The following is an excerpt from Oliver’s recent book, The Coming Aristocracy: Education & the Future of Freedom.

If freedom is to reverse the onslaught of American and global aristocracy, it will likely do so through the greatest freedom trend of our time.

This trend is revolutionizing institutions, organizations, relationships, society and even nations around the world. It is still in its infancy, and many have yet to realize its potential.

The experts tend to overlook it because it seems small. It will likely always seem small because it is a “bottom-up” trend with no “top-down” organizations, alliances, or even affiliations.

Truthfully, it isn’t even a single trend at all–it is thousands of small trends, all following a similar pattern.

Malcolm Gladwell called part of this trend “outliers,” Harry S. Dent called it the “customization” explosion, Alvin Toffler said it is the wave of “revolutionary wealth” as led in large part by “prosumers,” John Naisbitt named it the “high touch” megatrend, Stephen Covey called it the 8th Habit of “greatness,” Daniel Pink coined the descriptor “free agent nation,” and Seth Godin refers to it as “tribes.”

Others have termed it “social entrepreneurship,” “the new leadership,” “a new age,” and even “the human singularity.”

All of these touch on facets of this freedom trend, but I think the best, most accurate and descriptive name for it is the “mini-factory” model.

Modernism came with the factory–the ability to mass produce. This revolutionized the world–economics, governments, how we spend our time each day, what we eat and wear, relationships, the size and functions of our homes and cities, etc.

Today the mini-factory is changing everything just as drastically.

In ancient times the wealthy set up estates or fiefdoms to cover all their needs, and the masses worked to provide the needs of their aristocratic “superiors.”

In modern times the factory provided mass goods and services.

Imagine the impact on everything in our lives if each family could provide all, or even many, of its needs for itself–and do it better than kings or politicians ruling over working peasants or even corporations employing workers to produce goods and services.

Such is the world of the mini-factory.

How Does a Mini-Factory World Function?

For example, what if parents could educate their children better than local school factories, with the best teachers, classes and resources of the world piped directly into their own home?

What if a sick person had more time and motivation to research the cases of her symptoms than the factory doctors, and the availability of all the latest medical journals right on her computer screen?

She would also have holistic works, original studies, alternative and collaborative experts, and the ability to email the experts and get answers in less time than it would take to wait in the hospital lobby.

Ten friends would likely send her their experiences with similar illness within days of her mentioning casually online that she was sick. If she chose a certain surgeon, a dozen people might share their experiences with this doctor.

What if a mother planning to travel for family vacation could just book flights and hotels herself, without calling the “expert” travel agent? Maybe she could even choose seats on the flight or see pictures of her hotel room–all in her own home between her projects and errands.

Welcome to the world of the mini-factory. I purposely used examples that are already a reality. But they were just a futuristic dream when writers like Alvin Toffler and John Naisbitt predicted them before 1990.

Technology has helped it, but the impetus of the mini-factory trend is freedom. People want to spend less time at the factory/corporation and more time at home. They want to be more involved in raising their children and improving their love life.

In an aristocracy, these luxuries are reserved for the upper class. In a free society, anyone can build a mini-factory.

What is a Mini-Factory?

A mini-factory is anything someone does alone or with partners or a team, that accomplishes what has historically (meaning the last 150 years of modernism) been done en masse or by big institutions.

If a charter school provides better education for some of the community, it’s a mini-factory. If it does it at less cost and/or in less time spent in the classroom, so much the better. A homeschool or private school can be a mini-factory.

Of course, if the charter, private, or home school does a worse job than the regular factory, it is a failed mini-factory.

If joining a multi-level company and building it into a source of real income serves you better than an employee position, it’s a mini-factory.

If downsizing from a lucrative professional job in Los Angeles to a private practice or job that pays much less but allows you twice as much time with your family and a more relaxed lifestyle in, say, Flagstaff or Durango and makes you happier, it’s a mini-factory.

Entrepreneurship, alternative education, the downshifter movement, environmental groups, alternative health, the growth of spirituality, community architecture, the explosion of network marketing, home doctor visits, the rebirth of active fathering, and so many other trends are mini-factories.

How do Mini-Factories Impact Freedom?

It all comes down to this: Big, institutional, non-transparent, bureaucratic organizations are natural supporters of aristocracy. Freedom flourishes when the people are independent, free, and as self-sufficient as possible.

I am not suggesting going backwards in any way.

Forward progress is most likely in a nation that is both well educated and highly trained, where big institutional solutions are offered wherever they are best and individuals and groups seek smaller solutions where they better serve their needs, where free government enterprise rules apply and there are no special benefits or perks of class (either conservative aristocracy or liberal meritocracy), and where government, business, family, academia, religion, media, and community all fulfill their distinct, equally-important roles.

Such a model is called freedom. It has been the best system for the most people in the history of the world, and it still is.

To adopt freedom in our time, either the aristocracy must give up its perks and voluntarily restructure society, or the masses must retake their freedoms bit by bit, day by day, by establishing mini-factories.

Mini-factories will be more successful if each person only does a few, and does them with true excellence.

Freedom will flourish best if there is no organization or even coordination of the mini-factories; if individuals, partners, families and teams identify what is needed in the world and in their own lives and set out to deliver it.

This is especially hard in a time like ours where the employee mindset wants someone to “fix” things (like the economy, health care, education, etc.), exactly when an entrepreneurial mindset is most needed to take risks and initiate the best and most lasting changes.

If real, positive, and effective change is to come, it will most likely be initiated by the people acting as individuals, small groups, and teams.

If it comes from the top, it will tend to only bring more aristocracy, and the day of freedom will be over for now.

Whatever your mini-factory contribution might be, consider that it will help determine the future of freedom.

Is it Worth the Challenge?

Mini-factories can be hard to establish and challenging to build. Many people fail once or several times before they learn to be effective.

But the type of learning that only comes from failing and then trying again is the most important in building leaders and citizens who are capable of maintaining freedom in a society.

Note that this very type of education is rejected in a training model of schooling, where failure is seen as unacceptable and students are taught to avoid it at all costs.

This mindset only works if an aristocracy is there to take care of the failures.

In a freedom model, citizens and leaders learn the vital lessons of challenges; failures and wise risk-taking are needed.

Starting and leading a mini-factory, and indeed all entrepreneurial work, is challenging.

Those who embraced this difficult path in history established and maintained freedom, while those who embraced the ease of past compromises sold themselves and their posterity into aristocracy.

In the long term, though, aristocracy is much harder on everyone than freedom.

What Will You Build?

As you consider what mini-factories you should support, start, and build, just ask what things could be done (or are being done) better by a small mini-factory than by the big organizations that try to control nearly everything in our world.

If it could be done just as well by a mini-factory, the change to the smaller entity can drastically promote freedom. If it can be done even better by a mini-factory, it is better for life itself!

The mini-factory is the new vehicle of freedom.

Take a mini-survey: What are your pet complaints? Government? Develop family government models. Health Care? Educate yourself on prevention and self-care. Education? Learn the principles of Leadership Education. Media? Start a blog. Entertainment? Develop a group of hobbyists who share your interests, whether it be Harley road trips, ice fishing, scrapbooking, etc.

You get the idea: Live deliberately, and do not wait for institutions to change to meet your needs.

Do not waste your energy or good humor on complaining.

Find a mini-factory that does it right and get behind it–or start one yourself. So many are needed, and they can bring the miracle of freedom!

The future remains unseen. It is the undiscovered country.

Many ancients felt that fate drove the future, but the idea of freedom taught humanity to look each to his/herself, to partner with others, and to take the risk to build community and take action now in order to pass on a better life to our children and our children’s children.

Today, that concept of freedom is waning–slowly and surely being replaced by a class culture.

Those who love freedom, whatever their stripe–be they green, red, blue, rainbow, or anything else–are needed. They need to see what is really happening, and they need to educate themselves adequately to make a difference.

The most powerful changes toward freedom will likely be made by mini-factories, in thousands and hopefully millions of varieties and iterations.

Aristocracy or freedom–the future of the globe–hangs in the balance…

Click here to learn more about the mini-factory trend and to purchase a paperback copy of The Coming Aristocracy. Click here to download two hour-long webinars with Oliver DeMille explaining mini-factories.

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

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:

The American framers overcame domination by an elite upper class by establishing a new system where every person was treated equally before the law.

This led to nearly two centuries of increasing freedoms for all social classes, both genders and all citizens—whatever their race, religion, health, etc.

During the Industrial Age this system changed in at least two major ways.

First, the U.S. commercial code was changed to put limits on who can invest in what.

Rather than simply protecting all investors (rich or poor) against fraud or other criminal activity, in the name of “protecting the unsophisticated,” laws were passed that only allow the highest level of the middle class and the upper classes to invest in the investments with the highest returns.

This created a European-style model where only the rich own the most profitable companies and get richer while the middle and lower classes are stuck where they are.

Second, the schools at all levels were reformed to emphasize job training rather than quality leadership education.

Today great leadership education is still the staple at many elite private schools, but the middle and lower classes are expected to forego the “luxury” of opportunity-affording, deep leadership education and instead just seek the more “practical” and “relevant” one-size-fits-all job training.

This perpetuates the class system.

This is further exacerbated by the reality that public schools in middle class zip-codes typically perform much higher than lower-class neighborhood schools.

Private elite schools train most of our future upper class and leaders, middle class public schools train our managerial class and most professionals, and lower-class public schools train our hourly wage workers.

Notable exceptions notwithstanding, the rule still is what it is.

Government reinforces the class system by the way it runs public education, and big business supports it through the investment legal code. With these two biggest institutions in society promoting the class divide, lower and middle classes have limited power to change things.

The wooden stake that overcomes the vampire of an inelastic class system is entrepreneurial success.

Becoming a producer and successfully creating new value in society helps the entrepreneur surpass the current class-system matrix and also weakens the overall caste system itself.

In short, if America is to turn the Information Age into an era of increased freedom and widespread economic opportunity, we need more producers.

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

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.

Free citizens are innovative, independent and giving.

When these characteristics wane in a society, freedom decreases. When these values are bolstered, freedom grows.

Because they are so important in free nations, institutions attempt to produce and market them.

But the nature of innovation, independence and giving make them resistant to institutionalism; when private and public institutions take over these values, they slowly (sometimes more quickly) begin to diminish in the character of individual citizens—and freedom goes with them.

Such shifts come in both evolutionary and cyclical patterns. Each new age (Nomadic, Agrarian, Industrial, Information) is forged and grows when the freedom values flourish, levels off as they stagnate, and declines as they are lost among the citizenry and later from institutions.

On a cyclical level, nations rise in power and prosperity as innovation, independence and giving permeate the culture at the individual level. They weaken as individuals focus on other things and leave these values to institutions, and they move into periods of crisis when the institutions fail to deliver.

Crisis ruins societies where the citizens don’t restore these values to their daily lives, while such crises are building blocks to growth and empowerment when the regular people re-adopt innovation, independence and giving.

Governments try to force things along by requiring and regulating these values, but this very act moves nations toward crisis. If the people are forced to innovate, creativity shuts down. Forced independence is dependence. And forced giving without the value of real charity is a form of enslavement.

Institutions are, at their best, designed to perpetuate the values of a society or group—but when the people lose values the institutions themselves often become the enemy of these very values.

Combining the Values

The American ideals of freedom and prosperity “through opportunity for all” are the basis of our greatest institutions — both private and governmental.

Perhaps the single greatest generational foray into entrepreneurial government gave us the U.S. Congress, Presidency, Supreme Court and a republic of 50 sovereign and united states.

These institutions were designed, above all, to perpetuate a citizenry steeped in the freedom values including innovation, independence and giving.

Where these three values are found in combination, we see the hope for America’s future.

Those with strong political attachments or party affiliations may find this disturbing, since the budding of freedom values in culture doesn’t always match one’s pre-disposed view of how things work. Our institutions tell us about our past and what we have become, but cultural trends tell about our future and what we are becoming.

Those whose status or self-perception is based on ties to the institutional are mostly, by definition, caught in the cultures of maintaining the status quo, dependence and “getting.”

As a result, they often feel threatened by those whose cultures center on innovating, independence and giving.

From the perch of credibility, which institutions seek to bestow, the “experts” too often preach against innovation (“too risky”), independence (“obviously ignorant”), and giving (“too idealistic”).

It is poignant that the same Establishment which says that “The upstarts must be put in their place, lest things change,” also preaches that,

• “The world is what it is, and you’ll never change it.”
• “It’s just business.”
• “Security is the name of the game.”

Ironically, the Innovators don’t see the Maintainers as enemies or competitors, just as allies who have yet to grasp reality. Things change. Or more accurately, all things change. The Maintainers are fighting it, while the Innovators set out to shape and lead it.

Both groups win some, and both lose a few. But over time, as the Greeks taught, the bold lead. The risk-takers accumulate. The independents spread freedom and prosperity. The Establishment stagnates and is replaced.

Consider the following groups/systems which combine the values of innovation, independence and giving (note that some on this list may offend the Right while others discomfit the Left—but Left and Right are institutional values which are being remade by the Innovators):

• Downshifters (highly compensated professionals who leave big-city careers for more laidback rural lifestyles and family time);
• Charter Schools;
• Homeschooling;
• The Neo-Private Schools (what some call the “Chicken-Wire Harvards”);
• Tea Parties
• Immigrants
• Opt-Out Moms (highly-educated women who choose homemaking over careers; sometimes called “femivores”)
• Multi-Level and Network Marketing Entrepreneurs
• Small Business Entrepreneurs and Investors
• Social Entrepreneurs (who build organizations to combat societal challenges rather than focus on mere profit)
• The Corporate and Societal Ethicists (who promote a higher level of ethics in all sectors of American life, public and private)
• Self-Help Enthusiasts (who emphasize “positive mental attitude,” “leadership,” “habits” and “manifesting,” and apply improvement literature from Dale Carnegie to The Secret and beyond)

Say what you want about any of the groups listed above, but each is clearly innovating toward a new future, taking on the stagnant parts of the Establishment and charting a different course.

You may or may not agree with their goals, but they are certainly innovative. Each of these groups is also clearly independent, attempting to go its own way regardless of the “expert,” “accepted,” or “safe” view.

Many members from each of these groups are focused on giving. Critics of each group may call its members selfish in some ways, but it is true that people in these groups see themselves sacrificing for something greater than themselves and for the good of others.

In many ways they are selfless. For example, most Tea Partiers are sincerely seeking to better the nation for their posterity while many immigrants courageously risk and sacrifice themselves to hopefully send a little money home to feed hungry families.

The ends-means criticisms can be applied to any of these on the list; but in absolute terms, and in the context of their own sincere intentions and worldview, how can they be perceived as anything but noble and self-sacrificing? Likewise, those who most succeed as entrepreneurs are the ones who consistently give back.

There are many other groups that are working to combine innovation, independence and giving as they help influence society (see, for example, the Arbinger Institute, Wizard Academy, the Jackrabbit Factor, or Seth Godin’s Purple Cow concepts, among many others).

Alternate Views

There are many groups which combine just two of the freedom values, such as environmental groups which are innovative and giving but push for more independence-killing regulation, or some entrepreneurs who are innovative and independent but neglect giving and emphasize only profit.

A combination of all three of these values is necessary to truly lead the future toward freedom and prosperity—as various other environmentalists, entrepreneurs and additional groups show by their good example.

Some might argue that gangs or cults use these same values, but I disagree. Gang-like culture is anti-Establishment, to be sure, but only to the extent that it promotes its own institutionalism against the “outside” world.

Within gangs, individuals are hardly asked to be truly innovative or independent. This is a sign of cultish behavior—where dependence on the group is forced.

And the requirement to give all, or nearly all, to the gang is extreme and worsened by the way the gang takes from society at large and enriches the ones in power inequitably; this is hardly about giving.

Unfortunately, while the Internet is a great tool for innovation, independence and giving, far too many people bind themselves to e-groups who only think alike and vocally attack all others. Such micro-institutionalism is bad for the culture and denigrates the values of freedom and prosperity.

On the more positive side, many individuals and groups are challenging or simply improving the Establishment through their combined innovation, independence and attitude of giving. Indeed, their numbers seem to be growing.

The media often discount their influence, but even the media are being restructured from institutional to innovative in the Internet age. The near end of local newspapers and the gasping struggle of book publishers epitomize this shift.

Academia is following the same path—the old institutional brands are giving way over time to a rising swell of innovative educational options which promise to entirely revolutionize modern culture.

So much is headed the way of the video store, network television and the tethered, rotary dial telephone. Old replaced by new—institutional succeeded by various entrepreneurial options.

Principles and Change

At the macro-level, the forces that promote “keeping things the same,” “dependence on big institutions,” and “getting mine first” are still strong. In absolute terms, the Establishment Maintainers currently far outnumber the Innovators. But all the momentum is in favor of those who combine innovation, independence and giving.

If you don’t resonate with a group promoting these values, you can start one. The world needs many more of them. But let’s be clear: While the forces of “maintenance, dependence and getting” will surely fight to stay in charge, everything is against them—including physics. Change will come. This is a scientific certainty.

Indeed this change is already upon us. It just remains to be seen what kind of future we will choose.

If we want a nation and world of widespread freedom, opportunity and prosperity, the future belongs to those who embrace, combine, spread and even improve upon the values of innovation, independence and giving. These values are vital to free cultures, and in the cycles and evolutions of history, their time has come.

The irony of this all is that to survive and flourish the Establishment needs innovation. Power and wealth can be held by a dominating aristocracy or upper class, but the masses suffer and prosperity for all declines. Without an independent and giving citizenry, no nation can long remain free or generally prosperous.

For freedom and prosperity to flourish, the freedom values must be actively applied by the regular people. And in times like ours, they frequently must do so without much leadership from the big institutions.

Nations which accomplish this are worthy of the freedom they create and pass on to posterity. It is up to the regular people: We must exemplify innovation, independence and giving. The future of our nation will be determined by this reality.

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

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:

Sitting down to our daily meals is such a commonplace occurrence for most of us that we scarcely give it a second thought.

But the safety of the food we eat is becoming the focal point of an increasingly intense tug of war between federal regulators and food growers and producers at every level—right down to our own gardens.

The issue of food safety is closely tied to other issues that affect how and what we eat. To better understand what’s at stake when it comes to feeding ourselves, a bit of historical perspective is in order.

Nomadic to Agrarian

One of the most significant advancements in human history was the shift that moved mankind from the Nomadic age to the Agrarian age in which planting and harvesting largely replaced hunting and gathering as the principal means of obtaining food.

By creating permanent settlements, usually near a reliable source of water, societies found they could eat better, live better and enjoy far greater comfort than was possible within a nomadic existence.

In his series The Story of Civilization, historian Will Durant claims that the Agrarian Age may well be what made civilization possible since the growing, harvesting and storing of crops allowed mankind an unprecedented amount of leisure time to pursue education, art and culture.

Food was produced locally and wealth was measured by land ownership. Even with the advent of civilization, a large percentage of people still produced roughly half of the food on their table, through gardening, and keeping a milk cow or chickens.

Agrarian to Industrial

This changed drastically with the arrival of the Industrial Age.

The Industrial Age greatly changed the entire landscape of how most people lived their lives. People became more concentrated in larger cities and goods were primarily purchased at central locations.

Mass production and distribution created a huge disconnect in how the masses obtained their food.

Though food was plentiful, and available in greater variety than ever before, many people became completely out of touch with the means of producing food and, in turn, became almost entirely dependent upon others for their daily sustenance.

Purchasing our food at the supermarket became the norm and even a person who lived next door to a farmer or a dairy was far more likely to buy their produce or milk at the store rather than from their neighbor.

Mass production of food led to the creation of agri-business giants like Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland who along with other large food corporations have become major players in supplying our food.

These companies have also pioneered the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) including plants, seeds and animals in order to produce larger yields.

This practice has raised concerns ranging from the implications of allowing the companies’ control of seeds as intellectual property to the impact of genetically modified food upon human nutrition.

Industrial to Information

Now the Information Age is overtaking the Industrial Age and we are seeing a trend that steers away from the mass production approach that typified the pinnacle of the Industrial Age.

In the U.S., increasing numbers of people are choosing to “downshift” their lifestyles by leaving large cities and six-figure incomes for a more modest, rural existence that, more often than not, includes having some land and producing a portion of their own food.

Community Supported Agriculture cooperatives (CSA) are catching on in many areas where residents can purchase shares in a small, locally-operated farms that provide them with food produced in their own communities.

Farmers markets and private gardening are also becoming popular means of obtaining locally grown, organically non-genetically modified food within one’s community.

The Dangers of Centralized Food Production

While these local sources of food are gaining acceptance, they are still far from commonplace.

Few of us have encountered the specter of empty store shelves in our grocery stores and yet the system by which those shelves are kept filled is dependent upon carefully timed resupply and distribution that takes place every couple of days.

A truckers’ strike, bad weather or any number of other factors can prevent those store shelves from being replenished and at that point the learning curve then becomes incredibly steep for those who must now figure out how to feed themselves.

The bottom line is that today a vast amount of our population no longer has any concept of what is required to grow, harvest and transport their food from the field to their table.

And in regards to the safeguarding the quality of our food, we have placed that responsibility in the hands of a few state and federal regulatory agencies. But these agencies are now beginning to focus their attention beyond the mass producers of food products and to exercise greater control over small growers and local producers.

Numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that roughly 5,000 people die from food-borne illness in America annually. But most cases of food contamination are traced to large scale operations and not the small local producers.

So why the increased focus on the local producers?

Is More Regulation the Answer?

When the Food Safety Modernization Act was passed by Congress last December and signed into law earlier this year, it was billed by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as the “most significant safety law of the law 100 years.”

But the law has also become a flashpoint of concern for agriculture groups, small food producers and organic farmers who see the law as an unprecedented expansion of federal regulatory power over the ability of people to produce their own food.

In a nation where we always seem to be just one more law away from safety, the enforcement of current food safety regulations have resulted in SWAT teams raiding Amish farmers and organic farmers co-ops over allegations of selling products that haven’t been properly regulated.

The further expansion of federal power in this arena raises the question: Is there such a thing as too much safety?

The 80–page Food Safety Modernization Act moves the Food and Drug Administration out of the realm of mere inspection and into the realm of proactive prevention of food-borne illness.

It expands the enforcement powers for the FDA to where in the event of a food “emergency” or “major contamination” the FDA could place all food and farms under the the Department of Homeland Security; an agency which is mentioned no less than 41 times in the law’s text.

The FDA will have the power to conduct warrant-less searches of the business records of even small growers and producer even if there is no clear evidence that a law has been broken.

Depending upon how the regulations are interpreted and applied, all food production facilities within the U.S may be required to register with the federal government and pay an annual registration fee.

Fines for paperwork infractions can go as high as $500,000 for a single offense. Producers who sell or distribute food outside of government control could be prosecuted as smugglers.

To handle the increase of mandated inspections of food processing facilities and other provisions of the new law, the FDA will be required to hire more inspectors at greater taxpayer expense.

In fairness, the act contains a number of exemptions (under certain conditions) for small farms and very small food producers who sell their wares within a certain geographical radius and have less than $500,000 in annual sales.

But the problem remaining is that the law is written broadly and vaguely enough to give the FDA a great deal of discretion. Can we trust that the FDA will not expand its enforcement efforts to small growers and producers?

How many other regulatory agencies have experienced mission creep as time goes on? It is much easier to prevent abuse of power by limiting government than it is to correct abuses made possible by ambiguity in the laws.

Concerns over the law have prompted Utah lawmakers, among others, to consider legislation that would exempt agriculture produced and purchased within the state of Utah from federal regulations.

State Rep. Bill Wright’s HB365 seeks to exempt Utah growers, both large and small, from federal agricultural regulations on products cultivated and sold within the state.

The Utah Intrastate Commerce Project was launched as a means to protect small farmers who engage in farmers markets or Community Supported Agriculture cooperatives from a harsh federal regulatory climate that places unreasonable costs and mandates on them.

This food sovereignty approach has been also pursued, with varying degrees of success, in Georgia, Wyoming, Vermont, Kentucky and Florida.

Defenders of the Food Safety Modernization Act have expressed reactions ranging from puzzlement to scorn over those who would question the wisdom of the law, but it’s not a matter of having intensive, inflexible regulation of every aspect of the food supply or having to watch our children die from eating tainted, dangerous food.

Local Control

Local growers are easily recognizable within their local markets and have no incentive to produce tainted goods. This is an issue where the correct answer is more likely to be found somewhere in between the two extremes.

Economist and author Tom E. Woods offers a tongue-in-cheek characterization of the regulatory mindset as follows:

“Without [federal regulation], America would be populated by illiterates, half of us would be dead from quack medicine or exploding consumer products, and the other half would lead a feudal existence under the iron fist of private firms that worked them to the bone for a dollar a week.”

The truth, of course, it that even with minimal regulatory oversight, people will not devolve back to cave-dwelling savages by default.

No one wishes to eat unsafe food, but there is much more to this law than simply providing safeguards to the food supply. Whatever actual safety benefits may be found in the law, there is a corresponding economic impact and effect upon personal liberty that must be considered as well.

Even as food prices are steadily rising for American consumers, the prospect of growing more of one’s own food is becoming increasingly more risky due to regulatory concerns.

Food is what sustains life and any law that complicates or exerts control over a person’s access to or ability to produce food must be weighed against the likelihood for abuse by those in power.

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

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:

When these qualities are intentionally acknowledged and cultivated, they coalesce into a specific mission in service to the world.

These qualities already exist within you in a basic raw form. For most people they need to be clearly discovered, then nourished, studied and refined.

Soul purpose is like gold: hidden deep within, but when painstakingly sought for and carefully mined, it makes for fabulous wealth.

The common denominator of all successful and famous people throughout history is that they all lived their Soul Purpose. They all “followed their bliss” –- daring, many times against impossible odds, to be that which they believed they were destined to become.

This bliss led them to do what they had an innate passion and talent for. Their cause became a life mission –- a raison d’etre.

They rarely set out to achieve fame and fortune. On the contrary, fame and fortune occurred as “effects,” stemming from each person following their inborn “cause.”

This cause became their guiding beacon whenever fear, doubt and worry assailed them. It guided them to have faith, and the will to persist in times of challenge.

Recognizing Soul Purpose

Most people come to recognize the relevance and validity of Soul Purpose only after experiencing great discontentment.

This discontentment stems from not living their life with purpose. They know they’re here to do something important but all they can say is that they’re definitely not doing it.

Thus, discontentment is the fuel that propels people towards the discovery of this concept. We come to soul purpose by discovering who we are not, and do not, want to be and do.

Thus it is important to also address what soul purpose is not:

• a job
• a career
• about money
• about fame
• about material things
• without struggle
• glamorous
• indicative of any “specialness”
• worty of adulation

The phrase Soul Purpose is derived from realizing that you are a soul in a body who has a mind.

While residing in a material body and using the mind as a computer for storing, retrieving and analyzing data, the soul is your true essence.

But because of very deeply ingrained cultural conditioning, we have forgotten the essence of that which we really are. This conditioning drastically hinders people’s belief in themselves and their possibilities in the world.

The following story illustrates this point.

In India, elephants are still used for many heaving-lifting tasks. When the elephants are in training they are secured by a thick chain to a foot-wide steel shaft cemented deep into the ground.

As the trainer begins teaching them they initially pull and pull trying to free themselves, but after a couple weeks the elephant realizes it’s useless and stops pulling.

From that point forward the trainer can lead them around by a string! This massively strong creature has been conditioned for the rest of its life to never change, because of its early conditioning.

Human beings are very similar. This conditioning causes us to look at the world in a very fixed and limited way, without our even knowing it.

So we forget our essence and settle for a life of mediocrity.

This is the root of why so many good people experience depression — their soul is so stifled that it is crying our for the expression of its real purpose.

Soul Purpose Resides in the Spiritual Realm

One of the most important, and misunderstood, concepts surrounding soul purpose is that it can only fully be lived when one accesses the spiritual realm.

Spirituality is a way of being that people choose, or do not choose, every moment of their existence. It is choosing to be, and to behave, as either the God-Self or the ego-self.

Studying the attributes to these two very different selves will be helpful for clarity sake.

Thus, being spiritual is choosing love (power) over fear (force) when you are challenged. It is choosing to have faith instead of allowing ourselves to be filled with doubt when difficulties arise.

When things don’t go as planned the spiritual being focuses on learning instead of blaming, and so on with both categories of opposite qualities being virtually endless.

Spiritual people practice a series of disciplines that access the unseen domain I refer to as the spiritual realm.

It is critically important to understand that this is the realm in which Soul Purpose resides fully formed.

Without accessing the spiritual realm, living one’s Soul Purpose is virtually impossible. Thus, it is very important to recognize that without doing the disciplines, it is unlikely for someone to live their Soul Purpose.

The spiritual realm is the place of highest possibility, the mental realm is the middle, and the physical realm is the lowest. People have access to, and always create from, one of three planes of potential.

Creating from the physical realm only dictates that we follow basic animal instincts, thus is the most limited realm.

Creating from the mental realm exponentially increases results because you have engaged a higher engine, which is the mind, and combined it with the chassis of the body. You are not only working hard (physical) but you are also working smart.

Creating from the spiritual realm is a quantum leap unlike any other. It combines all three realms; working hard and smart but driven by the indefatigable power of the God-self.

Achieving at Your Highest Level

The God-self provides us with an amazing aspiration to succeed because Soul Purpose is the thing you already most love to do. H₂O can be seen as ice, water or steam depending on the intensity of its molecular speed.

Similarly, the human being can be physical, mental or spiritual depending on the intensity of aspiration to succeed.

Careful study of the following chart will illustrate the enormous difference between the potential results in productivity that are possible when creating from the spiritual realm.

From my research, one year of physical work can create enough value for others to generate $20,000 of income. One year of working in the mental realm may create enough value for others to earn $200,000 of income.

One year spent working from the spiritual realm of Soul Purpose can easily generate $2 million.

Notice the 10 times exponential growth that can occur due to the phenomenal leap in power as one transcends from the physical to the mental to the spiritual realm.

I’ve witnessed this with several of my clients. One of them in particular committed to his spiritual disciplines, and then created unique products and services that are now generating in excess of $2 million annually.

Climbing the Ladder

The quandary of the mental realm is that the mind convinces you that it is the pinnacle of human existence. Everyone stuck in the mental realm secretly believes his beliefs are right and superior to others.

That which was once the way out, has become the next impediment to be transcended.

You are a soul, in a body, who has a reasoning computer called a mind.

If you’re not experiencing prosperity, you are probably trapped in the mind, and as such, do not have direct access to your Soul purpose.

In fact, so many people are trapped in their mind that they don’t even believe the soul exists, much less has a purpose.

To begin awakening to your Soul purpose, start by seeing yourself as the spirit in the body who has a mind, but is not the mind.

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

Steve D’Annunzio is the founder of the Soul Purpose Institute, the author of The Prosperity Paradigm, and a productivity trainer and life success coach to Fortune 100 executives, professional athletes, and high-performance entrepreneurs. For twenty years, he has been helping people identify their passion, develop it into a business idea, and deliver it to the world.

A member of the Transformational Leadership Council, Steve has shared the stage with world-changers like Dr. Deepak Chopra, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Marianne Williamson, Jack Canfield, and Barbra-Marx Hubbard.

He uses principles of higher awareness to inspire others to be far greater versions of themselves than they ever knew to be possible. By combining scientific and spiritual truth, he co-creates inner transformations for people to experience more outer prosperity in their life.

He is an author and composer of many books, paradigms, and artistic projects that have the common theme of alleviating human suffering and enhancing joy.

Steve lives with his family in Rochester, New York.

Connect With Steve:

Read Part 1 Here
Read Part 2 Here
Read Part 3 Here
Read Part 5 Here

This reality, in fact, is one of those amazing coincidences that can only be called either inspiration or serendipity.

The current crisis is offering an opportunity for men to develop their nurturing side.

Before you discount this, consider that men are as naturally prone to nurture as they are to provide.

Thousands of years of the Nomadic, Agrarian and Industrial Ages have conditioned hundreds of generations of men to find success through work.

And the long era of comparative peace and prosperity since 1945 have tended to make them feel entitled to plentiful jobs, extra cash, vacations, and leisure time, and numerous other opportunities—often with minimal effort.

The Great Recession has challenged these assumptions, requiring a new type of individual with two sets of character traits and skills:

1. First, extremely high levels of initiative, resiliency, ingenuity, and tenacity.
2. Second, much higher than traditional levels of cooperation, communication, unselfishness about who gets rewards and credit, and teamwork.

Today’s generation of men and women are capable of the first list of needed traits and changes, but many men struggle to compete with women on the second list.

Indeed, for much of history it was man’s lack of these very “weaknesses” that made him independent, self-assured, bold, assertive, ambitious, and what has been called simply, “manly,” “Roman,” and “tough.”

When boys are taught, “be a man,” “don’t cry like a sissy,” and men are told to “cowboy up,” it often means precisely not to be the cooperative, communicative, depend-on-others types.

“Stop talking and just do it.” “Who cares what others say or do, just do what you want.”

Men still laugh at Tim Allen’s grunts as the essence of male communication, and even in team athletics boys are taught to stand out and rise above the crowd.

What used to be the unwritten rules of “male dominance” are now actually seen as inability to excel in the vital second list of characteristics (communication, cooperation, unselfishness).

While of course this generalization is overcome by a number of individuals, it remains a reality for many.

Wise fathers, grandfathers and role models will help teach boys and men that there is much more to manhood than the wartime and gang-related values.

Indeed, the lessons taught from fathers to sons by generations of hunters, farmers and entrepreneurs differ greatly from those idealized by warriors, politicians and corporate raiders.

The first group idealizes cooperation, communication, and progress whereas the second prefers competition, dominance and victory.

In the Industrial Age, the “Organization Man” became the ideal for males—detached, admired, cash-carrying, benefitting from a lot of leisure time, and considered in charge of his family and its members.

The Industrial Man was the provider and the boss. At work he was an employee, a servant, but at home he was the center of the universe. He too often tended to treat his wife and children like employees and act like the boss he resented at work.

With a life experience built on succeeding as an employee, he didn’t know another way of acting.

His wife was either an employee, the boss, or perhaps a fellow worker in competition for advancement, attention and rewards.

His marriage was most often seen as a contract, where both sides were expected to perform their agreed upon roles, rather than a covenant where he would give his all in sacrifice and longsuffering regardless of what the other side did.

His relationships with neighbors and his nation took on this same contractual perspective.

He voted like an employee, for what he wanted—rather than for what the nation truly needed like a farmer or owner protecting the land or the organization he raised from scratch.

Today some men are lamenting (often quietly) the loss of this concept, while at the same time the need for a new male ideal is vital.

Before the Industrial Revolution, the masculine ideal was often the best nurturer. It takes nurturing, not detached management, to grow a farm, build a business from the ground up, and raise children into adults.

The necessary attention to detail is legendary. Indeed, in the Agrarian Age the iconic man’s occupation and business was Husbandry.

Providing was part of their role, but it was a secondary natural outgrowth of nurturing children like a small business in its infancy, encouraging and husbanding plants and coaxing them to grow and flourish into a farm in full bloom.

As Wendell Berry put it:

“…a man who is in the traditional sense a good farmer is husbandman and husband, the begetter and conserver of the earth’s bounty, but he is also midwife and motherer. He is a nurturer of life. His work is domestic. He is bound to the household.

“But let ‘progress’ take such a man and transform him…sever him from the household, make…‘uneconomical’ his impulse to conserve and to nurture…’ and not only will much of his incentive to be a good husband end, but his attachment to the land, to his nation, and to his wife and children, who are, after all, not particularly economical.

“Then, send his children away to school during the day, thus severing the wife from both husband and children, and she will naturally follow him to work looking for connection and meaning.

“Our homes are left abandoned and barren across the nation—father, mother and children are all elsewhere, seeking love and acceptance and nurturing.”

Read Part 1 Here
Read Part 2 Here
Read Part 3 Here
Read Part 5 Here

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

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:

Perhaps no other industry is as aristocratic as industrial food production.

As a Georgics-loving, passionate gardener and an advocate of locavorism and sustainable agriculture, I’ve been studying this topic for a couple years.

I’ll be publishing more articles on the topic in the future, but for now I wanted to share the following links with the community.

If nothing else, exploring these resources will make you a more aware citizen. If you feel mission-driven toward sustainable agriculture systems, I encourage you to explore these in depth.

Books:

(Affiliate Links)

• Everything I Want to Do is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front by Joel Salatin
• In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
• Wisdom of the Last Farmer by David Mas Masumoto
• The Other Greeks: The Small Family Farm & the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization by Victor Davis Hanson
• The End of Food by Paul Roberts
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

Films & Television

• Food, Inc.
• The Future of Food
• Fresh
• King Corn
• Supersize Me
• The Garden
• Homegrown
• Homegrown Revolution
• Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution
• Food Matters
• The World According to Monsanto
• Simply Raw
• Bad Seed: The Truth About Our Food

Urban Food Production

• Urban Homestead
• Backyard Farming
• Urban Homesteading
• Backyard Food Production

Sustainable Agriculture Thought Leaders

• Jules Dervaes
• Joel Salatin
• Michael Pollan
• Will Allen
• Alice Waters
• Anna Lappe
• Raj Patel
• Eliot Coleman

Seeds

• Seed Savers
• Freedom Seeds

Local Involvement & Gardening Resources

• Shared Earth
• Urban Gardening Help
• Sustainable Table
• Square Foot Gardening
• Earth Box

Organizations/Associations

• Growing Power
• Organic Consumers
• Small Planet
• Land Institute

Farms

• Polyface Farms
• Four Seasons Farm
• Pine View Farms

Online Forum

• Freedom Gardens

Online Store

• Peddler’s Wagon

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

Stephen Palmer is a book writer for mission-driven leaders, a small business lead generation website design architect and persuasive website copywriter, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the author of Uncommon Sense: A Common Citizen’s Guide to Rebuilding America.

He co-authored the New York Times bestseller Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity, as well as Hub Mentality: Shifting from Business Transactions to Community Interaction.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate and faculty member 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.

Subscribe to Stephen’s blog and contact him at stephen [at] leadershipwriter [dot] com.

Note from CSL: In The Coming Aristocracy, Oliver DeMille lists networking marketing as one manifestation of “mini-factories.” In this article, network marketer Orrin Woodward describes how to be successful at network marketing specifically, though the principles apply to any entrepreneur, mini-factory builder, and aspiring social leader.

Links throughout are for informational purposes and do not represent specific endorsements from CSL of companies or products.

IN A HOME TOO CRAMPED FOR OUR GROWING FAMILY, in a relationship where neither of us understood the other, in a time of increasing responsibilities and decreasing hope, in a desperate move to keep my baseball cards, my wife Laurie and I started our networking business.

Can there be a more bizarre beginning to a destiny-changing day?

Your story is different in the details, but alike in the life-changing opportunity presented to you.

Networking provides people the opportunity to take control of their futures and no longer swim with the current of the times.

There are only 3 steps to master to accomplish nearly any goal or dream that you can imagine through the power of networking:

1. Define
2. Learn
3. Do

Define

Life is not always a bowl of cherries as it pulls us in so many directions, requiring more than we would give in three lifetimes, forcing us to clearly define what we want to accomplish with the time God has given us.

Clearly defining your objectives, narrowing your field of vision to the critical few, painstakingly visualizing, repetitively experiencing in your mind, and developing your game plan are essential features of all successful lives.

DO NOT WORK THE BUSINESS, BUT CHASE YOUR DREAM THROUGH THE BUSINESS!!

Businesses are not built with an employee mentality, but with an ownership mentality (affiliate link), meaning, to do everything with a specific intent.

Why do you go out night after night to build this business? You didn’t have a dream as a young child to build a community did you?

The business is just the vehicle to accomplish your dreams, just as you buy a drill if you need a hole.

No one buys a drill because they have always dreamed of owning a drill. A drill is the specific tool used to get the specific hole you need.

Networking is the specific tool to give you the time and money to get your dreams.

When you know what you want, learning and doing become the necessary steps to achieve what you desire.

If you do not take the time to clearly define why you are in business, then you are setting yourself up to fail.

Why share the product, why show the plan, why start the process, if you have no reason to?

If you are not showing the plan 15 times a month, it’s not because you are lazy, it’s not because you are loser, it’s not because you are incapable, it’s only because you lack focus by not beginning with the end in mind.

• Where would you live if you could live anywhere?
• Who would you choose for neighbors?
• What car would you drive?
• What charities would you support?
• What vacations would you take?
• What random acts of kindness would you do?

It must be defined, imagined, and experienced mentally before it will happen physically.

Learn

Learning is one of the most natural things that we do as human beings. Anyone with children has experienced the endless questions that your kids will ask you as they seek to learn.

“But daddy, why is the sky blue? Why do we drive on the right side of the road? How do our brains see the pictures from our eyes?”

We are born hungry to learn, but society quenches this hunger through ridicule and scorn.

Networking has reversed societies rules and created a culture that is hungry to learn. No one is above learning and the quicker you learn, the quicker you will apply, the quicker you will have.

Learning is not a part-time hobby, not a full-time job, but a lifetime of joy.

Have you experienced the joy of learning lately? Are you listening and learning from CD’s and mentors’ advice? Are you reading books, brochures etc?

Are you pounding through the information from the best of the best?

If you’re not, perhaps you need to revisit your dream.

Do

Making contacts, picking up the phone, showing the plan, talking in front of people, were some of the most fearful things that I had to overcome.

In fact, the only thing that helped me get over my unbelievable shyness and corresponding fears was the power of my dreams.

It makes me want to gag when I hear people say, “Well you have to be a certain type of person to build a network,” assuming that you are born that way.

Yes, you have to be a winner to build a network, but anyone can be a winner with the three steps that we are covering.

Winning is simple, but it isn’t easy because you must swim against the current.

It you want to win, then you must Define your win, Learn how to win and then JUST DO IT! No guts, no glory!

Are you going to let the negative thoughts of others deny you from the destiny you desire?

Laurie and I decided to follow our dreams, not our dreads and it made all the difference.

Are you dreaming, learning and doing or dreading, lying, and dying?

The choice you make weaves the strands of your destiny. Your posterity will either be blessed by your courage or cursed by your cowardice.

Choose wisely.

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

Orrin Woodward is the co-founder of Team, a leadership development and training company, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Launching a Leadership Revolution.

Named by the International Association of Business as a Top 10 Leadership Guru, he is dedicated to building leaders and entrepreneurs and promoting freedom and prosperity.

Orrin blogs regularly at Orrin Woodward. He lives in Port St. Lucie, Florida with his wife and four children.

Connect With Orrin:

David wasn’t paid to do this; he saw a need and filled it. Thanks, David.

Tell David what you think of the video by commenting below.

*If you’re reading this in an RSS reader or email, you may need to click the title of the post to view the video on our blog.

It’s at once humorous and infuriating. Humorous because of Joel’s genuine, down-to-earth writing style that just makes you chuckle throughout. Infuriating because of the jumble of insane bureaucracy he reveals.

Joel can be pretty far out with some of his political views, but that adds to the appeal of the book. Joel defines authentic — he lets it all hang out, doesn’t mince words, and states things plainly.

Whether you agree with him or not, he’s a likable guy whose thoughts should be considered seriously.

Proponents of locavorism, sustainable agriculture, and gardening, such as myself, will devour this book with glee.

But even if you’re not a “foodie,” this is a must-read for anyone dedicated to building a mini-factory.

In The Coming Aristocracy, Oliver DeMille points out that one reason we’ve lost freedom in America is because we have so many employees relative to owners, and employees don’t directly struggle with the loss of freedom on a daily basis.

He writes:

“In our current model of government and corporate dependence, aristocratic institutions, laws and policies encounter only nominal resistance. More to the point, relatively few people are even aware of how burdensome our current regulatory environment is. Employees are largely shielded from red tape. Ironically, they feel its effects indirectly in almost every aspect of their lives, but few make the connection.

“Create a multitude of mini-factory owners and it’s a different story. Suddenly, freedom issues are brought to the forefront as more and more people clash with bureaucracy, and mass consciousness is awakened.”

Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal is the perfect example of this. Unless you’re on the front lines, as is Joel, you don’t know how burdensome our bureaucracies have become.

But a good starting point is to learn from an in-the-trenches farmer like Joel Salatin. Joel caught the attention of Michael Pollan in his New York Times bestseller The Omnivore’s Dilemma when he refused to ship T-Bone steaks to New York. Since then, he’s been featured in a lot of media, including the documentaries “The Future of Food” and “Food, Inc.”

As Joel writes:

“Our farm, Polyface, has been featured in countless publications and media…All this notoriety has vaulted our family farm into the spotlight, the darling of local food advocates around the world…

“What many people do not understand, however, is that at every step on this journey toward success, government officials have unceasingly tried to criminalize us, demonize us, dismiss us, and laugh at us. We have fought, clawed, cried, prayed, argued, and threatened.

“The point is that if it had been up to public servants, Polyface would not exist. And the struggle is not over. Some battles, as you will see, we did not win. Some we refuse to fight. The war goes on…

“Supporters of local, heritage, artisanal, organic, ecological, sustainable, humane, biodynamic food need to know that every day, their food farmer friends receive visits, phone calls, threats, summonses, confiscation, and criminal charges.

“The harassment from government officials would make your hair stand on end. This book is about one such farmer’s lifetime of dealing with these issues.”

If you care about freedom, I urge you to read Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal. It makes theory concrete and will motivate you to stick with the fight.

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

Stephen Palmer is a book writer for mission-driven leaders, a small business lead generation website design architect and persuasive website copywriter, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the author of Uncommon Sense: A Common Citizen’s Guide to Rebuilding America.

He co-authored the New York Times bestseller Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity, as well as Hub Mentality: Shifting from Business Transactions to Community Interaction.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate and faculty member 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.

Subscribe to Stephen’s blog and contact him at stephen [at] leadershipwriter [dot] com.