The Cause of Liberty

Finding New Heroes, Forging America’s New Future

What, or who will save America? How will America be saved? Can she be saved at all?

I recently found profound answers to these consequential questions from “Whale Rider,” the powerful movie about a young girl’s struggle to “confront the past, change the present and determine the future.”

From the website; “In a small New Zealand coastal village, Maori claim descent from Paikea, the Whale Rider. In every generation for more than 1000 years, a male heir born to the Chief succeeds to the title. The time is now. The Chief’s eldest son, Porourangi, fathers twins - a boy and a girl. But the boy and his mother die in childbirth. The surviving girl is named Pai.

“Grief-stricken, her father leaves her to be raised by her grandparents. Koro, her grandfather who is the Chief, refuses to acknowledge Pai as the inheritor of the tradition and claims she is of no use to him. But her grandmother, Flowers, sees more than a broken line–she sees a child in desperate need of love.

“When Pai’s father, Porourangi, returns home after twelve years, Koro hopes everything is resolved and Porourangi will accept destiny and become his successor. But Porourangi has no intention of becoming Chief. He has moved away from his people both physically and emotionally.

“Koro is blinded by prejudice and even Flowers cannot convince him that Continue reading »

If you haven’t heard, April 23rd is Tax Freedom Day. Up until Tax Freedom Day, everything you’ve earned has gone to the government. That’s the bad news. The good news is that this video is funny. Cheer up, you have eight more months to earn money for your own bills!

Illegal immigration poses serious problems for America, on many levels and for many different reasons. It absolutely must be dealt with if we wish to preserve our heritage and culture and “establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, [and] provide for the common defence…”

It is, in fact, such a monumental and profound issue that to arrive at and enact long-term solutions will require us to raise the level, temper the tone, and deepen the wisdom of the current discussion.

We’ve all witnessed or taken part in furious debates about illegal immigration, and undoubtedly received intense mass emails about it. The issue is definitely a turbulent fire raging across America.

My immediate concerns have less to do with illegal immigration as a fact, and more with the virulence surrounding the issue. It’s imperative that we extinguish the flames of fear and enmity and find solutions initiated by love and kindness, infused with human dignity and respect, and based in justice and principle.

Specifically, there are three destructive tendencies that must be eliminated from the anti-illegal immigration stance in order to raise the level of the debate and find real and lasting solutions. These are… Continue reading »

The next time you’re asked about your political affiliation or leaning, say that you’re a problem-solver.

Because I often write about politics, I’m frequently asked what political party I belong to, or if I’m a liberal or a conservative. I always struggle with the answer because politics and society seem much too complex to pigeonhole ourselves into such sweeping generalizations.

For example, I believe that we are stewards of the earth, and as such, we should take care of it and maintain its beauty and sustain its productivity. So does this make me an environmentalist liberal? I believe that the proper role of government is to protect unalienable rights, including the rights of conceived but unborn children. I must be a conservative then, right? I adhere to Thomas Jefferson’s idea of foreign policy, “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” Since our current neo-conservative foreign policy is at direct odds with this, then I must be a liberal.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. The broad and confusing labels of “conservative” and “liberal,” “Republican” and “Democrat” are prohibitively confining in an age when our problems are immensely complex, party lines are increasingly obscure, platforms are highly evolutionary, and our values seemingly too diverse to find common ground.

Pulitzer-prize winning historian and author of 1776 David McCullough once said something in an interview that resonated with my independent-thinking mind. He said, “….we’re all in this together. And I feel very strongly that we need people who are there to help solve problems. I wish we had a Problem-Solver Party because we have very big problems that need solving. And I think a lot of our attention is addressed to the wrong problems.”

Ah, if only…

If only we had a political party that was actually concerned with solving root problems, rather than selling the people on temporary Bandaids. If only there were politicians concerned with more than proving their opponents wrong, or amassing self-aggrandizing power. If only we had public servants who actually did what their title suggests: served the people out of a sense of true public virtue, as opposed to simply seeking the security of a government job.

I think that Mr. McCullough is on to something, and he just may have the solution that millions of Americans have been searching for. Wouldn’t that be something: an army of open-minded, principle-based, and independent thinkers united behind the common cause of solving problems? Surrendering ego, getting beyond shallow labels, and really being a force for deep, sustainable, and positive change?

The next time someone asks me if I’m a conservative or a liberal, I’m going to answer, “I’m a Problem-Solver.” I invite you to join the new party, or rather, the new political ideal.

The Bloodless Revolution has begun.
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“I did it again!” I muttered quietly to myself, frustrated as I realized I had slept through my alarm.

The clock read 6:10 a.m., a full forty minutes after the set alarm time. I play basketball three days a week at 6 a.m., and since the gym I play in is fifteen minutes from my home, I set my alarm for 5:30.

I lay for a few minutes, feeling the frustration. As a freelance writer, I spend the bulk of my time in front of a computer screen, so it’s imperative that I meet my exercise schedule if I don’t want my body to fall apart.

Then, in those quiet moments thinking to myself in the dark, it dawned on me what had occurred, and that it was a parallel to so many other things in life.

“My choice to sleep in this morning was made last night!” I realized. I had chosen to stay up until 11:00 the night before working on a project. Then, oddly enough, I was mad at my body for not waking up to my alarm. But by then it was too late; I was beyond the free realm of choice and had entered the inexorable realm of consequence.

How many choices do we make on a daily basis, for which we do not see the consequences until later in life? Then, when we experience the consequences, how often do we get angry and frustrated because we’re not getting what we want?

In a broader sense, this is what is happening to America at large. We’re frustrated with the size of our national deficit and the impending Social Security crisis, yet this was a choice we made over 70 years ago with the New Deal. New Deal for citizens in the 1930’s; very Bad Deal for us today.

We hold peace rallies after spending precious time from our lives watching movies saturated with violence. We spend millions on ads and programs to reduce teenage pregnancy after infiltrating the media and our homes with inappropriate movies, magazines, and other media that encourage such behavior (then, of course, we think the answer is abortion).

Every choice carries a consequence. When America accepts this, she will be resurrected from her current travails. And it starts with you and I, as individual citizens.

What will you choose today, and how will the consequences of that choice manifest later in your life?

The Bloodless Revolution has begun.
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If you were left wondering whether you should laugh or cry after reading my last post, you got the point.

America really is at a crossroads, a momentous point in history infinitely more critical than anything Rome, Greece, or the ancient Israelites ever faced because of how much our decisions impact the rest of humanity.

However, I’m an optimist at heart and believe that Americans can and will conquer any challenge, no matter how difficult or even if it is self-imposed. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “It is a part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate, to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance.”

With this in mind, I wish to transcend the gloomy picture painted in my last post and offer the ten most important things that average Americans can do to ensure that our current decline doesn’t engulf us and last interminably.

10. Read at least one classic a month.

According to George Wythe College, “Classics are original works of depth and substance–writing, painting, sculpture, philosophy, music, theory, law, etc.–that engage the student in the great questions of life. Works that have wide application and scope, they offer valuable ideas to a variety of cultures and times, and can be applied to nations as well as communities, families and individuals. These timeless works change us and ask the hard questions that cut to the core of human nature and human institutions.”

Study the nature and anatomy of freedom through classics. Learn what it takes to preserve and promote freedom for yourself and your posterity.

9. Discuss the classics you read with groups of your peers on a regular basis.

Similar groups were formed long before the American Revolution erupted, and they had an integral role in shaping the views and direction of the entire populace. As Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

8. Keep entertainment in proper perspective.

We’re flooded with an infinite variety of ways to divert us from our highest potential and purpose. When entertainment becomes excessive, it prevents us from living the ideals necessary to sustain freedom.

7. Raise a family worth emulating.

Love and serve your family. Be true to your spouse, be kind and inspiring to and patient with your children. Take responsibility for the education of your children. Build America from the inside out with the solid bricks of family values and relationships.

6. Forgive those who have wronged you.

World peace will never be achieved until individuals become conscious of their own contribution to or detraction from that goal.

5. Be a person of integrity.

Keep your word, no matter how difficult, no matter how tempting it may be to follow the crowd and become casual. Do what you say you will do. Live what you say you believe.

4. Be vigilant about how you spend your private time.

As I have written elsewhere, “The ultimate measure of a person’s integrity is how they act when they are absolutely alone, and what they do when no one else will ever know. It is the quiet moments spent in solitude that determine if you are true to what you say you believe in.”

3. Become a constitutional scholar.

Know the Constitution backward and forward. Study its foundations. Study the works that its creators read. Learn what habeas corpus, bills of attainder, and ex post facto laws are. Learn what the different branches of government are authorized to do, and prohibited from doing. Know the intended balance between the States and the Federal Government.

2. Live your mission.

Discover, develop, and utilize your natural gifts and abilities. Do what you were born to do, even if it takes quitting your current job. Live the spirit of providence in your life. In the words of Steve Farber, “Do what you love in the service of those who love what you do.”

And the number one way to lead an American Renaissance is… Continue reading »

10. Paris Hilton is more popular than the President.

9. Abortion and pornography are cherished rights, yet homeschooling is a crime.

8. The March Madness brackets receive more news coverage than the President vetoing an anti-torture bill.

7. The economy is held together by bailing wire, duct tape, and the Federal Reserve.

6. Pregnancies among unwed teenagers rise dramatically, but no one minds because they figure we’ll need more people to pay for all the unfunded government entitlement programs.

5. Three words: widespread illiteracy.

4. Citizens spend their “stimulating” $600 tax rebate on their property tax increase.

3. Private virtue means recording American Idol on Tivo to reluctantly drag yourself to church on Easter.

2. Public virtue means wearing a Barack Obama t-shirt at an MTV benefit concert.

And the number one sign America is on the decline is…

Continue reading »

In a world of more than six billion people, it may often seem hard to believe that we can make an impact individually. However, the 20th Century genius Buckminster Fuller sheds some light on what one person can do by becoming what he calls a “trim tab.”

He said, “Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary–the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether. But if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, call me a Trim Tab.”

Never underestimate the influence that you as an individual can have. Find what you were born to do, become a “trim tab” in your sphere of influence, and the world will change because of it.

The Bloodless Revolution has begun.
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An Unlikely Combination, Amazing Results

A friend once flattered my brother and me by commenting that we were “salt of the earth” people. When he asked about the environment in which we were raised relative to his compliment, I said the first thing that came to my mind: I told him that we were raised in a salty environment.

It was just a joke at the time, but little did I know how much I would learn about salt and how it relates to families as a result.

The compliment was, of course, referring to the words spoken by the master teacher Jesus Christ who said, “Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted?” Christ also makes a strange request in the book of Mark, where he directs his disciples to “Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.”

These phrases and the conversation with my friend led me to research salt, with the purpose to answer the following questions: What are the qualities of salt that lend themselves to Christ’s parables? Why should we become like salt? And most importantly, what can… Continue reading »

Are you doing what you were born to do?

Our earliest citizens believed in an ideal that they called Providence, which is something that has been largely forgotten today. To believe in Providence is more than just believing that there is a God, although that is certainly a part of it.

Providence is the belief that every individual has a unique mission that they alone can perform and that the world suffers when they don’t fulfill that unique mission. It’s having a relationship with your God that gives you the faith and motivation to fulfill your unique mission regardless of the consequences.

How do you know if you are doing what you are born to do? A good indication of that is if you can’t wait to jump out of bed and begin every day with excitement and purpose. If you find yourself dreading going to work you know that something must change.

The best thing you can do for yourself and for society is to find and develop your passion–to revive the spirit of Providence in your own life.

The Bloodless Revolution has begun.
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