With another renewal of the PATRIOT Act recently, it’s clear that the debate still centers over whether the act goes too far or doesn’t go far enough to protect against terrorism.

A better question would be: Is the proper role of government to keep us safe or to keep us free?

At stake is whether national security–namely those measures undertaken to protect the government and its agents–should necessarily trump the personal freedoms of the populace.

Justification for expanding government powers is found in tales of implacable foes at home and abroad preparing to slaughter innocent Americans unless we collectively give government more power to scrutinize our lives in order to “protect” us.

When the issue is framed in these terms, many Americans will lend their support to continued government-sponsored waterboarding, domestic surveillance, extraordinary rendition and aggressive warfare against nations that may someday pose an actual threat.

While we’re hyper-focused on official enemies abroad who supposedly “hate us for our freedom”, we fail to recognize the opportunists here at home who are successfully depriving us of our freedoms in the name of security.

As evil as true terrorists may be, they still lack the necessary infrastructure, manpower, and popular support to control even the third world countries they infest, much less the power to invade, enslave or conquer America.

Despite being portrayed as nearly superhuman, Al Qaeda and other terror groups must use attention-grabbing threats and isolated episodes of brutal violence to try to force their way into our consciousness. Subtlety really isn’t one of their strong points.

The tiny handful of radical Islamists which engaged in terrorism have shown a preference for coming at us head-on in easily recognizable attacks like 9/11, the U.S.S Cole and the African embassy attacks in 1998. Attacks which, in the short term, tend to unify and rouse the populace much like the “sleeping giant” that Admiral Yamamoto acknowledged after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in WWII.

A more likely, though less obvious, threat is found in the actions of policy makers who, under the color of law are slowly but surely erecting the framework of a police state here at home. This goal is being accomplished through steady, incremental expansion of the state’s power at the expense of essential individual liberties.

This is done by focusing the security state’s attention inward on American citizens through the measures like the Patriot Act, Military Commissions Act and Keep America Safe Act.

These acts expand the federal government’s police powers to fight terrorism by allowing it to scrutinize virtually every American citizen as a potential terrorist. They provide cover for the state to engage in warrantless eavesdropping, denial of due process, etc., in order to keep tabs on us.

What these policies are intended to accomplish, in reality, is to increase the security of the state and its agents, not the security of the average American.

Think back a couple of years to when a tiny Cessna aircraft wandered off course and flew over the nation’s capitol. Remember the official response? News footage showed virtual citywide panic on the part of government as select leaders were whisked to “secure locations” while the mere “people” who worked in D.C. were herded about like frightened cattle by officers in battle gear.

It was an ideal demonstration of just who the State is willing to protect and who is likely to be on their own. From the TSA shakedown at the airport to rifle-toting officers patrolling public transportation, many of the obvious shows of force are simple window dressing for the sake of demonstrating that the state is “really in charge.”

That’s good for the state, but not so good for the prospect of perpetuating liberty for future generations.

Unlike the shadowy terror groups abroad, the security state actually has at its disposal the power to regulate virtually every aspect of our lives by piling on increasingly inflexible rules designed to solidify its control. And it’s cheered on by fearful individuals who are enabling the very entity that is quietly fitting them for their restraints.

The fearful don’t care what becomes of liberty so long as it’s the state promises to protect them from the unknown.

In truth, most of us are only touched or affected by terror to the degree that we allow fear of it to direct our lives or our thinking. Fearful people are generally more easily controlled and more easily persuaded to exchange their freedoms for promises of security. This is especially true when those promises come from an entity that knows precisely where they live, how much they make, what they buy, what they read, etc.

Terrorists can’t seize our assets; deny us the ability to travel, or prevent us from obtaining gainful employment. But government has the power to do all this and more at its pleasure.

A decade later, people still fixate on the loss of those 3,000 souls who perished on 9/11, but fail to comprehend that we lose that many Americans each and every month to the predations of homegrown criminals.

The statistical probability of being a terrorist victim is smaller than the prospect of dying of a spider bite or being struck by lightning. The odds are greater that a person will win the lottery than they will be a terror victim, yet millions of Americans still live their lives in fear and willingly surrender essential liberties.

It is highly unlikely that we will ever lose our freedoms to al Qaeda or any other radicalized sect of Islam because they simply lack the capability to physically invade, overcome and conquer America. But there exists a very real hazard in our own government’s response to security by which it justifies expanding and consolidating its power and control over the American people at the price of their freedoms.

The proper role of our government is to keep us free, not to keep us safe. It’s not a choice of having one or the other.

It is in the nature of government–any government–to expand beyond its upper limits. This is why the founders crafted a limited federal government with vertical and horizontal separation of powers as well as checks and balances and a Bill of Rights. Those limits on government power were not only intended for when the sun was shining, but for dark and foreboding days when men would be tempted to set them aside for expediency.

Anytime we’re told that it’s a “necessity” for government power to be expanded or “terrorists will kill us all”, it simply demonstrates that the faces and names may have changed, but the tactics of the tyrant never do.

Endlessly pointing to the events of 9/11 as justification for expanding government power doesn’t change the fact that capability is what really counts when determining a threat. And the capability of terrorists to destroy liberty can never approach that of a government that refuses to abide by its limits.

So who, in the long run, is more likely to succeed in separating us from our freedoms?

The one who openly comes out against you or the one who surreptitiously takes your freedoms while claiming to be your protector?

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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 Hydeologue.com. He and his wife Becky are raising their six children in Cedar City, Utah.

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1913 was a banner year for the United States.

During this year the 16th and 17th Amendments were passed and the Federal Reserve was created.

Students of American freedom have long debated about the damaging effects of these three occurrences. The year 1913 also marks the modern start of a long trend of increased spending by government, not only in the United States but across the rich world.

In 1913 the average government spending of 13 rich nations (as a percentage of GDP) was just above 10%. That is, the rich governments of the world spent about 10-15% of what the people of the country made.

Today the number is roughly 50%. In the last century, to summarize, the rich nations have increased government spending from just above 10% of the people’s labors to a cool half.

The percentages went down a bit during the Clinton years, and it was President Clinton himself who said that the era of big government is “over.” But it made a comeback in the Bush years and even more in the Obama era.

Half the product of the nation? To run the government? Clearly the era of big government is not over. It doesn’t even appear to be slowing down.

As the liberal publication The Economist put it:

“…despite all the rhetoric from the tea-partiers, big government is not just the fault of self-interested bureaucrats and leftist politicians. Conservative voters, even if they don’t like taxes, have kept on demanding that the state does more.”

Liberals claim to want bigger government and they vote for it; conservatives often claim to want smaller government, but they still vote for a lot of big government programs—from military and education to more police, prisons and protectionism. Both left and right have refused to cut entitlements.

So government spending continues to grow. Voters create “revolutions” demanding smaller government, and the government—whether led by conservatives or liberals—increases spending. And so it grows….

And grows, and grows. Even many liberals are now deeply concerned:

• “The state almost everywhere is big, inefficient and broke.”
• “[I]ncome inequality is fracturing our economic landscape.”
• “Slimming the state is not an easy conversation. But consider the alternative: an even fatter state, ever less freedom and ever higher taxes.”

Part of the problem is described by David Zinczenko:

“Way back in the early 20th century, when our grandparents were kids, America was a different place. Grandma and Grandpa didn’t have the modern conveniences we have today—cellphones and iPads and Skype and laproscopic surgery and refrigerators with crushed-ice dispensers on their front panels. But there was one modern annoyance they didn’t have to put up with either: the expert. Today we’re lousy with experts.”

The Economist now proclaims: “How to slim the state will become the great political issue of our time.” The title of that article is, “Taming Leviathan,” and the reference to Leviathan is appropriate.

Hobbes argued that there are really only three possible arrangements for human society:

• The chaos of pure license where there is little or no government and the weak are preyed upon by the strong.
• The conflict that occurs where government is small or limited: while the people have some areas of freedom in life, competing individuals, businesses and governments bring a lot of hardship on the regular people.
• The solution of a true Leviathan, a government so big and powerful that it controls everything and everybody and allows no pain or problems.

Without going into how many ways Hobbes is wrong, let’s just be clear that even if he were correct about these being our three choices, the second (with all its problems) would still be the best. Trying to take away human freedom in order to end all human problems is the great flaw of the many failed utopian plots.

Of course the world can be improved, and certainly government can play its role. But it is up to the regular people to really make the world better—and far too often through history, governments have been the biggest or at least a significant cause rather than the solution to the world’s ills.

Governments are different from other institutions because they hold the accepted power of force. Therefore, they must be carefully watched and effectively limited or they wreak havoc in the world. Government has probably caused more pain and problems than any other human institution; in fact, it is through government that the other major tyrannical institutions of history (cruel aristocratic classes, dominating churches, etc.) have hurt and tortured and controlled.

Hobbes was correct, however, that without good government, the strong typically prey upon the weak. It is because of this that people banded together and established government to protect inalienable rights. This is precisely why government was invented.

And let’s get one thing straight: Accomplishing this does take 7, 10, 13 or maybe even 17 percent of the nation’s product, but it does not require 35, 43, or 52 percent. If it is costing that much, the people have lost control of the government and their freedoms are in jeopardy.

If “how to slim the state” really is the great political issue of our time (and it is, whether we admit it or not), the great question is whether the regular people will get deeply involved in finding the answer.

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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:

Famous for its rich culture and heritage, Burma is also sadly renowned for the brutality of its current regime. Political and armed conflict between the repressive military regime and its opponents have displaced more than 3.5 million people over the years.

This, in turn, has led to a refugee problem that spills over into neighboring countries like India which now hosts nearly 100,000 Burmese refugees.

This influx of refugees has created unique challenges and opportunities for communities within India.

In New Delhi, for instance, many Burmese refugees exist on the margins of the community without legal protection, health, education and other means of taking care of themselves. Even the local poor tend to view the newcomers with suspicion and resentment.

The refugees are not issued work permits which relegates them to the informal work sector where limited, low-paying and back-breaking employment is the norm.  Because the Indian government is not a signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, it takes no responsibility for the the refugees.

This means that the refugees are excluded from mainstream society and are forced to live in the shadows where poor health, language barriers and lack of opportunity combine to keep them shut out.

Fortunately, the need of the Burmese refugees has not gone unnoticed and the Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) New Delhi chapter has boldly stepped forward to seek a solution.

The stated goal of SIFE, in this instance, is to play a role in the development and economic sustainability of these long-neglected refugees.

To that end, Project AARAMBH was begun with 3 current initiatives including:

1. Promotion of women based small handicraft entrepreneurial units
-Marketing goods such as handbags, laptop bags, purses, woolens, coats, shawls, all traditional Burmese handmade designs.
-Facilitating professional training for improved skills operations and scalability.
-Engaging the women and leaders of these small units in marketing work to increase their awareness and to network, thus laying the base for sustainability.

2. Placement Cells
-Creating an avenue to help people in the Burmese refugee community who are in need of a job
-Working as a 2 way forum, an interface between the people and the factories and shops which have job vacancies. The objective is to ensure just, sustainable, fair pay work for the refugees while ensuring regularity and consistency for the employers.

3. Outreach
-Reading out to the local population and college students to create awareness about the community and their plight.
-Engaging college students as volunteers in different parts of the project.
-Community initiatives for holistic development e.g. Health Camp

Statesmanship has always been exemplified by those who see a need in the world and who step forward on their own initiative to seek solutions. Project AARAMBH from SIFE in New Delhi is a fine example of how students using their technological and business skills are making the world a better place starting in their own community.

They are living proof that a small, tireless minority can make a bigger-than-life difference simply by getting involved.

If you’d like to help or to learn more about Project AARAMBH you can contact SIFE at parthnsharma@yahoo.in or learn more here.

When the Bush Administration lost the support of Congress to Democrats in the 2006 midterm election, it simply turned its focus to pushing its agenda through administrative policy in the numerous governmental agencies. The Obama Administration has said that it will do the same thing if it loses the House and/or Senate in the 2010 midterm election!

I-Devotion to Government

Some people believe in big government. They have a deep faith that it can and should solve the world’s problems. Those who are most zealous in this conviction feel that any government that doesn’t fix all problems is either evil or weak.

According to this narrative, “evil” governments are strong enough to fix everything in the world, but for some reason (usually greed or power) they don’t or won’t. Such governments must therefore be changed, reformed and newly led by those who can see the great potential of a government committed to perfecting the world.

And weak governments, according to this view, must be strengthened in order to have the power to create the ideal world we all want.  In either case, those with a deep devotion to the potential of a caring, committed and ubiquitous government want our present U.S. government to grow.

Some want it to grow mostly for the good it could do around the globe, and for fear of what could happen to the international order if the U.S. fails to maintain and expand its superpower influences.  Another group is more interested in domestic progress, in making the United States more socially responsible, equitable, and idealistic—all under the increasingly watchful and involved power of the federal government.

Granted that these labels may be a little simplistic; but historically, the first group is typically known as Republicans and the second as Democrats. For much of the twentieth century, the GOP was the party of big business and Democrats were the party of the little guy.

The new stereotype, however, has progressives pushing for bigger government at home and a more limited role abroad, with conservatives wanting to slow Washington’s control over U.S. citizens but increase America’s global extension of power.

A third group, independents, want the government to live within its means—to do the basic roles (like national security and good public schools) that they assert are best accomplished by the state while leaving everything else, including fixing most of the world’s problems, to non-governmental entities.

The populists, most recently embodied in the tea parties, want nearly the same thing as independents—but promote it much more impolitely. As a result, the majority of independents don’t trust the tea party movement, and even most Republicans have an uneasy feeling about them (something akin to how mainstream Democrats in the LBJ era felt about the leftist Woodstock crowd). The populist left (e.g. the “isms” such as radical environmentalism, extreme feminism, etc.) faces similar challenges.

Populism is usually defined more by its tactics than its goals.

Also, the limited-government group is divided by multiple factions who usually mistrust each other even more than they dislike those promoting universal government.

Into all this, enter the American voters. When they think the government is led by “tax-and-spend liberals,” they vote for anti-incumbent, anti-Washington, limited-government candidates. When they feel that Washington is being run by “unfeeling do-nothing conservatives,” they elect progressives who promise to tax and spend.

II-The Age of the Big Spenders

But strangely enough: regardless of which party wins, Washington’s expenditures increase. This is simply the way Washington now works.  On the one hand, this seems to be what the voters want. Republicans, Democrats and independents alike all have pet projects they want the government to spend more money to expand. Certainly the far left supports increased spending.

This leaves only the far right, currently led mostly by the tea parties (even though they are not all conservatives), really wanting to cut all government spending. But even arch-conservatives have their favorite spending habits—they can’t agree about whether to cut or increase expenditures on defense, education, or entitlements, among other things. Tea party members are widely divided on what to keep and what to slash, whether to implement across-the-board cuts like Britain or be more surgical in cauterizing spending hemorrhages.

Part of the problem is embedded in the old philosophical observation that, in any conflict, “being against something” is never as powerful as “being for something.” Conservatives, liberals, independents, moderates, special interests on the left and right, the various groups on the far left, and the overwhelming majority of American voters want government to spend more money on something.

Many, perhaps a majority, of the tea parties and other limited-government groups also have certain things they hope government will increase expenditures to accomplish.

This leaves a very small group of the electorate that is really against government spending. Here we have two visions pitted against each other. One side envisions using government money to fix things. Real things. Things that matter. Things that are full of human emotion, passion and deep meaning.

These “things” have enough stories to fill volumes: the loving father allowed to die by the insurance company, the mother weeping because her child didn’t get into the prestigious charter school and is now relegated to a life in the slums, the woman brutalized and forced to watch her husband tortured and her child raped by the agents of a tyrant whose statues fill the distant nation, the Chinese man standing in front of the tank demanding freedom.

“Government is needed to fix these things,” this side argues. “Now let’s fund [Fill in the blank].”  This is a compelling and powerful argument. It argues for something, and it asks each of us to vote for it. How can we deny such an argument? Our very humanity is at stake, right?

The other side, those few who really don’t want the government to spend anything more, who truly propose cutting spending everywhere and living within our means, has a vision of…well…

What exactly do they want?

Where are their emotional stories? Their tales of abuse, evil and wrongs to be righted?

Unfortunately, all too often, the best they come up with is criticism of national leaders as “socialists,” “idiots” or “power-hungry.” But this doesn’t reach most voters.

Instead, many Americans wonder: “What? Their strongest argument is that our kids will owe too much? That’s the best they can do? Really? This is all about them not wanting to spend their money? But what about those who suffer? Those who desperately need freedom? What about them? Who cares if it costs a lot? Where is their spirit of ‘our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor?’”

III-A Lost Vision

From the Revolutionary War to the era of Lincoln and up through World War II and the Korean conflict, the vision most Americans fought for was freedom. This vision was more powerful even than the vision of more government spending.
But today few Americans deeply feel what the concept of “freedom” even means.

The problem, unfortunately, is cyclical. The only way to truly grasp the meaning and value of freedom is to be deprived of it, or at the very least to truly fear that you will entirely lose it. Today’s American citizens have little concept of what it is like to live in a nation without freedom, and even less fear that our freedoms could soon be lost.

Throughout history, with only rare exceptions, most people have yearned for freedom in a world where they had very little liberty or opportunity. And nearly always the greatest thing keeping them enslaved or un-free was (and is—in most of the world) their own government. Fortunately, and unfortunately, Americans just don’t get this.

People whose experience is that their own government is the greatest threat to their freedom (and this includes the vast majority of all humans throughout history) see that the first rule of freedom is to keep the government under control, and the second—to use government for good—can only be enjoyed by those who have the first rule decisively in place.

Both sides are right and wrong. The real answer is found in a combination of the best thinking from both views. In short: In my opinion, the government must spend for the right things, and it is the first role of any free people to keep the government clearly and securely in its place. It should be given certain, clearly defined powers, and it should not be allowed to do anything else. Period.

Otherwise, freedom is lost. Always. There is no exception in history.

IV-Two Paths to Freedom

Of course, this is the legacy of the American founding, but how can modern Americans be expected to catch this vision when they have never been enslaved or feared such a possibility? Sadly, it is exactly at the point where the people can’t imagine losing their freedoms that they are in the most danger.

Rome is usually cited as the example of this, but the list is much longer: Athens, Jerusalem, the Ottomans, Beirut, Russia, Germany, East Germany, Cambodia, Vietnam, Columbia, etc.

Ask Victor Frankl about his freedoms in 1920. Or the Japanese-American community in 1935. Freedom can be lost. In fact, it is lost much more often than it is maintained in history. And when freedom is lost, it usually happens quickly.

This may sound extreme to modern American ears, perhaps, but history is what it is. Reality is reality. Few nations ever obtain freedom. Of the small number that does become free, even fewer keep their freedom. And freedom is only, ever, maintained while the people keep the government under control. If we can’t even control the government’s spending, no matter which party is in power and regardless of citizen outbursts or widespread concern, the people have lost control of government.

If history is any indication, we have two options to turn our nation back toward freedom. The first is to lose our freedom, learn for ourselves how valuable it really is, and then earn it back. This is the long, most painful, and most likely path to freedom.

A second option is to learn from history, internalize the experience of nearly all human beings in our world’s experience, and pay the price to put appropriate limits on government and keep it in its place. This requires fully funding the government in all its proper roles as determined by the principles of sound, freedom-protecting government and as directed by the people, and otherwise allowing the government to do and spend nothing.

This path is easier and better than the first. The rise of independents shows some potential for this option, but a lot of work is ahead if this is to become America’s future.

Still, one thing remains a major challenge: The easiest of all paths is to simply let freedom fade and dwindle away. Those with unbounded faith in government will continue to increase centralized power, spending, and the reach of the state into every aspect of life. They have the momentum of at least thirty years (and clearly the stage was being set for this trend long before), sometimes led by one party and at other times by the other.

All citizens need do to follow this path is focus on themselves and let the public domain keep going in its current trajectory.

In other words, if the only role of citizens is to vote and perhaps serve on a jury occasionally, we will continue on the road to out-of-control government. It remains to be seen which of these directions we will take.

V-The People as Overseers of Government

The problem with defining our citizenship mainly by voting is that elections are only one way the disciples of bigger government increase the size, scope, power and controls of government. In fact there are at least four major strategies of expanding government. In a free society, the people are the overseers of all four.

Strategy One: Elections

In this approach, those who support big government attempt to convince voters to elect candidates who promise to increase the size of government programs—or who promise something else but once elected turn to growing government.

One party promises to limit government but really only slows the domestic growth while expanding America’s international involvements; the other promises to pull back abroad but only slows global interventionism while significantly expanding government programs at home.

In other words, when voters push for less government they get more, and when they vote for more they get a lot more.
Another facet of government growth is that when voters send a mandate of government reduction, which happens in nearly every midterm election and more than a few presidential elections, the big-government advocates use one or more of the following strategies to keep growing government despite the expressed will of the electorate.

Strategy Two: Courts

The state, federal and Supreme courts can change government through decisions from the bench. Jefferson was concerned about the potential dangers of this power, and leaders ever since have raised the possibility of judicial overreach. For example, the Supreme Court decision and commentary on Butler v. the United States had the effect of basically telling the nation that the federal government can do whatever it wants (regardless of what the Constitution says) as long as its it attempting to benefit the general welfare of the nation.

A number of other cases, from 1803 to the present, have significantly—at times drastically—restructured, revised or reallocated the powers of our government. The greatest danger occurs where a generally conservative court is in power at the same time as a conservative Congress and White House, or when all three are liberal. This diminishes the check/balance process and tends to lead to collusive increases in government power and the decrease of freedoms.

In the first two years of the Obama era, the Court was the one generally conservative branch standing against the liberal Congress and White House. Predictably, conservatives were pleased with Court decisions that slowed the liberal agenda, while the White House was audibly frustrated with the Court.

Strategy Three: Treaties

The Constitution basically consists of the seven original articles ratified in 1789, the amendments, the treaties made pursuant to the Constitution, and the various definitions the courts have given to the words of the Constitution. Indeed, instead of a 9-page document the Constitution now consists of literally reams of complex details.

For example, while schoolchildren are (hopefully) taught about the three branches of government and the state/federal split of sovereign powers, few Americans can explain how the Breton Woods treaty, NAFTA or the Treaty of Rome changed our basic governmental system. Yet such changes are hugely important to modern America.

Populists on the left and right like to carry the Constitution in their pocket; but I doubt anyone hauls around the volumes of our de facto Constitution. When people feel that Washington is broken, and lament that nothing can fix our national problems, they are expressing the overwhelming complexity of our government model as it now stands.

The greatest danger of this is that we are now dependent on experts to tell us what our Constitution is, as shown by numerous Administrations which have routinely engaged teams of attorneys to study the potential constitutionality of their proposals. The American founders wanted the people to be the overseers of government, to be able to simply read the Constitution and compare it to what the government is doing.

When this occurs, we are living under the democratic principle of constitutional government.

But when only the experts can tell us what is constitutional and what is not, the people simply cannot be overseers of government. They can vote in elections, but cases and treaties and executive policies can simply ignore the will of the people. This system, where a small group gets to determine what is constitutional and the masses just have to accept the power of this group, is an aristocratic system.

Congress can alter this system, and until it does Washington will be irreparably broken. But our representatives are highly unlikely to do anything about this until the citizens demand it. The great benefit of a democratic republic is freedom; but its greatest weakness is that if the people stop overseeing government and leave it to the experts, freedom is lost.

Strategy Four: Agency Policy

Furthermore, when Congress passes a law, the executive government agency responsible for implementing that law writes up a set of policies on how to enforce the law. Sometimes one law requires numerous agencies to develop policy, such as the 2010 Health Care law.

In this policy process, agencies can emphasize certain things in the law and de-emphasize others. They can create numerous new policies they think are necessary to carry out the law, in essence making their own set of “laws” that were never anticipated or intended by Congress.

In this system, we are governed by numerous government policies that were never voted on or even discussed by our elected officials. Unelected bureaucrats have immense power in this, and can and do reduce freedom dramatically regardless of what the voters or elected representatives want.

Of course, such ability to make laws enforceable by policy is necessary in many cases, but it must be closely overseen by Congress if we want to remain free. Congress has the power to closely watch and respond to any abuses of policy, but often policies go unnoticed or unchanged by elected officials.

It is the responsibility of elected representatives to oversee all executive policy, but ultimately it is up to the people to ensure that this occurs. In societies where this happens, the people usually remain free. In nations where this doesn’t occur, the people always lose their freedom. There are no exceptions in history.

VI-The Duty of Citizens

Congress can oversee the courts, treaties and agency policy, and it has the power to keep all of these in line. But it must have the courage and will to do so.  And let’s be clear: This will only occur in Congress at a large enough scale to make a difference when the people demand it of their elected officials.

As long as a group of a few experts—in Congress, the courts, treaty-making circles and government agencies—read, strategize, and make decisions on the constitutional and legal codes of our nation which the masses simply never consider or understand, then simple voting will have very little impact on the governance and future of our society.

Herein lies the great challenge of freedom: A democratic republic can only work in a nation where the average citizens read, understand and know the fine print of laws, court cases, treaties and policies at the same level as the President and all government officials.

It goes without saying that this requires a system that is not complex and reams-deep in language that is self-contradictory and indecipherable. This is how the founders designed it, because there are no examples in all of human history of nations staying free without such citizens.

Unless we become this kind of people, we will lose our freedom. It really is this simple.

When the Bush Administration lost the support of Congress to Democrats in the 2006 midterm election, it simply turned its focus to pushing its agenda through administrative policy in the numerous governmental agencies. The Obama Administration has said that it will do the same thing if it loses the House and/or Senate in the 2010 midterm election.

In short, we have lost control of our government, regardless of which party is in power. It is no longer a government “by the people,” and won’t be until the regular citizens read and understand the court cases, laws, treaties and policies of the government.

If we want to be free, we must get to work on this kind of study. The two bits of good news on all this are 1) the Internet, which makes many of the details and documents available to all, and 2) the rise of actively engaged independents and other independent-thinkers who study the fine print.

Some may say that simply reading reams of government loquacity is a monumental waste of time. That is what the scribes and bureaucrats of non-free nations have always said. The fine print matters—if we are to maintain freedom. All that is required for fine print to continue to proliferate is for it to remain unstudied. But like the creep of black mold, it grows mostly in the dark.

This is the whole point of government by elites.

Others may say that it is too late for such remedies. More and more it seems unavoidable that our generation will witness epic challenges in our day. A silver lining may be that our government will be streamlined by force of circumstance, and we may have the opportunity, or perhaps our children, to make meaningful changes to restore our forms and freedoms—if we own our role as Overseers.

While there are many who feel a deep faith in big government, the future of freedom depends on more people who do their duty as free citizens. Until more of us dig deeply into the fine print of our government, the future of freedom is bleak.

Oliver DeMille’s brand new book, FreedomShift: 3 Choices to Reclaim America’s Freedom is on the presses at this very moment. Subscribers to this newsletter are invited to order this timely and inspiring book at a presale discount of 30% now through November 15th. Click here for more details.

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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:

Time magazine recently published a cover article on reforming American education, and its leading argument was the need for more great teachers.  The details, however, contained more of the same old edu-bureaucratic ideas which have been promoted for the past thirty years.

Opening the teacher rolls to more people with real-life business and professional experience is a good idea, as is the age-old argument that teacher pay must significantly increase.  But unfortunately most proposals are full of more red tape that further stifles good teaching.

As long as we have massive government bureaucracy and overwhelming levels of regulation on teachers, educational problems will increase.

Television networks also aired a number of recent news programs on educational reform, corresponding with the release of the new education documentary Waiting for Superman.  Not only are statistics and debates about education currently flying around in the professional and public forums, but most “regular” Americans are deeply worried about our schools.

According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 58% of Americans believe that major changes or a complete overhaul of education is needed. Another 36% believe that some change is needed. Only 2% of Americans give our education system an A grade, while 77% give it a C, D or F.

Many Americans are concerned with what they see on the Fall 2010 reality show School Pride. The program found schools in seriously dilapidated condition: mice running around in plain view, restrooms and drinking fountains that don’t work, ceiling tiles falling on kids in school, and so on.

News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch says that the public schools are “Failure Factories” which imperil the Middle Class.

“The failure rates of our public schools represent a tragic waste of human capital that is making America less competitive… Upward mobility in America is in jeopardy unless we fix our public schools… In plain English, we trap the children who need an education the most in failure factories…”

While many liberals discount the words of Murdoch (whose company owns The Wall Street Journal and Fox News), it was liberals—the same group that produced Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth—who brought us Waiting for Superman.
Both the left and the right have long voiced the need for improved education; but little real reform has resulted.

In Waiting for Superman, five kids seek to be accepted into prestigious charter schools, but across America many youth are forced to remain in failing local public schools.  The documentary portrays bad teachers (mostly tenured) and the unions that support them as a (the?) major problem.

In the movie, the teacher’s union in Washington, D.C. rejected schools chief Michelle Rhee’s offer to double teacher pay in exchange for getting rid of tenure and adopting merit pay.  But in truth, it will be great teaching that solves the education crisis—if we solve it at all.

As The Economist put it:

“…the movie also has a message of hope: there are good schools and teachers in America, whose methods could make its education system as good as any in the world if only they were allowed to.”

The Challenge

This comes at the most challenging time in decades, as overextended state houses attempt to balance deficit-ridden budgets and pay for basic services. Education appears to be failing at the very time that states can least afford to fix the schools.  Even with all the hype, most current proposals will increase the very regulation and bureaucratic requirements that hamstring great teachers and keep them from delivering truly quality education in schools across America.

I’ve visited many schools over the years, and inevitably teachers say their biggest challenge is that the system won’t let them really teach.  Dilapidated schools certainly need some work, but the educational process needs just as much. Given the choice between a great teacher and a plush classroom, which do you think would make the most difference?

Many conservatives and even liberals who have been otherwise critical of the Obama Administration’s agenda have praised the White House’s educational plans.

The major proposed initiatives include:

• An extended school year
• A national weeding out of the teachers which perform worst
• Increased emphasis on math and science
• 10,000 more science, math, engineering and technology teachers
• Nationalized teacher and student standards

Current plans are not emulating the Swedish model, where teachers are compensated and held in similar esteem to doctors, lawyers and engineers, nor do they idealize the model of elite private schools in America with individual tutors and deep study of the greatest classics of humanity (arguably the best schools in the world).

Instead, the initiatives appear to be modeled after the 1980s Japanese schools and the current educational system in France.

Many conservatives and liberals now seem to agree that the ideal system would include:

• High standards set by the central government
• Strict grading based on these nationalized standards in each subject
• Classes that teach to the national tests
• Teacher career advancement based on student test performance
• A meritocratic jobs system based on student grades
• Study hours per day and subject dictated by national education managers

This is more than a conveyor belt; it is a “mechanized-style” assembly line which assumes that every student in the nation has the same learning styles, interests, goals, dreams and abilities—or should.

Unfortunately, the results in both Japan and France include(d) high levels of mental illness among the youth, a high drop-out rate which leaves students with few career options and creates a perpetual unemployed class that is a drag on society, a society of students and workers who spend their lives “feeling like numbers” instead of individuals, and a nation of citizens and officials with a bureaucratic mentality.

And the “dirty little secret” is that the test scores of nations with such systems are still middle of the road—not top of the class.

Ultimately, the result of such education is reduced national innovation, initiative, ingenuity and entrepreneurialism—the very skills and habits which made America the world’s economic leader and which are needed to get the U.S. economy back on track.

The research, articles and books promoting major educational reforms to drastically boost America’s entrepreneurial mindset are myriad.  So why are we following the educational path of other nations (indeed nations whose students test in the middle and whose economies follow suit), instead of the effective private schools in our own nation?

Conspiracy theories aside, why don’t we simply emulate the best schools in our nation (and the world)?

The first response is likely that such education is too costly; but the facts simply don’t bear this out. For-profit educational institutions have proven that quality education can be delivered at less than the national cost-per-pupil, yet both the Bush and Obama Administrations have “radiated hostility” toward such programs (as do both Republican and Democratic leaders in many states).

Fortunately, the Obama team has been supportive of innovative charter schools. And Obama-led incentives to public schools which perform well are a positive free-market-style initiative.  In a few places huge donations are given to school districts, such as $290 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to three districts in Florida, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, and $100 million from Mark Zuckerberg to New Jersey schools, among others.

Unfortunately, most programs still fail to truly teach innovation, initiative, independent-thinking and entrepreneurial leadership.

Isn’t it time to really reform American education? If our schools continue on their current path, the future of our competitiveness in the world economy is bleak.  What can we do in order to simultaneously test well, compete for leadership in the world economy, and deliver schools which give every child the high likelihood of an excellent education in all subjects along with leading skills in innovation, initiative, ingenuity and entrepreneurial thinking?

Six Proposals

To cut through the reams of commentary on education, I will be as brief as possible in outlining six reforms which can truly “fix” American education. Further discussion on each of these is certainly worthy of our time, but my purpose here is to be as clear and concise as possible.

True educational reform will take a great deal of wise thinking and leadership, but it is not nearly as complex as the bureaucracy so often claims.

Here are six educational proposals that would significantly improve education:

1-Let Teachers Teach
Common-sense regulations for safety should remain, but we need to get rid of the massive levels of regulation forcing school boards to follow numerous policies which actually hurt education, requiring principals to shut down their best teachers and make them teach to the mediocre tests and standards, and preventing teachers from throwing away the bureaucratic manuals and lesson plans and really connecting with each student.

This is more complex than a simple change in attitude can achieve, but it is the first step. We need to give classroom teaching back to the teachers, or we will never see a significant improvement in American education.

2-Individualize
With proposal #1 above in process, great teachers can do what they do best—find out what each student needs and help him/her get it! Until this happens, we will never really know who the good versus bad teachers are. As long as teachers are following the manuals, they aren’t truly teaching. Once they are allowed to individualize, we will naturally see which teachers are great teachers.

And, many of the great teachers who have left the education profession because of the mediocrity of the conveyor-belt system will come back to a teaching career. Together these changes will revolutionize education. Individualized, personalized, focused education is education; anything else is something else.

Until we individualize, like the best private and elite schools do, we will never see the same quality of education in our schools. Indeed, most of the so-called “good students” in our schools excel precisely because they receive such personalization in their learning.

3-Restore Principals
The title “Principal” originally meant “Principal Teacher.” When we took principals out of the classroom, we de-emphasized learning and put the focus on management.  Great teaching occurs much more frequently and effectively when it is led by a great teacher in every school—who is also the boss. Most principals today are managers rather than educators because of the massive amounts of regulation they have to supervise.

Dump most of the regulation—everything that doesn’t protect safety or social equality—and put a master teacher in each school as the Principal. Then evaluate principals on the quality of education for the whole school. The rest will take care of itself, as great Principal Teachers drastically increase the quality of teaching and learning in every school.

Indeed, great principals naturally individualize the work of each teacher, encouraging them to bring their greatest strengths to the classroom. When this occurs, great teaching spreads and quality learning flourishes. This change will not be easy, but it will greatly impact the excellence of our schools.

4-Institute Flexible Exams
Allow flexible exam options where students can be tested according to their strengths—oral exams, projects, presentations, essays, multiple choice tests and other options agreed upon by the teachers, students and principal.
Instead of making students fit the system, great education occurs where committed educators adapt the system to the needs and abilities of the students.

This allows teachers to simultaneously teach to the test (raising the level of measurable progress) and do it in a way that personalizes the material to each student’s abilities and strengths. This encourages teachers to really, truly teach, helping each student identify, seek and obtain excellent and quality goals.

This is not, by the way, a weakening of standards; students should start where they can most effectively learn and succeed, and then over time teachers should help students master multiple and all modes of testing, making school exams more interconnected with and helpful in career and real-life skills.

5-Reform Teacher Training
Reduce some of the current teacher-training coursework and replace it with an intensive study of the greatest classics in human history using The Great Books and The Great Ideas. Leave the basic facets (such as classroom management, lesson planning, educational ethics, teaching specific topics, etc.) of teacher training in place, but in a more compact form.

Most of these are only truly learned on the job anyway, which is why Education majors and programs are often seen as among the easiest on most campuses.

In the new model, teacher training would last roughly the same amount of time as it currently does, and it would contain three main parts: teacher training, The Great Books, and student teaching. This kind of broad immersion in the Great Conversation will infuse life and excellence into the entire educational system.

The better educated our teachers—of all grade levels and educational topics—the more we are likely to see quality increase in our classrooms.

6-Empower Principals and Teachers
Give each teacher an administrative assistant/teacher’s aide, a laptop, a cell phone, and a set of—or subscription to—The Great Books.

Like Sweden, where teaching is an honored profession at the level of law and medicine, the United States needs to empower great teachers. And Sweden spends less per pupil than the U.S. does, with higher returns.

The reduction of expenses created by cutting the massive educational regulatory and bureaucratic apparatus (at federal, state and district levels and in each individual school) will free up a great deal of funding to pay for these changes.

Increasing teacher salaries would help, but almost no teacher goes into education for the money. Nearly all teachers pursue their profession because they want to help young people and to make a real difference. Items 1-6 will make teaching a dream for those who really love teaching and helping youth.

Conclusion

These six changes would drastically increase the quality of America’s public schools, by making them more like the private and elite schools which systematically produce high-quality educational results year after year.

All 6 would have significant impact on the quality of learning in our schools, and even just items 1-4 would greatly improve our schools.

Proposals 1-4 should be simultaneously implemented first (perhaps in a few test cases run concurrently in urban, suburban and rural schools), followed by proposals 5-6 as funding allows.

Such reforms would cause a veritable renaissance in American education. Until such changes, or reforms much like them, are instituted, we will most likely continue to see American education produce mediocre results.

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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:

A fairly recent textbook example of such all-knowing behavior involved members of the Utah State Board of Education.

How ironic that it would involve an institution expressly forbidden from acknowledging the Creator by the much vaunted “separation of church and state“.

This particular God Complex surfaced in 2007 when board members defiantly refused to implement the tuition voucher laws passed by both houses of the state legislature and signed by the Governor.

The Board of Education’s actions verified just how deeply the government education establishment despises competition in any form.

But their contemptuous disregard for the rule of law was even more disturbing.

If the State Board of Education was willing to thumb its collective nose at duly enacted laws with which it disagreed, what other abuses might it be willing to countenance to protect its interests? What else could be justified with an assurance that the board “knows what’s best”?

The board’s actions demonstrated a classic statist mindset that anything pertaining to the education of the children of Utah must be firmly under its control or be considered out of control. So where does that leave parents and students who would seek alternatives to the government education monopoly?

Perhaps it’s time to consider a separation of school and state.

Imagine what would happen if the state divested itself of the responsibility of educating our children. The school buildings would remain, the productive teachers would still have employment, and the resources would still exist albeit under different ownership.

Parents would pay user fees or tuition instead of property taxes. The state would get back to the work of protecting the rights of its citizens and the teachers’ union leadership might finally enjoy the prospect of holding productive jobs in society.

No more fighting over vouchers, sex education, creationism vs. science or any of the other politicized issues that are the hallmarks of government provided education. Best of all, parents could choose the educational path that’s best for their children instead of being forced to simply dump them into the herd.

But too few Utahns are willing to think beyond the party slogans of the education establishment. Statists both in and out of government tend to view all non-government school alternatives as somehow destructive to the well-being of Utah students.

Far too many people still prefer the collectivist worldview that instills the notion that only the state, through ever-increasing taxation and compulsory attendance policies, can provide a uniform education to the masses.

As Darth Vader might say, “I find [their] lack of faith [in something other than the state]…disturbing.”

Utah’s State Board of Education has done a masterful job of framing all attempts to enlarge parental choice in education as dangerous and anti-social.

It has likewise succeeded in promoting public conformity and obedience to the state’s educational bureaucracy as the sole arbiters of what is best for our children.

The education establishment’s interests come first. Our children’s educational needs are a secondary concern.

How did it come it to this? How could so many parents be persuaded that turning the responsibility for their child’s education over to the state was the proper thing to do?

Sheldon Richman of the Future of Freedom Foundation explains:

“Many of us grow up believing that government reflects the will of the people. But skeptics know better. Government has assumed more and more control over private life not because the people demanded it, but because power-seekers and privilege-seekers sought outlets for their ambitions. They then propagandized the public until a sufficient number of people came to believe government control was good for them.”

For the record, vouchers are not the best answer to breaking the state’s desired monopoly on education. They still allow money to pass through the hands of the government which means that conditions and strings will always be attached to its use.

Even tuition tax credits can be subject to a degree of state coercion through conditions under which they may be used. The only sure way to restore parental choice in education is through the separation of school and state.

It won’t be easy to accomplish.

George Contor’s Law of Conservation of Ignorance states:

“A false conclusion once arrived at and widely accepted is not easily dislodged, and the less it is understood, the more tenaciously it is held.”

These words are especially true when referring to how the public views the government education establishment.

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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 Hydeologue.com. He and his wife Becky are raising their six children in Cedar City, Utah.

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However, this is almost always a mistake. For the most part they don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t understand what they’re investing in, they have little or no control over how their investments perform, and they expose themselves to unnecessary tax consequences.

(By the way, the same applies to real estate—if you don’t know what you’re doing there, it shouldn’t be part of your investment plan.)

Most investors are better served by:

1. Investing in themselves and their career or business
2. Investing where they personally have deep interest, knowledge, and expertise if there is still extra money or no interest in being intimately involved
3. Using fixed, tax-advantaged vehicles, such as permanent life insurance, guaranteed insurance contracts, and/or specialty annuities.

Invest in Yourself & Your Business First

In 1960, a man named Srully Blotnick began a study of 1,500 people representing a cross-section of middle-class America. Throughout the twenty-year study, they lost almost a third of participants due to deaths, moves, or other factors.

Of the 1,057 that remained, 83 had become millionaires. The 83 successful people shared five characteristics:

• They were persistent
• They were patient
• They were willing to handle both the “nobler and the pettier” aspects of their job
• They had an increasingly noncompetitive attitude towards the people with whom they worked
• Their investment activities — aside from their main career — consumed a 
minimum of their time and attention.

Writes Blotnick,

“We originally expected the people in our sample to become wealthy by taking the money they earned at work and investing it wisely, in such things as stocks, bonds, and real estate…We thought there’d be no way for [them] to become rich unless they used their surplus income to generate more income…It didn’t work out that way…More often than not they made little or no money investing.”

In short, the study revealed that the successful participants found something they loved and they did it well. Says Blotnick:

“In case after case, they did increasingly well occupationally, while their pursuit of investment profits proved to be largely a waste of time. In the long run, it was their work which made them rich.”

Blotnick concludes that investing in yourself, what you do, and with whom you do it are the most important determining factors of wealth.

If you’ve got excess cash lying around, use it to expand your knowledge, credentials, and capabilities and to grow your career or business before investing in other investment vehicles.

Ultimately, a business will pay you far more dividends than any other investment. You have true ownership and can control the investment, you have collateral, you have specialized knowledge, and you love what you do (hopefully).

Anything else that doesn’t meet those criteria dramatically increases your risk.

Whatever you invest in, it should be where you have influence, passion, and knowledge.

Reduce Your Risk & Taxes With Fixed Vehicles

Fixed accumulation vehicles, such as permanent life insurance and specialty annuities, are some of the least understood and under-utilized money vehicles.

One main reason is that they’ve been given a bad rap by ignorant media pundits and financial institutions with vested interests. These are the same institutions who feed you baloney like “high risk equals high returns.”

Thankfully, more and more investors are beginning to understand and leverage their value, for the following main reasons:

They provide guarantees and fixed returns. You never have to worry about stock market volatility. You can focus on what you do best without constantly worrying about losing or managing money. And when you calculate losses, taxes, and administrative fees, these fixed returns can rival variable market returns.

They provide phenomenal tax advantages. Like qualified plans, such as IRAs 401(k)s, your money grows tax-deferred. But unlike qualified plans, you have options where you don’t pay taxes on the back end when you begin withdrawals.

Greater liquidity and access. Your money can be accessed in many of these contracts through tax-free and in some cases even interest-free policy loans without penalties. You don’t have to wait until 59½ to use your money.

If you love investing in stocks (or real estate), you actually know what you’re doing, and you have the ability to control outcomes with your stock market investing, then by all means invest some of your surplus profits there.

But if you’re like most people, stock market investing is a risky distraction. It’s not your area of expertise, so you just throw money into a diversified portfolio, cross your fingers, and hope and pray that you’ll receive a positive return. That’s not investing—it’s gambling.

Invest in what you know, what you love, and what you’re good at. Grow your career or business first. And if you still have excess cash to invest after doing that, invest in fixed, tax-advantaged accumulation vehicles before you even consider the stock market.

The true path to wealth isn’t to increase your risk, but rather to reduce your risk.

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Garrett Gunderson is an entrepreneur, financial coach, the founder of Freedom FastTrack, and the primary author of the New York Times bestseller Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity.

Garrett loves inspiring others to turn their potential into production. He has dedicated his life to living and teaching a unique concept known as Soul Purpose that reveals how anyone can live a more prosperous and rewarding life.

As a finance and business productivity coach, Garrett instructs both large and small groups of business owners and financial service professionals nationwide.

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For decades, many elite liberals in America have wanted the United States to become more like Europe.

During the Cold War the NATO agreement naturally kept Europe and the U.S. in a cooperative relationship.

But after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, an Atlantic divide appeared as U.S. and European Union interests frequently took different paths.

Germany, France, Italy, Spain and even Britain at times found themselves at odds with American policy around the world. Even Canada often sided with the Europeans against the U.S. on numerous attitudes from health care and international human rights to views on global institutions and world events.

While some conservative and liberal leaders openly believe in and promote American exceptionalism and the idea that the U.S. should retain its own brand of free society, a number of elite liberals, most notably the Clinton and Obama Administrations, seem to want the United States to fit more naturally into the Europeanized community of nations.

Europeanized America?

What would a more European-style America look like? Of course, nobody can really know for sure what such a change would entail. But we can use our imagination to consider a few possibilities simply by identifying major ways in which American life is the exception and doesn’t fit into typical European society. Here are few:

• More apartments and fewer houses. In most European nations, only the very wealthy afford houses instead of living in apartments. This impacts the size of families and also how many cars can be parked in urban settings. A narrative is growing that most Americans can’t really afford houses anymore (see the housing bubble which is still a problem) and a different style of housing is ahead.
• More public transit and fewer personal vehicles.
• Smaller families.
• Mandatory military service. Not every Western nation requires mandatory military service for all young citizens, but the U.S. has long been an exception to the norm with its all-volunteer military services.
• More people working for the government and a smaller percentage in the private sector. This would certainly end American exceptionalism, and in this arena the U.S. has—unfortunately—greatly progressed toward the European model in the past twenty years. Indeed, in 2010 U.S. public employees became more highly compensated, on average, than private business employees.
• International law and precedent above the Supreme Court. Many argue that we have been moving in this direction for a very long time. Add to this the changes effected in our legal structure by various treaties over the years and the trend is clear. A number of analysts consider this a genuine and ongoing reduction of national sovereignty.
• Government control of a guaranteed health care system, highly regulated banks and other financial institutions, and high levels of government intervention in nearly every sector of the economy. This has almost become a near-European-style reality in the current United States.
• Public education emphasis on career training from a very early age. Again, this has recently become the European-style actuality in the U.S.
• A sense of celebrity and superiority among some government officials, and a corresponding view among citizens that they are “below” many government officers.
• A deep reliance on, and unfounded faith in, experts. Coupled with the growing “celebrity and sense of superiority” of some government officers, this creates a new de facto class system–the major European legacy which the American founders rejected.
  There could be a number of other changes in American lifestyle to make it more similar to Europe, but these are enough to see the overwhelming potential impact of trying to make the U.S. more like many of our allies across the North Atlantic.

But is this Actually Liberal?

Ironically, only a few of these are actually in line with traditional liberal values. Indeed, conservatives have historically been supporters of class divides, which liberals have considered deplorable. And liberals have long argued against job-training as the center of education, frequently preferring the liberal-arts education to make us better people.

Both liberals and conservatives have recruited celebrities to their cause, but neither have been friendly to politicians as celebs. Liberals have always been very skeptical of anyone using celebrity, charisma or fame in positions of power. Likewise, liberals have customarily been opponents of any reduction of judicial power and independence.

It makes sense that liberals, as believers in the progressive role of government, would support European levels of regulation over health care, financial institutions and business, and also reliance on credentials and expertise as the highest available levels of human ability and trust.

But even this doesn’t logically explain the popularity of American Europeanization among some liberal thinkers. For example, how many liberals actually support mandatory military service? This is an arena where many liberals may dislike the Europeanizing of America, and where many conservatives might support a change.

If liberals who want America to become more like Europe are simply promoting much higher levels of government involvement in the U.S. economy, that makes sense. As an independent, I don’t agree with this goal, but I can understand why those who believe in big government would want it.

Or, if those who support American Europeanization want to pick and choose from the European model—applying good ideas and rejecting bad ideas—this fits into the original American founding viewpoint.  I have a hard time finding much on the list above that I think we should adopt, however. But I can understand the value of improving whatever we can—and learning from Europe.

For example, I think we should make real changes in response to Solzhenitsyn’s criticism of America for believing in legalism over morality, materialism over spirituality, and military might over the power of principles. Indeed, both Eastern and Western Europe, and other places, have much to teach us.

I believe the lessons learned by the people from so much war and devastation in the last century should be closely considered by us all.

No American should skip studying the works of Picasso, Anne Frank, C.S. Lewis, Frankel, Lusseyran and so many others. And Churchill’s counsel on how to analyze current events and prepare for the future is still sage advice.

More, I personally loved the tradition of siesta when I lived in Spain, and I think many Americans would benefit from a more relaxed attitude about life. We are, in general, far too driven most of the time. I am a fan of many things European, and many European ideals and traditions deserve consideration by Americans.

The Power of Fashion

I don’t think this is actually what is going on in the current longing to make America more like Europe, however. Instead, I think this view is simply fashionable in some circles. Wanting to be like Europe is hip. People see real and deep problems with American power, leaders and institutions, and they see them exhibited in both major political parties and by almost everyone in office.

For example, President Bush was seen by much of the younger generation as “King George” for his hardline stance in the world, and while President Obama came into office promising to take a very different approach, the reality has been an increase in the secretive apparatus of government.

Americans see this, then they visit other free nations and note many positive things. Or, in many cases, people who long to visit such places find it trendy to praise them.

Together these two groups watch the leaders of other nations being less extreme in international politics, seemingly more tolerant and diplomatic, and they wish their leaders would do the same.  Of course, the reality is much more challenging. But few see all the warts without a long-term involvement in the other nation. As even most fair-minded American expatriates will admit, their new country has its full complement of problems too.

Still, I do want the United States to change—a lot. And I think it has things to learn from European and other nations. But more than anything, it needs to learn (both good and bad) from its own history.

The Needed Americanization of America

Sure, at times some people over-glamorize the greatness of the American founding. To hear some tell it, the founding was perfect, ideal and even idyllic. They seem to have forgotten about brutal slavery, violence in the big cities and on the frontier, religious and racial persecutions replete with murder and rape and pillage, gender abuse, mob attacks and crosses burning on lawns, and so much more.

Some of my own ancestors supported and participated in the Revolutionary War, and later they were driven out of their homes and forced to carry their children in the biting Midwestern snow for hundreds of miles seeking safety—all for their religious beliefs. When they appealed to Washington D.C., the conservatives turned them away in disdain.

Some liberals at least showed concern and care for their plight, but ultimately almost nobody in power helped and their ordeal of pain and suffering was repeated less than a decade later. Their religious leader was attacked and brutally beaten repeatedly. He was eventually murdered. This is my history.

Ask an African-American, a Native-American or a Japanese-American about his story, and tragedy and drama will likewise be retold.

In short, our nation has problems. It always has. This is not what sets us apart from other nations. What does set us apart is that the American founding accomplished one thing that has few parallels in all of history: They established a free government and a free-enterprise system without many class restraints and brimming with opportunity.

Under this system, my ancestors, and all Americans, were able to start over and flourish within a very short time period.

Not every wrong was made right, but freedom gave them opportunity and they used it. Their successes came mostly through their enterprise, but without freedom it would not have been possible. And as a result of those successes, over time our nation has had the luxury seldom seen in history to try to right its wrongs.

Such opportunity is hardly the legacy of Europe. It is more American than almost anything else, and we need to remember and resurrect such levels of opportunity. Fortunately, there has been much progress under this free system in race, religious, gender and class relations.

The U.S. Constitution set the pace for all such changes, and they naturally—albeit not easily—occurred under its structure. In our day, we need less of an example from Europe and more of a return to the principles of freedom which made America great.

Those who dislike some things about America—and, honestly, who doesn’t?—should remember that few nations in all of world history or today have made as many positive advances for freedom and prosperity—and for most of the people. I love Europe, and certainly Europe and other nations have a lot to teach us.

But nothing in human history is more likely to help us make the needed changes effectively and lastingly than life under the U.S. Constitution and applying the principles of freedom as championed by the American founders and great leaders since.

Conclusion

The stakes may be poised to rise on this, since world events seem likely to drive U.S. gasoline prices well above $5 a gallon. When I lived in Spain, I was always shocked that the gas prices were always three to five times higher than in the United States. Americans have since seen prices go up to around $3-$4, depending on the specific time or place, but we may see this double, or more, in the years ahead.

Prices of $6, $7, or even $9 a gallon would not be surprising.  And make no mistake, cheap energy prices have greatly benefited America’s economic success.

America can alter this direction, or find ways to innovatively overcome it, if it is allowed to work in a free system with a free enterprise economy. But if it is forced to fight this battle without the benefit of true free enterprise, it will most likely move more and more toward European lifestyles.

Nothing in accepted history has accomplished more for widespread freedom and prosperity than the American constitutional model of free government and free enterprise. So, definitely, let’s learn all we can from the successes of Europe, Asia, conservatives, liberals, history and everyone else.  We must make sure our children and grandchildren have the opportunity to apply the best lessons of the world in a society as free and prosperous as the ideal American system—which we have yet to create.

Let’s improve our nation, change old traditions that don’t work, and re-emphasize the principles of freedom that have proven true (even if we have forgotten to apply them in recent decades). America needs to be a lot more like the ideal America—and soon.

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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:

“Raise their heads on gilded poles! Roast the fatted calf! We need a rousing song–summon Toby Keith!” – from The Onion on the killing of Usay & Quday Hussein by U.S forces in 2003.

The past couple of weeks have revealed a great deal about the character of the average American. It’s not exactly good news either.

When the news broke that 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden had been killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan, it took mere minutes for an orgy of celebration to break out across the nation.

Even the news media, which used to at least try to be circumspect in its coverage, couldn’t help but allow a bit of gloating to surface in the headlines including these gems:

• “Bin Laden Demise: America Rejoices After a Decade”
• “Rot In Hell!”
• “We Got the Bastard!”
• “Got Him! Vengeance at Last: U.S. Nails the Bastard!”
• “Justice Has Been Done”

Look, according to the Law of the Harvest, Bin Laden reaped exactly what he sowed as a murderous religious fanatic. No sympathy here. I can even understand the relief and emotional closure that many feel at this time.

But what about those who celebrate Bin Laden’s death with cheers, chants, chest bumps and high fives? Does his killing at the hands of our military really prove once and for all the that greatness of this nation resides in its ability to terminate despicable individuals with extreme prejudice?

Consider how John Quincy Adams summed up America’s greatness in 1821:

But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force…. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit…. [America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. [emphasis mine]

At the risk of being extremely unpopular, I suggest we take a step back and see what the joyful celebration of any bloodshed actually says about us as a people.

Muslims are often characterized in our media as blood-thirsty, vengeful people who dance in the streets when their foes are killed or maimed. Thank goodness we’re not so crass, right?

Remember how outrage in America hit a fever pitch when a video was shown purporting to show Arab people celebrating in the streets following the 9/11 attacks?

The footage was later revealed to be video of a wedding celebration. Yet few Americans ever knew they’d been played like a fiddle at a barn dance. The current reaction of many U.S. citizens to a man’s death halfway around the world shows that we’re not immune to the effects of official propaganda.

This type of misinformation inflames emotions and whips the crowd into the type of frenzy where facts simply don’t matter. What really counts in the minds of too many Americans is that Bin Laden’s death supposedly validates our nation’s inherent greatness.

The official line is that “justice has been served.” But that may not strictly be the case.

Vengeance has certainly been served. But justice usually involves a modicum of due process; a cornerstone of our legal system that serves to limit government and protect individual liberties.

Though the official version of events has changed several times since the story broke, it’s clear that whatever justice Bin Laden will receive will be administered in the hereafter.

Bob Higgs has zeroed in on the inconsistency of what separates us from the kind of mindless blood lust that characterized Bin Laden and his minions:

No matter how much one may believe that people must sometimes commit homicide in defense of themselves and the defenseless, the killing itself is always to be deeply regretted. To take delight in killings, as so many Americans seem to have done in the past day or so, marks a person as a savage at heart. Human beings have the capacity to be better than savages. Oh that more of them would employ that capacity.

Yet we can see that many Americans have enthusiastically fallen for this trick, dancing in the streets in celebration of a man’s death in faraway Pakistan. Such unseemly behavior is not the stuff of which true greatness is made.

Joseph Sobran long ago observed that there is a degree of tragedy involved even when someone is crushed by the enormity of his own evil actions. Is it unreasonable to think that even the Creator grieves at the loss of one of his children?

Salon Magazine’s Glenn Greenwald dares to pose the vital questions that need to be addressed:

But beyond the emotional fulfillment that comes from vengeance and retributive justice, there are two points worth considering. The first is the question of what, if anything, is going to change as a result of the two bullets in Osama bin Laden’s head? Are we going to fight fewer wars or end the ones we’ve started? Are we going to see a restoration of some of the civil liberties which have been eroded at the altar of this scary Villain Mastermind? Is the War on Terror over? Are we Safer now?

And then there’s the notion that America has once again proved its greatness and preeminence by killing bin Laden. Americans are marching in the street celebrating with a sense of national pride.

Our situation hasn’t changed because one man was waxed by our military. We are still less free as a people, more entangled as a nation, and far deeper in debt than we were a decade ago.  Are those facts worth celebrating as well?

We aren’t less free today because Bin Laden succeeded in personally wresting our freedoms away from us. We are less free because we’ve allowed our own government to take them from us, incrementally, in return for the promise of protection from our official enemies.

Our greatness as a nation depends more upon the quality of our individual character as citizens and less upon which official enemy we’ve just annihilated.

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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 Hydeologue.com. He and his wife Becky are raising their six children in Cedar City, Utah.

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This is Part Two of a two-part series. Read Part One here.

Away from Arrogance

With a Republican House, we now get to see if President Obama is only ideological (as some people claim) or if he has the ability to be a pragmatist.

It is possible that President Obama is a pragmatist, but that he simply believes his own press. His inner-circle supporters have said he is so intelligent that “he’s never been intellectually challenged.”

The President may not adopt such a smug view, but the Administration’s talking point that Democrats only lost the election because the White House didn’t communicate well (doublespeak for “the voters just don’t get it”) is reinforcing this view of the Obama Administration’s arrogance.

The Administration is saying that the American people like Obama’s policies, such as health care, but that they are simply upset with the pace of economic recovery and weary of partisan battles (double speak for “they don’t have the stomach for the political process”).

“Our policies were right on,” this argument goes, “but we did a poor job explaining our agenda.” This mantra is repeated by many Administration officials, including the President.

Democrats of course tend to accept this view, and on the opposite extreme Republicans would like the President to come out vocally against health care—which will never happen.

But the most poignant political reality is that this White House mantra sounds to independents a lot like the following:

“We did the right thing for the American people, but they just aren’t smart enough to realize it. We’ll just have to be patient with these uninformed American voters while we lead them along slowly toward what they really need.

“Our polices may need a few tweaks, like all major policies do, but they were right on. America should be praising our leadership in bringing them universal health care!”

“It was an embarrassment in front of truly informed people (like Europeans and Ivy Leaguers) that the U.S. didn’t have mandatory health care, and we fixed that! The midterm votes were not against our policies, just frustration with a slow economy among hard-working but unsophisticated voters.”

The White House isn’t saying these things, exactly, but it seems like they are.

If, as the White House seems to believe, so erudite and articulate a man as our sitting President lost the House because he didn’t couch his message in a way the people could understand, isn’t this just another way of saying that the masses aren’t smart enough to get it?

Independents, who determine modern elections, believe the election of 2010 was a call for:

• No tax hikes;
• A cut back of the big-spending portions of health care;
• Lowered government debt and the end of deficits;
• Reduced regulations on small businesses;
• Reduced government spending.

Above all, it was a call for reduced government spending.

When the average government employee in America makes $120,000 a year while the private sector average is $60,000, with 9.6 percent unemployment at a time that government is hiring more employees, government spending is clearly out of control.

Small businesses are laying off and shutting down in large part because of the rising regulatory cost of doing business, and they are watching those with government jobs getting increased budgets.

(And the irony is even more poignant when we consider that the job description of many of those with expanding government-funded budgets was to define and enforce regulations on private sector employers and employees.) That’s what the vote was about.

If the Obama Administration doesn’t get this message, it doesn’t understand independents. Independents voted against Democrats in 2010 because they want the economy fixed, and they see health care as the major obstacle to significant economic recovery.

They realize that President Obama can’t turn on his own health care law, which is exactly why they turned to Republicans. Where they turn in the 2012 election will depend on whether the Obama Administration goes on a massive government cost-cutting and regulation-cutting push in the next two years.

Whatever direction President Obama takes, one option is to end certain foreign interventions and bring the troops home. Ironically, Obama will probably have more support for this now with more right-wing and even Tea Party members in Congress.

If we had spent the 3 trillion dollars used up in Afghanistan and Iraq on incentivizing and seeding American entrepreneurial ventures, where would unemployment and our economy be right now?

Or what if we had never taxed or borrowed the trillion dollars in the first place—just left it in the economy instead?

The combined 2009-2010 deficits were $2.9 trillion, less than the cost of our Middle East interventions. Certainly we should afford operations which truly protect our national security, but did it really take $3 trillion to do this?

Of course, we’ll never know the exact answers. But clearly the economy would be at a better place.

As for national security, more people are now asking which makes us stronger against terrorism—thousands of troops and $3 trillion spent in the Middle East or a booming U.S. economy?

More and more it seems that the interventions, for all their anecdotal successes, were animated by the need to save face—from start to finish. When those towers came down we had to respond; of course we did.

But the perilous and labyrinthine issue of America’s War on Terrorism seems to be a never-ending vicious cycle of losing and saving face.

Military options should deal with direct threats, and we should put our nation-building efforts and capital to work at home.

Washington spends more on national security than China, Russia, Japan, India and Europe combined ( Foreign Affairs, November/December 2010, p. 30)—even as our soldiers and vets lack some of the basics needs and care.

And the quagmire that is our Middle East war theater is a one-step-forward-four-steps-back debacle; meanwhile, our own citizens are being subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures for simple domestic travel.

This is the epitome of imperial overreach and a broken policy of national security. Certainly some of these massive and ineffective expenditures can be cut while still maintaining the strongest national defense in the world. Hopefully we can apply these lessons in the next two years and beyond.

The President can also recommend an immediate 5 percent cut to everything in the federal budget, and a 10 percent cut to all government salaries above the private-sector average of $60,000 per year.

Republicans would be called reckless for such an act, but the President would be called an aggressive leader who really cares about the economy. He has already suggested an end to the small business-killing 1099 requirements in the health care law, which is a good move.

He can do more if he stops advancing the line that he just didn’t sell his message better and instead vocally listing out other positive “tweaks” to health care and other regulations—all in the name of helping small business.

A powerful White House talking point could be, for example:

“America needed Health Care reform and we are glad we did it, but it needs some changes to really work. I propose that we cut…”

President Obama could list 10 things that need to be changed in the law and energetically get to work altering them. And he could identify specific cuts to government spending in big ways, and sell the reduced cost as he promotes the changes.

Now that’s leadership. In effect he would be saying, “I hear the American people. I still believe in health care, but I know we can make it even better through wise cuts; as a servant of the people I’m going to lead out in this reform that the voters have demanded. Come on, Republicans, let’s make these changes right away!”

Here is what independents would hear: “I may have seemed like an ideologue before, but with Democratic leadership of the White House and both houses in Congress I wanted to push for as much as I could.”

“That’s just smart politics. But now the people have spoken, and I’m humbled and listening. They want less government spending, and as their leader I’m not going to sit around and wait for the other party to set the agenda.”

“I’ve heard what the voters have to say, and it’s time to get to work. Let’s start by changing certain big-spending items in health care, and then let’s get to work on deregulating small business and rebooting the economy.”

“I hear you, voters. And I believe in you. This is a democracy, and I’m going to lead the people in the direction they really care about. Let’s get to work.”

Incentives Matter Most

In the election passion of 2012, will jobs, China and Health Care still be the issues that elicit voter anxiety, fear and fervor? Two years is an eternity in electronic-age politics.

Iran, Israel, India, North Korea, Europe and other themes could rise to the top. A third party could arise and sway the entire political landscape like the rise of the Federalists, Democrats, Whigs, and Republicans did at earlier decision-points in history.

Unless a serious re-incentivizing of small business does occur, the issues may well be major financial challenges like increasing fears of a depression.

People are hurting in this economy a lot more than Washington admits. Consumers are loathe to spend, and most families have far less discretionary money than before 2008.

When Democrats continue to ask if America really wants to go back to the failed policies of the Bush years, a lot more Americans are comparing their life now to 2001-2008 and answering, “Yes, please.”

They don’t mean it in a technical way, perhaps, but they do want their prosperity back. If they thought the Republicans could really offer it, the 2010 election would have been an even bigger swing to the right.

Americans are feeling less and less faith in the policies of the Democrats that got us where we are now. The White House can greatly impact this by re-incentivizing growth and global investment in U.S. business. If it doesn’t, Barack Obama rather than George Bush will be blamed for the second Great Depression.

Unemployment. China. Health Care.

Barring some major change in the world (like a legitimate third party, a great depression, another 9/11-like event, or a detonated weapon of mass destruction, etc.), this will be the 2012 campaign slogan of Republicans and independents.

And this could make the Republican gains of 2010 seem small in comparison. But even conservatives don’t really want this path—they’d prefer to see Obama really help reboot the economy long before 2012.

The Obama Administration has the chance to truly lead by re-booting the private sector and therefore the economy. If it does, President Obama will probably go down in history as one of the greatest American presidents.

He is not popular now, but the policies of the next two years (not the last two) will determine his legacy.

The challenge, of course, is that Barack Obama isn’t a private small-business owner. He can only significantly boost such owners with drastically decreased levels of regulation and government spending—the real test of whether he’s mainly a politician-ideologue or a pragmatic and visionary leader.

As President Obama considers his strategy for what’s ahead, he should seriously contemplate this: As small business goes in the next two years, so goes his presidency, his leadership, and the nation.

For more on the big themes and issues in the coming years, see Oliver’s latest book, FreedomShift: 3 Choices to Reclaim America’s Destiny.

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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: