Opening the “Self-Interest” Can of Worms
November 24, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · 1 Comment
In a past article, John Robertson takes issue with “the idea that self-interest is somehow a vice, a detriment or a critical flaw” because it is “a denial of one the most most fundamental truths of nature…”
Allow me to clarify. First, understand that my perspective is based on Christian epistemology (at least my version of it), which means that if we do not share that epistemology there will be little, if any, grounds for debate. I only write this to clarify my position, not to persuade non-Christians, agnostics, atheists, and/or Objectivists that my perspective is right, nor do I write to initiate debate with them.
The Real Flaw of Self-Interest
It’s undeniable that we’re hardwired to pursue our self-interest. Put in different terms, we seek pleasure, joy, happiness, and fulfillment and strive to avoid pain and sorrow. The pursuit of self-interest is not a “vice, detriment, or critical flaw.” The real flaw, or limitation, of self-interest isn’t the pursuit of it; it’s simply that our knowledge of what is truly in our self-interest is limited at best.
Any parent can see the self-evident nature of this. A child, pursuing her self-interest, is drawn towards the flickering light of an open fireplace. We as parents, possessing greater knowledge, steer the child away. A self-interested teenager pleads to go to a party, one that we as parents know will be harmful. A child complains about having to work in the home, wanting instead to play, watch TV, or play video games. As parents, we understand that it is in the self-interest of the child to learn how to work, although the child does not.
In short, self-interest must be guided, or enlightened, by a source external to us, a Source with greater knowledge than us, a loving Source that has our best interest at heart, a Source with the wisdom to know when pain, sorrow, and sacrifice may be to our long-term benefit. Parents serve this role for children. In a larger sense, as a Christian, I obviously believe this Source to be God.
This type of self-interest has been referred to as “enlightened self-interest.” If that term works for you, by all means use it. I shy away from it because over time and with wide usage the meaning becomes diluted. I prefer “submission” instead, which will be explored later. First, we must understand epistemology.
The Relevance of Epistemology
In the simplest terms, epistemology is how human beings determine what is true and untrue. It deals with the questions, “What is knowledge?”, “How is knowledge acquired?”, “What do people know?”, “How do we know what we know?” There are a number of epistemologies including, but not limited to, reason, empiricism, tradition, authority, and revelation.
Epistemology is fundamental to self-interest because it is the foundation of how we determine what is in our self-interest, or what is opposed to it. If tradition is my epistemology, then following tradition, cultural or otherwise, is in my self-interest. If reason is my epistemology, reason will dictate what is in my self-interest. On the other hand, if revelation is my epistemology, then what God tells me determines what is in my best self-interest.
My personal epistemology is what I call “reveleason,” which is the combination of revelation and reason, with revelation being the ultimate authority on what determines truth. God created us with the ability to reason, which we are expected to use to our advantage. However, He also interacts with, enlightens, and expands our reason and knowledge through revelation. Again, since our knowledge is limited, we must seek the guidance of an external Source.
“Man Alone” Vs. “Man With God”
Assuming it’s true that we are children of God, then there are two ways to live: with or without God. Man Alone depends on epistemologies other than revelation. Man Alone does not seek the guidance of metaphysical or spiritual sources to make decisions. At worst, Man Alone degenerates into unchecked hedonism, exploitation of others, greed, and harmful selfishness. At best, Man Alone is a good citizen living far below his potential.
When it comes to sacrifice, Man Alone either fails to see any virtue in sacrifice, or what sacrifices he does make are limited to very practical, earthly terms. For example, Man Alone using reason as epistemology may sacrifice time and money to go to college in order to earn more money. But this same person may fail to see any virtue in or purpose behind Abraham’s sacrifice.
Man With God, however, seeks the will of God in the pursuit of his self-interest. His self-interest dictates that he obey the laws of God — whatever he believes them to be — and even when he does not understand them fully. Man With God is uplifted to achieve far greater things than Man Alone because he follows the will of One who knows what he needs to progress.
Man With God understands the virtue in sacrifice. He understands that God only asks him to do things that are ultimately in his self-interest, although he may not understand why or how at the time he is asked to sacrifice.
In short, Man With God submits his will to the will of God. He lays his uninformed self-interest upon God’s altar and trusts God’s judgment of what is in his best self-interest. It doesn’t mean that he’s not self-interested or that pursuing his self-interest is a vice; it means that his self-interest is guided, enlightened, enhanced, and expanded by a Source external to Him.
One might say that he is pursuing God-interest, rather than self-interest, although the more he submits his will to God the more those two merge into one.
It is precisely this faith that gives him the desire and ability to sacrifice perceived personal benefit and endure hardship. It’s what the Founders referred to as Public Virtue.
Examples of Submission
Every great man and woman that I revere in history has displayed the characteristics and habits of Man With God. They have sacrificed and endured hardship because they submitted their self-interest to God.
Jesus Christ
When Christ retired to the Garden of Gethsemane, faced with the awful burden of suffering for our sins, he prayed, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” (Luke 22:42)
John 5:30 records, “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.” John 6:38 explains, “For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.”
Christ submitted his self-interest to the will of His Father, who led Christ to do excruciating things that were ultimately in his (Christ’s) self-interest.
George Washington
We’re familiar with Washington’s struggles to keep an inexperienced and undisciplined army together facing extreme shortages of food, clothing, shelter, and ammunition. We know of his countless sacrifices for his country and posterity when his greatest desire was to live a quiet life of farming in Mount Vernon. But he sacrificed so much because he had submitted to God.
His prayer in Valley Forge, as recorded by Reverend Nathaniel Randolph Snowden, an ordained Presbyterian minister, graduate of Princeton with a degree from Dickinson College, in his “Diary and Remembrances.” He details the story of a Mr. Potts, who stumbled upon George Washington praying in the woods near Valley Forge. Mr. Potts recounted:
“It was a most distressing time of ye war, and all were for giving up the Ship but that great and good man. In that woods pointing to a close in view, I heard a plaintive sound as, of a man at prayer. I tied my horse to a sapling & went quietly into the woods & to my astonishment I saw the great George Washington on his knees alone, with his sword on one side and his cocked hat on the other. He was at Prayer to the God of the Armies, beseeching to interpose with his Divine aid, as it was ye Crisis, & the cause of the country, of humanity & of the world. Such a prayer I never heard from the lips of man.”
“I felt much impressed,” Reverend Snowden wrote, “in his presence and reflected upon the hand and wonderful Providence of God in raising him up and qualifying him with so many rare qualities and virtues for the good of this country and the world. Washington was not only brave and talented, but a truly excellent and pious man of God and of prayer. He always retired before a battle and in any emergency for prayer and direction.”
Washington also sheds light on his faith in his own words. A Reverend Israel Evans once delivered and printed a sermon to American soldiers. Washington received a printing of the sermon, and wrote to the Reverend and assured him that, “…it will ever be the first wish of my heart to aid your pious endeavors to inculcate a due sense of the dependence we ought to place in that all wise and powerful Being on whom alone our success depends…”
Was Washington self-interested? Of course. Yet his submission to God led him to make sacrifices that most never make. He allowed God to lead him — through revelation — beyond uninformed self-interest to a much higher form of self-interest.
More Examples
Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for her sacrifices. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated for his beliefs and efforts, as was Gandhi. Mother Teresa devoted her life to serving “the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.” The signers of the Declaration of Independence challenged the greatest military force on earth in order to secure freedom for themselves and their posterity.
The list goes on. The point is to say that Men (and Women) With God think and act differently than Men Alone. They willingly suffer and sacrifice more — not because they’re not self-interested, but because they submit to God and allow Him to guide the pursuit of their self-interest. They thus achieve and enjoy more.
Conclusion
We are hardwired to be self-interested. It is perhaps the most fundamental aspect of our nature. Desiring self-interest is not a flaw or a vice of human nature. It’s not wrong to pursue self-interest. The problem is that our self-interest is uninformed because of our limited knowledge.
In order for us to achieve our highest potential and do the most good in the world, both for ourselves and for others, we need an external Source to guide and enlighten our self-interest. Without this external guidance, our lives and contributions are degenerate at worst, and limited at best.
We must submit to God, who, through personal revelation, asks us to sacrifice temporary benefit in order to fulfill long-term self-interest. Submission requires faith, faith that submitting our will to God is ultimately in our best self-interest.
The goal, then, isn’t to stop pursuing self-interest. Rather, it’s to pursue a much higher form of self-interest than can be found without submitting to God. It’s a Divine Paradox. “For whosoever will save his life,” taught Christ, “shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.”
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The Fall of Heroes…
August 18, 2008 by Aspen Eggimann · 4 Comments
…And How to Raise Them Again
“In an age that would level everything and reverence nothing, I light my candles at the shrines of great men.” -Will Durant
I was once sitting in a room of about thirty youth. They gave their names one-by-one and told us who their hero was, as a way of introduction. As the moments passed my faith in our future began to fade.
Who were the heroes named? The Hulk, because he is green, Homer Simpson, Dwight from The Office, Superwoman, no truly great person was named. No figure with moral character and genius. The great men were entirely gone.
How Our Heroes Fall
New Social Icons
In an age of mass media and cheap entertainment, we are bombarded by stories, facts, faces, ideas and advertisements, and this bombardment has created casualties that are sometimes unseen but no less real. And those dying are not the weak but the strong. Those dying are the heroes.
Our society kills heroes. Those past and present are buried in a landslide of information and social icons without morals or genius. Most people know more about Britney Spears and her custody dispute than they do about our Founding Fathers. (Case in point, Google “Britney Spears” and you will find 45.5 million hits, compared to the 15.5 millions hits for “George Washington.”)
How can the actions and stories of the great shine through to our lives when all our thoughts are taken up with the latest actors scandal? How can we possibly remind ourselves of the actions of great men and women when what we see from our public figures is mediocrity at best and degeneracy at worst?
Buried History
In the past the stories of history were repeated in vivid epics about the lives of great warriors, artists, statesman and saints.
Now history is taught through the lives of the masses, and not the actions of the great. Dates and facts are piled on a student with no enlivenment from stories of brave souls and great minds. We recognize no heroes in history because our democratic dogma of leveling all men has made the giants nothing but common men.
People as a whole have an aversion to great men. For whatever reason we like to make lesser what is actually greater. We are ashamed of the mediocrity of ourselves and so try to tear down the greatness of other. Even names of the past, which are separated from us by time, are “humanized.” So often you hear of the Founding Fathers stories starting out with a list of all their faults and ending with a statement indicting how normal they were.
How does this happen? How can we stand in complete awe of the wonders of nature and the advancement of technology and yet look straight past the wonder of all the ages, a man or women who has changed the world?
Society Without Heroes
What happens to a society without heroes? What happens to people without a heroes’ light by which to see?
We cannot rise to that which we know nothing about. Without the stories and a belief in heroes we have limited ourselves to a lower state of behavior. Simply by denying or not knowing about a higher standard set forth by heroes. The effects are such that we have no leadership for the decision in our lives; there is no standard by which to judge others or ourselves. Worse, we settle with the standard of popular culture, no matter how far fallen or how second rate.
3 Ways to Resurrect Gods
1. Tell the stories
Stories are the lifeblood of individuals and civilizations at large. Stories have held together the past and the present for all of time and molded the aspirations of men. From the Bible to the storytellers of Native American tribes, civilizations have used stories to lift their people.
As Durant said in A Shameless Worship of Heroes,
“I see men standing on the edge of knowledge, and holding the light a little farther ahead; men carving marble into forms ennobling men; men molding peoples into better instruments of greatness; men making a language of music and music out of language; men dreaming of finer lives, and living them. Here is a process of creation more vivid than in any myth, a godliness more real than in any creed.
“To contemplate such men, to insinuate ourselves through study into some modest discipleship to them, to watch them at their work and warm ourselves at the fire that consumes them — this is to recapture some of the thrill that youth gave us when we thought, at the altar or in the confessional, that we were touching or hearing God.”
2. Expose Yourself to Greatness
Do not be afraid of greatness! Embrace it, learn it, and do not be uncomfortable by it. Delve into the great classics that allow you to rub shoulders with character and passion. Doing so may sharpen your sense of mediocrity and weakness within yourself, it will also start a fire, the same fire that warms those great men and women and drives them on.
Exposing yourself to greatness and genius is where life is made, where the godliness of man shown. Who knows but in that exposure to genius we may catch fire from its sparks.
3. Be the Hero
There is, in fact, only one sure way that heroes will continue on through our history and in the lives of our children — by becoming heroes ourselves and leaving a legacy of greatness.
There will always be a need for new heroes. Light the candle and hold it at the edge of knowledge, at the edge of the known, and lead out for the others. Hold the torch a little further along the road of history and others will take it up when you are gone.
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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!
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The Truth About the Road Less Traveled
August 3, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · 1 Comment
I recently took the road less traveled…
…and ended up getting lost and hundreds of pesky stickers in my clothes and socks.
I was on my regular run the other day, exploring a few streets I hadn’t been on. I passed a heavily wooded area and noticed a faint trail disappearing into the underbrush. In the mood for adventure, I headed down the path, not sure where it would lead to. A half hour later, I finally emerged onto a street that I recognized, my lower half adorned in a thick layer of tenacious stickers, and thinking of how my experience was a fitting analogy for other life pursuits.
As romantic as Robert Frost makes it sound, taking the road less traveled is never easy. It’s far easier to go along with the crowd and never make waves than it is to take a stand, go against the grain of popular culture, and make a lasting difference.
Martin Luther King, Jr. took the road less traveled and was murdered for it, as was Gandhi. George Washington, wanting nothing more than to be a quiet farmer, suffered through years of toil and hardship as a General, then stayed in the trenches during two terms as President. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for attempting to free France from the rule of England and claiming that she saw visions. Corrie ten Boom endured the horrors of Nazi concentration camps for hiding Jews. Jesus Christ was crucified for speaking truth.
The people who rock the status quo boat are usually kicked off the boat and are often drowned. But because of their courage and sacrifice, the rest of us enjoy smooth sailing.
We can complain today about slow traffic lights, while sitting in our air-conditioned cars listening to the radio and talking on our cell phones, because of the thousands of soldiers who suffered and died of frostbite, starvation, and disease at Valley Forge.
Is the road less traveled romantic and easy? No. Inspiring and worth it? Yes. Will it make a difference? Absolutely.
“That which we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly.” -Thomas Paine
The Road Less Traveled in an Age of Comfort
Ironically, in America today most are far less likely to take the road less traveled, not because it is more difficult than it was in the past, but precisely because it’s easier. Accustomed to comfort, material abundance, and political freedom we often fail to see how simple it is, yet also how critically important.
We won’t be burned at the stake for speaking our mind, so few of us put anything into our minds worth speaking. We’re not engaged in a bloody war with the political establishment, so we become soft and fail to fight the good, peaceful fight of striving for virtue and obtaining a world-class education. We’re not faced with concentration camps, yet we often build ourselves personal prisons of complacence and selfishness.
“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.” -Gandhi
Our enemies and hardships are not murderous tyrants, starvation, disease, filth and poverty, and violent discrimination. Instead, they are ease and comfort leading to apathy, ignorance because we’ve delegated our political responsibilities, greed from valuing our privileges above our principles, and societal decay from failing to care for the institution of family.
How To Find the Path and Make a Difference
We can and we must take the road less traveled for the benefit of our nation and our posterity. Yet how we do that today, in an age of comfort and relative freedom, takes on a different, less grueling form than one might think.
Our Valley Forge consists of, among others, reading and discussing classics; being politically active; choosing to not to consume inappropriate media, no matter how popular or even if no one else will know; studying the Constitution, no matter how difficult it may be to understand; choosing to follow our dreams by becoming entrepreneurs, rather than selling out to false security and corporate benefits; and maintaining strong marriages and raising productive, self-reliant children.
Relative to being tortured, burned at the stake, dying of starvation, and being martyred, these seem easy, yet that is exactly why so few will actually do them. But those who do will leave a legacy. They are those who will save the Constitution and preserve freedom for future generations. They are those who will discover more efficient and powerful methods of alleviating suffering in the world.
Be among them. Choose to take the road less traveled.
This road, while excruciating for heroes and heroines in the past and simple for us today, is never easy. The easy, well-worn path is watching TV instead of reading Democracy in America. Easy is abdicating to the government your responsibility to make sure your children are educated. The popular path is to constantly eat unhealthy food and rarely exercise, then expect doctors and pills to take care of your health problems. Easy is staying in a job with benefits that you dislike, rather than risking change in order to find a career path more conducive to living your passions. Easy is seeing problems in society and waiting for the government to solve them, rather than rolling up your sleeves and going to work.
The hard and unpopular path isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. Take the road less traveled — you might get lost for a time and you might attract stickers and experience other trials, but enduring hardship is the price of greatness. As Helen Keller said, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
Recommended Reading:
The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Becoming One Who Goes Before by Stephen Palmer
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.
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Will you be a Whale Rider?
May 14, 2008 by Stephen Palmer · Leave a Comment
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 Pai is the natural heir. The old Chief is convinced that the tribe’s misfortunes began at Pai’s birth and calls for his people to bring their 12-year-old boys to him for training. He is certain that through a grueling process of teaching the ancient chants, tribal lore and warrior techniques, the future leader of their tribe will be revealed to him.
“Meanwhile, deep within the ocean, a massive herd of whales is responding, drawn towards Pai and their twin destinies. When the whales become stranded on the beach, Koro is sure this signals an apocalyptic end to his tribe. Until one person prepares to make the ultimate sacrifice to save the people. Pai, the Whale Rider.”
Pai, young and female in a tribe that values age and male leadership, rises to the occasion against all odds, finds and fills a critical need that she appears to be unqualified for, and instills courage, dignity, and vision to a struggling people. She is an unlikely heroine, the one seemingly least likely to be able to create change and have lasting impact. But she ignores the limited perceptions around her, stays true to her heart and intuition, and quietly, humbly, yet persistently takes the daunting path of leadership.
Pai is an example of precisely what and who will save America. Leadership needs a new story. If America wants to be saved from our various and urgent problems, we need fresh, new ways of viewing, approaching, and dealing with them. The old stories, the old leadership models, have proven to be ineffective at best, and destructive at worst.
The new story is that ordinary, common Americans will rise up from the trenches of daily living and become the heroes and heroines our culture has been waiting for. The silent majority will be silent no longer. The good-hearted will become the great-hearted. Earthly beings will rise up to their divinity. The weak and the simple will cut through layers of complex bureaucracy to find empowering principles, liberating natural laws, and transcendent truths. Then, through diligence and sincerity, they will become a beacon in the darkness, a foundation of strength in seas of change and corruption.
Americans will stop looking outward to blame others and upward to wait for the government to save them. They will instead start looking inward to themselves and downward to the People for solutions. Where before they relied upon force and institutions, they will rely upon voluntarism, charity, individuals, and families. Where before they waited for politicians to hash out solutions, they will act immediately and self-reliantly. Where before they depended upon “command and control” to get things done, they will now trust in the goodness of citizenship.
What will save America? Common citizens becoming the change they wish to see in the world. Common citizens doing uncommon things. Common citizens revolutionizing themselves, their minds, and their hearts, and in the process revolutionizing the nation at large.
Who are these citizens? You and I.
Can America be saved? Yes. That is if you and I put our privileges in proper perspective, rise to our duties as free citizens, and be examples to follow, voices to heed, and rocks to rely upon. Like Pai transcended her limitations of birth, age, and prejudice, we must transcend our own limitations to be 21st Century “Whale Riders.” As Pai’s ancestors called upon her, so do ours call upon us. The government will not save us. Politicians cannot save us. We must save ourselves.
Recommending Reading:
A Renaissance of Kings by Dr. Andrew Groft
A Separate Peace by Peggy Noonan
Finding Our Way: Leadership For An Uncertain Time by Margaret Wheatley
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.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
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