“Hi Bryan,
“How are you doing?

“Just wondering, a friend of mine at work was pretty ticked off at you for a show of yours she listened to this weekend. She said that you were saying that Fox [N]ews fans are delusional, and that you didn’t reference what people should be watching or listening to instead.  Just curious if you have time, could you further explain?”

Uh-oh.  Looks like I might have some ‘splainin’ to do.  All right, let’s get to it.

Yep. I said that people who rely SOLELY on Fox News for their information, thinking that they’re no longer being propagandized are, in fact, deluding themselves.  

Of course the same is also true for those who depend entirely upon CNN or NPR or any other single source of information.

The problem is that there is no unbiased source of mass communication and the single greatest challenge for anyone who wishes to be informed today is to be capable of sifting through all the spin and propaganda to clearly comprehend the way things really are.

It’s not so much a matter of which information source we use as a matter of developing our ability to use critical thinking skills in order to correctly interpret that information.

As citizens, our greatest responsibility during times of crisis is to think clearly and independently.

My biggest beef with Fox News is that too many people think they’re getting all the information they need when, in fact, the information is just as spun and the debate is just as controlled as anything they’d get from the mainstream media.

Information Versus Truth

Too often we forget that information isn’t always the same thing as truth.

Talk radio listeners exacerbate the problem when they become content to simply repeat whatever talking points they hear Beck, Rush or Hannity saying.

Parroting someone else’s words creates a dependency that tends to make a person dogmatic in their viewpoints. Dogma coupled with an inability to articulate one’s own thoughts is a perfect recipe for defensiveness when one encounters a differing viewpoint.

Before retiring a few years ago, Charley Reese was a writer of unusual clarity.  Here’s what he had to say about thinking we know it all:

“But since our means of learning are limited so that we can never learn everything about anything, we should avoid being dogmatic. I don’t mean living in a constant state of uncertainty, but we should at least always concede the possibility that what we think is so isn’t so. I have trouble understanding people who get emotionally upset when they bump into an opinion they disagree with.”

Does that last sentence not describe the scorched earth approach taken by many of the top names in talk radio who feel they must shout down, marginalize or hang up on anyone whose opinion differs from their own?

If you dare deviate from what the talking heads of ANY of the mass media sources consider the acceptable parameters of debate on a given issue, prepare to have disapproval heaped upon your head.  

And the rancor won’t just be from the commentators, but also from those faithful viewers or listeners who have hitched their ideological wagon to a particular star.

Whether it’s the person who just knows that “our news media” would never lie or the one bearing their testimony of “Brother Beck” to you, your dissent, however mild, represents a threat to their worldview.

Charley Reese made a recommendation years ago that I took to heart and I offer it now to you:

“Take this little test: Pick out any national issue or any national political figure and ask yourself, What do I really know about this issue or this person? The honest answer in most cases will be not much that hasn’t been spoon-fed to you by liars and propagandists.”

Once this realization occurs a person can begin to actually study the issues for themselves and take responsibility for their own viewpoint.  

The beauty of this approach is that it is much more based in reality than simply taking talking points from a professional propagandist.

There is real effort involved in thinking for yourself, but the payoff is that you will never be at the mercy of another in knowing what to think about a given issue.

One last quote from Charley Reese to drive the point home:

“Remembering and imagining are not thinking. Emotional reactions or ideological reactions are not thinking. Belief in the ‘word magic’ of labels is not thinking. Faith is not thinking.”

“Thinking is the use of reason to determine the truth as best we can. To do that, we have to shuck emotions, desires and wishes and look at the world in its nakedness as it is, not as we wish it were or as someone else has told us it is.

“Reality is not affected by our desires or by our comprehension. We glean data from our senses of that world outside our bodies and use our brains to draw inferences from the data. We have to conform to it; reality will not conform to us.”

My point on my radio show was that we need a propaganda-proof citizenry now more than ever, but few Fox News viewers or talk radio listeners would ever admit they were being bamboozled.

Liberal Arts: The Remedy for Propaganda

This is where there is simply no substitute for a true blue liberal arts education.

It’s been nearly 60 years since Mortimer Adler and then-president of the University of Chicago Robert Hutchins set about publishing the Great Book series containing the greatest works of Western thought spanning a period of nearly three millennia.  

The published collection is a remarkable achievement in and of itself, but the purpose for which Adler & Hutchins set about compiling the Great Books of the Western World is as timely today as it was in 1952.

The first volume of the 54 book set is titled “The Great Conversation,” and in it the editors make a powerful case that the disappearance of the great canon of Western Thought from education portends a calamity rather than progress.  

They clearly saw that while America’s standards of living were continually rising in terms of material comforts, a majority of adults were becoming impoverished morally, intellectually and spiritually.  

The predictable result of this type of educational malnutrition is a trend where each successive generation is further impaired in its ability to think for itself.

In Hutchins’s words:

“We believe that the reduction of the citizen to an object of propaganda, private and public, is one of the greatest dangers to democracy.

“A prevalent notion is that the great mass of the people cannot understand and cannot form an independent judgment upon any matter; they cannot be educated, in the sense of developing their intellectual powers, but they can be bamboozled.

“The reiteration of slogans, the distortion of the news, the great storm of propaganda that beats upon the citizen twenty-four hours a day all his life long mean either that democracy must fall a prey to the loudest and most persistent propagandists or that the people must save themselves by strengthening their minds so that they can appraise the issues for themselves.”

Hutchins understood that study of the great books provides one with a more well-rounded grasp of humanity, history, politics, morals and economics that enable the reader to effectively exercise their own mental abilities rather than waiting for experts to tell them what to think.

It’s been nearly 60 years since Hutchins made the following prescient observation:

“The trials of the citizen now surpass anything that previous generations ever knew.  Private and public propaganda beats upon him from morning till night all his life long.  If independent judgment is the sine qua non of effective citizenship in a democracy, then it must be admitted that such judgment is harder to maintain now than it ever has been before.  

“It is too much to hope that a strong dose of education in childhood and youth can inoculate a man to withstand the onslaughts of his independent judgment that society conducts, or allows to be conducted, against him every day.  For this, constant mental alertness and mental growth are required.”

The editors of the Great Books in no way pretended that the series was a panacea by which all of our problems could be answered.  

Instead, they recommended them as tools to further one’s self-education by allowing the reader to come face to face with what the greatest thinkers of the past 3,000 years had to offer.  

Only those who have actively put in the effort of studying great thinkers like Herodotus, Plato, Descartes, Machiavelli, or the many others whose works comprise the Great Books can accurately attest to the insight such study provides to better understanding the current issues and crises of our own time.

It was once considered self evident that a liberal education (meaning a well-rounded one) was how a person gained the necessary thinking skills to be capable of perpetuating liberty.  

Today, in ideological circles, the very word “liberal” causes some to have palpitations and others to reflexively genuflect to the state as their master and savior.

The Great Books won’t teach a person what to think, but by studying the great ideas (even the ones that were wrong) our minds become trained in how to think and how to ask the right questions.  

This type of education doesn’t even require a formal classroom setting.  Most liberally educated people got that way by diligently spending a bit of time reading and studying daily in the privacy of their own study or bedroom.  

There are no shortcuts to self education and that’s why the concept is such a tough sell to generations that prefer to plop down in front of the TV or computer and be entertained.

Mortimer Adler said it best:

“Anyone who has done any thinking, even a little bit, knows that it is painful. It is hard work-in fact the very hardest that human beings are ever called upon to do. It is fatiguing, not refreshing. If allowed to follow the path of least resistance, no one would ever think…

“Whoever passes by what is over his head condemns his head to its present low altitude; for nothing can elevate a mind except what is over its head; and that elevation is not accomplished by capillary attraction, but only by the hard work of climbing up the ropes, with sore hands and aching muscles.”

Instead of waiting for someone to tell us what sources to tap for information, we need to develop our thinking skills to the point that we can avail ourselves of many sources and accurately sift truth from error.  

This type of independent thought is what inoculates a citizenry against the effects of propaganda from any side of the political spectrum.

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

Bryan Hyde is a radio host, husband, father, graduate student at George Wythe University, and seeker of truth. He does professional voice work through his company One Clear Voice.

Bryan blogs at The White Rose Society and writes firearm reviews for The Truth About Guns. He and his wife Becky are raising their six children in Cedar City, Utah.

Connect With Bryan:

While seeking peace and human rights are notable and essential goals, the idea of using force to set up a system claiming to foster true freedom is a farce.

Let me tell you a story…

ONE DAY IN NOVEMBER 2001 I received a phone call from a worried Assyrian friend in Detroit.

He had been talking to his relatives back in Iraq, “My people tell me that Saddam wants to talk with someone in the U.S., but nobody here will talk to him.”

I called the US Department of State and spoke to an official (prefers to remain anonymous) who served in Iraq and told me no one from the US had officially or otherwise communicated with Saddam or his regime since 1997, more than four years ago.

Business as usual, I thought.

The ultimate tool of conventional engagement: a huffy silence. I knew my friend well enough to know that he wasn’t calling simply to complain or to voice his worries. He had something in mind.

That something quickly evolved into two “backdoor” diplomacy efforts, first with Iraq’s ambassador to Jordan and secondly, meetings with Saddam’s top officials in Iraq.

Having traveled to many countries, and having met some of the most despotic leaders of modern times, I drew rather firm inferences from these meetings, which I shared at a congressional debriefing after the trip, and later with the administration.

I presented three main points:

1) While Saddam, two weeks before our trip, pounded a podium insisting there would “never be inspectors in Iraq”, I was convinced he would allow inspectors; without conditions. This was based on conversations with then Iraqi Information Minister Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, and Foreign Minister Naji Sabri and others.

2) If there were WMDs in Iraq, by the time either our military or inspectors arrived, they would be gone. After all, we announced our clear intentions to go to war a second time, giving Saddam ample time to move whatever he had.

3) We needed to give careful thought to what would come after Saddam. What type of government, resistance, how to deal with the Bath’ists post Saddam, the Sunni/Shiite schism, etc?

Although I briefed several members of Congress, Cheney’s people and the Administration regarding the trip, my words were not fully received.

No Hard Evidence

“How did I know these things?” asked one Senator. I responded that all the so-called intelligence that we were basing a potential war on was only inferences and intuition.

There were no conclusive facts, nor hard evidence. I was surprised that no direct or “backdoor” diplomacy had been engaged, or for that matter all nonviolent efforts at least attempted, since the stakes for the U.S. were very high.

My perceptions were based on the experience of discussing life and death issues with dozens of despotic leaders over 24 years. While I may be somewhat naïve, it is clear that they tend to lie, give false information, and deceive.

While not empirically founded, my perceptions were no more or less pragmatic than what was presented by the Western intelligence sources.

When discussing my thoughts on Iraq with the Bush Administration, it became clear they were not interested.

What proved to be a fateful decision to go to war had already been set in stone, and I simply stood in that path to war.

Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post pointed out:

“The key judgment was made by the Bush Administration in the spring of 2002—that the political status quo could not and should not be maintained in the Middle East.”

A Warning

I will never forget resting on the couch in my home study answering my cell phone. It was the congressman who had helped my undaunted efforts against the war for several weeks.

He gave me clear and chilling advice. “Stop pushing against the Iraq thing. The decision has already been made and your continued efforts could cause you serious problems.”

In my world that type of veiled threat was unequivocal. I would entertain the full wrath of the administration if I persisted.

Regretfully I surrendered to defeat and went on with my life.

I was later to learn that my “file” with the administration, which undoubtedly includes my varied efforts in Libya, Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq, would catch up with me and present one of the greatest personal challenges of my life.

The Bush Administration’s actions have led, as we know, to a lengthy war on multiple fronts. It will be some time until we are to determine the long-term viability of the fledgling democracies set up within these contexts.

Some countries with large Muslim populations do enjoy stable democracies, such as Indonesia. But in others, the neoconservative bulwark has seen fit to simply clip the wings of democracies who are not “minding their mother,” shall we say, or electing leaders who do not share the values they feel they must.

This was the case in Algeria, and with Hamas in Palestine. Through these situations, we see that democracy is not the ultimate value we are exporting, but a shell of the democracy we hope for.

Universal Human Longing

Step back for a moment and consider the human heart.

Our essential longings throughout history are not aimed at (or fulfilled) through a form of government such as democracy (or any other), but at a search for universal truth, universal meaning.

The early cave drawings point to human questions about the universe. Our instinctive human passions relate not only to our physical realities, but the spiritual as well.

In our conflicts on this globe, shouldn’t we acknowledge spirituality and the quest for spiritual truth as an essential motivator in the equation?

The neoconservative view that Muslims would welcome a taste of democracy (while at the tip of a gun) is as laughable as Islamic militants offering Islam through the same methods. Force is not the tool that wields true change.

Both attempts ignore the human spirit and respect for each other. If we rather act in such a way to touch a spiritual chord and sound a note of friendship, we have a foundational starting point in engaging each other. For people of faith, faith is infused in everything.

Respect for the primacy of that faith goes a long way in building trust, in laying a roadmap to peace.

Many ask, “But what is this shared spiritual reality? Muslims, Christians and Jews have been diametrically opposed for centuries.”

But we are not so far from each other. When the essence of your religion is caring for the widows and orphans, when you are to love the Lord your God, the Lord who is One; when you preach “if any one slew a person … it would be as if he slew the whole humanity: and if any one saved a person, it would be as if he saved the whole humanity,” we find that we can join together around this rule of compassion for others.

When working as partners and friends in the world, a renewed faith can foster the change of heart necessary in building a foundation that leads to the fruit of peace.

Any hope for sustainable peace must realize the prerequisite of engaging at a spiritual level when human culture and framework is so wrapped in the fabric of the spiritual.

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

Mark Siljander is an ex-Congressman and the author of A Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman’s Quest To Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide.

He represented Michigan for fifteen years, which includes three terms as a Member of the United States Congress, where he served on the International Relations Middle East Subcommittee and was Ranking Member of the Africa Subcommittee. He was the primary sponsor of the African Famine Relief Act.

Mark was later appointed by President Reagan as a US Ambassador (Alt. Delegate) to the United Nations in New York, where he served as a member of the Middle East and Africa Strategy Group of permanent representatives.

Ambassador Siljander is a student of several languages, including Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew, and has spent over ten years studying the three Holy Books of the Abrahamic faiths.

With over 26 years serving in the power circles of Washington and semi-official travel to nearly 130 countries, he has generated unique opportunities for frequent access to world leaders.

These experiences have led him to develop a unique paradigm for the peaceful resolution of conflict that has been successfully applied in several challenging areas of the globe.

Mark Siljander reinforces his conflict resolution efforts through regular travel overseas with Congressional and high-level delegations.

I recently watched the first four episodes of Jamie Oliver’s television show, Food Revolution.

It’s at once shocking, infuriating, inspiring, and uplifting.

I was mesmerized, not just because it’s a great show, but also because it’s overflowing with profound insights and lessons on leadership.

There are too many to list, so I’ll narrow them down to four.

Note that these lessons aren’t shocking revelations that you’ve never heard or read before.

But what makes them so poignant is actually seeing them in action on Jamie’s show, rather than just looking at dry, empty words on sheets of paper. The show makes the lessons real and tangible.

Jaime became famous as the “Naked Chef,” a TV show where he “[stripped] food down to its bare essentials – to prove that you didn’t need to dress up ingredients or buy a load of fancy gadgets to make something really tasty.”

After a successful campaign to improve school food programs in the U.K., he came to the U.S. to attempt the same.

He chose Huntington, West Virginia as his starting point because it’s statistically the unhealthiest city in America.

He begins by convincing a local school district to let him cook lunch for an elementary school.

Lesson #1: Expect Resistance

Jamie is plunged into conflict from day one.

The kitchen cooks resent him for treading on their turf. School district bureaucrats force him to comply with insane guidelines. A local radio DJ launches a personal campaign to disparage his efforts.

Diplomacy is certainly necessary for leadership, but no matter how skilled a diplomat you are, you will encounter resistance. Nor does it matter how sincere, pleasant, and right you are.

Implicitly, leadership is about changing the status quo. And the status quo doesn’t like to be changed.

Lesson #2: Re-Define & Shift the Enemy

However, when facing resistance, it’s almost always a mistake to fight force with force, fire with fire.

Rather, you can deflect and transfer the energy of your resistance by making the enemy someone or something else other than your resistors.

This works particularly well when it’s a common enemy that you share with them.

One of Jamie’s low points comes when a local paper takes some of his comments out of context and makes him out to be the enemy of the town.

When the cooks, bureaucrats, and radio DJ read the paper and confront him about it, they’re deeply hurt, to the point of wanting to run Jamie out of town.

But rather than fight through their ignorance, he deflects their energy and shifts their focus to a common enemy: the government, who makes the food guidelines, and our corporate system that produces processed food and is in bed with the government.

Scott Brown, the Republican junior senator from Massachusetts, used a similar strategy to win the seat vacated by Ted Kennedy.

Rather than making Democrats at large the enemy, he defined the enemy as the Washington political establishment, both Republican and Democrat. This won him support from both sides of the aisle.

Lesson #3: Passion Trumps Everything

When you’re 100% aligned with your mission and in tune with your passion, nothing can stop you.

Passion gets you through the hard parts of leadership.

About 41 minutes into episode one, after dealing with angry and defensive Huntington residents, an emotional Jamie says:

“It’s quite hard to cut through negativity and defensiveness…I’ve given up massive time that is really compromising my family, because I care.

“The tough thing for me is they don’t understand me ’cause they don’t know why I’m here. They don’t even know why I’ve done the things I’ve done in my life in the last 10 years.

“And I’m just doing it ’cause it feels right. And when I do things that feel right, magic happens. I’ve done some amazing things, you know, and that’s when I follow my heart. And when I never follow my heart I always get it wrong.”

Jamie’s passion pushes him through the negativity. It helps him swallow his pride when needed, and act boldly when the time is right.

It sparks creativity. It makes him nimble and adaptive. When he gets blocked, he always figures out a detour.

Lesson #4: Be an Expert Marketer & Engage the Masses

When he struggles to get the establishment — the cooks, school district, and local media — on his side, Jamie circumvents them and creates his own media and movement.

He befriends and engages the help of a local pastor. He forms a group of aspiring chefs from the local high school and leverages them to create goodwill in the community with a fundraiser.

He sets up a kitchen on the main street of town where residents can come and learn how to cook for free.

And things really heat up between him and the radio DJ, he takes a giant risk and bets the DJ that he can teach 1,000 people to cook in five days.

His kitchen is dead the first two days; few people know what he’s doing, and the DJ uses his bully pulpit to discourage residents from going to the kitchen.

So Jamie has to be smart and bold. He coordinates a “flash mob” at the local university, which creates massive awareness and turns the tide in his favor.

He builds momentum, rallies the townspeople in a big way, and eventually wins the bet.

In fact, the 1,000th person he teaches to cook is the same DJ with whom he made the bet and who was his staunchest opponent.

Although there are tons of technical details to marketing, the magic is in the passion. Jamie’s passion led him to do things that most people are unwilling to do or can’t even imagine doing.

When asked how to market, Joel Salatin, the owner of Polyface Farms, a social leadership enterprise, responded, “Become the local lunatic.”

If you want big things to happen, you’ve got to stand out.

Of course, you run the risk of looking like a complete idiot and failing miserably. But if you’re aligned with passion and mission, you’ll pick yourself up and keep moving.

Want to learn how to become a social leader? Watch Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and take notes.

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

Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and persuasive writer with KGaps Consulting, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.

Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela. Stephen and Karina blog about their magical life on Palmer Journeys.

Connect With Stephen:

Email: spalmer [at] kgaps [dot] com

Read Part 1 Here
Read Part 2 Here

Anti-Federalist Prediction #3: Power Will Flow Away From the States

Prediction: Power will flow consistently away from the states and increase the scope, size, and power of the federal government. Only major crisis, where the federal government falls, will ever send significant powers back to the states.

Again, we are perfectly on target for this even though it has not yet fully matured. Federal budgets now dwarf state costs, and many state programs are funded by federal money.

Indeed, this has become a major misunderstanding in modern America.

The media constantly pounds the populace with the message that government is broken—Washington is in gridlock and accomplishes little. In reality, however, this is highly inaccurate.

Each year Washington manages to drastically increase the budget, debt, and deficit. It is spending more and more annually, and each year Congress authorizes many new programs.

A lot is getting done—many would argue too much!

Perhaps we could learn from the British-published magazine The Economist, which wrote in February 2010:

“It is simply not true to say that nothing can get through Congress. Look at…TARP…The stimulus bill…The Democrats have also passed a long list of lesser bills, from investments in green technology to making it easier for women to sue for sexual discrimination…

“America’s political structure was designed to make legislation at the federal level difficult, not easy. Its founders believed that a country the size of America is best governed locally, not nationally…

“The Senate, much ridiculed for antique practices like the filibuster and the cloture vote, was expressly designed as a ‘cooling’ chamber where bills might indeed die unless they commanded broad support.

“Broad support from the voters is something that both the health bill and the cap-and-trade bill clearly lack.”

The Senate has killed bills from Republican and Democratic presidents through the years, but this should be seen as the success of our mixed democratic republic with checks and balances rather than as government not working.

If the Senate had killed more bills in the past century, the power of the states would not have diminished to such a weakened place.

Both major parties often make the ingenuous mistake of claiming to be carrying out the “democratic” will of the people when they have broad voter support, and then when such support is lacking of blaming the Senate and Congress for gridlock, partisanship, and a system that doesn’t work.

When there is widespread dislike of certain proposed policies, not being able to pass them isn’t gridlock, but good government.

The Senate was designed specifically by the founders to protect the states, to leave most things to the state level and only allow issues to receive federal support when they were wanted by a large majority of Americans and needed to be accomplished at the national level.

Indeed, the system works more often than the modern media gives it credit.

Anti-Federalist Prediction #4: The Courts Will Eventually Have Too Much Power

Prediction: The courts will not only be independent but will eventually have too much power because there are really no effective checks on their decisions.

This has happened and is still increasing in its impact. Without checks on the Supreme Court, states have little recourse against growing federal controls over powers previously (and constitutionally) held by the states.

Our freedoms consistently decrease as the Court expands its interpretation of the role of the federal government in our lives.

To be continued…

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

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 2 Here
Read Part 3 Here

If you want to understand and profit from the political, economic and cultural forces at play in today’s world, you must understand two things:

1. The evolution of pre-modernism, modernism and post-modernism.
2. How independents view and are shaping the world.

Armed with this understanding you’ll be able to see through the superficial and misleading “liberal versus conservative” debate portrayed by the media. Furthermore, you’ll be able to harness our current societal transformations to your advantage.

The most fundamental question in the Great Debate of how society should be organized is “Who (or what) will save us?”

Pre-modernism, modernism, and post-modernism all have different answers.

Pre-Modernism & Modernism

Modernism is defined in many ways. One of the most enlightening is discovered by comparing modernism to the pre-modern and post-modern worlds.

In a nutshell, pre-modern societies believed that some supernatural being or at least super-powerful entity would save mankind. Man is flawed and weak (so the narrative went), and if we are to be saved it must come from something greater than man.

The three main branches of this view ⎯ one God, many gods, and shamanic energy powers ⎯ all agreed on the basics.

For example: man needs saving, he can’t save himself, a higher power must save us, and we should therefore live in a way that pleases or avails us of the benefits of the higher power.

That’s a simple version of pre-modernism.

Modernism began when societies changed these assumptions. The modern era adopted the following beliefs: man needs saving, he can’t save himself and it seems no godlike power is inclined to step up (for whatever reason), so man must build institutions which can save him.

In short, modernism rests on the belief that man-made institutions can and should save us.

The early modernists built on their pre-modern religious roots and turned to churches as the institutions most likely to fix the world’s problems. Those who were dissatisfied or impatient with this solution turned to governments as the answer.

If there are any problems in the world, according to this view, government should fix them. If a government won’t fix a problem or allows any suffering, it is bad and should be reformed or replaced. If a government tries but can’t fix problems, it is too weak and must be given more power.

After all, we humans like our higher powers incredibly strong and always benevolent.

Government v. Markets

A third major branch of modernism arose when governments repeatedly failed to solve the world’s problems. This school of thought believed that big business was the answer.

Huge, powerful businesses, as Keynes argued, reach a size where they care less about profit and more about taking care of their employees and society in general.

This view has business provide insurance, benefits and other perks to help the people live happily. It tends to ignore small business and even large “greedy” businesses, and instead promote more power to the biggest corporations.

In recent years we’ve witnessed the debates between all three branches of modernism, from faith-based initiatives (church as central institution) to health care reform (government as central institution) to executive bonuses (corporation as central institution).

But since the media usually couches all these and many other issues in “Conservative versus Liberal” terms, few people realize what is actually going on in these controversies.

The church-as-savior belief lost most of its influence in the last century, leaving governments and businesses to jockey for first place in this race to be the central institution helping mankind.

Many participated in this debate: Marx, Darwin, Bastiat, Nietszche, Freud, C.S. Lewis, Andrew Carnegie, Ayn Rand, Solzhenitsyn, Keynes, Kinsey, Milton Friedman, Mao, Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama, several Popes, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and others.

“It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object; in those most advanced, what is economically needed is better distribution.” -John Stuart Mill

The New York Times published this story yesterday about how one woman, Cynthia Magnus, made a big difference with very little effort.

After finding bags of “unworn but mutilated clothing that had been thrown away by [clothing retailer] H & M on West 35th Street,” Ms. Magnus contacted H & M’s headquarters in Sweden. When she didn’t receive a response, she contacted the New York Times, which reported finding more slashed clothing in the same location.

This prompted the following response from H & M spokeswoman Nicole Christie:

“It will not happen again. We are committed 100 percent to make sure this practice is not happening anywhere else, as it is not our standard practice.”

According to Ms. Christie, H & M’s policy is to donate unworn clothing to charitable groups. The story reports that “She said that she did not know why the store on 34th Street was slashing the clothes, and that the company was checking to make sure that none of its other stores were doing so.”

I applaud Cynthia for her great example. Here’s what I learn from her:

Lesson #1: Look for opportunities

First, she had the frame of mind to even recognize the problem, whereas most people, including myself, probably wouldn’t even take notice. We’re too busy to be attuned to the simple ways we can make a difference on a daily basis.

We need to train ourselves to always be on the lookout for ways to improve our communities.

Lesson #2: Act

Secondly, she acted. I don’t know how savvy she is and how clear she was on what would be the most effective strategy, but I know she acted.

I often don’t act because I’m not clear on what the strategy should be. But Cynthia’s actions show that we should just DO something — anything — and learn effectiveness as we go. We’ll have more impact by acting and learning from mistakes than not acting and never making mistakes.

Lesson #3: Leverage Media

Cynthia was smart to leverage the power of media.

As Carl Woolston and I discuss in our e-book on Hub Mentality, in the social economy power has shifted from institutions/companies to individuals/consumers. We trust peers now more than we trust companies and celebrity endorsements. We have more tools than ever before to make companies transparent and hold them accountable.

Cynthia’s actions demonstrate just how much power the average consumer has. Our feelings of powerlessness defeat us before we ever get into the game. We need to recognize our power and leverage it through media channels, including traditional media outlets, social networks, blogs, and all forms of peer-to-peer interaction.

A Final Word on Philosophy

I’m sure many of you are wondering why I used the John Stuart Mill quote to begin this post, and some may take issue with me, on capitalistic grounds, for highlighting this story as an example of social leadership.

No, I’m not a socialist. No, I don’t advocate forced wealth redistribution. No, I don’t believe in perpetuating dependence through unwise, unprincipled and bureaucratic largesse.

But I do believe in the power of and responsibility for voluntary charity. I do believe that we have the ability to create a just and equitable society without using force and without creating and perpetuating dependence. I do believe in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, administering to the sick and afflicted, et al.

I’m not the moral authority on how every person and company should manifest charity, but I think this story is pretty cut and dry. It’s a ridiculous and gross lack of stewardship for any company to just throw resources away.

So what do you think? What do you take, if anything, from Cynthia’s example?

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Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and persuasive writer with KGaps Consulting, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.

Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela. Stephen and Karina blog about their magical life on Palmer Journeys.

Connect With Stephen:

Email: spalmer [at] kgaps [dot] com

Family

The role of the family is to ensure responsible citizens, preserve society, and balance the desires of individual liberty with the demands of community responsibility.

As James C. Ure, professor at George Wythe University, has written,

“The family is the bubble in which a child…feels safe enough to explore his individuality. It is also the first place a child learns to make personal sacrifices for the good of the whole.

“In the family, it is natural for a parent to expose a child to various activities or ideas to determine what unique interests the child may have and to give the child an enhanced sense of self. It is also natural for a parent to ask a child to sacrifice personal interests to benefit the family, such as to provide help with cooking or cleaning.

“In the end, this is not very different from what makes free societies tick…It is in the family that children are expected to learn the core values and beliefs that democratic institutions later draw on to perpetuate themselves.”

Community

The original concept of federalism meant that as many decisions as possible were made at the lowest level possible.

As Cleon Skousen taught, strong, local self-government was the keystone to the original American system.

Understanding that power centralizes and expands, the Founders knew that the bulk of our political decisions should be made on the community level.

The role of the community, therefore, is to prevent the centralization of power by keeping responsibility and decision-making close to the people.

Religion

John Adams wrote that,

“Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not only of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.”

George Washington affirmed,

“Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure…reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

The role of religion is to remind republican citizens of their duties to and reliance upon God. Virtue is the bedrock of free society, and religion provides a constant reminder of that fact.

Furthermore, religion serves as a venue where citizens serve God by serving their fellowman; philanthropy is enacted in large part through religion.

Academia

Academia advances culture through knowledge, helps to prevent socio-economic inequities, breaks through boundaries of human ignorance and fear, helps societies to avoid repeated historical mistakes, and serves as a check on the government by keeping citizens informed of civic affairs.

As John Adams said,

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people…They have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge — I mean, of the characters and conducts of their rulers.”

Business

The role of business is to provide exchange, commerce, and ultimately widespread prosperity. In a free market economy prices tend to decrease through competition and innovation, the ultimate benefactors being end consumers of products and services.

In a free market economy poverty decreases, the standard of living rises, and people are able to find self-fulfillment as their subsistence needs are met.

In The 5,000 Year Leap, Cleon Skousen wrote that,

“By 1905 the U.S. had become the richest industrial nation in the world. With only five percent of the earth’s continental area and merely six percent of the world’s population, the American people were producing over half of almost everything — clothes, food, houses, transportation, communications, even luxuries.”

The occurred because of our free market economy, where business was left free to fulfill its role.

Media

The role of the media is to disseminate information, highlight important current events, and to essentially stand as a witness, an observer of cultural, political, community, and educational events.

A healthy media provides a check on the government and increases the political astuteness of republican citizens.

Government

The role of government is to protect unalienable rights. Government is the institutionalization of force, and as such should not do anything that would not be right for an individual to do (such as steal).

As Thomas Jefferson said,

“…a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”

Why It Matters

Freedom occurs when all seven of these societal institutions are on an equal plane, with no one form being more important or having more power or influence than another. When one gains predominance, some form or level of tyranny always emerges.

For example, having family run society results in the mafia. The Dark Ages illustrate the problems of religion ruling. When business is predominant, the society is oligarchic. When the government is predominant, this usually occurs as a monarchy or aristocracy.

The best way to ensure that all seven institutions remain on a level plane is to keep the government within its proper role.

Since the government does not produce — it only takes what others have produced and redistributes — any time it favors one institution over another it does so to the aggrandizement of the one favored and the detriment of the other.

When government tries to get into the business of philanthropy through wealth redistribution, family, community, and religion are weakened.

When government stifles the press, the media is obviously weakened, and so is academia as citizens are kept in the dark on important matters.

In America today, government and business are predominant over the other five societal institutions. Furthermore, they are often joined together, forming an oligarchic structure that harms small business, decreases widespread prosperity and increases discrepancies in wealth distribution, and increases the size and scope of the government.

If America is to survive and thrive in the 21st Century, it is imperative that the power and influence of the government and business be reduced and the power of family, community, religion, academia, and media be increased.

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Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and persuasive writer with KGaps Consulting, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.

Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela. Stephen and Karina blog about their magical life on Palmer Journeys.

Connect With Stephen:

Email: spalmer [at] kgaps [dot] com

Seth didn’t write it himself; he asked over 70 thought leaders to each contribute a page.

As Seth explains on his blog, each shares “an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly, from publisher Tim O’Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here. The ebook includes Tom Peters, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried, along with Gina Trapani, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber.”

Click here to download the e-book now, and visit the e-book’s Squidoo lens here.

Don’t just download it; sit down and take some real time with it. It’s packed with tons of valuable insights that will help you adapt to the massive shifts we’re engulfed in.

Specifically, it will help you do the following:

• Gain more confidence
• Shed fear
• Find your passion
• Develop your voice
• Build a successful mini-factory
• Create more peace, harmony, freedom, healing, dignity, meaning and abundance in the world
• Strengthen community
• Challenge the status quo
• Connect with what matters most
• Discover vision
• Market more radically and effectively
• Cultivate imagination and creativity
• Dedicate yourself to lifelong learning
• Understand the evolution of technology and how to harness it to your advantage
• Increase your productivity

And much, much more. Seriously, it’s a great read and well worth your time. Absorb it now.

Share the insights it sparks in you with the community by commenting below.

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Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and persuasive writer with KGaps Consulting, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.

Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela. Stephen and Karina blog about their magical life on Palmer Journeys.

Connect With Stephen:

Email: spalmer [at] kgaps [dot] com

To put it bluntly, if you’re not using an RSS reader, you’re way behind the times. I’m not going to take the time to explain what it is here, since you can find explanations all across the web, such as this video.

Rather, I simply want to share with you some of the RSS feeds I subscribe to in order to illustrate how powerful they can be and how much real-time information you can have access to at your fingertips.

More importantly, I highly recommend these information sources and thought leaders.

Note that all of the following links are to the direct RSS feed, not the actual website. Set up your RSS reader first, then click on these to subscribe to them.

• Acton MBA
• Acumen Fund
• Beneath the Cover
• Brian Tracy
• Bruce Shneier
• The Center for Social Leadership
• ChangeThis
• Chris Brady
• Chris Garrett
• ClickZ Experts
• The Coming Aristocracy
• Copyblogger
• Daniel Pink
• David Brooks
• David Meerman Scott
• Econsultancy
• Fast Company
• FutureNow
• Gail Collins
• George Will
• Greg Mortenson
• Guy Kawasaki
• Harry S. Dent
• Hubspot
• Ignite Living
• John Bell
• Ken Wilber
• KGaps Consulting
• Lateral Action
• Life Beyond Code
• Made to Stick
• Marketing Beyond Advertising
• Men With Pens
• Michael Fortin
• Mother Jones
• Naomi Wolf
• National Review Online
• New Rules for the New Economy
• Newsweek
• Orrin Woodward
• PR 2.0
• Seth Godin
• Skoll Foundation
• Social Media Today
• Soul Purpose Institute
• Stephen Covey
• Summalogica
• Wall Street Journal Opinion
• White House
• William Kamkwamba
• Wired: Threat Level
• Zen Habits

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

Stephen Palmer is a marketing consultant and persuasive writer with KGaps Consulting, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.

Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela. Stephen and Karina blog about their magical life on Palmer Journeys.

Connect With Stephen:

Email: spalmer [at] kgaps [dot] com