Memorial Day Update ~ 05.30.2011

The sun sparkles off of the water in millions of tiny flash bulbs as if it were a camera attempting to capture the beauty of this day. Cutting through the sea of rippling water and radiant light, boats of all shapes and sizes cross paths in the river, many adorned with a familiar piece of star-filled cloth hanging from poles, lines, and masts. On this warm afternoon, a constant, light breeze kissed by the cool temperature of the water brushes calmingly past the thousands of people who have found similar ways to soak in the beauty of the day.

Today is not just any regular Monday on the calendar – it is a day to pause, to reflect, and to be grateful for where the course of history has brought us. On this afternoon, our military’s aircraft – helicopters and other planes in our Navy’s fleet – have controlled the airspace above the Hudson River. The planes remind us that something is different today. Today, we remember the heroism that has built our nation; we take a break from the current debate to remember where we have been and where we must always be.

Rotating 180 degrees from my current vantage point reveals the splendor of Manhattan’s Financial District, the historic buildings of the Village, and a peak at the Empire State Building. The Freedom tower, with it’s construction cranes booming above, now stands as the tallest structure in lower Manhattan, and what a motivational and resolute sight that is.

Freedom is what we remember today; freedom is what we celebrate. As the former occupant of the grounds upon which the Freedom Tower is being constructed and the numerous monuments throughout the city remind us, freedom is not free. Our founding fathers made the momentous sacrifice to secure freedom between the Atlantic and the Pacific, but the millions of lives lost in the preservation of freedom since the British packed up and sailed back for England remind us of our great duty. The maintenance of freedom is a constant battle on numerous fronts – both at home and abroad, and it is one that will always require sacrifice.

Today, we remember the sacrifice of those who have given everything and those who have been willing to make that same sacrifice on behalf of our great land and our fellow citizens. We reflect upon the greatness that has been erected out of that sacrifice, out of the greatness of our freedom, and from the greatness of people’s minds who through the sacrifice of so many were able to pursue inventions and work that have made our nation the most exceptional in the history of the world.

A feeling of effusive gratitude at a scene like this is innate. The emotion that wells up thinking about the Washington’s ragtag bunch of farmers and novices armed with muskets and small boats who escaped New York under the cover of fog only to ultimately retake the city, free the country, and found this nation is motivating. The thoughts of soldiers returning on ships from the European theater after WWII who first returned a continent to freedom and then crossed through these waters, guided by Lady Liberty’s radiant torch, are overwhelming. The memories of the World Trade Center under attack, on fire, and in a heap of rubble after crumbling under the heat of the intense blaze, followed by the events of the past ten years that have been marked by continued heroism and sacrifice by our fellow citizens are humbling. Freedom, in any generation, is certainly not free.

One is left with a combination of intense pride and gratitude on this afternoon. Yet, in order that our gratitude for our nation’s greatest heroes is not hollow and empty, we must renew our pledge to always do our part, however small, to preserve freedom in this great land. Tomorrow, we will get back to the fight; today, we pause to remember just how great we are because we stand upon the shoulders of those who have stood behind the cause of freedom, even to the point of making the ultimate sacrifice.

May the hand of Providence always watch over those who are actively sacrificing on behalf of our freedom!

Happy Memorial Day

Higher Education Update ~ 01.26.11

Over the past few years, the subject of our discourse has trended along with the headlines and from one of the Administration’s “revolutionary” programs to the next. Each has deserved study, rebuke, and the attention we have given, but there are plenty of often-ignored issues lurking just below the surface that will be in the next round of discussions. I believe one of those is the continued expansion of the federal government’s role in education, which has been an often-mentioned topic for our President, including his half-baked thoughts around making a four-year college education “free” for all – akin to high school. The goal of this piece is to get us thinking about the subject and to prepare a rebuttal when the subject rises to the surface by discussing the premise – not the individual programs and proposals. As with so many other programmatic solutions offered by the left, this one has to be rejected at its root.

 

There is nothing more fundamental to the future of our country than education. In order for our so-called service economy to flourish, we have to stay at the forefront of innovation, technology, and learning. As part of that, we need to act as a magnet for the world’s brightest and best (a topic for another day), but we must also be able to truly and efficiently educate our own citizens. The future of education is highly dependent upon both our cultural attitude toward it at a macro level and the familial strength at an individual level. Education begins at home and then moves to schools, while accountability for actual learning has to remain in the home and with the individual student.

 

The pre-1970s governance of public schools, in theory, was a fantastic example of what a federalist system should resemble – the control should be at the lowest levels, at the individual district where communities impact the direction of their school through the direct election of representatives to the school board, who in turn answer only to the county or state that collects and remits funds back to the school. As this structure evolved, states, responsible for funding, began to mandate standards and conditions in order for schools to maintain the funding; after all, states could not be on the hook for funding poorly-run centers for corruption and political disaster that result from irresponsible citizens who elect incapable and backward school board members (see Detroit, MI for Exhibit A). This system allows states and school boards to (a) tailor their curriculum to the economic needs of the individual state and district, (b) compete with other states and neighboring communities for population migrations, and (c) allocate their resources as they see fit (i.e. new science labs vs. college-quality football stadiums vs. Carnegie Hall-style performing arts centers). If a district wants to raise funds to erect a new stadium, so be it, but it should come on the heels of a campaign and popular vote by the district, not the pen of a state legislator or, worse yet, federal bureaucrat.

 

Instead, the competition amongst school districts and states for people who vote with their feet has been increasingly replaced by Jimmy Carter’s system of federalized education (as created in 1979 and 1980). Federal curriculums have replaced those of state construct, 10 cents out of every government dollar spent on education now comes from federal coffers, and the simple goal of providing the smartest education has another layer of bureaucracy in its way. As with any other federal bureaucracy, the US Department of Education (“ED”) has sought not to limit its own powers, but to greatly expand them. At $40.2 billion, higher education is the most expansive portion of ED’s 2011 budget, as currently proposed by Obama. The higher education spending is 52% of the overall budget and is largely made up of $35 billion in Federal Pell Grants to students (for which the 2011 budget amount represents a 29.2% increase over 2010 levels); the remaining $5 billion is primarily administrative overhead. (Note: ED’s budget does not include special appropriations for grants to institutions under the guise of ‘research’ or other study.)

 

Since higher education comprises the lion’s share of the budget and because it is the President’s most often discussed education-related topic, the remainder of this piece is dedicated to addressing the current and future state of US collegiate and university education.

 

Thinking back on my life as an example, I do not remember a time where there was not a cultural expectation to attend some kind of college in order to work. There was certainly a time when I was three or four years old that I dreamed of being a carpenter or builder, but after that, I was dropped into the American education mold and fit to the expectations that comprise it:  graduate from high school with a high GPA, go to the best college possible, and then get a job. Nowhere in that mold is there even a thought about what one wants to do and if that desire requires a college degree, a high school diploma, or some kind of trade education. Our culture preaches a “college or bust” philosophy; it is so engrained in our fabric that many students now go through high school mindless of what lies ahead – without thinking about what they want to do after college; they simply focus on college as a concept. This unthinking has caused massive amounts of waste in multiple avenues including lost years to changing fields of study, transferring schools, and expanding curriculums to include excessive amounts of “general education” requirements. Much of this waste could be avoided by helping students to direct their collegiate studies in a way that will provide the most value to them upon graduation.

 

While I am not advocating a European-style college entry examination and forced career planning, I am suggesting we shift to a cultural emphasis on career direction early in life. A student who knows his career path can then determine the appropriate avenue for success – whether it is college or not. Today, too many students enter college as a rudderless ship searching for direction. These students end up exhausting their general education classes, changing majors multiple times, extending their stay in school beyond the historically-accepted, four-year window, and/or graduating with a meaningless degree and still no idea what they want to do. If a student is able to determine in high school what one desires, one can then focus high school studies, college planning, internships, course work, and extracurricular activities around a career track that will provide the most benefit to one’s learning and career. And that career track may not involve college at all. Today, we have too many students leaving college only to never use their degree; while the experience they gained in college will impact their lives, working toward their real future would have also provided them with a beneficial experience – an experience beyond the frat party and Saturday tailgate.

 

Those who exit college and never again use their degree have just made the worst investment of their lives and set themselves back four to six years. Chances are good that they have racked up tens of thousands in education debt, blown their savings, and/or wasted thousands from their parents’ savings. They either compound this waste by going to graduate school to finally focus on what they need to study in order to be taken seriously in the job market, or they take a job that never required the degree in the first place. This phenomenon has birthed the concept of “underemployment” or set employer’s educational expectations/requirements above a level that should exist. Simply because an employer can seek a college-educated person to answer the phone does not mean that it should in any way a requirement, and at an operator’s wage, a person will spend a lifetime consumed by one’s college debts.

 

Many of these individuals would be better served by skipping college and learning a trade, going to a specialized school, or entering their field directly for on-the-job training.

 

Our culture has created waste, not by denying or supporting too few people in their efforts to attend school, but by confusing the entire purpose of higher education and sending perhaps too many people through the institutions. Again, I am certainly not advocating that we deny people access to the institutions; rather, we should foster a society that encourages individuals to make a concrete evaluation of their personal situation and the applicability of higher education in that. Thinking of this sort is unquestionably counter to the vision of the President, who seeks to extend the compulsory K-12 education as far as possible. There are of course different motivations for this thought – both good and bad. He undoubtedly feels that college holds the key to professional success and is seeking to extend that key to everyone, but he is also seeking to expand the most influential center of liberal influence in our society. As commonsense would suggest, his first premise is misguided and the second is dishonest and unconstitutional.

 

To advance this cultural assumption, our government has endeavored to provide millions of Americans with grants and student loans in order to “afford” higher education. While noble in intent, the effect of this government subsidy is rarely questioned or publicized; we constantly hear about the “rising cost of education,” but we never hear about the actual reasons behind it. In contrast, we hear about the “rising costs of health care” in equal frequency, but the media is quick to falsely accuse “greedy” doctors and “big insurance” for the problem. Though the problem of abnormal cost increases in both instances is directly attributable to the government’s distortion of supply and demand, we never hear the real cause trumpeted in public. Leaving the health care debate for another day, government’s noble intent has done nothing but to create a vicious cycle of rising prices in education – one that “requires” more and more funding each year to build upon the excesses of the previous year.

 

Government’s distortion of education supply and demand occurs in two key areas – both concerning demand.

 

The first issue is government’s stance that individuals need to be aided in attending centers for higher education. To demonstrate the effect of this program, let’s take an example in a different industry. Suppose the government announced tomorrow that it was going to extend grants and low-interest loans to citizens who cannot afford to purchase an iPad so that they can go out and purchase one; in that event, two things would happen:  (1) Apple stores would be so packed that backorders for the device would extend beyond the end of the Obama Administration, and (2) in response to this insatiable demand that cannot be met by near-term supply, Apple would raise the price of the iPad to increase profitability on sales as the devices become available.

 

Prior to the announcement, some consumers who could not afford the iPad and had to settle for low-cost alternatives, others could afford the device but decided against making the purchase, and many others already purchased the device – some of those stretched to make the purchase and others would gladly have paid 50% more for it. Prior to the announcement, Apple priced the device at a point to maximize profitability – a balance point to generate the most demand at the highest profit per unit.

 

After the announcement, the three groups of consumers changed. First, those who were desirous but previously could not afford an iPad were able to go out and switch from low-cost alternatives to an iPad. The group who were uninterested probably remained uninterested, but may have reconsidered their decision and perhaps switched into the buying camp with the incentive. The third group who already purchased on iPad will not be affected at first but will be affected after the pricing phase hits. With the increased demand in group one, Apple, being a well-run company, will take this new data and return to its pricing model. Their model will be affected most by the group of newly-eligible iPad buyers, Apple would recognize that some of them could afford to spend some of their own money on the device, so they will raise the price above the amount of the government grant – a price that maximizes profitability once again. But wait … now the third group is affected; with the increased price, Apple has just created a new class of people who are “unable to afford an iPad.” Surely the government will need to adjust its grant program to include these newly-affected consumers, and the cycle will continue.

 

In this way, college education is no different than other consumer goods, including the iPad. As government extends its loans and grants to students, it disrupts the pre-existing equilibrium and sets in motion this continual re-setting of the supply-demand levels and, therefore, the upward pricing pressure. Without government intervention, colleges would have to (a) provide a quality product (education) that perspective students would demand, (b) make pricing decisions based on affordability for their logical consumer base, and (c) dedicate more of their general funds and endowments to individually subsidize students of lower means that they want to attend their institution. Without the government intervention, the schools can be left to set their own pricing equilibrium based upon the means of their general populations, while provisioning to recruit desirable students by leveraging the dedicated capital from their other funds.

 

Institutions are not established to educate those with means. As constructed today, they thrive on churning out the best graduates, increasing their rankings, and publishing the results of groundbreaking research. They require the brightest and best to do this – regardless of means. When they can strike this balance and generate this desired outcome, they are ripe to attract the more people of means who desire to send their children to the “best” schools and thereby the school is able to increase its profitability, its enrollment, and extend more grants to students it seeks to recruit (regardless of means).

 

In a case where government lifted its grants today, schools would have to either lower the price to make tuition affordable for students or raise/use more of their own funds to provide for students of lesser means. In other words, they would have to re-evaluate their pricing model. Schools would actually have to adapt to market forces that, like most other sectors of our economy, drive costs down while increasing quality (e.g. Lasik eye surgery and flat-panel TVs). In situations where schools are continuing to innovate, staying at the cutting edge, and providing a superior product, higher prices will be supported by a certain contingent of the population willing to pay for a superior good and/or by schools that support the brightest students in an effort to attract greater demand and notoriety for their brand. In other ways, schools would have to evaluate their own product lines and exit those that are unprofitable; they may have to employ professors to instruct and leave the research to be funded by private grants and joint ventures with businesses.

 

The second issue is derived from the way that government approaches the administration of student aid, which disadvantages the entire market and distorts prices even further. To qualify for any kind of financial assistance – be it governmental or school- based, students are required to submit the federal form in which one is required to disclose his along with his parents’ financial position. Under the guise of providing assistance, this information is then sent to the feds as well as school admissions departments. In order to see the damage of this information sharing, we must again return to the iPad example and Apple’s pricing model.

 

In order for Apple to set its price for the iPad, it collects market data, conducts studies, and uses historical information to make assumptions about the proper pricing of its iPad – an item that will have the same price to every consumer; it will have the same price for a one-hundred-millionaire as it will to a fifty-thousandaire. Apple has no ability to set a very high sticker price that it will charge its wealthiest customers, and then profile customers based upon wealth as they come into the store only to offer consumers of lesser means discounts. Under this structure, Apple would be able to fully maximize profitability by extracting the greatest amount of profit from each and every consumer. The economic term for this pricing model is called “price discrimination” and this is exactly what the government has enabled in education.

 

By mandating the sharing of this financial information, schools are able to set a high sticker price for the wealthiest students and then offer discounts (or more loans) based upon the information they glean when perspective students apply. This allows them to set the price at a profit-maximizing level for each and every student they seek to admit. Without this information sharing, the sticker price on tuition would be lower, the need for aid would be lower, and the requirement for students to take on more debt to afford these higher prices would be lower. In a typical market with limited information, schools would be unable to raise the price of tuition to a level tolerated only by its wealthiest students.

 

To tie this discussion back to our current Administration and its proposals, “free” college for all would do nothing but to exacerbate the cost issue to be funded by taxpayers. In a “free” environment, far more people would attend college, which would increase the demand, but the supply is relatively fixed in the near term. This would require expenditures to expand the infrastructure and during the build-out would decrease the quality of education with increasing class sizes and more demand for classes that were once niche, hands-on offerings. The increased demand would create near-term resource scarcity and increase the long-term required capital expenditures, which would cause tuition costs to rise. That aside, school administrators would no longer be beholden to the affordability constraints placed on them by their wealthiest students; with the “bottomless” pocket of the taxpayer on the hook for the politically-untouchable tuition bill, one can only imagine what that would do to the pricing model.

 

Further, by increasing the demand from this federal program, states (who control the public institutions in their states) will be forced to pick up a greater tab to build infrastructure or expand the schools to meet the needs. This will result in yet another unfunded mandate placed upon the states by the federal government. States will no doubt look to tax payers first, but at some point, private donations and other private resources would have to be tapped – still a drain of resources on the overall economy.

 

Finally, all of this increased demand will further intensify our cultural problem by having even more misplaced people go through schools wasting time and resources, while incurring personal opportunity costs instead of advancing their own career. That’s not to mention the ballooning cost on taxpayers.

 

With so many graduates now who have gone through undergraduate programs and endured the general education course requirements (that includes Econ 101), it is a wonder how proposals like these get any legs in the first place. But, I guess if wasting money on a program like this makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside, then it must be worth it. Which reminds me … is there a special colored lapel ribbon for education? I want one.

Independence Day Update ~ 07.04.10

Independence Day is a day set aside to remember the greatness of our cause, the truth in which our founding was rooted, and the sacrifice required to first secure independence and second to preserve it.

This July 4, our cause is under attack from the virus of ignorance, a condition that has given the opponents of freedom an opportunity to bastardize our systems and strip us of our freedoms. Many of our fellow citizens do not know the freedoms intended for each one of us by the founding fathers, and more than that, they do not understand the power of the freedoms they were granted.

Today, feeding on this ignorance, we have a government that seeks not to empower the its citizens, rather it seeks out every opportunity to control the affairs of the people – even going so far as to create many of those opportunities on its own. We look around at the current state of our government and see failure stamped on nearly everything it does. With the exception of the military and few other institutions, our government is comprised of departments, bureaus, and groups whose very charter runs counter to the actual incentives of those working there. For example, if the institutions established to fight the fictitious war on poverty were ever successful, they would be putting themselves out of a job, and we know they are not going to do that. The incentives of such a structure are so backwards that the word ‘success’ has to be blacked-out of the dictionary in those offices.

Today, we have too many people seeking to use the government and our institutions as a means to accumulate power and wealth. Our founders intended for the government to be anything but a place for that. They created a system where wealth and prosperity sprung forth from the empowerment of individuals to take hold of their natural rights, not a system where a person’s rights are anything a bureaucrat says they are.

Seeing past the doom and gloom fostered by the policies and practices of our current government, today must be a day of optimism and hope about our future.

As the fireworks burst over our spacious skies tonight, look to them as a source of inspiration and as a reminder of what we still have. Though the system is under attack, the greatest governmental framework ever devised still exists for us to reignite. Our nation is still blessed with the tools, the spirit, and the resources necessary to begin anew.

As the flag waves in the background, take pride in what it stands for and what we will make of things to come. Its broad stripes and bright stars have come through the worst in the past to stand as a beacon for the strength of our truth, and it will once more.

Finally, as the words of “God Bless America” are sung, let us make those words our prayer. It was the hand of Providence that guided our founders on this day in 1776, and it is the hand of Providence that we need today to stand beside us, and guide us, thru the night, with a light from above.

Happy Independence Day.

The American Divide Update ~ 06.21.10

The following is the text from the speech that I gave this past weekend. The focus was on the basis for the societal political divide – a divide that has widened as a result of a fundamental difference that runs far deeper than a notion of left or right – liberal or conservative.

Tonight, we gather united not behind a conservative cause, but around an American cause. We long for a reinvigoration of liberty, for a renewal of federalism, and for a change of course that shuns the false prophets of collectivism and recalls the truth and unbridled success of individual freedom. Yet, we recognize that it was individual freedom itself that has taken the American cause off course; however, we know that it is a reinvestment in the individual that will ignite us again.

Since the beginning, we have pledged allegiance to our American flag and to the nation that stands for liberty and justice for all. The framework of that liberty and justice was captured in our founding documents and in the spirit of our shared Judeo-Christian values. Our sense of justice and the basis for our rights is founded in that shared system of values. For without the underpinnings of a common morality and sense of justice, our documents are worth less than the paper on which they were drafted. The documents were written merely as a reflection of that which our Founders knew to be true – a truth that governs our lives well beyond the reach of those documents.

In our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that the basis for our ability to declare independence was in the assumption of the rights to which we are entitled by nature and nature’s God. Further, he wrote that the specific rights we sought were those made self-evident to us by our Creator. From that point through the penning of our Constitution, our founding was based in natural truth – a truth greater than any of us or any group of us. Our documents codified the truth that was held and lived out by a vast majority of society, a moral society from which a respect of the Truth was natural.

In 1798, John Adams wrote to the Massachusetts Militia reminding them of this fragile, yet powerful fact, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

“It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Since Adam and Eve, we have seen countless examples throughout history where the ills Adams referenced were destructive to individuals, to the balance of power, and to the struggle between good and evil. In America, however, where the minority opinion is heard while the majority rules, we have seen a slow erosion in this truthful underpinning. The destructive forces take time to work in our system, but for the last 80 years we have now seen them steadily advance to the precipice of destroying both liberty and justice.

Our scales of justice have been balanced by a firm reliance on the Judeo-Christian truth of the Ten Commandments, and if not all of them, at least those Commandments where societal norms are established. We acknowledged the truth that there are such concepts as a right and a wrong – that there are clear lines between good and evil. This principle cannot be stressed enough, the acknowledgment of this very truth …. as truth is what made our founding so unique, so powerful, and so prosperous. We acknowledged the source of our rights to be something other than a king, a piece of paper, or any one person’s economic theory. As such, we adopted our Creator’s norms as the basis for our law.

Though we acknowledged this truth at our founding, the last 80 years have chipped away at the foundation so much so that nearly 53% of the voting populace selected Barak Obama to be the standard bearer for the version of truth in which they now believe. At our founding, we selected the moral truth to be the basis for our law; therefore, any rejection of that can be said to be immoral. We now have a President who clearly does not believe in the moral truth and as such does not adhere to the premise of our founding. He has become the poster child for this thriving immoral cancerous tumor on our society. It is a tumor that has been growing for some time, but the pace of its growth has now exponentially increased thanks to his deceit.

Unlike the arguments of our President, there are examples to back up this rhetoric.

One of the fundamental roles for government in the law is to protect private property rights. The right to private property is one of the most critical rights for fostering our rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The right to private property is not new – it is derived straight from the Ten Commandments – the natural law that we acknowledge. Exodus 20:15 says plainly, “You shall not steal.” Yet, it goes further in verse 17, which commands us, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”

This is fundamental – you have no right to anything that belongs to another person – it is his to keep just as he should not covet that which is yours.

In psychology the word ‘covet’ means an inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one deserves, especially with respect to material wealth. A synonym for covet is jealousy, as in the resentful desire for the advantages of others.

So here we have it in very plain language, do not steal things from others, and so you are not tempted don’t even covet that which is not yours.

I’d guess that if I read those last 100 words to people, that 99 out of 100 would agree with them, yet that is not how our society is playing out – actions of our fellow citizens are speaking louder than these words.

In Barak Obama’s America, it is perfectly okay to, as he said, “spread the wealth around.” It is encouraged to play class warfare, it is encouraged to take from the private sector, it is encouraged to steepen the ladder of progressive taxation, it is encouraged to confiscate property through special taxation crafted for certain groups, it is encouraged to create entitlements that reallocate property from one group to the next, and it is encouraged to spend recklessly to the point of stealing from future generations to fund the excesses of the current.

All of these violate our known basic, fundamental truth that is encapsulated in the spirit of our founding and in the moral imperative thereof. The cancerous tumor of immorality expands every time he opens his mouth or moves his pen.

Unfortunately, this tumor cannot be excised by a removal of this new growth; Obama is merely a symptom of the root cancer cells that have permeated our society. We have far too many citizens who have decided that it is perfectly plausible to send representatives to Washington with the directive of enacting laws and practices that appease their jealousy, their covetous disposition. These are citizens who now believe that it is easier to build one’s house through the enticement of the legislature rather than through one’s hard work and economic merit.

If this behavior is not stealing, I don’t know what is. Any way that one cuts it, this behavior and thinking is wrong and immoral. This immorality is a cancer that is akin to the metaphoric whale that Adams warned would go right through the net of the Constitution; it is a cancer that is killing us. It is perverting the incentive or prohibiting people from pursing happiness, which causes all boats to rise with the successes of the individual – our nation is empirical proof of that very fact.

Americans are the most generous people in the history of the world because we seek to treat our neighbors as we would treat ourselves. We understand that the equality of man that was written into our Constitution was not the equality of outcome, but the equality of opportunity and the equality in the brotherly sense, the sense that we are all part of the same family. However, it is when people alter this definition of equality to encompass the fantasy of equal outcomes that we again sprint into the land of immorality. If left to our own generosity as part of the acknowledgment of truth, we would have a very different society.

A second example of where our current president has gone off of the rails of morality concerns his view of the Constitution. As previously discussed, the Constitution is based upon the acknowledgment of eternal truths; not from the theories of Karl Marx or even Adam Smith. Our Constitution, specifically the Bill of Rights, is a list of prohibitions – a list of things that the GOVERNMENT cannot do to its citizens. This document defines and acknowledges the freedom of the individual to take full advantage of the unalienable rights endowed unto us by our Creator.

The construction of our Constitution stands in sharp contrast to those of the former Soviet Union and to China. The Soviet constitution was comprised of an infinitely long list of that which one was forbidden to do; in China, it is the other way around. In neither case is the government restricted so as to allow the individual to pursue the truth.

However, in an interview a few years back, Obama lamented that the Warren Court did not go far enough when it failed to “break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution.” Instead the judges held that the Constitution was, “a charter of negative liberties” — one that says only what government “can’t do to you.” For Obama, the pursuit of equality of outcome demands that the Constitution outline what government “must do on your behalf.”

If we acknowledge that the Constitution was drafted based upon a moral truth, it follows that any redrafting of the document that requires a 180-degree turn away from the original intent would put it clear in the land of immorality, where immorality is defined as the repudiation of the truth.

Sadly, Obama is not alone in fostering the growth of cancer in Washington. He is not the only politician who has been sent to Washington by a perverse constituency that has succumbed to tales of the false prophets. The vast majority of those in Washington today seek to use the tools of government over the individual to solve problems. They seek to appease, to one level or another, the clamor of a society covetous of the advantages achieved by those who have realized economic or meritorious success.

Our Founders imagined a world in which, as John Jay wrote in Federalist #3, “once an efficient national government is established, the best men in the country will not only consent to serve, but will also be generally appointed to manage it.” If what we have in Washington today is our best, we ought to leave this room right now. Further, John Adams clarified the qualities of a good representative in a letter to his son in which he wrote, “Integrity should be preserved in all events, as essential to his happiness, through every stage of his existence. His first order to do this he must make it a rule never to become dependent on public employments for subsistence. Let him have a trade, a profession, a farm, a shop, something where he can honestly live, and then he may engage in public affairs, if invited, upon independent principles.”

The founders clearly did not have in mind the likes of Chris Dodd and Chuck Schumer. In the spring of 2008 when the oil debate was raging on, Senator Schumer went before the people of New York to falsely blame Wall Street for the rising price of oil. I used this opportunity to send a note to him with the following conclusion, “It is not your job, Senator, to propagate lies and excite the country over the package of baseless garbage that you spewed yesterday. The American people, now more than ever, need less government intervention in their lives, not more. You advocate “solutions” that will merely create problems of a greater scale than those we have today. We need elected officials who do not act to buy votes and spread lies. True cooperation and true patriotism in this case would be to all agree to the truth of simple, free market economics and allow the market to work. If all of our elected officials presented a unified message of truth and facts to the American public and got the government out of the way of the free market, the market and America’s people will respond in a way unimagined by government elites. I could go on for hours on this simple topic that you have chosen to confuse beyond belief. Spreading lies and blaming parties not at fault to buy votes is a shallow game that attempts to play off on some perceived ignorance of American citizens. I was embarrassed yesterday to call New York home, and I shall continue to be embarrassed as long as you continue to lie to the American public and stand in the way of true solutions.”

In early 2009, we had 30-year Senator Chris Dodd railing against Wall Street – a topic and industry about which he has zero practical knowledge. In John Adam’s definition of a qualified representative, Dodd’s resume would include actual experience in the industry over which he has been granted abusive powers. Instead, Dodd’s qualifications to be the chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs include an undergraduate degree in English from Providence College, two years of service in the Peace Corps where he was a volunteer in a rural village in the Dominican Republic, a law degree from the University of Louisville which he earned in 1972, three years of practicing law, five years as a member of the US House, and then 30 years in the US Senate.

The final example of this sort of leadership comes from Jimmy Walker – former Mayor of New York, who during the 1920s handed out the favors of Tammany Hall to his friends and cronies. In one of his more egregious favors, he appointed a renowned mental midget as judge of the juvenile court in Brooklyn. When confronted about the appointment, Mayor Walker said, “The appointment of Judge Hylan means the children can now be tried by their peer.”

Unfortunately, this is the way we are moving in the public intercourse, the captains of immorality are now being sent to Washington to represent their teams of immoral players back home. Too many citizens have found out that it is easier to vote themselves a check stolen from a fellow citizen than it is to earn it, and unfortunately, we have politicians who willingly acquiesce or stimulate this thinking as they seek not good for the country, but popularity, power, and employment for themselves.

I take heart from the fact that Rasmussen records Obama’s approval rating to have hit a new low of 41% this week. The disapproval trend suggests that the election of 2008 may have been a misleading indicator of how far the immoral cancer has advanced. There is no doubt that the makeup of Washington is reflection of a potentially terminal condition, but the shock that Obama has provided our country may have been just the radiation we needed.

The charge of our generation is the greatest our country has faced since 1776. Today, we are challenged to fight both international terrorist threats to our morality as well as to return the national focus to our founding moral premise – in the famous words that define victory in the War on Terror, we “must win the hearts and minds” of our own citizens. We must remind and convince our neighbors that there is no middle way – there is only morality or immorality – success through the preservation of the eternal truth or failure at its rejection.

Our task has two phases. First, we must change the mindset so as to eliminate future immoral advances that may come in the form of new entitlements, tax code gerrymandering, and baseless regulation. Second, we must turn to reverse the historical immoral indulgences in the form of health care, progressive taxation, Social Security, and the list goes on. If we are able to stop the advance of our societal cancer, our generation’s accomplishment will rank atop those of many; if we are able to reverse it, our sacrifice – both personal and financial – will put the accomplishment into greatest territory. Accomplishing phase one is imperative in order to keep freedom’s torch ablaze.

On the night before the Declaration of Independence was signed, John Adams wrote to his wife, “The furnace of affliction produces refinement in states as well as individuals, but to inaugurate the new regime will require a purification from our vices, and an augmentation of our virtues, or there will be no blessings.” Thankfully, the blessings that flowed from our founding generation’s acknowledgment of Truth have propelled us to a point where we have these crossroads to navigate. A challenge that we can navigate by looking to the same inspirations our founders did.

Perhaps our greatest early leader, George Washington, concluded a letter to a Rhode Island Hebrew congregation with a prayer, a prayer that acknowledged the truth of the individual, the pursuit of happiness, and an optimistic future rooted in our Creator. Tonight, Washington’s prayer is ours as we go forth to protect the truth for ourselves and our posterity, “May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.”

America the Beautiful Update ~ 02.25.10

Despite the groundswell of energy in our movement and the nation-wide support for a common sense approach to government, I still encounter a number of people who tend to be pessimistic about the future of our country. I know from personal struggles that maintaining an optimistic attitude about our future is often a challenge. Both pessimists and optimists get stuck in a mode of tunnel vision whereby they focus on the people around them, they listen to various media sources, and they project aspects of that negativity across the country. For those of us living in larger cities (read: centers for liberalism), pessimism has a way of creeping into one’s thinking as he projects his liberal neighbor’s or colleague’s baseless thinking upon the rest of the country. For those living in the Heartland, the pessimistic temptation is to believe that common sense, conservative Americans are outnumbered by the utter craziness they see promulgated through various media outlets. In both cases, it is easy to feel alone and alienated in one’s thinking; it is easy to feel that this country is going to Hell in a hand basket and that there is nothing that just one, alienated, right-thinking individual can do about it. There is no doubt that pessimism is the easy choice and that optimism is the difficult one. Optimism is a daily choice and a daily struggle, but one that can be met by many sources of support from all walks of life – from America’s everyday heroes.

I was the beneficiary of a two-day reminder last week when I was blessed with the opportunity to drive from Dallas, TX to Muskegon, MI. Over the course of the drive and the various stops along the journey, I was touched by four reminders of simple American greatness; the kind of greatness that maintains our stature as the greatest country in the history of the world; the kind of greatness that maintains that America’s lifecycle is in the very early stages of its upswing; the kind of greatness that reminds us that the American Dream and the American Spirit are alive and well. I have taken from these four events an enormous sense of pride and a recharged spirit rooted in everyday American exceptionalism.

The first event happened prior to my leaving Dallas. On Wednesday morning, the movers showed up at my apartment to begin packing and loading my belongings. The moving team was a three-man crew led by a guy named Miguel. Miguel was the only one of the three who spoke English, and while his English was not perfect, it was pretty good. As the day moved along, Miguel and I had a chance to talk a few times and I asked him some questions about his work schedule to gauge the moving company’s overall level of activity. No surprise to find that Miguel has been busy moving people into Dallas over the last year, but during our conversation, he offered that he leads two to three moving teams per day for four days per week and then goes to school full-time the other three days during the week. Miguel was a former member of the Mexican Marines who moved to Texas just one year ago knowing zero English, with the goal of earning a degree in computer science and systems administration. He is now working a full week, paying his own way through school, and is a more-than productive member of our society. Miguel is living proof that people are still living out the American dream daily. Sometimes it is difficult for us to find examples of such individuals who are pulling themselves up by the bootstraps, but last Wednesday, I was fortunate enough to witness simple greatness in Miguel’s work ethic and desire to make of his life what he desires – an opportunity he clearly in this country. While I did not get into his political views, Miguel is one of the millions of Americans who is living his life inline with the founding principles and has an innate, natural yearning to exercise his liberty in the pursuit of happiness; Miguel’s life and the millions more like him are shining examples of our movement in action (whether he even knows it or not).

After my belongings were loaded, I began my journey by heading east towards the Texas-Arkansas boarder. About two hours outside of Dallas, I stopped to eat at a McDonald’s (yes, Michelle Obama, people can find a good salad and some fruit at McDonald’s) in a small town called Mt. Pleasant, TX. When I arrived, the restaurant was fairly empty, so I sat in the back facing the door. After a few minutes, three families came in – all traditional families with mom, dad, and kids. Fresh off of reflecting upon my interactions with Miguel, I studied the families as they ordered, sat, and ate. It hit me after a few minutes that I was witnessing simple, everyday, American greatness. These families were enjoying themselves, talking, growing, learning, mentoring, and sharing. For all we hear about the extinction of the American family, the abandonment of the child rearing process, and the need for the state to raise children under the guise of education, these families served as three examples of why much of this media sensationalism is pure liberal filth. The simple greatness found in these three families is an inspiring testament to the good people who do exist in our nation. They are a reminder that there are countless millions of Americans out there seeking the best for themselves and their families. While the manifestation of that spirit may take on many forms, families sharing a meal together on a Wednesday night in small town America is a reminder that Americans do not need big brother government to provide a defined roadmap and users’ guide to life for everyone to follow. Individual responsibility and American values will guide us far better than any bureaucrat could ever accomplish (yes, Michelle, this includes your stupid little obesity campaign).

Continuing my journey east and then north, I arrived in Memphis, TN around 10:00 PM; I stopped there to spend the night. I asked the gentleman at the front desk to point me in the direction of a place where I might be able to grab a bite to eat and a pint or two. He directed me two blocks away to a place called Westy’s – a little sports pub. I was one of about four patrons in the place and was quickly greeted by the bartender with a menu and a beer list. I placed my order and quickly began a conversation with him. It turns out that he was a retired Marine who served for 25 years; his service included live combat missions in Beirut, Grenada, and Iraq. We spoke at length about the missions, about serving in the military under Reagan, and about the state of the country today. He has retired to managing the bar and is happy living the “simple life” as he called it.

My food was then brought of the kitchen by a fellow named Reggie who also brought a meal out for himself and sat to my left. Reggie and I began talking and I quickly found out that he was the general manager for three bar/restaurants in Memphis and was also going to school full-time. Reggie was somewhere between 35 and 40 years old, and decided to go back to school because he was full of ideas, but lacked the communication skills to be able to present them in a useful manner. Besides writing a book on bartending, Reggie is preparing a proposal to connect and streamline gang-prevention efforts that currently exist across three government agencies. His proposal is a common sense effort to actually implement a long-term solution to proactively combat the gang problem instead of reacting to the issue. He calls his proposal Gang Free School Zones, and this has caught the attention of is professors who are arranging a meeting between Reggie and the Governor’s office. I did not get into other issues or political views with Reggie, but his proposal is absolutely the kind of common sense ideas that our government needs. Gang violence is not something I grew up with, but it is clear that Reggie, his kids, and many others in his community have had to combat this issue in gaining their education. I won’t get into all of the specifics, but his proposal is self-funding and is designed to actually eliminate a problem – not to service a problem like so many of our other agencies. Reggie’s proposal would create a path to forcing parent responsibility and accountability for kids who demonstrate leading indicators or gang-related issues in school; this would be done through a mechanism of counseling and action that is already funded by the state. The proposal is incentive-based for the kids and parents alike – Reggie understands the need to align incentives and to introduce market concepts in order to induce a successful outcome.

I know that there are hundreds of thousands of Reggies all across America. There are thousands of ideas percolating through our country that would get government out of the way of our citizens and allow us to make it a better place. One tenant of good management is to listen to suggestions made by the employees; well, one tenant of good government should be to listen to suggestions made by citizens. This is surely a tenant of our movement. Strip away the party labels from us all and we are left with Americans who more often than not are united by common values that lead to simple greatness. It is on the left fringe that we have to deal with the irrationality that is currently manifested in the Democratic Party in Washington, but our movement, led by people offering common sense solutions with an ear to the ground listening for proposals like Reggie’s, will be supported by more people than we could ever imagine. Reggie provided me with another reminder that concerned citizens with great ideas exist in the places we would least expect, and that is why America is America.

On Thursday morning, I awoke to begin my final leg northbound into Michigan. In the process, I went back across Arkansas to Missouri to Illinois to Indiana and finally to Michigan. Across that portion of the trip, I was struck by the sameness of it all. From small town to small town, from corn field to wheat field to hay field back to corn field, the heartland of America was dusted with a layer of snow, but sleeping under that layer of snow lay the source of the world’s food supply. The beauty of our farms, the hard work of our farmers, and the ingenuity of our heavy-duty equipment manufacturers that make it all possible is nothing short of amazing. Simply cultivating that kind of acreage is an inspiring feat in and of itself. Those farms represent the greatness of American industry. The days of the pessimists telling us that America’s best days are behind us will fade away like the snow covering those fields on a warm spring day. Just as the warm weather will reveal the sprawling tracts of production ready for planting, our movement, rooted in the greatness of Americans, will render the pessimists fools in the face of new opportunities and soaring accomplishments.

Through my interactions with real America last week, I am recharged, refreshed, and committed anew to the American cause of greatness through the preservation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

America – what a beautiful country; we are truly blessed to be able to call her home.