liberal education, it would seem that, if this is the ideal education, we ought to try to help everybody get it. Those especially who believe in “getting the facts” and “the experimental method” should be the first to insist that until we have tried we cannot be certain that we shall fail.

The business of saying, in advance of a serious effort, that the people are not capable of achieving a good education is too strongly reminiscent of the opposition to every extension of democracy. This opposition has always rested on the allegation that the people were incapable of exercising intelligently the power they demanded. Always the historic statement has been verified: you cannot expect the slave to show the virtues of the free man unless you first set him free. When the slave has been set free, he has, in the passage of time, become indistinguishable from those who have always been free.

There appears to be an innate human tendency to underrate the capacity of those who do not belong to “our” group. Those who do not share our background cannot have our ability. Foreigners, people who are in a different economic status, and the young seem invariably to be regarded as intellectually backward, and constitutionally so, by natives, people in “our” economic status, and adults.

In education, for example, whenever a proposal is made that looks toward increased intellectual effort on the part of students, professors will always say that the students cannot do the work. My observation leads me to think that what this usually means is that the professors cannot or will not do the work that the suggested change requires. When, in spite of the opposition of the professors, the change has been introduced, the students, in my experience, have always responded nobly.

We cannot argue that, because those Irish peasant boys who became priests in the Middle Ages or those sons of American planters and businessmen who became the Founding Fathers of our country were expected as a matter of course to acquire their education through the liberal arts and great books, every person can be expected as a matter of course to acquire such an education today. We do not

know the intelligent quotients of the medieval priests or of the Founding Fathers; they were probably high.

But such evidence as we have in our own time, derived from the experience of two or three colleges that have made the Great Conversation the basis of their course of study and from the experience of that large number of groups of adults who for the past eight years have been discussing great books in every part of the United States, suggests that the difficulties of extending this educational program to everybody may have been exaggerated.

Great books are great teachers; they are showing us every day what ordinary people are capable of. These books came out of ignorant, inquiring humanity. They are usually the first announcements of success in learning. Most of them were written for, and addressed to, ordinary people.

If many great books seem unreadable and unintelligible to the most learned as well as to the dullest, it may be because we have not for a long time learned to read by reading them. Great books teach  people not only how to read them, but also how to read all other books.

This is not to say that any great book is altogether free from difficulty. As Aristotle remarked, learning is accompanied by pain. There is a sense in which every great book is always over the head of the reader; he can never fully comprehend it. That is why the books in this set are infinitely rereadable. That is why these books are great teachers; they demand the attention of the reader and keep

his intelligence on the stretch.

As Whitehead has said, “Whenever a book is written of real educational worth, you may be quite certain that some reviewer will say that it will be difficult to teach from it. Of course it will be difficult to teach from it. If it were easy, the book ought to be burned; for it cannot be educational. In education, as elsewhere, the broad primrose path leads to a nasty place.”

But are we to say that because these books are more difficult than detective stories, pulp magazines, and textbooks, therefore they are to remain the private property of scholars? Are we to hold that different rules obtain for books on the one hand and painting, sculpture, and music on the other? We do not confine people to looking at poor pictures and listening to poor music on the ground that

they cannot understand good pictures and good music. We urge them to look at as many good pictures and hear as much good music as they can, convinced that this is the way in which they will come to understand and appreciate art and music. We would not recommend inferior substitutes, because we would be sure that they would degrade the public taste rather than lead it to better things.

If only the specialist is to be allowed access to these books, on the ground that it is impossible to understand them without “scholarship,” if the attempt to understand them without “scholarship” is to be condemned as irremediable superficiality, then we shall be compelled to shut out the majority of mankind from some of the finest creations of the human mind. This is aristocracy with a vengeance.

Sir Richard Livingstone said, “No doubt a trained student will understand Aeschylus, Plato, Erasmus, and Pascal better than the man in the street; but that does not mean that the ordinary man cannot get a lot out of them. Am I not allowed to read Dante because he is full of contemporary allusions and my knowledge of his period is almost nil? Or Shakespeare, because if I had to do a paper on him in the Oxford Honours School of English literature, I should be lucky to get a fourth class? Am I not to look

at a picture by Velasquez or Cézanne, because I shall understand and appreciate them far less than a painter or art critic would? Are you going to postpone any acquaintance with these great things to a day when we are all sufficiently educated to understand them—a day that will never come? No, no. Sensible people read great books and look at great pictures knowing very little of Plato or Cézanne, or of the influences which moulded the thought or art of these men, quite aware of their own ignorance, but in spite of it getting a lot out of what they read or see.”

Sir Richard goes on to refer to the remarks of T. S. Eliot: “In my own experience of the appreciation of poetry I have always found that the less I knew about the poet and his work, before I began to read it, the better. An elaborate preparation of historical and biographical knowledge has always been to me a barrier. It is better to be spurred to acquire scholarship because you enjoy the poetry, than to suppose that you enjoy the poetry because you have acquired the scholarship.”

Even more important than the dogma of scholarship in keeping people from the books is the dogma of individual differences. This is one of the basic dogmas of American education. It runs like this: all men are different; therefore, all men require a different education; therefore, anybody who suggests that their education should be in any respect the same has ignored the fact that all men are different; therefore, nobody should suggest that everybody should read some of the same books; some people should read some books, some should read others. This dogma has gained such a hold on the minds of American educators that you will now often hear a college president boast that his college has no curriculum. Each student has a course of study framed, or “tailored” is the usual word, to meet his

own individual needs and interests.

We should not linger long in discussing the question of whether a student at the age of eighteen should be permitted to determine the content of his education. As we tend to underrate the intelligence of the young, we tend to overrate their experience and the significance of the expression of interests and needs on the part of those who are inexperienced. Educators ought to know better than their pupils what an education is. If educators do not, they have wasted their lives. The art of teaching consists in large part of interesting people in things that ought to interest them, but do not. The task of educators is to discover what an education is and then to invent the methods of interesting their students in it.

But I do not wish to beg the question. The question, in effect, is this: Is there any such thing as “an education”? The answer that is made by the devotees of the dogma of individual differences is No; there are as many different educations as there are different individuals; it is “authoritarian” to say that there is any education that is necessary, or even suitable, for every individual.

So Bertrand Russell once said to me that the pupil in school should study whatever he liked. I asked whether this was not a crime against the pupil. Suppose a boy did not like Shakespeare. Should he be allowed to grow up without knowing Shakespeare? And, if he did, would he not look back upon his teachers as cheats who had defrauded him of his cultural heritage? Lord Russell replied that he would

require a boy to read one play of Shakespeare; if he did not like it, he should not be compelled to read any more.

I say that Shakespeare should be a part of the education of everybody. The point at which he is introduced into the course of study, the method of arousing interest in him, the manner in which he is related to the problems of the present may vary as you will. But Shakespeare should be there because of the loss of understanding, because of the impoverishment, that results from his absence. The comprehension of the tradition in which we live and our ability to communicate with others who live in the same tradition and to interpret our tradition to those who do not live in it are drastically affected by the omission of Shakespeare from the intellectual and artistic experience of any of us.

If any common program is impossible, if there is no such thing as an education that everybody ought to have, then we must admit that any community is impossible. All men are different; but they are also the same. As we must all become specialists, so we must all become men. In view of the ample provision that is now made for the training of specialists, in view of the divisive and disintegrative effects of specialism, and in view of the urgent need for unity and community, it does not seem an exaggeration to say that the present crisis calls first of all for an education that shall emphasize those respects in which men are the same, rather than those in which they are different. The West needs an education that draws out our common humanity rather than our individuality. Individual differences can be taken into account in the methods that are employed and in the opportunities for specialization that may come later. In this connection we might recall the dictum of Rousseau: “It matters little to me whether my pupil is intended for the army, the church, or the law. Before his parents chose a calling for him, nature called him to be a man. . . When he leaves me, he will be neither a magistrate,

a soldier, nor a priest; he will be a man.”

If there is an education that everybody should have, how is it to be worked out? Educators are dodging their responsibility if they do not make the attempt; and I must confess that I regard the popularity of the dogma of individual differences as a manifestation of a desire on the part of educators to evade a painful but essential duty. The Editors of this set believe that these books should be central in

education. But if anybody can suggest a program that will better accomplish the object they have in view, they will gladly embrace him and it.

The longer I live and the more I see, the more I realize how important a classical liberal education is for Western Civilization.  When a civilization loses its roots, it is easily washed away with the latest ideas and fads.  The classic literature from the past can help build roots deep enough to stand the storms of modern life.  I have made a commitment to myself to read all of the classic over the next 10 years.  Our liberties, laws, economics, and faith all stem from the thinking and ideas from those who have gone before us.  This gives us our foundation to leap even further than our progenitors.  But if we do not read and comprehend our past, we have no foundation to leap ahead.  I recently read a biography on Robert Hutchins.  It was a fascinating book that discussed in depth the meaning and purpose of a classical liberal education.  The West enjoys more free time than ever before; but instead of educating ourselves, we entertain ourselves to death.  I believe a group of men and women who will discipline themselves to learn our past is necessary, if we are to ensure our futures.  Here is an article that Robert Hutchins wrote to introduce the Great Books series.  Please share your thoughts on the Great Conversation.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

The Great Conversation

 by Robert M. Hutchins

The tradition of the West is embodied in the Great Conversation that began in the dawn of history and that continues to the present day. Whatever the merits of other civilizations in other respects, no civilization is like that of the West in this respect. No other civilization can claim that its defining characteristic is a dialogue of this sort. No dialogue in any other civilization can compare with that of the West in the number of great works of the mind that have contributed to this dialogue. The goal toward which Western society moves is the Civilization of the Dialogue. The spirit of Western civilization is the spirit of inquiry. Its dominant element is the Logos. Nothing is to remain undiscussed. Everybody is to speak his mind. No proposition is to be left unexamined. The exchange of ideas is held to be the path to the realization of the potentialities of the race.

At a time when the West is most often represented by its friends as the source of that technology for which the whole world yearns and by its enemies as the fountainhead of selfishness and greed, it is worth remarking that, though both elements can be found in the great conversation, the Western ideal is not one or the other strand in the conversation, but the conversation itself. It would be and exaggeration to say that Western civilization means these books. The exaggeration would lie in the omission of the plastic arts and music, which have quite as important a part in Western civilization as the great productions included in this set. But to the extent to which books can present the idea of a civilization, the idea of Western civilization is here presented.

These books are the means of understanding our society and ourselves. They contain the great ideas that dominate us without our knowing it. There is no comparable repository of our tradition.

To put an end to the spirit of inquiry that has characterized the West it is not necessary to burn the books. All we have to do is to leave them unread for a few generations. On the other hand, the revival of interest in these books from time to time throughout history has provided the West with new drive and creativeness. Great Books have salvaged, preserved, and transmitted the tradition on many occasions similar to our own.

The books contain not merely the tradition, but also the great exponents of the tradition. Their writings are models of the fine and liberal arts. They hold before us what Whitehead called "'the habitual vision of greatness." These books have endured because men in every era have been lifted beyond themselves by the inspiration of their example, Sir Richard Livingstone said: "We are tied down, all our days and for the greater part of our days, to the commonplace. That is where contact with great thinkers, great literature helps. In their company we are still in the ordinary world, but it is the ordinary world transfigured and seen through the eyes of wisdom and genius. And some of their vision becomes our own."

Until very recently these books have been central in education in the West. They were the principal instrument of liberal education, the education that men acquired as an end in itself, for no other purpose than that it would help them to be men, to lead human lives, and better lives than they would otherwise be able to lead.

The aim of liberal education is human excellence, both private and public (for man is a political animal). Its object is the excellence of man as man and man as citizen. It regards man as an end, not as a means; and it regards the ends of life, and not the means to it. For this reason it is the education of free men. Other types of education or training treat men as means to some other end, or are at best concerned with the means of life, with earning a living, and not with its ends.

The substance of liberal education appears to consist in the recognition of basic problems, in knowledge of distinctions and interrelations in subject matter, and in the comprehension of ideas.

Liberal education seeks to clarify the basic problems and to understand the way in which one problem bears upon another. It strives for a grasp of the methods by which solutions can be reached and the formulation of standards for testing solutions proposed. The liberally educated man understands, for example, the relation between the problem of the immortality of the soul and the problem of the best form of government; he understands that the one problem cannot be solved by the same method as the other, and that the test that he will have to bring to bear upon solutions proposed differs from one problem to the other.

The liberally educated man understands, by understanding the distinctions and interrelations of the basic fields of subject matter, the differences and connections between poetry and history, science and philosophy, theoretical and practical science; he understands that the same methods cannot be applied in all these fields; he knows the methods appropriate to each.

The liberally educated man comprehends the ideas that are relevant to the basic problems and that operate in the basic fields of subject matter. He knows what is meant by soul. State, God, beauty, and by the other terms that are basic to the insights that these ideas, singly or in combination, provide concerning human experience.

The liberally educated man has a mind that can operate well in all fields. He may be a specialist in one field. But he can understand anything important that is said in any field and can see and use the light that it shed upon his own. The liberally educated man is at home in the world of ideas and in the world or practical affairs, too, because he understands the relation of the two. He may not be at home in the world of practical affairs in the sense of liking the life he finds about him; but he will be at home in that world in the sense that he understands it. He may even derive from his liberal education some conception of the difference between a bad world and a good one and some notion of the ways in which one might be turned onto the other.

The method of liberal education is the liberal arts, and the result of liberal education is discipline in those arts. The liberal artist learns to read, write, speak, listen, understand, and think. He learns to reckon, measure, and manipulate matter, quantity, and motion in order to predict, produce, and exchange. As we live in the tradition, whether we know it or not, so we are all liberal artists, whether we know it or not. We all practice the liberal arts, well or badly, all the time every day. As we should understand the tradition as well as we can in order to understand ourselves, so we should be as good liberal artists as we can in order to become as fully human as we can.

The liberal arts are not merely indispensable; they are unavoidable. Nobody can decide for himself whether he is going to be a human being. The only question open to him is whether he will be an ignorant, undeveloped one or one who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining. The question, in short, is whether he will be a poor liberal artist or a good one.

The tradition of the West in education is the tradition of the liberal arts. Until very recently nobody took seriously the suggestion that there could be any other ideal. The educational ideas of John Locke, for example, which were directed to the preparation of the pupil to fit conveniently into the social and economic environment in which he found himself, made no impression on Locke's contemporaries. And so it will be found that other voices raised in criticism of liberal education fell upon deaf ears until about a halfcentury ago.

This Western devotion to the liberal arts and liberal education must have been largely responsible for the emergence of democracy as an ideal. The democratic ideal is equal opportunity for full human development, and, since the liberal arts are the basic means of such development, devotion to democracy naturally results from devotion to them. On the other hand, if acquisition of the liberal arts is an intrinsic part of human dignity, then the democratic ideal demands that w should strive to see to it that all have the opportunity to attain to the fullest measure of the liberal arts that is possible to each.

The present crisis in the world has been precipitated by the vision of the range of practical and productive art offered by the West. All over the world men are on the move, expressing their determination to share in the technology in which the West has excelled. This movement is one of the most spectacular in history, and everybody is agreed upon one thing about it: we do not know how to deal with it. It would be tragic if in our preoccupation with the crisis we failed to hold up as a thing of value for all the world, even as that which might show us a way in which to deal with the crisis, our vision of the best that the West has to offer. That vision is the range of the liberal arts and liberal education. Our determination about the distribution of the fullest measure of these arts and this education will measure our loyalty to the best in our own past and our total service to the future of the world.

The great books were written by the greatest liberal artists. They exhibit the range of the liberal arts. The authors were also the greatest teachers. They taught one another. They taught all previous generations, up to a few years ago. The question is whether they can teach us.

Robert M. Hutchins has been deemed one of America's most highly esteemed and most well known educators. He was born on January 17, 1899, in Brooklyn, New York. Hutchins was educated at Oberlin College in Ohio, before serving in the military during World War I. He later completed his education at Yale university, graduating in 1921 and earning a law degree in 1925. From 1927 to 1929, he was the Dean of the Yale Law School. By the age of 30, Robert M. Hutchins became the President of the University of Chicago. He remained at the university until 1951, and served as Chancellor of the University of Chicago from 1945 to 1951. Hutchins then went on to become the director (1951) and President (1954) of The Fund for the Republic. He served as Chairman of the Board of Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica from 1943 until his death on May 14, 1977.

Here is a fascinating article on a subject that all freedom loving people should read.  Independence is only maintained by an independent, responsible, and vigilant citizenry.  Think through these issues as the author, Robert Genetski shares them.  How can we, as a community, bring personal responsibility back into vogue?  We cannot demand for dependence on government and expect to remain independent for long.  If someone provides for your security, they do so at the price of your freedom.  As Patrick Henry said, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?”  I do not demand for security, but I do demand an equal opportunity in my country to sink or swim based upon my efforts and the content of my character.  Let no wealthy person forbid the poor from their opportunity, and let no government forbid the wealthy from their honestly gained wealth.  Equal opportunity, not equal results has always been the ideal for true freedom loving people!  A nation of dependents cannot expect to remain Independent!  Enjoy the article and please share your thoughts. God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Excerpted from A Nation of Millionaires, by Robert J. Genetski. Copies of this 168-page book were delivered in May 1997 to nearly 10,000 state and federal policy makers, journalists, think tank representatives, and Heartland friends and donors nationwide. Additional copies are available for $8.95 pre-paid from The Heartland Institute.

For two centuries, the United States has been a beacon of hope for the rest of the world. That hope is based on what was once a novel and untested idea: that citizens could successfully govern themselves. The United States has proven democracy so successful that it has become the only legitimate model of political organization. But democracy was only one part of the Founding Fathers' unique experiment. They believed not only that individuals can be responsible for governing themselves . . . but also that individuals have a responsibility to provide for their own needs.

Government's Duty

As viewed by the Founding Fathers, government has certain responsibilities. First and foremost is the obligation to provide an environment that enables individuals to achieve their highest potential, in terms of their contributions to society and in terms of the rewards they receive for those contributions. Creating this environment involves four things: low tax burdens, free markets, protection of property rights, and a stable currency with which to conduct business.

Low taxes make it easier for people to provide for their own needs by letting them keep their hard-earned income. Free markets help maximize output, and thus earnings, by providing vital information about the value of goods and services. Markets are free when government is limited and individuals are primarily responsible for their own needs. Property rights protect the accumulation of assets from confiscation. Without such rights, individuals would have little incentive to create wealth. A stable currency is needed to provide reliable information about transactions and to prevent government from usurping resources by devaluing the currency.

In recent decades, government has obviously failed in its obligation to provide an economic environment in which individuals can achieve independence and assume responsibility. High tax rates, the seemingly unconstrained growth in government, interference with markets, a withering away of property rights, and persistent inflation have placed substantial barriers in the way of achieving independence. As the ability of individuals to provide for their own needs is eroded, economic, moral, and cultural deterioration accelerate. If recent trends persist, insecurity, injustice, and crime will become even more pervasive.

Why People Behave As They Do

Behavior is shaped by three things: values, incentives, and information. An individual's values are formed from the lessons provided by parents, teachers, friends, relatives, religious leaders, and even government. A government that is corrupt and immoral is certain to be a negative influence on its people. A judicial system that renders the concept of law meaningless by interpreting it to conform to the latest social theory hastens the erosion of moral values. When those charged with interpreting the law mold it to reflect their own preferences, they undermine respect for the law and promote lawlessness.

The inclination toward criminal activity can be overcome by a strong system of social and moral values. Still, the more society's institutions reflect a lack of values, the greater the erosion is likely to be among its people. When a society adopts policies making it more difficult to respect moral values, it dilutes those values.

Behavior also is influenced by incentives. While individuals don't always realize it, they often make decisions in response to economic pressures. For example, when an individual has little to lose, the potential gains from criminal activity seem relatively high and the penalties for getting caught appear relatively low. Applying such cost-benefit analysis to crime may seem crude, but it is both appropriate and accurate. The greater the rewards from an activity, and the lower its costs, the more people will tend to engage in it.

The commission of a crime can be a rational economic choice if the expected loss is minimal. If individuals have little income and assets to lose, and if their expected punishment is fairly mild, more of them can be expected to commit crimes. As taxes take a larger and larger bite out of people's paychecks, the ability of lower-income workers to support themselves--not to mention their families--is undermined. As the rewards for legitimate work decline, the pressures for criminal activity become even greater.

On the opposite end of the income spectrum, it doesn't make much sense for a millionaire to engage in criminal activity. Relative to his or her prospects in the legitimate economy, the potential benefits of crime are small. Moreover, the cost of getting caught is enormous: considerable lost income for time spent in court or in jail, lost assets for compensating the victims of the crime and paying court costs, and social rejection by family, friends, and the community at large.

This doesn't mean that the rich are more virtuous than the poor. Many who are poor have the social and moral upbringing to avoid the temptations of criminal activity. By contrast, those who are rich and without principles do commit crimes, but they are seldom the random, violent crimes that have become commonplace in recent years. When individuals see themselves as being or becoming rich, they have strong incentives to avoid crime, particularly violent crime.

Policies that Promote Dependency

Government policies that promote dependency seriously undermine values and incentives. These policies encourage irresponsible behavior by providing misleading information about its consequences. The influence of such policies extends well beyond the welfare population. Collectively, they have produced a nation of individuals dependent on government.

Policies that foster dependency permeate almost every aspect of our lives: retirement, health care, the legal system, welfare, and, perhaps most importantly, education. Instead of encouraging individuals to accept responsibility for their lives and their decisions, government policies discourage such behavior.

As government takes on more responsibility for the problems of its citizens, individuals feel less responsibility to provide for themselves. Moreover, their ability to do so is significantly reduced. Each time government is called on to fulfill a need, there is a cost. The more needs government attempts to fulfill, the higher the costs. Since individuals are the ones who pay for government programs, they are inevitably left with fewer resources to fulfill their own needs.

It is instructive to realize what has happened to the typical family's income over time. The most meaningful way to measure income is after taxes and after inflation. This measure is called real spendable earnings. It measures the amount of money a family has available to live on. The federal government used to calculate a similar figure, but it stopped doing so sometime around 1980 because the trend was so depressing.

Despite the lack of official figures, it is possible to estimate the trend in after-tax family income. Consider the "typical family," one whose yearly income is right in the middle of all families (that is, there are as many families earning more as earning less). After-tax income trends can be plotted for several types of families: two-income families, single-parent families, etc. Since cultural changes and financial hardships led many families to shift to two wage earners in recent decades (thus making it difficult to plot income trends over a long period of time), it is most useful to focus on the typical family where only the husband works.

In today's dollars, that family earned after-tax income of $31,000 in 1972, but just $26,000 in 1993. In that 21-year period, the family's after-tax take-home pay fell by 16 percent. As government has taken a progressively greater share of family income, families are left with less money for their basic needs, and they are made more dependent on government.

Dependency may be appropriate for young children. But as they grow and mature, even children must be given more responsibility. If they are not, they remain dependent upon their parents and never become responsible adults.

Similarly, a nation where a significant portion of the population behaves as dependents can never be a great nation. It can be only a nation of individuals who have failed to attain maturity and independence; a nation of individuals who will insist on blaming others for their problems; a nation of individuals who constantly look to government, as a child looks to a parent, to solve its problems.

In the United States, government increasingly has taken on the role of parent. Unfortunately, it has done a miserable job with its "children." Almost without fail, government has hindered the development of independence and maturity. Politicians have developed programs to "solve" the problems of their needy constituents, instead of providing the tools and assistance to enable individuals to solve their own problems.

Social Security

Our current system of Social Security gives government the power to decide how much of an "allowance" retirees should receive and how they must behave to receive it. Those who choose to work past the normal retirement age can be punished with lower allowances. Spouses who never worked may be rewarded with greater benefits than those who worked full-time. Single persons who die upon reaching retirement age have all of their allowance taken away.

By creating a class of dependent retirees, Social Security has led to resentment, indignity, and a sense of frustration and betrayal. It has caused retirees to form political pressure groups to defend what they have earned and what they thought they had been promised. Born of a program based on dependency, these political groups tend to act like children. They insist that their immediate demands be met and ignore the longer-term implications of maintaining the present system. Like children, these groups often refuse even to listen to any suggestions for altering the system.

Welfare

The tendency of government programs to create dependents extends most destructively to the current system of welfare. Unlike retirees, who have already lived productive, independent lives, welfare recipients have their lives and the lives of their children influenced by the policies of dependency. At virtually every turn, the present welfare system works to keep those who are poor from overcoming their condition. Any of the poor who decide to work and accumulate assets face the prospect of losing food stamps, housing allowances, educational grants, and a host of other potential benefits.

Instead of providing the poor with the means to solve their problems, government welfare programs aim at solving their problems for them. By penalizing constructive behavior such as thrift, deferred gratification, or the exercising of foresight regarding the future, the present system makes it extremely difficult for the poor to gain true independence.

Health Care

For many at the lower end of the income scale, the health care system creates a major incentive against legitimate work and accumulating assets. Those individuals who have few assets and little income, or those who are in prison, can receive unlimited free or nearly free treatment for serious illnesses under various government programs. Those who work hard for a living must pay heavily for the same services.

The public education system, legal system, and regulatory system also create dependency. Through them, government is called upon to educate children, ensure that the injured receive compensation, and restore or maintain the environment. All are important objectives. But a healthy society is one that provides the institutional arrangements necessary to help people solve their own problems.

A Nation of Dependents

Over the past several decades, a cycle of dependency has been created. Government policies have eroded the responsibility of individuals to provide for their own well-being, and taxation has severely limited their financial ability to do so. Government policies have replaced a nation of free, independent individuals with a nation of individuals dependent on government.

A nation of dependents can be neither great nor prosperous. To reverse the deterioration in today's society, we must fundamentally change government policies. Our efforts must be aimed at the heart of the problem, changing incentives and information to reinforce each individual's responsibility for shaping his or her own life.

Zig Ziglar has inspired, taught, and encouraged millions of people over his career.  Zig's Christian testimony has personally inspired me and many others. I salute Zig for living a life of excellence that is making a difference in other people'e lives.  Here is a short video that captures some of Zig's thinking on attitude.  Zig teaches us to have an attitude of gratitude.  I believe that to solve your challenges, you must go beyond your challenges and focus on the solutions.  The solution to your problem is not in the problem, so endlessly talking about the problem is counter-productive.  By constantly dwelling on the problem, you cannot move onto the answers.  I love the Albert Einsten quote, "The significant problems that we face in life cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created them."  Are you dwelling on the problems in life or dwelling on the solutions?  If you do not have the answers, then find a mentor to help.  The key is to listen and apply the advice of your mentor! The choice to focus and apply solutions instead of dwelling on problems, will make all the difference.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Napoleon Hill was one of the originators of the field of success coaching.  Napoleon interviewed many giants of the industrial revolution and studied what made them great.  Many of his success thoughts have stood the test of time.  I don't buy into 100% of his philosophy, but there is so much good that I felt I would share some of the best here.  Napoleon's classic book, Think and Grow Rich has made a huge impact in many leaders thinking.  This video has captured some of his best thoughts on transforming your thinking to transform your life.  Thank you Napoleon Hill for blazing a trail in the success/leadership field.  Many others have followed your pioneering steps. God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Today, I am going to share a portion of an article by one of my favorite thinkers of all time.  Ludwig Von Mises is one of the clearest thinkers on economics and human action that has ever lived.  He also was principle centered enough to go against the grain.  It takes guts to follow your principles when everyone else is abandoning them, but that is exactly what Mr. Von Mises did.  The world was plunging into socialism and one lone voice predicted the demise of this unworkable economic scheme.  There has been a rebirth of interest in this great man’s work as so much of what he stated has turned out to be true.  This article is a fascinating look at the world as a struggle for liberty against coercion. Enjoy the article and remember that ideas have consequences.  Keep reading and learning so that you can defend liberty against coercion!  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

The history of civilization is the record of a ceaseless struggle for liberty.

Social cooperation under the division of labor is the ultimate and sole source of man's success in his struggle for survival and his endeavors to improve as much as possible the material conditions of his well-being. But as human nature is, society cannot exist if there is no provision for preventing unruly people from actions incompatible with community life. In order to preserve peaceful cooperation, one must be ready to resort to violent suppression of those disturbing the peace. Society cannot do without a social apparatus of coercion and compulsion, i.e., without state and government. Then a further problem emerges: to restrain the men who are in charge of the governmental functions lest they abuse their power and convert all other people into virtual slaves. The aim of all struggles for liberty is to keep in bounds the armed defenders of peace, the governors and their constables. Freedom always means: freedom from arbitrary action on the part of the police power.

The idea of liberty is and has always been peculiar to the West. What separates East and West is first of all the fact that the peoples of the East never conceived the idea of liberty. The imperishable glory of the ancient Greeks was that they were the first to grasp the meaning and significance of institutions warranting liberty. Recent historical research has traced back to Oriental sources the origin of some of the scientific achievements previously credited to the Hellenes. But nobody has ever contested that the idea of liberty was created in the cities of ancient Greece. The writings of Greek philosophers and historians transmitted it to the Romans and later to modern Europe and America. It became the essential concern of all Western plans for the establishment of the good society. It begot the laissez-faire philosophy to which mankind owes all the unprecedented achievements of the age of capitalism.

The meaning of all modern political and judicial institutions is to safeguard the individuals' freedom against encroachments on the part of the government. Representative government and the rule of law, the independence of courts and tribunals from interference on the part of administrative agencies, habeas corpus, judicial examination and redress of acts of the administration, freedom of speech and the press, separation of state and church, and many other institutions aimed at one end only: to restrain the discretion of the officeholders and to render the individuals free from their arbitrariness.

The age of capitalism has abolished all vestiges of slavery and serfdom. It has put an end to cruel punishments and has reduced the penalty for crimes to the minimum indispensable for discouraging offenders. It has done away with torture and other objectionable methods of dealing with suspects and lawbreakers. It has repealed all privileges and promulgated equality of all men under the law. It has transformed the subjects of tyranny into free citizens.

The material improvements were the fruit of these reforms and innovations in the conduct of government affairs. As all privileges disappeared and everybody was granted the right to challenge the vested interests of all other people, a free hand was given to those who had the ingenuity to develop all the new industries which today render the material conditions of people more satisfactory. Population figures multiplied and yet the increased population could enjoy a better life than their ancestors.

Also in the countries of Western civilization there have always been advocates of tyranny — the absolute arbitrary rule of an autocrat or an aristocracy on the one hand and the subjection of all other people on the other hand. But in the Age of Enlightenment the voices of these opponents became thinner and thinner. The cause of liberty prevailed. In the first part of the nineteenth century the victorious advance of the principle of freedom seemed to be irresistible. The most eminent philosophers and historians got the conviction that historical evolution tends toward the establishment of institutions warranting freedom and that no intrigues and machinations on the part of the champions could stop the trend toward liberalism.

II

In dealing with the preponderance of the liberal social philosophy there is a disposition to overlook the power of an important factor that worked in favor of the idea of liberty, viz., the eminent role assigned to the literature of ancient Greece in the education of the elite. There were among the Greek authors also champions of government omnipotence, such as Plato. But the essential tenor of Greek ideology was the pursuit of liberty. Judged by the standards of modern liberal and democratic institutions, the Greek city-states must be called oligarchies. The liberty which the Greek statesmen, philosophers and historians glorified as the most precious good of man was a privilege reserved to a minority. In denying it to metics and slaves they virtually advocated the despotic rule of an hereditary caste of oligarchs. Yet it would be a grave error to dismiss their hymns to liberty as mendacious. They were no less sincere in their praise and quest of freedom than were, two thousand years later, the slaveholders George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. It was the political literature of the ancient Greeks that begot the ideas of the Monarchomachs, the philosophy of the Whigs, the doctrines of Althusius, Grotius, and John Locke, and the ideology of the fathers of modern constitutions and bills of rights. It was the classical studies, the essential feature of a liberal education, that kept awake the spirit of freedom in England of the Stuarts and George III, in France of the Bourbons, and in Italy, subject to the despotism of a galaxy of princes.

No less a man than Bismarck, among the nineteenth-century statesmen the foremost foe of liberty, bears witness to the fact that even in the Prussia of Frederick William III the Gymnasium was a stronghold of republicanism.[1] The passionate endeavors to eliminate the classical studies from the curriculum of the liberal education and thus virtually to destroy its very character were one of the major manifestations of the revival of the servile ideology.

It is a fact that a hundred years ago only a few people anticipated the overpowering momentum which the antiliberal ideas were destined to acquire in a very short time. The ideal of liberty seemed to be so firmly rooted that everybody thought that no reactionary movement could ever succeed in eradicating it. It is true, it would have been a hopeless venture to attack freedom openly and to advocate unfeignedly a return to subjection and bondage. But antiliberalism got hold of people's minds camouflaged as superliberalism, as the fulfillment and consummation of the very ideas of freedom and liberty. It came disguised as socialism, communism, and planning.

No intelligent man could fail to recognize that what the socialists, communists, and planners were aiming at was the most radical abolition of the individual's freedom and the establishment of government omnipotence. Yet the immense majority of the socialist intellectuals were convinced that in fighting for socialism they were fighting for freedom. They called themselves left-wingers and democrats, and nowadays they are even claiming for themselves the epithet liberals.

These intellectuals and the masses who followed their lead were in their subconsciousness fully aware of the fact that their failure to attain the far-flung goals which their ambition impelled them to aim at was due to deficiencies of their own. They were either not bright enough or not industrious enough. But they were eager not to avow their inferiority both to themselves and to their fellow men and to search for a scapegoat. They consoled themselves and tried to convince other people that the cause of their failure was not their own inferiority but the injustice of society's economic organization. Under capitalism, they declared, self-realization is only possible for the few. "Liberty in a laissez-faire society is attainable only by those who have the wealth or opportunity to purchase it."[2] Hence, they concluded, the state must interfere in order to realize "social justice." What they really meant is, in order to give to the frustrated mediocrity "according to his needs."

As long as the problems of socialism were merely a matter of debates people who lack clear judgment and understanding could fall prey to the illusion that freedom could be preserved even under a socialist regime. Such self-deceit can no longer be nurtured since the Soviet experience has shown to everybody what conditions are in a socialist commonwealth. Today the apologists of socialism are forced to distort facts and to misrepresent the manifest meaning of words when they want to make people believe in the compatibility of socialism and freedom.

Here is an excellent article from Steven Yates on America's Founding Principles.  Techniques will change, but principle never do.  In today's turbulent changes in technology and techniques, let us not forget our founding principles that provide a firm foundation to leap forward.  Enjoy the article and please share your thoughts on America's Founding Principles.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

Exploring America’s Founding Principles:

The Need Has Never Been Greater

by Steven Yates

On September 16 our city newspaper published a special section entitled "America: What We Value As a Nation." That such sections are being published, probably in many newspapers across the land, should come as no surprise. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have left in their wake a sense of instability. Efforts are underway to assuage this instability by a variety of means, some good, some not so good. Journalists making efforts at articulating American values amount to one such effort, one worth evaluating.

The values identified in our section were four: generosity, service, courage, resilience.

There is abundant evidence that these are indeed values held by many if not most Americans. Generosity? Consider the lines of people outside Red Cross facilities, which here stretched half a city block. When they heard about the attacks in New York City and Washington, there were more people willing to donate blood than there were Red Cross volunteers capable of accommodating them. Americans are among the most generous people in the world. Service? Business enterprises flourish because they service markets. While profit may be the motive, the service must be a genuine one. Many other enterprises (e.g., think tanks, research institutes) provide services without earning a profit. Sometimes profit isn’t the point. Sometimes we take an action not to gain monetarily but because it is the right thing to do. Writing columns for the Internet can be regarded as a service in this sense. So can volunteering at a local Red Cross facility, for those so inclined. Courage? Consider the handful of passengers who fought to retake control of Flight 93. They knew they would probably not get out alive and that their deed might never be known, but they fought back anyway, realizing the importance of preventing that plane from reaching its destination, most likely the White House. Todd Beamer has rightly been dubbed a hero. No doubt, though, there are other Americans who would have done the same thing. A writer from whom I receive frequent emails recently spoke of courage "not [as] the absence of fear [but] the decision that something is more important than the fear." Resilence? Another American trait, which applies particularly to the U.S. economy. Presently the economy is taking a beating. It will come back. The "economy" is just the aggregate actions of millions of people: producing, selling, buying, saving, investing, and so on. Whatever else occurs, and although it may take some time, the economy will rebound from the events of September 11 – if, of course, the federal government will allow it.

This list is not wrong, therefore, but it is incomplete. It suggests that certain values are desirable, but without going to the core issue: what makes them right. The need for a complete understanding of what once made America a special place has never been greater. President Bush spoke last Thursday about our being "called to defend freedom." What does this mean? Is this more than political jingoism? Without a clear conception of what we are defending, we might find ourselves doing quite the opposite. Therefore I will endeavor to complete the list here. Hopefully it will place the above values into a larger context. My list includes: individual liberty, personal responsibility, Constitutionally limited government and the rule of law. In large measure, of course, America has drifted from each. This spells trouble, because taken together these are the principles of a free society. Since they haven’t been taught in the government schools in quite a while now, few Americans – even those who think of themselves as "conservative" – can articulate them very well. But if we cannot reassess where the country stands in light of its founding principles, then we are in more danger than ever of losing them altogether. And then the terrorists will have won. For example, if law-abiding American citizens find themselves hysterically embracing national ID cards, wiretapping, massive searches of private property by federal agents and so on, all in the name of feeling secure, then the terrorists will have destroyed that which made America great – namely, freedom!

So let us begin anew. Individual liberty is the state of affairs, within important limits, in which law-abiding citizens can live according to their own choices rather than those of someone else. If you want to obtain an education, you can. There are no significant restrictions on what you can read, or where you may travel. If you want to start a business, no one will stop you. Your business may make you rich, and no one will plunder your wealth or tell you how you must spend it. If you wish to own a gun, that is your prerogative. In a free society, you may worship God as you see fit, or not worship anything at all. This is quite unlike most of the rest of the world, and increasingly unlike the America we live in today.

Of course, individual liberty does not mean the freedom to do anything one pleases. Freedom is not anarchy. Genuine freedom recognizes bounds placed on human conduct by common morality. Moral citizens have learned to restrict their own basic impulses in specific ways. It would be fair to say that genuine freedom involves a kind of paradox (the "paradox of liberty," I sometimes call it): freedom flourishes when citizens embrace restrictions on their conduct imposed from within, to avoid their being imposed from without. The basic moral limit to individual liberty is the familiar barring of the initiation of force against others. Using force automatically means taking others’ liberties away. It is also illegitimate to defraud others, or cheat them. Sometimes all this is cashed out in the language of rights: individuals have a right to live in accordance with their own choices so long as they do not violate or forcibly interfere with others’ right to do the same. This all brings us to the second.

Personal responsibility. At base, individual liberty works under the assumption that individuals take care of themselves. The world does not take care of the individual. The ideal is that individuals take care of themselves by taking necessary actions – getting an education and then either working in an occupation for which they were educated or starting a business and supplying a market with some good. This calls for individuals to develop a sense of personal responsibility.

Of course, the ideal is not always realized and there are some obvious exceptions to it: we do not come into the world as fully formed, thinking, acting adults but as helpless babies. It is easy to cash out individualism in an excessive, atomistic fashion. We are all individuals, and all our actions are individual actions, but we are not atoms; as individuals we are members of families, formal organizations such as businesses and churches, and more loosely structured ones such as communities. In a free society there is no supervening entity (a central government, for example) whose purpose is to take care of the individual, whether to provide safety nets, guarantee good health, or whatever. But sophisticated, as opposed to atomistic, individualism embraces the fact that we are members of larger systems such as families, businesses, churches, and communities. Individuals, in their efforts to be independent, sometimes suffer setbacks, and sometimes these setbacks are personally devastating. At these times, the resources of one’s family members can prove invaluable. Within other organizations are other resources through which people can help each other, creating local "safety nets" for one another. The important point to note is at this local, community level, such actions between people who have sometimes known each other all their lives are voluntary and not forced. The benevolence between people that emerges, especially in times of crisis, is sincere, not artificial. Central government, with its army of bureaucrats coming into communities from the outside, cannot achieve the level of trust and benevolence that exists among members of a community who grew up as neighbors, played on the same sports teams, graduated from the same high schools, and so on. Moreover, bureaucracy causes harm in at least two other ways. The taxation needed to support the bureaucrats drains resources from where they may be employed more effectively, and the presence of bureaucrats may lead people who haven’t seen anything different to take for granted that providing "safety nets" is a job only bureaucrats can perform. This brings us to the third.

Constitutionally limited government. Government, as every libertarian knows, is the one institution in society with a legal monopoly on the use of force. This makes it the most dangerous institution in any society, and the one most important to limit. The Framers knew this, and while they may have wanted a government more centralized than the one defined by the Articles of Confederation, all understood well the importance of setting limits. So in what became known as the Constitutional Convention of 1787, they spelled out those limits, dividing the intended federal government into its familiar three branches, designating specific powers to each and building checks on the power of each into the others. Example: the President (executive branch) is designated Commander-in-Chief, but under Constitutionally correct government, only Congress (legislative branch) has the power to declare war.

Limitations on government are, however, fragile and must be preserved by vigilance, as Thomas Jefferson observed ("vigilance," he said, "is the price of liberty."). This is, in a nutshell, the central problem of political philosophy: not how to build the ideal society but how to control power. A Constitution is merely a written document; it won’t protect itself. The need for vigilance is one of our responsibilities, and arguably we have fallen down badly in this area. In recent years, "undeclared wars" have allowed two generations of presidents to thwart the check on the power of the executive branch. The Clinton Regime’s end runs around Congress were blatant. If Clinton wanted to bomb someone, he did. This, of course, barely scratches the surface. To see how far we have drifted from Constitutionally limited government, we have only to look at the Constitution and realize that there is nothing in it about education, for example. Nor will one find anything allowing for taxation on one’s personal income or for social security or for affirmative action or many other things now taken for granted.

The Constitution, moreover, makes no provisions for a federal government large enough and powerful enough to police the rest of the world, whether to impose "democracy" on peoples who don’t want it or for any other purpose. It does make provisions intended to ensure that the checks on government power have teeth in them. These were insisted upon by the critics of the original Constitution – the so-called Antifederalists. We owe them the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution. The First Amendment grants citizens the authority to criticize official government policy without being arrested and thrown in jail; the Second, arguably, was intended as a separate check on government power by means of an armed adult citizenry (the original meaning of militia). Other amendments place additional limits on the power of government; the Ninth and Tenth, finally, underscore the rest of the document by designating that in a Constitutional republic the states are sovereign. The federal government is their servant, not their master. Moreover, the enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution and Bill of Rights was not to be taken as exhaustive of all rights, the clear implication being that rights antecede legal authority. Here we arrive, again, at a moral and metaphysical / theological basis for Constitutionally limited government. Most of the Framers, of course, believed that rights as moral claims with teeth in them can come only from God, the Author and Final Arbiter of justice in the universe.

The rule of law. The Constitution was intended to be the supreme law of the land. While cashing out what this meant took some doing, the idea was to build up – for the first time – a society whose government answered to the authority of its own founding documents as understood above. There were, of course, antecedents such as the Magna Carta. That document made specific claims on the king, John, but didn’t provide a larger philosophical framework. By and large, in the past the king was the law and could do as he pleased. The Framers of the U.S. Constitution set out to change that.

The struggle toward controlling power with something other than a greater power was long, hard, and is far from over. There is, I am firmly convinced, a minority in any population that is fascinated by power and understands people and relationships only in its terms. Many members of this minority in our population end up in politics where they can thwart the intentions of the Framers. They have had plenty of help from the academic and educational worlds, where ideologies emphasizing power have flourished. For a few years I debated the topic of power and restraints on power (mostly through the mail and eventually email) with a professor of public administration at a major northeastern university. My position: a government worthy of loyalty and support adheres to the rules it sets for itself, and does not try to micromanage everything in sight. His position: all truth and morality is determined by authority or power, so that power gets the last word in any event. He believed we ought to abandon the Constitution. His position held that science alone, with its special method, would get us past the temptations of power. As to how and why we could expect this from an institution no less a product of human beings than any other institution, he had no answer.

Here is a fantastic video that is deceptively simple and yet says so much.  We can reverse any trend by discipline around the fundamentals that made America great in the first place.  Success is deviance.  Success requires a level of commitment and discipline that is beyond the norm.  Wherever you see consistent success, I promise you that you are witnessing deviant behaviors from the norm.  I think it is time to have more leaders step up to deviant behavior in a success oriented way.  Why can't we change the country?  Why can't we change the world?  Throughout time, a dedicated minority has alway moved the apathetic masses.  The first decision is to choose which group you are part of and the second is to grow youself to start the change process.  The MonaVie Team plans on playing its part by changing our own lives through listening, reading and associating.  One life can make a difference as this video so aptly displays.  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

This is a touching true story of hope and redemption!   I was sent this link from one of the many super commenters on this blog.  I want to thank all of you for the incredible content that you send to me.  This one got to me and hit me hard.  All of us need a second chance in life because hope and redemption are universal principles of the human condition.  The fact that a high school coach can selflessly sacrifice the cheering of his own fans to give hope and redemption to other young men, gives me hope for our country and our world!  Thank you Kris Hogan for caring for others, you are a true American hero.  Enjoy the article and the video!  God Bless, Orrin Woodward

An amazing story of hope comes from Texas high school football. Kris Hogan, coach of the Faith Christian Lions in Grapevine, looked at his team's schedule and noticed that they'd be playing against Gainesville State School, a correctional facility for teens. Leading up to that game, he had an out-of-the-box idea:

"I started thinking about the fact that many of these guys had convictions for drugs, assault and robbery,” said Coach Hogan. “Many of their families had disowned them. Then I thought about what it would mean for hundreds of people to suddenly believe in them as individuals and as a team. That’s when I decided we were going to do something different.”

Coach Hogan asked some of the parents to sit on Gainesville State’s side of the field and cheer for the other team—complete with cheerleaders and a spirit line for the players to run through before the game. Needless to say, the boys on the Gainesville State team were a bit surprised and confused at first. But the result was just what Hogan was hoping for. After the game, the Gainesville coach came up to Coach Hogan and said, “You will never know what you have done for these boys.”

Here's a video about the game as covered by Matt Barrie of NBC Sports, Dallas-Fort Worth, TX:

Coach Hogan is nothing short of a hero, and that is confirmed by other details we’ve seen about how he runs his football program. He has what we would call a Championship Fathering vision. His coaching is about a lot more than football, and he recognizes how important it is to reach out to other children who need encouragement and support. He also knows that even small, purposeful actions can make a huge difference in those children’s lives.

These are the kinds of the things that can change our nation’s future for the better. Using Kris Hogan’s example, what steps can the rest of us take to encourage other children—especially kids who don’t have a father? At the National Center, we often urge dads to include other kids when they’re playing outside in the neighborhood, or on fishing or camping trips. But don’t stop there. You probably have some unique opportunities in your community or neighborhood—ways you can think outside the box and do something remarkable that those children will remember for the rest of their lives.