The LIFE business products provide information under categories called the 8 F’s. Following (Leadership) is important to how we live because it effects all the other F’s. With leadership comes responsibility. Leadership is connected to freedom because it stems from personal initiative. With leadership and freedom come choices. Less leadership and freedom, less options. Books like ‘Leadership and Liberty’ by Orrin Woodward and Chris Brady, and ‘1913’ by Oliver DeMille open our eyes to learning about where our freedoms come from. Freedom gives us the ability to pursue opportunities to better our faith, family, and finances. Freedom requires responsibility to learn and responsibility to act. Without that we will succumb to the choices that are given to us from outside sources.
The struggle for freedom and liberty against power and authority is as old as man’s time on earth. The Israelites gave up a system of Judges for the want of a King to rule over them. The earliest documented use of the word ‘Freedom’ came from a Sumerian tablet in 2350 BC. The kingdom of Lagash threw off the shackles of an oppressive government. Uracagina, who led the recovery, relieved the heavy taxes. He also understood the importance of a literate society toward freedom and prosperity. He wrote, “Must make manifest to all, by means of the written word, the guilt for which the accused was punishment.” Freedom’s struggle can be traced from the Greek Democracies to the fall of the Roman Republic into Feudalism. The Renaissance and Reformation led to Rouseau’s ‘Emile’ in 1762, which has been called the fountainhead of modern liberal ‘progressive’ education. In the 1800’s Hegel influenced Marx. Burke influenced Bastiat. Alexis de Tocqueville was enlightened with his American experience. The struggle for liberty has always required great courage. Remember that in some circles human beings feel more secure under the power of a government of entitlements. Roman Politician and Historian Sallust wrote, “Only a few want Liberty. The vast majority wants a master.” Many instances have been documented where people have sold their freedom for security of government control.
Today, the Progressive movement is clearly an open direct criticism of the Constitution. They believe the Constitution is old and out dated. Actually, the Constitution will stand in the way of their agenda. Today we see God almost removed from one of the planks at a political party convention. Values of our country are clearly changing when “One Nation Under God” and “Endowed by their Creator” are no longer believed. One of the leaders of the Progressive movement, Woodrow Wilson wrote, “We are not bound to adhere to the doctrines held by the signers of the Declaration of Independence.” They believe the rights the individual possesses are not from his Creator but from the society to which he belongs. John Dewey whose influence led to our current educational system said, “the founding generation lacked historic sense and interest”, and that it had a “disregard of history.” Interesting statement considering the founding generation was one of the most well read and historically astute of any generation to date.
In Friedrich Hegel’s ‘Philosophy of History’, as with Rouseau’s ‘Social Contract’, the citizens owed their undivided devotion to the state. Hegel, (who influenced Marx) also influenced William Torrey Harris who was U.S. commissioner of education from 1889 to 1906. German influence began to influence our national schooling. G. Stanley Hall from the German inspired Johns Hopkins University mentored John Dewey. Horace Mann who was also influenced by the Prussian system developed compulsory education. Benjamin Disraeli wrote, “All important events were controlled by an invisible government of which the public was unaware.” Two separate congressional investigations (1915, 1959) came to identical conclusions, “School policy was being deliberately created far from public oversight, inserted into the school mechanism by a sophisticated, highly advanced campaign of influence, invisible to public awareness.” John Dewey stated, “I believe that education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness, and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction.” Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, said the following to the New York School Teachers Association in 1909, “ We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal (classical) education and fit themselves to perform specific, difficult manual tasks.” Does that sound like an endorsement of class struggle as written by Marx in the Communist Manifesto? Interestingly, illiteracy first became evident between WWII and the Korean War. Today there are over 7,000,000 illiterate in the U.S. According to the National Commission on the Future of Higher Education, August 2006, “Only 31% of college educated Americans can fully comprehend a newspaper story, down from 40% a decade ago.”
There are choices. For those willing to give up their liberties at the hands of the state the choice is simple. Vote for bigger government. Those who want more freedom and liberty need to do more. Build a compensated community of leaders using the Team system where the people empower themselves through a self directed education. Professor J. Rufus Fears wrote, “Once so long ago the Roman People had boldly seized Liberty by revolution and war, assuming to themselves the awesome burdens and responsibilities of self – government. Now, like children, at each imperial accession they eagerly awaited to see whether their new master would be just and good like Augustus or Trajan, or a perverted monster like Caligula or Domitian. Such was the fate of a people who had abandoned republican Liberty. There are choices. God Bless, George Guzzardo
