i Government
August 27, 2008 by Hyrum Lefler · 1 Comment
“Where, oh where, has my liberty gone?” we cry. Too often the answer is, “The ‘government’ stole it!”
One challenge we face as liberty-loving Americans is to bring politics and economics back into the first person. We speak of the “the government” and the “the economy” as if they were independent, conscious entities. The “government” is people, interacting with each other and operating according to forms and policies established by we the people and our duly elected representatives. Likewise, the “economy” is people (We the People!) interacting and acting according to economic forms and norms in the interest of bringing value to themselves and those they love.
Where has our liberty gone? It has gone into the oblivion of the third person — that third person being “i Government.” This is apparently a monster in D.C. that is ruining our lives.
The truth is that Liberty is not a product or even a state of being; it is a process and a lifestyle. It has always found its life and growth in history when people have lived it. It is not birthed or proliferated authentically through legislation or through civil disobedience in the streets.
This article could also be called “i Economy” based on the way we talk about the financial state of affairs in the nation. Has anyone ever seen “the economy?” Well, actually the answer is yes! You see him/her every day in the mirror, and you see economy in every relationship you have.
It is very easy for a nation looking for excuses to raise certain fearful illusions even to godlike status — with powerful abilities and magical powers for bestowing ease and power to its favorites. Unfortunately, this imagined god is also vengeful and will sometimes strike innocent people with undeserved punishments of poverty (against their will, of course). This imagined monster is blamed for stealing people’s liberty.
How To Make the Economy “First Person”
Families have become appendages in economy. They have become flies on the elephant, giving up their place as the central economic source of resources and growth in our economy. With the rise of the Industrial Revolution, and the massive economic shifts that the U.S. underwent in the first half of the 20th Century, came the rise of the consumer-finance industry. You may have heard of the original Sears and Robuck Magazines that came out in the 1920’s, offering American “consumers” (yet another identity that has risen) an array of products on credit. They swept the nation and are a symptom of the rising obsession with material products. A new economy rose; one that has been fueled, burned to charcoal, then burned again and again — on the fires of consumer whims.
A people obsessed with enjoying the fruits before performing the labor will sell even their liberty — indeed they will have to when their resources are depleted. The number one way for American families to bring “the economy” into the first person is for them to take back the direct responsibility and control of their economy. How do they do this? They must adopt economic forms that are conducive to liberty. This is where Georgics come in.
Citizens must learn and apply the timeless lesson that we reap what we sow, and apply it in their financial lives in the following ways:
- Never borrow to consume.
- Spend less than you earn.
- Plant the “seeds” of your capital by invest your savings into people and projects that will bring you the “harvest” of a financial return.
Making the Government First Person
The cliché answers are varied: “get involved,” “vote,” “write your Congressman,” watch the news,” and “speak out for what you believe.” The truth must be admitted: you are the government! I offer a challenge:
Name one person in this entire nation that has more direct responsibility for this nation’s happiness, future, policies, laws, and every other reality, than YOU.
Maybe you would say the President has more responsibility than you. Is that really true, when he is only our representative? If I grant a friend authority to do something for me, it is assumed that in that responsibility I hold the ultimate authority even though I have delegated some task or thing that I could not do myself. We cannot all be President of the United States at the same time, but we are all citizens. If we should not point the finger at anyone but ourselves for the state of the nation, then it is certainly childish to point the finger at our President for the state of our personal financial statements.
I recently listened to a program featured on National Public Radio where a woman called in on the subject of the housing foreclosure spike we are seeing currently. She made the point that she did not hear the media admitting the follies of the people who had signed their names for risky variable interest rate loans. The NPR host was polite at first, but ended up cutting the woman off saying, “Even irresponsible people suffer sometimes, Mam.”
That statement tripped me up for a few minutes. Clearly the host felt it effective to dismiss the truth of the caller’s words with mockery — hinting that this woman was some kind of conservative believer that there is no suffering, only consequences. The fact that the media will not address, let alone admit, the irresponsible financial actions of millions of Americans is another symptom of the upside down nature of our society; a society where courage fails and appeasement reigns. By lifting their audience above reproach, for popularity reasons, the media contributes to their slavery.
The term “i Government” is an interesting mixture of humor and irony. We have formed this identity to shift responsibility from ourselves, and yet the term also makes one ponder the concept of personal governance. Unfortunately, the former interpretation of the phrase is a more accurate description of our contemporary perceptions of the source of responsibility and liberty.
Have you ever considered that it is Americans that have (through their Representatives) laid taxes on other Americans to finance desired benefits? As Benjamin Franklin said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” Americans are selling their liberties in exchange for other Americans’ goods and at the expense of their fellow Americans!
Is YOUR palm open facing up, asking for an ear of corn… or facing down, grappling a metaphorical hoe, as you till the ground to plant seeds of production? Are “YOU the Government” taxing or producing?
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
Email This Post
Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
Georgic Economics: The Genesis of Liberty
August 18, 2008 by Hyrum Lefler · 5 Comments
What is meant by a “Georgic Economy?” It occurs when families plant seeds after preparing the ground; they then water, tend, protect, and eventually harvest. In our modern day, it is experienced by families who adopt Georgic Principles in their finances. It is compared to banking as well: Banks plant seeds (of capital) and harvests increase over time.
When America shifted from agriculture to industry they outsourced (unwittingly perhaps) the planting of seeds for their livelihood, to others. The professional farmers provided the food, and the professional financiers provided the capital.
We Americans now do the opposite of banks: We receive products first, then pay for them over time — providing bankers with a harvest. In essence, Americans began choosing material comforts over economic freedom. We lost the principles of Georgics.
The Georgic Economy is not a new concept or practice. It has peeked its perspiring head several times throughout history. Adam was taught this economy by God in the Bible. We see it again with Abraham. It was then forgotten by the Israelites in Egypt — and it took God forty years to revitalize it in the people! The Greeks had it early on; they cultivated it in their rocky soil, only to have the vine blossom in the Golden Age and wilt in the scorching heat of flamboyance and frivolity. The Romans built a powerhouse economy using Georgic principles, but eventually rejected Georgics for bread and circuses.
Virgil the Poet, coined the phrase to describe this economic genesis of liberty in The Georgics (29 BC) and had it read to Octavian, who continued his course for power, along with his people. He became Emperor in 27 BC, and the 800 year-old Republic continued imploding into the pompous Roman Empire.
Georgic economies found life in pockets and bore fruit in the Great Economic Revolution at the turn of the 1st Millennium (See Will Durant’s Story of Civilization Volume IV), in the Renaissance, and in Puritan England. Many of the Puritans, known for their work ethic and devotion to God, sailed to American (beginning in 1620) and on American soil this economy blossomed, birthing the greatest movement of freedom that has ever spread across the world.
As the British surrendered to Washington at Yorktown, their drummers played the march “The Day the World Turned Upside-Down.” (see Siege of Yorktown.) The world had turned upside-down; the Founding Era of our nation rested firmly upon the shoulders of a Georgic Revolution.
Every burst of liberty on the landscape of humanity has been preceded, fueled, tempered, and preserved by Georgic revolutions. We as Americans will not find and secure liberty by legislating it in Washington. It will not be securely founded if spurred on only by discussion, persuasion, rhetoric, and hype. Liberty is a consequence of work — of hard work, sacrifice, patience, and perseverance. Our government’s over-spending on social programs, subsidizing, and other fear-mongered policies, are symptoms of the real problem: We forgot, and eventually refused to admit, that we must first plant, before we can reap.
It is time, once again, to “turn the world upside-down.” YOU are an American! Experience a Georgic Revolution in your own life, for thus it must spread across our land if we are to succeed in moving the Cause of Liberty with any permanence and authenticity. We must do this as our Founding Fathers did. This must be pursued in the natural pattern: Georgic Revolution first, political revolution second. The Founders lived the Declaration long before they ever signed it…
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
Email This Post
Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
The “McGuffy Paradigm” & Why It Should Be Revived
August 15, 2008 by Hyrum Lefler · Leave a Comment
Have you heard of the McGuffy Readers? Do you know there were 120 million of them sold in the middle part of our nation’s history? They were the standard educational text for America for a hundred years. So, what is in them?
Well, the first page of the first book talks about cats and rats, the second page shows the cat eating the rat, the third page is about a brother and sister trying out a homemade sail boat, fanning it because there is not enough wind. Skip down the pages; stories about boys that are fat getting caught in games of tag by skinny and fast boys, old men with makeshift bandages over broken legs, young girls being kind to old and young blind men.
Then we have three different notes on a bird’s nest with five eggs in it. “Do not rob the nest,” it says. And, “Tom will not rob a bird’s nest, he is too kind to do so.” Then a few more pages and we have twelve-year old boys chopping wood with the caption, “Ned and John are hard at work. John has a saw, and Ned has an ax. They will try to cut all of the wood which you can in the pile. Do you think they can do this in one day?”
Interesting…animals dying, skinny boys catching fat boys, charity for the downtrodden, protecting a bird’s nest. Young, unfortunate boys breaking a sweat — not to mention breaking child-labor regulations and facing dismal obituaries someday that may contain the words “hard worker” in them.
These stories are real! You know as well as I do that in the real world we don’t get anywhere by staying home forever and being entertained by The Cat in the Hat. No offense intended to fans of Cat in the Hat; I’m just a little burned out on the media-mania out there. I want some backbone to my children’s stories!
Life is an experience like no other! It is about toil, hardship, joy, service to others, excitement, challenges surmounted, focus, driving out the imperfections in ourselves, moving the cause of liberty, and making a difference! This is where we find our happiness. There is so much more to life than most of us realize and experience; we have so much dormant ability. As Thomas Jefferson put it, “Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.”
Love the challenge! Face life with all its wonder, mystery, and difficulty. Take a stand in spite of opposition.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, recently deceased, was a man who lived life to the fullest. In a speech at Harvard he said the following:
“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days…A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human beings in the West while in the East they are becoming firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Eastern Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. Life’s complexity and mortal weight have produced stronger, deeper and more interesting characters than those produced by standardized Western well-being.”
Struggle? Isn’t that for foreigners — or at least anybody but “me”? It is time we all took a step back and asked ourselves some tough questions: Why are we fighting so hard for the stagnant life here in America? Why are we so intent on outsourcing our window washing, lawn care, weed pulling, the teaching of our children (public education), thinking (the media), policy making (anybody but us), and the good life (our entertainment gods and goddesses); and all this in the hopes of allowing ourselves the Pastoral boringness of a fake, aristocratic ease and laziness.
There is a constant discussion in our country about illegal aliens and the work that they do because we won’t. “Isn’t hard work something that migrant workers do?” we ask. Isn’t it our ultimate goal to get out of work, to “retire,” to “arrive” and never have to work again? No! It’s not — or at least it should not be if we want to call ourselves Americans! Work is for us, if we have a spine or any real desire for happiness and success in this life! “The love of work is success,” said David O Mackay.
Virgil also wrote of this in The Georgics:
“No easy road to husbandry assigned,
And first was he by human skill to rouse
The slumbering glebe, whetting the minds of men
With care on care, nor suffering realm of his
In drowsy sloth to stagnate.”
In our affluence, we have forgotten that happiness comes through work, service, love, and faith. The greatest nation on earth doesn’t know what it stands for anymore. Actually, WE as individuals don’t know what we stand for anymore. After all you and I are America!
Too many of us stagnate in the mire of complacency, afraid to be leaders. Make the change, not excuses! Join the Cause of Liberty, subscribe to the Sentinel, and experience the Georgic Revolution in your life!
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
Email This Post
Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
21st Century Georgics: An Introduction
July 29, 2008 by Hyrum Lefler · 4 Comments
A key factor in maintaining freedom is sustainable economic forms. Are you maintaining freedom through the financial principles and practices you are using? Have American families adopted the economic forms necessary for the preservation of a free people?
The average American household pays over 34.5% of every dollar earned to interest payments. Forget about the taxes — that is serious bondage! Our system has become top heavy, threatening our economic solvency as a nation and necessitating large government bailouts to offset their blunders. When a government is forced to tax its people heavily to keep economic centers of capital from collapsing, how can we expect it to reduce in size? To force such a thing is tantamount to economic collapse.
We have allowed our wealth to centralize and grow in the hands of OTHERS. We have given them our money and the control of it for the “magic of compound interest” and then turned around and borrowed from them with a price.
Families are the foundation of American stability and economic growth, and it is time for families to regain real control of the resources of the economy. What do I suggest? We obviously cannot steal all of the money and put it in our families’ accounts! No, I am suggesting that we have all of the resources we need, and they flow through our hands day after day, and we relinquish control of them day after day. This is because we do not understand money; or, more importantly, we do not understand economy.
The Roman Poet Virgil wrote The Georgics in 29 BC. The concept of “Georgics” that came out of this poem was widely debated and discussed in the founding era of our country. The word basically means “to work the land.”
In early spring-tide, when the icy drip
Melts from the mountains hoar, and Zephyr’s breath
Unbinds the crumbling clod, even then ’tis time;
Press deep your plough behind the groaning ox,
And teach the furrow-burnished share to shine.
That land the craving farmer’s prayer fulfils,
Which twice the sunshine, twice the frost has felt;
Ay, that’s the land whose boundless harvest-crops
Burst, see! the barns.
It was felt by many of our Founders that this connection to the land, to hard work, and the dependence on God that is pre-supposed when seeds are planted, had a profound effect of building an independent and free people — especially when coupled with the other Foundations of Freedom.
Up until 100 years ago, 97% of Americans worked the land with plows — they were farmers. Short of a massive catastrophe, that isn’t going to happen in our time. What can be done in our day to bring the Family Farm — or at least its principles — back to life?
We must first understand Georgics. In the coming weeks I will be posting several articles outlining the basic tenets of Georgic Economics, with links to sites where you can learn how to establish a rebirth of freedom in your family through Georgic principles and forms.
American families must become independent centers of the U.S. economy if our liberties are to be preserved. I am calling for a regeneration of organic, financial systems centered in and controlled by America’s families.
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
Email This Post
Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
-
Free Newsletter Subscription
Subscribe to The Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and receive two free gifts. Your personal information will never be shared.
Subscribe To The Cause Of LibertyPolls
Loading ... Loading ... Loading ...