Once in a while a truly great book comes along that you just can’t wait to tell everyone else to read. Unschooling Rules by Clark Aldrich is that kind of book.

I started reading in the afternoon and couldn’t put it down until I finished.

My first thought when I completed the last page was, “I wish I had written this!” My second thought was, “I need to read this again.”

Those who have read and studied A Thomas Jefferson Education (TJEd) or Leadership Education will find this book especially enjoyable. It covers a lot of TJEd themes, but with its own interesting twist.

As I read it I kept saying, “Yes! Absolutely! Right on!” I haven’t seen a book so totally capture the vision of Leadership Education in home school in a long time.

But I’ll let this outstanding book speak for itself. Here are some quotes from this fabulous little book:

“In many schools across the world, children en masse get dropped off and enter buildings where they become the recipient of linear ‘teaching’ and tests. They go home, do homework, and start over again the next day—all for the goal of preparing them for the next level of school and meeting broad and dubiously constructed standards.”

A better “…type of learning answers such questions as: ‘What do I love doing?’ ‘What is my dream?’ ‘What gives me energy?’ ‘What are my unique strengths?’ and even ‘What is my role in a group?’”

“There are two reasons to learn something: either because you need it or because you love it.”

“Twenty-five critical skills are seldom taught, tested or graded….adapting, analyzing and managing risks…being a leader…gathering evidence, identifying and using boards of mentors and advisors…managing projects, negotiating, planning long term…”

“Don’t worry about preparing students for jobs from an Agatha Christie novel…”

“One computer + one spreadsheet software program = math curricula.”

“Five subjects a day? Really?”

“Maturing solves a lot of problems.”

“Grouping students by the same age is just a bad idea.”

“Tests don’t work. Get over it. Move on.”

“The future is portfolios, not transcripts.”

“Outdoors beats indoors.”

“The predominant academic milieu should be walking. When walking, children can talk. They can think.”

“Under-schedule to take advantage of the richness of life.”

“But it will not be the governments, or their school systems, or other of their institutions that will drive real innovation in reconstructing childhood education. It will be as it already is, the homeschoolers and the unschoolers.”

These are just a sample of the many wise things in Unschooling Rules. As I said, this book fits right in with the TJEd model of leadership education and home school. I highly recommend it book for every parent, teacher and administrator involved in modern education. It is a manual for great learning.

My friend Jeff Sandefer wrote in the forward to this excellent book:

“Each child has a spark of genius waiting to be discovered, ignited, and fed. And the goal of schools shouldn’t be to manufacture ‘productive citizens’ to fill some corporate cubicle; it should be to inspire each child to find a ‘calling’ that will change the world. The jobs for the future are no longer Manager, Director, or Analyst, but Entrepreneur, Creator, and even Revolutionary.”

This is a great book for our time — whether you home school or not. Five stars! I hope you’ll read it right away. If you are new to TJEd, read this great book right along with A Thomas Jefferson Education.

If you’re already familiar with TJEd, Unschooling Rules provides another excellent witness of what really works for truly quality education. This book belongs on every shelf, and its ideas need to be in every mind!

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

Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

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

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

A good book, I think, is distinguished by its ability to transport the reader to ‘somewhere else.’

By this, I mean more than pulp fiction escapism.

I mean a place of new thought, philosophical territory as yet unexplored by the reader, fields of new information, lands of epiphany, skies of new considerations.

One such book provoked in me a thought that surfaces occasionally in my frenzied mind: Width or Depth?

I have written previously in an article entitled Multum, Non Multaabout this concept.

Recently, though, several things have returned my thinking to this same great idea.

One of these pointers was the phrase I Tweeted a week or so ago:

Happiness lies not in getting what you want but in wanting what you have.

In a rushed society of more, bigger, faster, shinier, louder, fancier, more expensive, more expansive, more ostentatious – something must get crowded out.

Usually those ‘somethings’ are the little things.

And often, those little things might be the important things; irreplaceable moments with children, quiet moments in worship and prayer, moments of solitude in deep thought, casual moments with friends, moments of interaction with neighbors, and chance moments of every sort.

In a world that naturally and consistently nods its head in approval at the bigger steps and yawning appetite of MORE, the value judgment seems already made that the smaller stuff is somehow by its very nature less significant.

This might be a tragedy in that we notice the loss less and less as technology and the NEXT THING crowd further into our culture.

However, I am not suggesting a return to Walden’s Pond.

As has almost become a cliche, the truth is most likely somewhere between the extremes.

However, it is worth considering that more contacts, more tasks, more stuff, more engagements, more commitments, more more more might in the end just be less less less.

This article would have been better as a poem, I think, the very representation of saying more with less.

And as an illustration of the very concept that less may be better, I end.

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

Chris Brady co-authored the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Weekly, USA Today, and Money Magazine best-seller Launching a Leadership Revolution.

He is also in the World’s Top 30 Leadership Gurus and among the Top 100 Authors to Follow on Twitter. He has spoken to audiences of thousands around the world about leadership, freedom, and success.

Mr. Brady contributes regularly to Networking Times magazine, and has been featured in special publications of Success and Success at Home. He also blogs regularly at Chris Brady.

He is an avid motorized adventurer, pilot, world traveler, humorist, community builder, soccer fan, and dad.

Connect With Chris:

Nothing will have more impact on the future of the world than the future of families.

This truism is sobering as we watch the decline of the family.

As we consider the industrialized world, it is disturbing to note that even amongst those who espouse, promote and live a strong family lifestyle, some of the most basic roles have been lost.

For example, consider the following from an editorial by John Rosemond:

“A journalist recently asked me to name the number one problem facing today’s family. I think she expected me to address education, the economy, or some other “hot” topic. To her surprise, I said, ‘A confusion of roles.’

“In today’s parenting universe, married women with children think of themselves first and foremost as mothers. This is confusion. If you are married with children, you are first and foremost a wife or a husband. In your wedding vows, you did not say, “I take you to be my (husband, wife) until children do us part.” Those vows, many generations old, read the way they do for a reason.

“I’ve been telling recent audiences that parenting has become bad for the mental health of women. Today’s all-too typical mother believes that whether her child experiences success or failure in whatever realm is completely up to her. If she is sufficiently attentive to her child’s needs and sufficiently proactive in his life, he will succeed. If not, he will have problems. The natural consequence of this state of over-focus is anxiety, self-doubt, and guilt.”

Marriage is the central relationship of society, and in society, no roles are more important than husband and wife.

As I talk to young people about their plans for life, career is usually the first thing they mention.

Once in a while, a young man will mention that his main goal is to be a good father, and a little more frequently a young woman will say that she really wants to be a great mother.

But I’ve never heard the following: “I want to be a great wife,” or “my most important goal is to be a great husband.”

This is a concern. In a way, feminism has had moved society by persuading our generation to focus on parenthood even more than marriage.

I’m convinced that most people who say they want to be great parents just assume marriage as part of it. But that’s the problem. Just assuming marriage isn’t enough. It reflects a lack of emphasis on our primary roles.

The future of the world certainly depends on the quality of fathering and mothering in the twenty-first century.

The quality of marriages is even more important. The state of the world ten, twenty, even seventy years from now will be determined by the depth and quality of our marriage relationships. Parenting will largely be determined by the level of success our marriages attain.

The recent politicization of the institution of marriage raises concerns in the minds of virtually everyone, no matter where they stand on the issue.

Of most concern to me is that 64% of married women and 82% of married men responded to a survey in the early 2000′s that they had been unfaithful to their marriage vows.

I see no greater threat to the institution of marriage than the tepid level of commitment of the spouses, and the way they characterize and fulfill their roles.

Marriage is hard work, worthy work–the work of a lifetime. If there is one thing we should teach our youth, it is the value of building a great marriage.

More precisely, we need to teach—by precept and example whenever possible—that “wife” and “husband” are vital roles to society, requiring preparation, consideration, emphasis and great effort.

Once married, these must always be the primary roles of each individual—not secondary to career, social endeavors, or even parenthood.

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

Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

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

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

Why can’t the freedom movement seem to get any traction?

Why have we lost battle after battle for at least the past century?

It’s because we tend to make the good the enemy of the perfect, the pragmatic the enemy of the ideal.

To be clear, it’s because the most passionate among us have adopted a rigid, dogmatic, uncompromising “either-or” stance in the fight.

Rather than winning hearts and minds in the trenches inch-by-inch, we drop rhetorical nuclear bombs and make enemies of potential supporters.

There’s one critical distinction that explains this tendency and, if understood, can overcome it and make all the difference to our success:

Do we view the fight for freedom as an election-cycle battle, or as a 100-year war?

These vastly different mindsets generate completely different strategies and tactics and produce completely different results.

If we view the fight as an election-cycle battle, the battlegrounds are primarily political and governmental.

The tactics include:

• Public, energetic, and angry marches and demonstrations
• Passionate, vitriolic, and partisan commentary that preaches to the crowd and riles the base but fails to win new supporters
• Literal, logical, and personal argumentation
• Directing energy primarily at getting individual political candidates elected

But in a 100-year war, the battlegrounds are cultural and educational, and the short-term tactics above shift to the following long-term strategies:

• Personal, lifelong, classical education in the quiet of our homes
• Respectful, thoughtful, open-minded discussion with people across the whole spectrum of belief, with the intention of winning hearts and minds, rather than simply spewing passion or proving how smart and “right” we are
• Symbolic, metaphorical, and artful story-telling and persuasion
• Directing energy toward reforming education, building families and communities, and becoming successful entrepreneurs (see the three choices in FreedomShift by Oliver DeMille)

In a 100-year war, we moderate our passion and smarten our strategy.

We heal the roots of our demise, rather than hacking at the symptomatic leaves.

We work from love, rather than anger.

We reform from the outside-in and bottom-up, rather than the top-down. In other words, we focus on fixing ourselves, rather than Washington.

We understand that studying Montesquieu in our homes is far more effective than waving banners in the streets.

We spend our time and energy teaching the rising generation the depths of freedom and political philosophy, rather than debating opponents in chat rooms and on radio and TV shows.

We build successful small businesses, rather than complaining about losing jobs overseas.

In a 100-year war, idealism and pragmatism aren’t mutually exclusive. We’re more concerned with direction than destination.

In other words, we don’t reject particular policies because they’re not ultimate, black-and-white ideals.

Rather, we judge them based on whether or not they take us closer to the ideal, however slight the progress.

In a 100-year war, we learn and teach principles, rather than fight candidates.

To be perfectly clear, we don’t waste time forwarding mass emails about the status of Obama’s birth certificate.

Most importantly, in a 100-year war, independent freedom lovers create an inclusive tent, rather than an exclusive club.

For example, many conservatives denigrate environmentalists, or as they’re disdainfully labeled, “tree-huggers.”

But many of these environment-conscious, thoughtful people are also highly-conscious and passionate about local, organic food production and sustainable agriculture — which is a primary battleground for freedom.

So rather than building on common beliefs and bringing these people into the tent of freedom, many conservatives banish them with narrow-minded labels.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is also a favorite target of many conservative commentators.

But wise freedom-lovers would do well to harness their energy.

The truth is that they raise a critical point that most conservatives fail to see: Vast inequities in wealth distribution and power are, in fact, killing America — every bit as much, if not more so, than governmental wealth redistribution from rich to poor.

The government does favor those with capital over those with little or none, big businesses over small businesses, which creates these unfair and unsustainable inequities.

We don’t have to occupy Wall Street with them, but we can at least be wise enough to recognize where we agree in order to work together toward a more free, just, and sustainable society.

We can start winning more friends and creating fewer enemies. We can be pragmatic coalition-builders, rather than dogmatic clique-builders.

I’m as passionate about freedom as anyone — freedom is my mission.

But passion alone isn’t going to win the fight for freedom.

The war will be won through wisdom.

Home Schools, the New Private Schools, and Other Non-Traditional Learning

The current national commentary on American education is split by a major paradox.

On the one hand, nearly all the experts are convinced that our schools must find a way to effectively and consistently teach the values and skills of innovation and initiative.

If we fail in this, everyone seems to agree, the competitiveness of U.S. workers and the economy will continue to fall behind other nations.

As Gary Shapiro wrote:

“Our nation is looking into the abyss. With a blinding focus on the present, our government is neglecting a future that demands thoughtful action.

“The only valid government action is that which invests in our children. This requires hard choices…

“America is in crisis. What is required is a commitment to innovation and growth. We can and must succeed.

“With popular and political resolve, we can reverse America’s decline…. America must become the world’s innovative engine once again; we cannot fail.”

And education is the key.

On the other hand, many of the top education decision-makers seem committed to only making changes when there is a consensus among educators, parents, experts and administrators.

They adamantly criticize any who take bold, innovative initiate to improve the situation.

In the meantime, they wait timidly, albeit loudly, for a consensus which never comes.

Because of this view, the innovative success of many parents in home schools, teachers in small private schools and other non-traditional educational offerings go unnoticed or undervalued by the national press.

The reality is, as Orrin Woodward put it: “If everyone agrees with what you’re doing, it isn’t innovative.”

The growing Global Achievement Gap in our schools, as outlined by Tony Wagner’s book of this title, presents an ominous warning for Americans.

We can change things if we choose, Wagner says, by adopting the following values and skills in our school curriculum: critical thinking, agility, adaptability, initiative, curiosity, imagination and entrepreneurialism, among others.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan quoted Wagner in Foreign Affairs:

“…there is a happy ‘convergence between the skills most needed in the global knowledge economy and those most needed to keep our economy safe and vibrant.’”

He also foreshadowed the decades ahead by quoting President Obama:

“The nation that out-educates us today is going to out-compete us tomorrow.”

It is difficult to imagine our public schools meeting these lofty needs if our teachers are expected to be anything but entrepreneurial, innovative and agile, when they in fact work in an environment that discourages and at times punishes precisely such behaviors.

It is even more impossible to make the needed changes to our education system if we must wait for everyone to agree on a consensus of action.

Change always comes with a few courageous souls taking the lead, showing what can work, and helping others follow their innovative path.

The only way we’re going to see a burst of innovation and initiative in American education is to start paying attention to the myriad exciting educational innovations already occurring.

As Malcolm Gladwell suggests, the leadership right now in many arenas—including education—is occurring outside the mainstream, led by “Outliers” who just forget the experts and create new and better ways of doing things.

If you are one of these educational innovators—at home or in the classroom—keep taking the lead. You are the future of American success!

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

Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

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

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

Connect With Oliver:

Read Part One Here

Must an education be limited to completing a checklist of courses in order to receive a certificate of conformance to present as evidence to a prospective employer of having met a minimum standard of proficiency in practical, productive job skills?

Is an education limited to passing through a “liberal arts” program at a name brand institution in order to gain entrance into the power circles standing guard and carefully bestowing limited access to positions of power in government, business, and law?

Or is an education limited to the fine art of intellect-building, culling knowledge from the great ideas of the past and the present, simply for the sake of knowledge?

What is an education, and what is its purpose?

The study of languages offers a portal into the exploration of at least a partial answer to such a worthy question.

Learning begins with an awakening to something previously unknown—a glimpse of the view from a different vantage point—an expanded perception of the world.

Right learning takes our perceived reality a step closer to actuality.

The true language of math trains our minds to recognize patterns, think in the abstract, and logically reason.

The true language of science increases our capacities to observe, to measure, to think in the concrete, and to make and test theories.

The true language of art teaches us to both appreciate and express beauty, symmetry, elegance, emotion, and feeling.

The study of foreign languages introduces us to human cultures and worldviews distinct from our own, allows us to recapture nuances once lost in translation, and offers a gesture of respect to others with whom we want to seek common ground and understanding.

A personal worldview may be likened to peering through a monocle.

Depending on the quality of the lens, the view can be clear and magnified or in places it may be somewhat clouded and distorted.

With only a single eye, the view is inherently limited in scope and depth.

Learning another language is much like adding another monocle, thus creating binocular vision.

It adds another vantage point that in many ways complements, enriches, and completes the original picture.

Of course, in another sense, the new monocle may also compete to be fitted to the dominant eye.

The challenger may present alternative values and goals that, by definition, are incompatible with the status quo.

A hearing will be demanded and a choice must be made.

The virtue of Hebrew is that it offers both a completing and a competing lens to consider.

Completing Features I live in a western world that is highly influenced by our Greek and Roman heritage.

The Greeks teach me the static nature of things at rest.

Things simply are.

They are fixed and inflexible, ordered, calculated, reasoned, planned, and rational.

Ideally, life is peaceful and harmonious; it is meant to be lived in moderation—a virtuous compromise centered between the vices of the extreme.

The Hebrews offer me a distinct, yet complementary, alternative.

Theirs is a verb-oriented language.

The foundation of nearly all ancient Hebrew words is a three-letter root whose basic meaning expresses movement or activity.

Other letters are then added as prefixes, infixes, and suffixes to derive the other grammatical forms: verb conjugations, nouns, adjectives, etc.

Thus, the very construction of the Hebrew language emphasizes the dynamic and active nature of things.

They are changeable and in motion.

Take, for example, a mountain, a decidedly static object to my Greek eye.

Point at it.

Declare it a noun.

“But wait…” interrupts the Hebrew. “Do you see ‘that which looms’ in the distance?”

The primitive root for mountain is a verb meaning to rise up or loom.

In the same sense, a door is that which opens wide.

Mountain and door—that which looms up and that which opens.

The nuance is dynamic, masterful, and energetic.

In contrast to the peaceful and harmonious, life is vigorous, passionate, and explosive.

Life in all its light, color, voice, sound, tone, smell, and taste is meant to be experienced, not spectated.

To my Greek mind, appearance holds highest priority.

It favors an objective, outsider’s point-of-view: observe beauty as displayed in the ideal form and symbol.

Consider, for example, the golden ratio and other optical refinements in the Parthenon and the vast architecture, sculptures, and paintings of Ancient Greece.

Hebrew, in contrast, teaches me to value impression, a subjective, experiencing, insider’s perspective: feel beauty as revealed in function—that which fulfills it purpose—that which lives in excitement and rhythm.

Rather than the architecture, the sculpture, or the painting, see the transformation of the stone, the clay, and the canvas in the master’s hand.

How is Noah’s ark to be constructed? Of what is the Tabernacle made?

Dimensions and materials are defined, but a visual image of these edifices does not come easily to mind.

Compare that to the much more visually descriptive cave in Plato’s allegory, or to the gods of Homer and Hesiod.

The Greeks argue that the power of the mind is measured in its capacity to think logically, to gather and synthesize, and to reason its way to truth.

Points, lines, and planes offer visual and spatial elements for working Euclid’s geometry.

Aristotle’s logic systematically reasons to a right-minded conclusion.

To know for the Greek is to see what is.

“Seek learning” in order to furnish a proof.

Hebrew, on the other hand, proposes to me that the power of the mind be measured in its capacity for psychological understanding, its ability to analyze by dismembering and separating.

Experience, rather than observation, is the primary path to knowing.

Truth is steady, faithful, sure, constant, trustworthy, and certain; and that certainty comes through recollection.

Time, rather than being expressed spatially—timeline, point in time, from time to time—is rhythmic.

It has a beginning and an end; but it alternates between light and darkness, warmth and cold.

Again, this notion is carried in the very construction of the language.

In English, verb tenses are related to time: past, present, and future.

“He spoke. He speaks. He will speak.” In Hebrew, verb tenses are related to action.

The action is either complete or incomplete.

“The speaking is finished. The speaking is not finished.”

To know for the Hebrew is to hear and feel what becomes.

“Seek learning” to find a point.

The challenge before me is to somehow attend equally to both of these heritages; to find a synthesis between what at first glance appears to be diametrically opposed biases—similar to resolving the dual-nature of light, which at times demonstrates a wave-like structure and at other times a particle nature.

Studying Hebrew is another monocle to awaken my awareness to other possibilities, offering a distinct, but complementary, vantage point—a more accurate perception and an expanded worldview.

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

Shanon Brooks is the President of Monticello College, the Director of Education and Training for Humanitarian Visions International, S.A., and a founding partner of the Center for Social Leadership. He co-authored Thomas Jefferson Education for Teens.

Shanon and his wife Julia are raising their six children in Monticello, Utah.

Connect With Shanon:

By Oliver DeMille

The current national commentary on American education is split by a major paradox.

On the one hand, nearly all the experts are convinced that our schools must find a way to effectively and consistently teach the values and skills of innovation and initiative.

If we fail in this, everyone seems to agree, the competitiveness of U.S. workers and the economy will continue to fall behind other nations.

As Gary Shapiro wrote:

“Our nation is looking into the abyss. With a blinding focus on the present, our government is neglecting a future that demands thoughtful action.

“The only valid government action is that which invests in our children. This requires hard choices…

“America is in crisis. What is required is a commitment to innovation and growth. We can and must succeed.

“With popular and political resolve, we can reverse America’s decline…. America must become the world’s innovative engine once again; we cannot fail.”

And education is the key.

On the other hand, many of the top education decision-makers seem committed to only making changes when there is a consensus among educators, parents, experts and administrators.

They adamantly criticize any who take bold, innovative initiate to improve the situation.

In the meantime, they wait timidly, albeit loudly, for a consensus which never comes.

Because of this view, the innovative success of many parents in home schools, teachers in small private schools and other non-traditional educational offerings go unnoticed or undervalued by the national press.

The reality is, as Orrin Woodward put it: “If everyone agrees with what you’re doing, it isn’t innovative.”

The growing Global Achievement Gap in our schools, as outlined by Tony Wagner’s book of this title, presents an ominous warning for Americans.

We can change things if we choose, Wagner says, by adopting the following values and skills in our school curriculum: critical thinking, agility, adaptability, initiative, curiosity, imagination and entrepreneurialism, among others.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan quoted Wagner in Foreign Affairs:

“…there is a happy ‘convergence between the skills most needed in the global knowledge economy and those most needed to keep our economy safe and vibrant.’”

He also foreshadowed the decades ahead by quoting President Obama:

“The nation that out-educates us today is going to out-compete us tomorrow.”

It is difficult to imagine our public schools meeting these lofty needs if our teachers are expected to be anything but entrepreneurial, innovative and agile, when they in fact work in an environment that discourages and at times punishes precisely such behaviors.

It is even more impossible to make the needed changes to our education system if we must wait for everyone to agree on a consensus of action.

Change always comes with a few courageous souls taking the lead, showing what can work, and helping others follow their innovative path.

The only way we’re going to see a burst of innovation and initiative in American education is to start paying attention to the myriad exciting educational innovations already occurring.

As Malcolm Gladwell suggests, the leadership right now in many arenas—including education—is occurring outside the mainstream, led by “Outliers” who just forget the experts and create new and better ways of doing things.

If you are one of these educational innovators—at home or in the classroom—keep taking the lead. You are the future of American success!

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

Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

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

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

Connect With Oliver:

Stone steps greet my weary feet once again, while the sun keeps up its constant beaming from above, pounding on my hat and searing my skin.

The bag on my back, though small, irritates me from long companionship, and the camera that produces the pictures I so love is an annoyance.

My senses are overloaded and my brain is full.

It’s been another full day of touring the Holy Land.

From Dan to Beer-Sheva, and Caesarea (Maritime) to En-Giev, we’ve covered this land.

We swam in the Sea of Galilee and bobbed in the Dead Sea (this latter event so comical I couldn’t stop giggling at the curious situation of lying on top of the water).

We’ve surveyed archeological digs both old and new, gathered smooth stones from the Brook of Elah where David did so to the great chagrin of Goliath, and drove to the military installations along the borders of the Golan Heights.

We passed through the Palestinian checkpoint at Jericho where the soldier there (Palestinian) was watering flowers.

I’ve seen the Israeli soldiers, many of them young girls with cute pony-tails bouncing down the backs of their uniforms, toting AR 15 machine guns as if they were shopping bags.

We have pushed through crowded, narrow market streets while the Muslim call to prayer boomed loudly from speakers mounted to minarets high above.

I’ve seen monks in their brown robes with white ropes, nuns in their hobbits, and beggars of several faiths.

We walked into many an old church, usually constructed dead atop some Biblically important site, now entirely obliterated by the building meant to commemorate the very event it now obscures.

Perhaps the most adventurous activity was wading through the narrow (and sometimes short) tunnel of Hezekiah, a 1750 foot wonder that snakes around back and forth under the old City of David and takes water from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam.

This required feet that could withstand long exposure to the cold and still flowing spring water, a flashlight, and the ability to duck repeatedly, as well as a decent ability to fight off claustrophobia.

But we all made it through, shamed by the 90 year old lady who soldiered through it with us without a word of complaint or even a slow step.

Climbing the recently unearthed ceremonial staircase from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple Mount above (way above, I might add) turned into another spelunking adventure as we ended up squeezing between ancient ashlars that framed a drainage system (at least that was our best guess).

I’ve seen wild Ibex, commercially tamed camels one can ride for ten shekels, and prairie dogs with a fancier name which I now forget.

There have also been cats, lots of cats, loose in every nook and cranny of these old cities.

But everywhere and all the time there have been people.

I have been all over the world, and have visited what I had previously believed to be some pretty crazy, diverse places.

But I must admit, never in my life have I seen anything like Israel.  Enemies exist in muted tension side by side.  Radically different faiths fight for the same commemorative soil.

Cultures crash like cars in a downtown intersection, with sounds and wounds just as loud and painful.  I work my brain like a prize fighter trying to make sense of it all.

Israel, chosen by God to be the intersection of the world.  Israel, today, as much as ever, upholding its duty to be the place where all the cultures flow together.

Our trip was billed as a study tour, and study tour it has been.

Under the masterful tutelage of Dr. Doug Bookman from Shepherds Theological Seminary in North Carolina, we’ve been whisked around this mysterious land like the students in the classroom of Miss Frizzle, the zany but enthusiastic grade school teacher whose “Magic School Bus” transforms itself into whatever shape is needed to give the students a tactile, on-location lesson of the material being covered.

With contacts in every corner of this land, Dr. bookman has us transported up to places like the half-built and then abandoned palace of Jordan’s King Husain, which was begun in 1965 but quickly abandoned with the outbreak of the Six Days War in 1967.

From it’s ruined hulk, a place (to quote Dr. Bookman) where “Osha has never been,” we could look out at the surrounding hills and almost see the Bible narrative that occurred there coming to life.

While we pass other tour groups in silly kerchiefs and matching hats, we sneak around where people rarely go and take a look from off the beaten path.

Another joy has been traveling with long time friend and business partner Orrin Woodward and his wife Laurie.

As we learn we discuss, and review and analyze.

Learning is always more fun in concert with other minds equally enthused and invigorated with the lamp of growing understanding.

Further, we’ve been in cahoots with a small team of others from Califormia, Indiana, North Carolina, and Georgia, who have been as fun as they have been adventurous.

This tour is not over, but its days are rapidly ending.

And as they close, I realize once again that the more I learn, the more there is to understand.

Further mystery is always on the other side of new understanding, and these days in Israel have opened me to more wonder than I ever could have imagined.

My appetite to study and learn even more about the foundations of my faith and the plan of God for this land is mightier than ever.

My faith is stronger, my knowledge higher, and my camera fuller than when I began.

And yes, my feet might throb as I drop into bed at night, but my mind races and my heart leaps at all that God has done.

We can learn a lot about freedom by understanding how Marx wanted to establish communism. One of his ten planks of establishing communism was this:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes…

Take away property and you take away freedom. If a man or woman cannot own land, a house, his or her own things, freedom is gone.

Note that there is more than one way to abolish property and ownership. One is to make it illegal, to not allow ownership. This is extreme, of course.

But there are other ways that are less obvious.

For example, what if it is legal to own property but only those who can afford a license, taxes, filings and attorneys to implement these things can actually own land.

This is an “abolishment,” but it is of the right rather than the left. To the person who can’t own the house, the land, or the car, however, the reality is the same.

Another way to abolish land or house ownership is simply to establish a legal-economic system where the majority cannot afford such ownership without advanced education and/or the careers which require such education.

Another is to disallow immigration so that the poor of other nations have no change to come to your nation and benefit from a system that allows ownership.

The left can abolish property ownership simply by taxing at rates that keep those with money from investing in real estate development and keep those with little money from seeking ownership.

There are many other ways to in effect abolish property ownership. Any of them hurt freedom.

Whatever your politics, it is important to evaluate each policy to ensure that you are not unknowingly supporting a Marxian reduction of freedom.

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

Oliver DeMille is the founder and former president of George Wythe University, a co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd Online.

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

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

Connect With Oliver:

As my daughters are growing, I’m fashioning a series of stories to tell them that will teach them the principles of self-reliance and disciplined optimism.

The main characters of the series are two Japanese samurai warriors that are immortal. They wear the same clothes and they look identical to each other.

They fight to gain leadership with the people they influence. Seeing that they never die, the fighting is almost continuous.

Whenever they are not fighting, they stay in meditation and prayer, asking for the sustenance they need to win the next battle.

Each story will give the warriors attributes in such a way that my daughters will never know them by name but by their intentions.

One warrior will stand for positive thoughts and all that is honorable: joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth and compassion.

The other warrior will display actions out of anger, fear, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, pride, superiority and ego.

The climax of each story will begin with one of the warriors receiving the sustenance he needs to win the battle.

Since the people cannot tell one warrior from the other, they follow the one that wins.

The conclusion of each story will be a real-life event with a discussion about how their thoughts and behaviors influenced the warriors.

The warriors are our thoughts.

Their sustenance comes from our decisions and behaviors. The people that follow them are the people you influence every day, whether you think you’re a “leader” or not.

As you give sustenance to one he grows in strength.

It becomes easier for you to recognize him and it becomes easier and easier for him to defeat the other.

No matter how much you feed one, the other will never die and will surely win a battle with just a little sustenance.

The battle happens every day.

How does this story apply to/influence the actions you take in your business?

Who of the two warriors inside of you are you feeding?

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

Kevin Mogavero is a co-founder of “Six Degrees of Leadership,” a personal development company that empowers people to live their purpose and passion by building “Social Capital.”

A graduate of West Point Academy, Kevin served six years as an officer in the U.S. Army Field Artillery. He held a combat arms leadership role for his entire career, except one staff position, during which he obtained a Master’s Degree in Leadership and Management. He also served in Iraq during “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Since the military, Kevin has worked for Honeywell as an earned-value analyst in the aerospace department, in Phoenix Arizona.

He started testing his leadership skills in the entrepreneurial world by starting several companies, to include a real estate company and a business mailing-address company. Kevin loves to serve people who have a yearning to create a better life for themselves and others. He is passionate about teaching people the importance of something that most take for granted: relationships.

Kevin lives in Phoenix with his wife and two daughters. Read and subscribe to Kevin’s Warrior Blog here.