Anyone who has ever been around Orrin Woodward and the leaders of the LIFE business know that they share a passion to make a difference. That passion is contagious. Outside of learning the basic people skills from the top five books and becoming competent in the power player system from the Team, I found learning historical leadership as the most important igniter of passion. You might ask, “Why historical leadership?” Just ask a group next time you’re with them what were the basic fundamentals they learned growing up in the educational system? They might say, “English”, “Science”, or even specific training related toward their careers but less than 1% will say that they learned historical leadership. I find that statement disappointing for two reasons. One, is that our country does not see fit to find this subject important and two, our people have no working knowledge of the principles of our country’s roots. By taking away the knowledge of historical cause and effect, we become doomed to repeat history.
Many great leaders in the past have been in similar situations and have made a difference by either warning the people of the consequences of forgetting the principles that their freedom was founded upon or making a difference by implementing programs to inform the population about how to live a principled based life. Principles are truths that are proven over and over again through time. Principles are simply cause and effect, meaning the effect of what you do can be predicted. According to history professor S.N. Kramer, the earliest documentation of the word ‘freedom’ was found in Sumeria 2350 B.C. where it was written on a clay tablet. Fighting against an oppressive regime, the people had enough of heavy taxation, loss of private property, and loss of personal rights. Urakagina of Lagash came into power and made sweeping reforms. In addition to establishing a rule of law that protected individual rights, he insisted that the Sumerian courts must ‘make manifest to all, by the written word, the guilt for which the accused was punishment’. Think about it. He felt that there was a direct link to the written word and spreading information, to the people’s personal freedom.
I will write about specific historical leadership cause and effects in my next blog but in the mean time we need to learn about the value of classical liberal education to our freedom. Incidently, classical liberal education has been deemphasized since John Dewey influenced the passage of the vocational training act back in the early 1900’s. Since then, according to educator Oliver DeMille, the focus of our curriculums has become “conveyor belt”, and “professional training”. A great start to learning the basic principles of freedom are to read best selling authors Orrin Woodward and Chris Brady’s book ‘Leadership and Liberty’, and Oliver DeMille’s book ‘1913’. Freedom is a critical word only when you lose it. We need to treat our freedom with importance by taking measures and become informed about the importance of historical leadership ‘cause and effect’. God Bless, George Guzzardo
