tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71635357648599675532024-03-13T08:21:35.595-07:00Brush Fire ForumBrush Fire Forum is providing resources and promoting reasonable conversation about preserving self, family, and community. please "LIKE" what you see and "SHARE" what you like.Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comBlogger212125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-52301281089169888152017-10-03T07:40:00.002-07:002017-10-03T07:42:32.806-07:00Press Release - New Book Coming Oct 9th
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Press
Release</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">October
4, 2017</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Contact:
Eric Wilson</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Cell
Phone: 859-983-5190</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Email:
ewilson1776@yahoo.com</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">New
Book changing the way people view the past, present, and prepare for the
future.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Every
culture goes through predictable cycles of abundance and catastrophic “resets.”
Eric Wilson, the director of the Kentucky 9/12 Project and former leader in the
Tea Party movement has released his latest book “Cultural Cycles” and warns the
United States is on the brink of its next reset, with potentially disastrous
results – and he backs it up with data.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Owensboro,
KY – "Cultural Cycles" is a book written by Eric Wilson who is
also a professional business forecaster for a local international company and
worked in the field of analytics for over twenty years.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><b>Through
an intriguing mixture of historical acumen and big-data analytics - Cultural
Cycles examines the cyclical nature of history and applies it to the United States
today.</b> Basing his observations on repeating eras and cycles from the
seventeenth century to the present, Wilson reveals that the United States’ next
cultural reset is imminent and posits what the consequences will be for a
nation already divided.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;"><i><b>“This
book was the coming together of my professional life and personal passions
where I use history and analytics and most of all the readers own intuition and
logic to explain the seemly rhythmic nature of history,”</b></i> said Eric Wilson.
<i>“I wanted it to be easy to understand but thought provoking and maybe even a
clarion call as well.”</i></span></div>
<i><br /></i>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Eric’s
book is a fascinating, easily understood exploration of history and analytics,
Cultural Cycles uses practical reasoning and intuitive insight to reveal what
many sense—the next great turn of the wheel of history.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>His book demonstrates a predictable cycle of
historic extremes from periods of abundance and growth to cultural crises, or
“resets,” marked by disastrous social and political upheaval. Each cycle, per
his calculations, is approximately eighty-two years and separated into four
distinct eras called “Family”, “Community”, “Self”, and “Guardian.” At
its worst, during the final era comes a reset that can destroy a culture—and
any nations strong enough to survive such events are forever changed. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Book
available in stores October 9th or online now at Amazon.com<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">or
visit the website @ <a href="http://www.culturalcycles.com/"><span style="color: #0563c1;">www.culturalcycles.com</span></a>
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;"># # # #</span></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Press kit including
images and additional information available @ <a href="http://www.culturalcycles.com/"><span style="color: #0563c1;">www.culturalcycles.com</span></a></span></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">For interviews
contact
Eric at (859) 983 5190</span></div>
<br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span>Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-3151526668894835832017-09-22T13:14:00.004-07:002017-09-22T13:16:11.292-07:00Predicting the Future by Looking at the Past - Chapter 1<br />
<div align="center" style="margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Exert of
Chapter 1 from the book <b>Cultural Cycles</b> (Oct 9 2017) by Author Eric
Wilson and contributions by Justen Collins available @ <a href="http://www.culturalcycles.com/"><span style="color: #db6700; margin: 0px; text-decoration: none;">http://www.culturalcycles.com</span></a></span><br />
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF9F-toQ8CgGypyHtxxO7qTVWiXeFnxRaq2Ys-7suYoELzI4IdTqK4pcdbu30QQ44Ohs8clN8HARmaPLY7GsfwZ9VjYC_9uBhZpSWjHAJtP97FZxdwHLeyGVaEip7w_cwJypT2MJYLIBw/s1600/67848313_Kindle+Ready+Front+Cover+JPEG_7326728.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1036" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF9F-toQ8CgGypyHtxxO7qTVWiXeFnxRaq2Ys-7suYoELzI4IdTqK4pcdbu30QQ44Ohs8clN8HARmaPLY7GsfwZ9VjYC_9uBhZpSWjHAJtP97FZxdwHLeyGVaEip7w_cwJypT2MJYLIBw/s320/67848313_Kindle+Ready+Front+Cover+JPEG_7326728.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">For
over twenty-five years now – in my “day” job of analytics and business forecasting
– I use past results and forecast outlooks to predict future actions and events
every day. I have thrived in the corporate world by observing patterns and correlations
in events and attempting to explain – not necessarily “why” something occurred –
but “what” might occur next. Most times – whether people realize it or not – I am
far from alone in these pursuits.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">While
they may not get paid to do so, most people generally try to anticipate what is
going to happen in their lives.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Of course,
the majority do not fully understand the statistical probabilities or potential
forecast elements involved. Regardless, they still spend their time guessing what
might happen tomorrow or prognosticating to their peers about the future – even
if it is just which team will win this Sunday’s game.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">We
all make these guesses, but what if we could see into the future? Would you not
want to “peer under the shroud” and see what was to come? I am not talking about
learning the next winner of the Super Bowl or Lord Stanley’s Cup, but more like
knowing what type of culture shifts we will see in the coming years.</span><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">This
is actually not much different than forecasting the sales of widgets that a company
is going to hit next quarter. To do this, I would look at historical results for
recent months and years – as well as other market indicators and demand drivers
– and then (through the magic of some pixie dust…and mostly statistics) I would
develop a picture of what the future of sales will look like. The key is to look
at enough relevant data and enough history to begin to see patterns. Patterns such
as summer sales increase by 22% each year due to seasonality or a summer selling
season. Or – if you have a product with a life cycle of forty months – we begin
to see sales decrease at an increasing rate after that time has passed. Maybe we
see indicators that tell us that an increase in home sales correlates in ninety
days to a corresponding increase in sales of our product.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Do
these same patterns exist in the world at large? Can we glean them to see more than
sales but also the impending changes in cultural moods and attitudes or even forecast
the probability of major world events? If so, the key would still be to look at
enough relevant data and enough history to begin to see patterns.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">This
is what I decided to do – in my spare time away from that day job. I started looking
objectively at history and gathering as much data as I could find.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Over
the years, I have come to realize a few things about myself. One, I am obviously
not normal. Two, I really should find a better way to enjoy my time away from work.
But lastly, I have also realized that I have a disposition that takes joy in finding
the relationships in seemingly unrelated things and an acute ability to sort through
the ambiguity and messiness of those things down to their root cause and effect.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">In
addition to this, the future and the past fascinate me, and I am the kind of person
who grasps the connectivity of seemingly unconnected events and loves to peer over
the horizons. This has suited me well, and I have parlayed it into over two decades
of “on-the-job training” through a fulfilling career in analytics, big data, and
business forecasting.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">My
passion for connections and predictions permeates my personal life as well. This
book has become the intersection of my professional and personal background and
skills with my worldview and love of history. It might sound overly complicated
at first, but let us try a quick little experiment together to demonstrate how simple
some of these concepts can truly be.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">Continue Reading Chapter 2: <a href="https://brushfireforum.blogspot.com/2017/09/are-you-smarter-than-forecaster-chapter.html#more"><span style="color: blue;">https://brushfireforum.blogspot.com/2017/09/are-you-smarter-than-forecaster-chapter.html#more</span></a></span></u></b><b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike></div>
Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-23672497798282097352017-09-22T13:09:00.002-07:002017-09-22T13:11:53.268-07:00Are You Smarter Than a Forecaster - Chapter 2<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Exert of Chapter 2 from the book <b>Cultural Cycles</b> (Oct 9 2017) by Author Eric Wilson and contributions by Justen Collins available @ <a href="http://www.culturalcycles.com/">http://www.culturalcycles.com</a></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Even though what I do – and forecasting in general
– may seem implausible at worst and unreliable at best to many, it is also intuitive
to most. Look at the chart below (figure 1) and guess where the next point will
fall.</span></div>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;"><br /></span></i>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhheUHiHyWdcpTpjgyiCt5u13Y_2rMakksj49ct3FCOOXm59tJKAsvQ78TBUAt8jVY3VXFqbroEz7KPH45PZY4LI1GP-TryUcuuQ4BSgO3mfgzUvGpQtzG0VWL4mshOJKFGWWc6yll2viY/s1600/Image+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="307" data-original-width="895" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhheUHiHyWdcpTpjgyiCt5u13Y_2rMakksj49ct3FCOOXm59tJKAsvQ78TBUAt8jVY3VXFqbroEz7KPH45PZY4LI1GP-TryUcuuQ4BSgO3mfgzUvGpQtzG0VWL4mshOJKFGWWc6yll2viY/s640/Image+1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">(Figure 1)</span></i></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Overwhelmingly, almost everyone predicts the next
point will fall below the center line and answer “<u>C.</u>”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Congratulations! You are now a forecaster. Barely
700 words from where this book began, you have arrived at the same place it took
me three decades – studying statistics, obtaining certifications, continuing education,
and carrying on a career practicing analytics and forecasting – to reach. What this
shows is that predicting the future is not crazy but rooted in some science. As
much of it is math or algorithms, there is an equal part that is the art of prediction
and logic that we use.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">The core of predictive analytics relies on capturing
relationships between explanatory variables and the predicted variables from past
occurrences, and exploiting them to predict the unknown periods or outcomes. Often
the unknown event of interest is in the future, but analytics can be applied to
any type of unknown - whether it is in the past, present or future. For example,
identifying suspects after a crime has been committed or credit card fraud as it
occurs.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">With the right data and analytics, a large big-box
retailer can even predict when someone is pregnant and when they may be due. Such
was the case for a Minneapolis father who found out – from Target of all places
– that his fifteen-year-old daughter was pregnant. After shopping at Target, the
girl began receiving mail at her father’s house advertising baby items like: diapers,
clothing, cribs, and other baby-specific products. Her father was incensed at the
company’s attempts to “encourage” pregnancy in teens and complained to the management.
Turns out that what Target was doing was collecting point-of-sale data and clustering
that data and comparing it to demographics. Through looking at past purchases and
seeing patterns and descriptive models, Target could make assumptions of what coupons
to send what customers. A few days after the irate father called Target, an embarrassed
dad phoned the manager back to apologize. It appeared his daughter actually was
pregnant</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">. [1]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">So, why are we discussing Target or how to predict
sales of widgets for company XYZ? I am hoping to convey that society already uses
predictive analytics – as well as intuition – to help determine events and occurrences.
Many companies are using data and observations to help see patterns and drive behaviors.
We are not just suddenly waking up in a world with pattern dependencies, but they
have always been around us – waiting to be discovered and tapped. It is not a leap
of faith to look for these same patterns in life and society to help better understand
where we have come from but – equally as important – what may be next.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Using sound principles, my experience, your logic,
and a little history, we can look at cultures and the world we live in and possibly
gain insights into what is to come.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Keeping this in mind - what if I told you major
and measurable events and aspects of world – and American – democratic civilizations
and cultures have been occurring on roughly an eighty-two-year cycle for centuries?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>What if the concentration of wealth or the business
output and activity beat at a recurring rhythm that no one ever taught you in school?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>What if we see periods of repeating gilded ages
and times of religiosity come and go with seemingly predictability? What if things
like wars and incidents of death and casualty rates are not that random?</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Now, look at the same graph you previously used
to forecast the next point with some additional information added (figure 2):</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrUBlFbLMPIRvosh7WUu-doQ9ufdaAOWxV9Sw_z7U4SmWbofJeyfnB-9UXvLpJpkxjwbX7mJpC0ODLkm-kvB7GXhCWYlsJQKxAp5rpANo0lIPxIcZGkzaHYrWnxVuzrxE_koZBcuaFKBk/s1600/Image+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="349" data-original-width="950" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrUBlFbLMPIRvosh7WUu-doQ9ufdaAOWxV9Sw_z7U4SmWbofJeyfnB-9UXvLpJpkxjwbX7mJpC0ODLkm-kvB7GXhCWYlsJQKxAp5rpANo0lIPxIcZGkzaHYrWnxVuzrxE_koZBcuaFKBk/s640/Image+2.jpg" width="640" /></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">(figure 2)</span></i></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Where do you imagine the next point will be? Where
do you feel like we are heading? The three highlighted times and events in the bottom
half of (figure 2) were not chosen at random. It was during the three bottom points
that Americans experienced eras that saw over twenty-five percent reductions in
business activity and double-digit inflation or unemployment. Sadly, these were
also the only eras in U.S. history where conflicts resulted in one percent or more
of the population being tallied among the dead, wounded, or missing in combat-related
action.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">April 19, 1775 - The shot heard ‘round the world
and the beginning of the Revolutionary War that claimed close to 20,000 lives and
many more casualties representing over one percent of the colony’s population.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Almost eighty-six years to the day later - on
April 12, 1861 - Confederate forces under General P.G.T. Beauregard fired on Union
soldiers at Fort Sumter. So began the Civil War the deadliest war on U.S. soil with
650,000 (or over three percent of the population) lives claimed or wounded. Eighty
years later - on December 7, 1941 - America was attacked and entered World War II.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>This was a day that will live in infamy…<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>until eighty to eighty-two years later when…</span><br />
<div style="line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5uxH6mGxUJdlnY8OxtEtjiRSCmKdnkWzmk_h_LWO9sJ38Glf62IlLhOBR_tHsDHqH1O8h4G-mGkOSPQ4XK0BxZO1Rsvzz6nNR0-3PER2MiSOppPvLYH39AqDquhF2_IuRLaJSfaofIus/s1600/Image+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="523" data-original-width="877" height="380" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5uxH6mGxUJdlnY8OxtEtjiRSCmKdnkWzmk_h_LWO9sJ38Glf62IlLhOBR_tHsDHqH1O8h4G-mGkOSPQ4XK0BxZO1Rsvzz6nNR0-3PER2MiSOppPvLYH39AqDquhF2_IuRLaJSfaofIus/s640/Image+3.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;"></span><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0px;">(figure 3) Sources: data
taken from the “data-Fig4B” tab of the September 2013 update of the spreadsheet
appendix to Piketty and Saez (2003). Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman. “Wealth Inequality
in the United States Since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data.” NBER
working paper no. 20625. Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research
2014. War time causalities and deaths Wikipedia @https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0px;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">It is not by chance or accident that America has
experienced great cataclysms or “crises” about every eighty-two years or so. Looking
back before the shot heard ‘round the world and the founding fathers were signing
the Declaration of Independence, another eighty-seven years had just passed since
the Anglo-American “Glorious Revolution” of 1689 and Independence Day. Go back a
slightly longer period, and you reach the English naval victory over the Spanish
Armada—a turning point in England’s history. Another eighty years or so before that
takes you to the end of the War of the Roses, a bloody civil war whose passage enabled
“Tudor” England to emerge as a modern nation-state.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">Can we apply these same principles and logic to
the progression (or predictions) of behavior in education trends, business cycles,
political swings, religion, or even people, cultures, and societies? Of course we
can!<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>We see it back in (figure 3) with the
income or wealth gap growing and the peak followed by a decline occurring approximately
every eighty-two years. We saw the last spike just prior to the stock market crash
of 1929.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Just shy of eighty years prior to
the panic of 1857, we had the peak of 35% of the income going to the top 10% of
the population followed by a steep drop. Go just over eighty years earlier (and
prior to the Revolution) and we see another pinnacle of the wealth gap during the
credit crisis of 1772. Forecasting the future and events is not voodoo, but simply
taking sound principles, reason, statistics, and modeling to generate a probable
conclusion.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; margin: 0px;">So, what does this mean is next?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In this book, we must start to peel away at this
onion and look deeper into the data and patterns to find causal variables and what
is driving these cycles and rhythms.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>We must
use principles, logic, and intuition to better understand what has happened and
what will happen next.</span><br />
<br />
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="file:///E:/dad/Book%20-%20MINE/Cycles/64965021_Manuscript.7326728%20Rev%20B.docx" name="_edn1" style="mso-endnote-id: edn1;" title=""></a><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: x-small;">Part I</span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0px;">[i]</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: x-small;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 8pt; margin: 0px;">Kashmir Hill. “How
Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did”. Forbes
Magazine Feb 16, 2012</span></i></div>
</div>
</div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-36227058372700038192017-09-12T08:46:00.002-07:002017-09-12T08:51:37.662-07:00We Do Forget 9/11<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Monday
on 9/11 a day which one of its mantras is “never forget”.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I clearly remember where I was that morning
when I saw the second plane fly into the World Trade Centers.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I will truly never forget the feeling and
emotion I had as I watched in disbelief as the events unfolded.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Me, like many others, that day changed our
lives and changed our perspectives.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>For
anyone that lived through this tragedy and has a heart you will never forget.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj_bZI-7oPFr46j-6g_UK4n_H15qVF-9FbULc4DECLLSG9eU1rgzEbPI3FbIjEMRrPgV8mF6nvdAQqTpH8cREcauTBjtYS9OHkQCRybv7S61G8wfefB2ZlDO_Y0XJWfutEqbUC7szQdxQ/s1600/th.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="211" data-original-width="217" height="194" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhj_bZI-7oPFr46j-6g_UK4n_H15qVF-9FbULc4DECLLSG9eU1rgzEbPI3FbIjEMRrPgV8mF6nvdAQqTpH8cREcauTBjtYS9OHkQCRybv7S61G8wfefB2ZlDO_Y0XJWfutEqbUC7szQdxQ/s200/th.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">As
I proclaimed the other day on 9/11 out of sorrow and actuality - sadly history
has shown us and time is proving out "we do forget.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>While understandably many people took this as
a criticism of the times we live, I was expressing a much bigger picture.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>There are dates that should live in infamy
and moments of history that should never be lost, that are relegated to the
history books that nobody reads.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>These
events live in the past that we cannot relate to or empathize with.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>And the further we are from them the more we
have ease and tranquility, as if no such event had happened.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">But
what does this mean for our understanding of the past and actions in the
future?</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"></span></div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih_ACHFZ1QvJbhfurPJ636FynLsPb-7yzmK8KX2ns_NzX3MeppWoGi76HTocSvdpLMuHakXQ2VBF0rtkjErkAIpt1su5pJFfyduSTGzaye5HjjHtJQVV2UGTFSsjyVJOfH-sTzF1zZpsc/s1600/1_P30XiCetQgXSpkjtYno2Bg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="396" data-original-width="530" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih_ACHFZ1QvJbhfurPJ636FynLsPb-7yzmK8KX2ns_NzX3MeppWoGi76HTocSvdpLMuHakXQ2VBF0rtkjErkAIpt1su5pJFfyduSTGzaye5HjjHtJQVV2UGTFSsjyVJOfH-sTzF1zZpsc/s320/1_P30XiCetQgXSpkjtYno2Bg.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">I
am not the first to express such a sentiment.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>We can see this in one of Adam Smith’s earlier works “Theory of Moral
Sentiments” which he wrote around 1759.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>In chapter three of that book he goes on to describe the struggle of one
man’s empathy with two different incidents. </span></div>
<br />
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 48px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">“Let us suppose that the great empire of China,
with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an
earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no
sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon
receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of
all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy
people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of
human life, and the vanity of all the labors of man, which could thus be
annihilated in a moment. …And when all this fine philosophy was over, when
all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his
business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease
and tranquility, as if no such accident had happened.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Now
speaking of that same comfy man, but this time the news – a forecast of great
personal pain – hits closer to home.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 48px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">“If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow,
he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore
with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his
brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object
less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own.” - Adam
Smith Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Is
this no different than a generation that lived through a crisis that reset a
cultural’s thinking to several generations later that are removed from those
events and live as if that accident never occurred.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">One
of the major consequences of this is that we not only do not remember history
but we do not learn from it either.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>As a
culture finds tragedy and a reset - that impacts a generation - it is brought
together and the thinking is we shall never forget. But while history is circular,
it is partly because time is linear and moves forward bringing a culture
further and further from that event.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Truth is as generations come and go – we do forget.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>We know of the life changing event of the
past but it no longer changes our lives today and the lessons are softened or forgotten
as well.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The cost of this is that we end
up repeating many of those same mistakes and drift back towards the next crisis
or reset – completing the cycle. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">As
I proclaimed the other day on 9/11 out of sorrow and actuality - sadly history
has shown us and time is proving out "we do forget.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">While
we are beginning to see the slight fading of the true impressions of September 11,
2001 we are also seeing the lost lessons of past cycles.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">I
leave you with a very brief exert from my latest book “Cultural Cycles: Examining
the History of the United States – Why it Repeats Itself, and the Next Looming
Reset”.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I hope you read it, if for no
other reason to better understand what and why we see the sins of the past
being relived today.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Maybe just maybe we
cannot fully emphasize with our past but possibly we may be able to learn
something from it.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwv6FSD6vQlu_xGoN4hA-q6IXGpSQlEQ79KE33mLk5mUdRU4fBbbh_onhO1D5oZV2h2kfMqdTERm6b5E9NWUAx2mWE-7vgs15qRdQNX820n0yFXRpdM8hHkAP4nu-bVch5nLmHGsWXETc/s1600/cover+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="551" data-original-width="375" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwv6FSD6vQlu_xGoN4hA-q6IXGpSQlEQ79KE33mLk5mUdRU4fBbbh_onhO1D5oZV2h2kfMqdTERm6b5E9NWUAx2mWE-7vgs15qRdQNX820n0yFXRpdM8hHkAP4nu-bVch5nLmHGsWXETc/s320/cover+%25282%2529.jpg" width="217" /></a></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 48px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">“Everyone in this era is both farthest from and
closet to a Reset. Most were born after the prior Reset and – like something
that is occurring clear around on the other side of the globe – you may
empathize but you can never internalize. Much like the telephone game, as the
history lessons get passed from one phase to the next, it loses it purposes and
feeling. At the same time, there is a growing pessimism of the direction we are
going and warning signs of what is to come. Sadly, though, the usual wisdom of
the Sage is unheeded, and the youth are so far removed from the past that any
warning signs go ignored until we are past the point of no return – and as far
as history…we are doomed to repeat it.” – Eric Wilson Cultural Cycles 2017<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 48px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 48px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">learn more about the book and even pre-order a copy @ <a href="http://www.culturalcycles.com/">http://www.culturalcycles.com</a></span> </span></span></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike>Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-8287416356782159492017-09-06T11:05:00.000-07:002017-09-07T11:45:18.911-07:00The Last Flower<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“As for the winter, when the freezing rains </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">confine the farmer,
he may employ himself </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">in preparations for serener seasons.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">- Virgil’s First
Georgic by Robert Fitzgerald</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Every
year I play like I’m a backyard farmer and plant my gardens. Every year I
complain that despite my efforts nothing happens the way I think it
should. And every year I learn valuable lessons not just about
agriculture but life.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Intuitively
I know gardening enhances our quality of life in numerous ways: providing fresh
food, exercise and health benefits, and opportunities for life-long learning. A
garden experience fosters ecological literacy and stewardship skills -
enhancing an awareness of the link between plants and cycles of life. </span></div>
</span><a name='more'></a><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">This
is the spirit of Georgics which I relentlessly try (many times without avail)
to embrace year after year. Man’s struggle against the hostile natural
world that can be overcome through hard work. Taking the time alone,
turning off the myriad of electronic devices, and listening to what nature has
to say to us. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">The
term "Georgics" suggests a connection to the Greek word (georgein)
meaning “to farm" and comes from the second major work of the Latin poet
Virgil. Written to be poetic instruction for the proper care of one’s
land, it speaks directly of the foundationalism of the earth and specifically
the act of farming. This literary work describes the cycles of crops, the
seasons, the weather — the birth, death and rebirth that mark the natural
world. He provides us with a complex, realistic, and painful reminder of the
reality of the human condition.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">So,
going back to my observations and gardens - what lesson have I learned?</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">When
I look at some things, I do not always look at what they are but what they
correlate to or sometimes what they may symbolize. It is amazing - while
getting my hands dirty - the analogy that is hidden in the simple cycle of a
plant’s life. I say these things as a parable of where we are and what
may be to come.</span></div>
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">
</span><div style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHfrDzCjkeFQ_MtiGgH_DUMOi6rxL1WP4sU3fks782UWacIdWd2J84woFKPwC5n2mJNmsx8BKePlxP5vxsKKcrYanWN2cfKAo9Mm3CLZTZ0w6N81atNW9To17wt4f6Piz6UoPPN3Z9jho/s1600/Picture1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHfrDzCjkeFQ_MtiGgH_DUMOi6rxL1WP4sU3fks782UWacIdWd2J84woFKPwC5n2mJNmsx8BKePlxP5vxsKKcrYanWN2cfKAo9Mm3CLZTZ0w6N81atNW9To17wt4f6Piz6UoPPN3Z9jho/s200/Picture1.jpg" width="178" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Every
year, in the first signs of spring a new cycle begins. The plant life cycle
begins with a seed. With water, the right temperature and the right location,
that seed grows. The seed will sprout and produce a tiny, immature plant called
a seedling. Roots then push down into the ground to get water and
minerals. The stem reaches for the sun, and leaves begin to unfold. A bud
appears. The plants then produce flower and the pollinated flower turns into
food or seeds. The moment the flower produces a fruit that fruit begins to decay.
For trees the leaves begin to die and fall, for fruit the seeds are inside and
they ripen until the day they drop. Flowers begin to fade, and even grass stops
its growth for a season or more.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHfrDzCjkeFQ_MtiGgH_DUMOi6rxL1WP4sU3fks782UWacIdWd2J84woFKPwC5n2mJNmsx8BKePlxP5vxsKKcrYanWN2cfKAo9Mm3CLZTZ0w6N81atNW9To17wt4f6Piz6UoPPN3Z9jho/s1600/Picture1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></a>
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Just
like the poet Virgil this shows the cycles of crops, the seasons, and the
weather. Most of all, it illuminates the birth, death, and - for some -
the rebirth that mark the natural world. Sadly it is not only a science
lesson I see every year in my garden but also like the ancient Greek verse- a
prophetic and painful reminder of the reality of the human condition. </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">We
learned the plant life cycle in grade school but when you pause and look at
this cycle as a comparison to a much larger picture, you can see a nation that
has lived the seasons and is now on the verge of decay. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Every
nation and culture begins with a new seed. It is provided the right elements
and opportunity and it grows. But every people are faced with the moment
when they must confront their time for the leaves to fall or flowers to fades
on the prosperity of future generations or cultures. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">I
am writing on the brink of the first frost. I have harvested the last of
the good fruit from my gardens. I have prepared them and myself for a
hard season to come, and I look toward the new life that will come next year.
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">I
am writing on the brink of the first frost. Our nation faces economic,
civic, and geo-political crises that have the potential to shake the very core
of our society. The current system is in decay and we – as a nation – are
facing our withering vines. We have drifted far from the nation of people
driven by intellect, sacrifice, and public virtue that characterized this
country at the time of its founding. We no longer understand – or even
concern ourselves with – what it means to be a self-governing leader. As
individuals, we have lost our sense of deep obligation to our marriages, our
families, our communities, and even to ourselves.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">The
one other thing that I have learned from my little time in my gardens is that I
can contribute. Nurturing, and caring for plants and animals that then fulfill
our physical and nutritional needs, helps completes the circle of life. I
learned that I and you can help to care for and prepare the next culture. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">I
cannot seem to alter or change the cycle of life but I can influence its
success. I am writing on the brink of the first frost. I am writing
this not as an agriculture or history lesson but rather a clarion call for the
next culture. It is my hope we listen together to lessons from life and
man’s struggle against the hostile natural world. Together, we may see
the cycles and progression of cultures that we may not only understand where we
are but prepare for what is to come.</span></div>
</span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">
<i><br /></i><br />
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0px;"><i>If
you enjoyed this article or even just intrigued by ominous predictions – after
five years Eric has just recently completed his latest book of an in depth look
at the Cycles that move a culture and the next looming reset.</i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">
<i><br /></i>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0px;"><i>Every
culture goes through predictable cycles of abundance and catastrophic “resets.”
We see this pattern throughout history—periods of prosperity and growth
followed inevitably by disastrous upheaval that changes everything. The
question is not whether a culture will experience such a reset but when.</i></span></div>
<i><br /></i>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0px;"><i>Through
an intriguing mixture of historical acumen and big-data analytics, Eric
Wilson’s newest book <b>“Cultural Cycles”</b> examines the cyclical nature of history
and applies it to the United States today. Basing his observations on repeating
eras and cycles from the seventeenth century to the present, Wilson reveals
that the United States’ next cultural reset is imminent and posits what the
consequences will be for a nation already divided.</i></span></div>
<i><br /></i><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0px;"><i>With
a proficiency in business forecasting and analytics, Eric Wilson combines his
love of history and predictive science in Cultural Cycles to help illuminate
the past, explain the present, and provide a bold picture of tomorrow.
find out more @ <a href="http://www.culturalcycles.com/">http://www.culturalcycles.com</a></i> </span></div>
</span></div>
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<b><br /></b>
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Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-25377028290648261742017-08-28T07:04:00.000-07:002017-09-08T07:05:54.768-07:00Cultural Cycles - The End is Neighmessage from the Author Eric Wilson:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">After
five years, I have recently completed my latest book of an in depth look at the
Cycles that move a culture and the next looming reset. Stay tuned for the new
book coming this fall <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Cultural Cycles:
A Story of the History of the United States - Why It Repeats Itself, and the
Next Looming Reset</b>”.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>This book uses
history and analytics and most of all the readers own intuition and logic to
explain the seemly rhythmic nature of history. We answer many of the questions
of why various well-known historic events took place when they did and what we
might be able to expect in the future.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>After extensive research of historical patterns, I not only show how and
why history does repeat itself but also provide insight to how America may be
on the verge of the next cataclysmic reset.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike><br /></strike></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
COMING THIS FALL LEARN MORE @ <a href="http://www.cultrualcyles.com/">http://www.cultrualcyles.com</a></div>
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<a name='more'></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaGpNWo-84QsLgRwonmSaf68jUn526wO3yjrycLmMSZA6tZwiV6Kemy8P3JN2FkmU0SDd7YrnxMNZ2Gn9F1GsEX4U5N2A1mZ5A7-7Dw2-Lx_keCgB-YAzpcYtCm1g5x9CHHFiHzsqDwbA/s1600/67848313_High+Resolution+Front+Cover_7326728.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1036" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaGpNWo-84QsLgRwonmSaf68jUn526wO3yjrycLmMSZA6tZwiV6Kemy8P3JN2FkmU0SDd7YrnxMNZ2Gn9F1GsEX4U5N2A1mZ5A7-7Dw2-Lx_keCgB-YAzpcYtCm1g5x9CHHFiHzsqDwbA/s400/67848313_High+Resolution+Front+Cover_7326728.jpg" width="258" /></a></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">Extended Full Summary </span></span></b></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black;">History not only repeats
itself but it also can be very interesting.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>This 68,000-word book defines reoccurring “Cultural Cycles” that every
nation goes through and makes a case that The United States is poised on the
brink of its next reset, with potentially disastrous results.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">Cultural Cycles is the
second book from author Eric Wilson.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It
was released in the fall of 2017 after five years of research and is coming
together of Wilson’s professional life and personal passions where he uses
history and analytics and most of all the readers own intuition and logic to
explain the seemly rhythmic nature of history and current events. Eric has over
twenty years award-winning experience in the fields of business forecasting and
analytics and is the director of business planning for an international company
and a thought leader and advisor for Institute of Business Forecasting.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black;">In his newest book,
Cultural Cycles, Eric Wilson applies his knowledge of predictive analytics to
the history of human cultures, to help illuminate the past, explain the
present, and provide a bold picture of tomorrow.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">Part history, part
prophecy, part logic – this book begins with a re-negotiation of how history is
perceived from a linear view to that of a circular view of history. Almost
immediately in the first section and first few chapters, he lays the foundation
of the theory of recurring cycles in history and begins to change people’s
paradigm in thinking.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="color: black;">Wilson then goes on to
identify variables and various cycles that already occur throughout history and
our culture and demonstrate their predictive behavior.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>He takes us on a journey looking at
everything from crime rates to income inequality to church and school
attendance to death tolls and shows not only patterns but the relationship
between them.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">From here Wilson demonstrates
a predictable cycle of historic extremes from periods of abundance and growth
to cultural crises, or “resets,” marked by disastrous social and political
upheaval. Each cycle, per his calculations, is approximately eighty-two years
and separated into four distinct eras called “Family”, “Community”, “Self”, and
“Guardian.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>At its worst, during the
final era comes a reset that can destroy a culture—and any nations strong enough
to survive such events are forever changed.<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span>Closely examining the historical cycles of the United States from the
seventeenth century to the present, Eric details the various cultural cycles
from 1600’s to today and into the future beyond the 2100’s.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">As he argues that the
nation is poised for its next cataclysmic reset – he concludes with some hope
and a vision on navigating and preparing for future eras. In his final section,
he provides four overriding principles that will help you focus on what is
important during the reset and in the next cycle to come.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The nation’s future lies in the balance—and
Wilson’s recommendations can help us prepare.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri;">A fascinating, easily
understood exploration of history and analytics, Cultural Cycles uses practical
reasoning and intuitive insight to reveal what many sense—the next great turn
of the wheel of history</span></span></div>
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<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><u></u><u></u><u></u><u></u><br />Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-16011853897410913152017-08-24T10:00:00.000-07:002017-09-07T11:38:08.412-07:00Charlottesville is Only the Beginning<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiokwzNlzbBoNf3mnoVRn7DoDeEUneQUZYEMvq0DV1litOhRWZL8HPWc6awtdDCo931Y_mJrD7CKuBCVIWPAHC6NpfE4-zy8H72zRbuABGfLa5kmiT_7VE6_8diet770hHqnOSCqdnN2Hs/s1600/th1B49BQXY.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiokwzNlzbBoNf3mnoVRn7DoDeEUneQUZYEMvq0DV1litOhRWZL8HPWc6awtdDCo931Y_mJrD7CKuBCVIWPAHC6NpfE4-zy8H72zRbuABGfLa5kmiT_7VE6_8diet770hHqnOSCqdnN2Hs/s1600/th1B49BQXY.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Recent
events in Charlottesville, Virginia have shined a renewed light on our culture,
where we have come from, and where we still must go. Not surprising this has
set off a firestorm of emotional responses and actions from all sides.
More than thirty cities either have removed or are removing Confederate monuments,
according to a list compiled by The New York Times. In Baltimore during the
dead of night three statues the mayor and city council deemed offensive were
lifted from their moorings. As both for and against - protests and
counter protests are being organized in cities across America. </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin: 0px;">
<br />
</span></span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">President
Trump even weighed in as well a few times adding to the banter. While
there are many issues, one of the underlying debates over the Confederate
monuments espoused by Mr. Trump and others is a fight between those who wish to
preserve history and those who wish to “erase” it. I actually think the
President was partially correct – this is about history. We are in a
fight, but this just may be a fight between those who wish to learn from
history and those who wish to “relive” it.</span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin: 0px;">
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">The
history behind many of the Confederate monuments is not what most people may
think. </span></div>
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<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Most
of the oxidizing green statues and Confederate war shrines were not created
immediately after the war as a way to honor those men who died in battle. After
the Civil War our nation went through eras of rebuilding, reawaking, and
Reconstruction without trying to revive or romanticize the past. It was
not until another era following the turn of the century and early 1900’s that
the majority of these monuments were actually erected. The one in
Charlottesville for example dates to only 1924. As a matter of fact,
between the years 1900 and 1935, close to half of all of the Confederate
monuments were dedicated. To put that in perspective, in the 156 years
since the Civil War just thirty-five years during the middle of that time
accounted for more than all of the monuments for the past forty years and the
forty years immediately following the war combined. </span></div>
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><img border="0" data-original-height="839" data-original-width="1600" height="332" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU-y2FpAvsGThepNXFbgWSrWhdWmBzmmIC6tpkZmvsn3wpQjWRn-IbwnaVmCNd4f3PrZtcWWEhD3OBRhj3amxYJup420tfm848kIvat3SCQi5g6DCI9fZeVN3wEsovAMOualACGLIu4Jg/s640/whoseheritage-timeline150_years_of_iconography.jpg" width="640" /><br />
</span><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">So
why did we see this unexpected enthusiasm to preserve history during this
era? The time following the turn of the twentieth century was an era with
strong tribal or group culture. People began to - much more than the
prior era - identify in smaller homogeneous groups rather than a personal
identity or that of the collective culture. This was brought on for a variety
of reasons, but the outcome was smaller undiversified clusters of people where
they found comfort in their identification based on shared values and
beliefs. The consequences were many times the clashing between various
groups sometimes divided by gender, race, economic status, or partisan lines.
We can see this in the data as measured by the voting patterns of the U.S.
Congress. Measuring the gap or partisanship of voting between the two
major parties we see the greatest gap -or lack of cooperation - during this era
between 1900’s and 1930’s.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2jbLloELBPyXGda0nNgUyC-8dcT-ePZpDfqAP2OI_MuiotyaVte8k2nwitCMU5xGHLGux6WfVrIW4wNWOn3eCWGBvmnHxdPgjxdEQoBgyWCPETtfm1EMFiZu1SOeTW7tjVTSb3GdqvH4/s1600/image+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1224" data-original-width="1600" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2jbLloELBPyXGda0nNgUyC-8dcT-ePZpDfqAP2OI_MuiotyaVte8k2nwitCMU5xGHLGux6WfVrIW4wNWOn3eCWGBvmnHxdPgjxdEQoBgyWCPETtfm1EMFiZu1SOeTW7tjVTSb3GdqvH4/s400/image+2.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span></div>
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</div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">Add
to this, income disparity, economic uncertainty, and global unrest of the times
it brought with it a certain level of anxiety of the future and concern we
would drift too far from the past. During this time, we were caught
between nationalists longing for the glories of an imagined past, and activists
invoking ideals of a utopia they wished to attain. We saw this with the
Ku Klux Klan who had been mostly marginalized prior to this era but now with
the cultures feelings of nativism found a revival and new attention. We
had a revolution or revival of Anarchist-Communist that exploited and
influenced the Progressive Movement. We had tensions rising and saw a
domestic bombing in New York city, race riots across the country, and violence
between groups. We also had statues erected at a record pace as a
manifestation of one side or groups symbol of identification and devotion to
the past. </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">If
any of this sounds eerily familiar and much of what we are living today you are
not crazy. History does repeat itself with some commonality and in an approximate
eighty-two-year cycle. We see this today and in cycles past with
alt-right and alt-left. We see this between racial lines with Black Lives
Matter today or the ‘new negro’ movement of the 1920s. We see this between
gender lines with women’s rights movement of 1850s or alternative lifestyle
movements of today. We see the seeds of revolution or secession play out before
the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the red scare just prior to World War II,
and today with the resurgence of small like-minded tribes like the socialist
leaning ANTIFA and fascist leaning Neo-Nazi. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">The
gap or partisanship of voting in the U.S. Congress is back at an all-time high
it has not seen for eighty years. Income equality is back above 45% of
all income that was congregated amongst the top 10% of the people – a number
not seen since the late 1920’s. And instead of putting statues up they
are now trying to take many down as a manifestation of one side or groups
symbolic gesture and devotion for their ideals.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">The
problems are not the statues but the time and era we live in. We are repeating
the cycles and history of the past. What we are seeing is merely an
emotional response to a logical conclusion of where the culture has come to and
has been before. We are in the late 1700’s crying for a revolution, the mid
1800’s causing civil division, and the early 1900’s marching towards a world
conflict. We have divided ourselves as a nation as us versus them and my
tribe against yours. Unfortunately, not looking at things logically and through
history - emotionally and because of these smaller tribes and the era we are in
many people cannot detach themselves to see this. Instead many find
comfort in their echo chambers that feed the illusion they must be right and discount
and blame others if something does not fit their views or hinders them from
what they feel is just. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0px;">The
President was partially correct – this does have something to do with
history. We are in a fight with history and we have seen time and time
again that history and the cycles we live in tend to win. The emotions
and events we are witnessing are not unprecedented but predictable. The
same underlying triggers and times that raised the statues are the same
underlying triggers and times eighty years later that are now trying to bring
them down. History also tells us we will most likely keep going down this path
with even higher tensions between groups, identity politics, and creating
greater divides that will only be mended with the next looming crisis that
brings us back together</span></div>
</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri";">
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">After five years, I
have recently completed my latest book of an in depth look at the Cycles that
move a culture and the next looming reset. Stay tuned for the new book coming
this fall <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“Cultural Cycles: Examining the
History of the United States - Why It Repeats Itself, and the Next Looming
Reset</b>”.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>This book uses history and
analytics and most of all the reader’s own intuition and logic to explain the
seemly rhythmic nature of history. It answers many of the questions of why
various well-known historic events took place when they did and what we might
be able to expect in the future.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>After
extensive research of historical patterns, I not only show how and why history
does repeat itself but also provide insight to how America may be on the verge
of the next cataclysmic reset.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></i></div>
<div style="margin: 0px;">
</div>
</span><br />
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></i></div>
<b></b><i></i><u></u><sub></sub><sup></sup><strike></strike><br />Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-19600933286329994692015-08-25T18:30:00.001-07:002015-08-25T18:30:52.983-07:00By Dawn We Will Be Free<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-style: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Re-Posted by Dr. Shanon Brooks on Aug 25, 2015 </span><a href="http://www.monticellocollege.org/" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px; text-decoration: none;">monticellocollege.org/</a></em></b></em></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-style: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></b></em></div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">About a year and 1/2 ago, I was teaching in Southern California. I always try to bring a lot of stories and historical relevance to my classes and in this particular class, I had related the events surrounding the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.</em></div>
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<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">One of my students, a quiet but attentive older lady approached me after the class and with a bit of an accent, thanked me for sharing the Hungarian history and quietly shared that she had lived through that revolution. This lead to a formal interview, which then lead to her writing this book.</em></div>
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<img alt="GEORGETTE AT 19, JUST 18 MONTHS AFTER ARRIVING IN THE USA" class="size-full wp-image-1260" height="277" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Georgette-1959.jpeg" style="background: transparent; border: 0px none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="251" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 4px 5px; vertical-align: baseline;">
GEORGETTE AT 19, JUST 18 MONTHS AFTER ARRIVING IN THE USA</div>
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At the end of WWII, the Soviet Army pushed the Nazi’s out of East Europe and began to occupy it. It was 1945 when they invaded Hungary and made it a communist state, one of the most repressed in the world.</div>
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Georgette and her family quickly went from a comfortable middle class life in Budapest, Hungary to being prisoners of one of the most horrific political systems in modern times.</div>
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Thousands of Hungarians were arrested, imprisoned, and tortured. Many died of starvation, and of foul conditions after being forced from their homes and made to live in camps.</div>
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Some were executed. Georgette and her family knew they had to escape or they faced the same fate as their unfortunate neighbors.</div>
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<img alt="GEORGETTE IN CALIFORNIA TODAY" class="size-full wp-image-1261" height="375" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/GEORGETTE.jpg" style="background: transparent; border: 0px none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="250" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 4px 5px; vertical-align: baseline;">
GEORGETTE IN CALIFORNIA TODAY</div>
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Georgette was captured by Russians soldiers, hunted by a communist spy in Austria, and suffered the consequences of a failed attempt to escape through the infamous <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Iron Curtain</strong>, all before she was seventeen years old.</div>
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Georgette tells the riveting narrative of a brave child and teenager, who lived through the tyranny of Stalinist communism and ultimately triumphed on the free soil of the United States of America.</div>
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Georgette is normally a soft-spoken family-oriented woman who transforms into a passionate promoter when it comes to freedom and the dangers of loosing basic human rights.</div>
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This book provides a perspective that is difficult for Americans to imagine. This reading experience strengthens families and helps you see liberty in a vivid and deeply personal manner.</div>
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<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">READ <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dawn-Well-Be-Free/dp/0985857072/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1440511281&sr=1-1&keywords=by+dawn+we%27ll+be+free" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">BY DAWN WE’LL BE FREE</a> WITH YOUR FAMILY TODAY!</strong></div>
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We are planning to bring Georgette to Utah on a speaking tour. If you are interested in such an event please email Mr Brooks.</div>
Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-38883163745667671872015-08-24T18:26:00.000-07:002015-08-25T18:33:13.300-07:00What Are The Georgics<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Re-Posted by Dr. Shanon Brooks on Aug 24, 2015 </span><a href="http://www.monticellocollege.org/" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px; text-decoration: none;">monticellocollege.org/</a></em></b><br />
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CHICKENS ROAMING THE YARD AT MONTICELLO COLLEGE</div>
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“<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What are the Georgics?</strong>,” is a really good question. Let me qualify myself before I attempt to answer this.<br />
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I grew up on a 40-acre farm with 1,000 chickens, 30 head of cattle, 10 pigs and an assortment of ducks, geese, cats, and dogs etc.<br />
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So I understand farm life and nature’s birth, growth and death cycle, puny man’s dependence on Providence for hay crops, 3:00am calving emergencies, the untimely death of a beloved animal, the threat of coyotes–you see where I am going with this.<br />
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I am also a self-styled entrepreneur. I have not worked anywhere for the last 20 years that I did not take a hand in creating the company or institution of my employ. So when I was introduced to the concept of Georgics, it made sense to me right away. But as our culture has moved away from the concept of the Georgics, fewer and fewer people understand what this is and why it is important.</div>
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When the term<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/231" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Georgics</a></strong> is mentioned in conversation, I have observed that people usually rely on one of three responses or definitions:</div>
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1) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrepreneur" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">entrepreneurship</a></div>
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2) farming–specifically growing and storing one’s own food, being at some level self-sufficient, working with nature to self-sustain</div>
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3) they have no clue</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Entrepreneurship</strong></div>
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<a href="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/images-13.jpeg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-59" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/images-13.jpeg" height="245" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="images (1)" width="206" /></a>Entrepreneurship is the American trait of “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_ingenuity" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yankee Ingenuity</a>“, the ability to dream, to ask questions, the innate curiosity of how something works or how it can be done better or the determination to never stop when faced with a difficulty, to just keep going until the problem is solved, or even just the willingness to work hard, save and build a better tomorrow.<br />
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In a climate of freedom, this self-motivation and self-reliance on one’s own abilities is the life blood of a country. It drives an economy and the standard of living. It can lead to strong families and communities if used in conjunction with a belief in the Divine, but it does not naturally lead to a reliance on Providence.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Farming</strong></div>
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<a href="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/images-23.jpeg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-61" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/images-23.jpeg" height="206" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="images (2)" width="245" /></a>Farming is likely one of the most misunderstood concepts of past 60 years. Since the advent of corporate-industrialized mono-crop farming and the demise of small-diverse-family-farms, the benefits and image of family farming has altogether been lost on the horizon of the American consciousness.<br />
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The original American family farming concept was that the purpose of the farm was to meet the family’s needs as much as possible and trade the farm surplus for the remainder of the family needs.</div>
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During the 1600’s and 1700’s, the American family produced between 70 and 100 percent of their own food. By the 1850’s, it was still as much as 50%. Entering the 20th century, the average non-farming American family still had chickens, a large family garden and canned or somehow preserved a large portion of what they produced for winter and spring consumption.</div>
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<a href="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/images7.jpeg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="alignright size-full wp-image-62" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/images7.jpeg" height="259" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="images" width="194" /></a>As a kid in the 70’s and 80’s living in the Pacific Northwest, I remember growing and harvesting from our 1/2 acre garden. All winter long, mom would send us (usually me as the oldest) down into the bowels of the creepiest basement in the state without a doubt, to fetch a few quarts of home canned tomatoes or beets from the shelves or maybe recover some carrots or potatoes or onions from the bins of sand and sawdust.<br />
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Not until the mid 1980’s did the idea of producing your own loose its American status and become a thing that only <a href="http://americanpreppersnetwork.com/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">preppers</a> or rednecks did.<br />
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The transition of the dairy where I spent my summers during my last adolescent years was astounding. In less than a decade the culture changed from purchasing whole milk in reusable 1/2 gal. glass bottles right from the farm to only purchasing cartoned milk (likely the same milk) from the shelves of a super Walmart.<br />
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From a financial perspective, it was a great move for my farmer boss, he made much more money during the late 80’s selling manure and landscaping supplies than he ever did selling milk and cows. But at what cost?<br />
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So what are the Georgics?</strong></div>
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I have been in heated arguments about the definition of the term Georgics. Modern, never-farmed-city-dwellers are very keen on the Entrepreneurship definition, stating that entrepreneurship and farming are really the same thing at their core and that we are now simply in a more enlightened era.</div>
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Only someone who has never grown, harvested, and relied on themselves to produce their own food and hence, missed the significance of the process, would ever give such an general response. On the other hand, farmers alone don’t have all of the answers, especially modern monoculture corporate farmers.<br />
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If we want to understand the Georgics, perhaps we should go to the author of the phrase–the Roman Poet Virgil.</div>
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<a href="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/virgil-b1.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-63" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/virgil-b1-216x300.jpg" height="300" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="virgil-b" width="216" /></a>The <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Georgics</strong> is a poem written by the Roman poet <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="Virgil">Virgil</a>, likely published in 29 BC. As its name suggests (Georgica, from the Greek word georgein, ‘to farm’) the subject of the poem is agriculture and the human relationship to it.<br />
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As Virgil describes the cycles of crops, the seasons, the weather — the birth, death and rebirth that mark the natural world, he provides us with a complex, realistic, and painful reminder of the reality of the human condition.<br />
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Georgics speak directly of the foundationalism of the earth and specifically the act of farming. This literary work communicates from more than two millennia earlier, the basic concept that man’s liberty, indeed, his life is dependent upon himself, working the earth and depending on Providence.<br />
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The Georgics had a profound impact on the American founding and the 300 years that followed. Until recently, it greatly defined the phenomenon of being “American.”<br />
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I believe that the essence and modern application of the Georgics is a combination of entrepreneurship and farming. Clearly the early American farmers and ranchers had what it took in the entrepreneurship department. But today it seems every action is defined not by liberty and self-reliance but by the dollar value of that action. Standard of living has been hijacked and redefined as quality of life (they are not the same). Both entrepreneurship and farming have succumbed to the allure of the dollar.<br />
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This is neither consistent with happy living or economically sustainable. Corporate or mass farming or production of food takes us away from a vital and almost spiritual process of personal wellbeing. Nurturing, and caring for plants and animals that then fulfill our physical and nutritional needs, somehow completes the circle of life.<br />
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For more on how to family farm, read <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_22?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+new+organic+grower&sprefix=the+new+organic+grower" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The New Organic Grower</a></em></strong>, by Elliot Coleman.</div>
Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-91771037872838293192015-07-27T18:19:00.000-07:002015-08-25T18:19:51.968-07:00Stop Stealing Dreams<div class="p17" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Re-Posted by Dr. Shanon Brooks on July 27, 2015 </span><a href="http://www.monticellocollege.org/" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px; text-decoration: none;">monticellocollege.org/</a></em></div>
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Godin NAILED IT!!</div>
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<img alt="Stop-Stealing-Dreams-Seth" class="alignright size-full wp-image-1185" height="239" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Stop-Stealing-Dreams-Seth.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="360" />I have been promoting these ideas for the last 20 years. I hated school and was very much against all “education” until Oliver DeMille first introduced me to these concepts in the early 1990’s.</div>
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But these aren’t new ideas, they had been talked about for a long time since the 1940’s and 50’s. Great minds such as Mortimer Adler, Jacque Barzun, Robert Hutchins, Louise Cowan, Neal Flinders, and countless other have been sounding the warning for decades.</div>
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So while I strongly encourage you to read the full text of Seth Godin’s <a href="http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/docs/stopstealingdreamsscreen.pdf" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">STOP STEALING DREAMS</a>, I am giving you a few excerpts here.</div>
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This is the best introduction to POST INDUSTRIAL AMERICA AND EDUCATION I have seen so far. Enjoy!</div>
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By the way…this post is 5,000 words. That does not mean you have to read it all. It means that out of a 40,000 word e-book I am suggesting you read 11% to try it out. It means that if you read this and like it, you should go to<a href="http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/docs/stopstealingdreamsscreen.pdf" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Seth’s site and read the rest of his revolutionary book.</a> The future depends on you.</div>
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<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Back to (the wrong) school</i></b></div>
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A hundred and fifty years ago, adults were incensed about child labor. Low-wage kids were taking jobs away from hard-working adults.</div>
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Sure, there was some moral outrage about seven-year-olds losing fingers and being abused at work, but the economic rationale was paramount. Factory owners insisted that losing child workers would be catastrophic to their industries and fought hard to keep the kids at work—they said they couldn’t afford to hire adults. It wasn’t until 1918 that nationwide compulsory education was in place.</div>
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Part of the rationale used to sell this major transformation to industrialists was the idea that educated kids would actually become more compliant and produc-tive workers. Our current system of teaching kids to sit in straight rows and obey instructions isn’t a coincidence—it was an investment in our economic future. The plan: trade short-term child-labor wages for longer-term productivity by giving kids a head start in doing what they’re told.</div>
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Large-scale education was not developed to motivate kids or to create scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system. Scale was more important than quality, just as it was for most industrialists.</div>
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Of course, it worked. Several generations of productive, fully employed workers followed. But now?</div>
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Nobel prize–winning economist Michael Spence makes this really clear: there are tradable jobs (doing things that could be done somewhere else, like building cars, designing chairs, and answering the phone) and non-tradable jobs (like mowing the lawn or cooking burgers). Is there any question that the first kind of job is worth keeping in our economy?</div>
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Alas, Spence reports that from 1990 to 2008, the U.S. economy added only 600,000 tradable jobs.</div>
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<i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you do a job where someone tells you exactly what to do, he will find someone cheaper than you to do it. </i>And yet our schools are churning out kids who are stuck looking<i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </i>for jobs where the boss tells them exactly what to do.</div>
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Do you see the disconnect here? Every year, we churn out millions of workers who are trained to do 1925-style labor.</div>
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THE POST INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IS HERE</div>
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The bargain (take kids out of work so we can teach them to become better factory workers as adults) has set us on a race to the bottom. Some people argue</div>
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that we ought to become the cheaper, easier country for sourcing cheap, compliant workers who do what they’re told.</div>
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Even if we could win that race, we’d lose. The bottom is not a good place to be, even if you’re capable of getting there.</div>
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As we get ready for the ninety-third year of universal public education, here’s the question every parent and taxpayer needs to wrestle with: Are we going to applaud, push, or even permit our schools (including most of the private ones) to continue the safe but ultimately doomed strategy of churning out predictable, testable, and mediocre factory workers?</div>
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As long as we embrace (or even accept) standardized testing, fear of science, little attempt at teaching leadership, and most of all, the bureaucratic imperative to turn education into a factory itself, we’re in big trouble.</div>
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The post-industrial revolution is here. Do you care enough to teach your kids to take advantage of it?</div>
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<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What is school for?</i></b></div>
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It seems a question so obvious that it’s hardly worth asking. And yet there are many possible answers. Here are a few (I’m talking about public or widespread private education here, grade K through college):</div>
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To create a society that’s culturally coordinated.</div>
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To further science and knowledge and pursue information for its own sake.</div>
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To enhance civilization while giving people the tools to make informed decisions.</div>
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To train people to become productive workers.</div>
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Over the last three generations, the amount of school we’ve delivered to the public has gone way up—more people are spending more hours being schooled than ever before. And the cost of that schooling is going up even faster, with trillions of dollars being spent on delivering school on a massive scale.</div>
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Until recently, school did a fabulous job on just one of these four societal goals. First, the other three:</div>
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<i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A culturally coordinated society: </i>School isn’t nearly as good at this as television is.<i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </i>There’s a huge gulf between the cultural experience in an under-funded, over-crowded city school and the cultural experience in a well-funded school in the suburbs. There’s a significant cultural distinction between a high school drop-out and a Yale graduate. There are significant chasms in something as simple as whether you think the scientific method is useful—where you went to school says a lot about what you were taught. If school’s goal is to create a foundation for a common culture, it hasn’t delivered at nearly the level it is capable of.</div>
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<i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake: </i>We spend a fortune teaching trigonome-try to kids who don’t understand it, won’t use it, and will spend no more of their lives studying math. We invest thousands of hours exposing millions of students to fiction and literature, but end up training most of them to never again read for fun (one study found that 58 percent of all Americans never read for pleasure after they graduate from school). As soon as we associate reading a book with taking a test, we’ve missed the point.</div>
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We continually raise the bar on what it means to be a college professor, but churn out Ph.D.s who don’t actually teach and aren’t particularly productive at research, either. We teach facts, but the amount of knowledge truly absorbed is miniscule.</div>
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<i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The tools to make smart decisions: </i>Even though just about everyone in the West has<i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </i>been through years of compulsory schooling, we see ever more belief in un-founded theories, bad financial decisions, and poor community and family planning. People’s connection with science and the arts is tenuous at best, and the financial acumen of the typical consumer is pitiful. If the goal was to raise the standards for rational thought, skeptical investigation, and useful decision making, we’ve failed for most of our citizens.</div>
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No, I think it’s clear that school was designed with a particular function in mind, and it’s one that school has delivered on for a hundred years.</div>
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Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers built school to train people to have a lifetime of productive labor as part of the industrialized economy. And it worked.</div>
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All the rest is a byproduct, a side effect (sometimes a happy one) of the schooling system that we built to train the workforce we needed for the industrialized economy.</div>
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If school’s function is to create the workers we need to fuel our economy, we need to change school, because the workers we need have changed as well.</div>
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The mission used to be to create homogenized, obedient, satisfied workers and pliant, eager consumers.</div>
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No longer.</div>
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Changing school doesn’t involve sharpening the pencil we’ve already got. School reform cannot succeed if it focuses on getting schools to do a better job of what we previously asked them to do. <i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">We don’t need more of what schools produce when</i> <i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">they’re working as designed</i>. The challenge, then, is to change the very output of<i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </i>the school before we start spending even more time and money improving the performance of the school.</div>
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The goal of this manifesto is to create a new set of questions and demands that parents, taxpayers, and kids can bring to the people they’ve chosen, the institu-tion we’ve built and invested our time and money into. The goal is to change what we get when we send citizens to school.</div>
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<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Mass production desires to produce mass</i></b></div>
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<img alt=""Rather than protect jobs or increase the minimum wage, we should consider improving our antiquated education system", says Ryan Feit, CEO of SeedInvest" class="size-medium wp-image-1188" height="173" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/459234860-300x173.jpg" style="background: transparent; border: 0px none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="300" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 4px 5px; vertical-align: baseline;">
“Rather than protect jobs or increase the minimum wage, we should consider improving our antiquated education system”, says Ryan Feit, CEO of SeedInvest</div>
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That statement seems obvious, yet it surprises us that schools are oriented around the notion of uniformity. Even though the workplace and civil society demand variety, the industrialized school system works to stamp it out.</div>
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The industrialized mass nature of school goes back to the very beginning, to the common school and the normal school and the idea of universal schooling. All of which were invented at precisely the same time we were perfecting mass production and interchangeable parts and then mass marketing.</div>
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Some quick background:</div>
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The common school (now called a public school) was a brand new concept, created shortly after the Civil War. “Common” because it was for everyone, for the kids of the farmer, the kids of the potter, and the kids of the local shopkeeper. Horace Mann is generally regarded as the father of the institution, but he didn’t have to fight nearly as hard as you would imagine—because industrialists were on his side. The two biggest challenges of a newly industrial economy were finding enough compliant workers and finding enough eager customers. The common school solved both problems.</div>
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The normal school (now called a teacher’s college) was developed to indoctrinate teachers into the system of the common school, ensuring that there would be a coherent approach to the processing of students. If this sounds parallel to the notion of factories producing items in bulk, of interchangeable parts, of the notion of measurement and quality, it’s not an accident.</div>
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The world has changed, of course. It has changed into a culture fueled by a market that knows how to mass-customize, to find the edges and the weird, and to cater to what the individual demands instead of insisting on conformity.</div>
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Mass customization of school isn’t easy. Do we have any choice, though? If mass production and mass markets are falling apart, we really don’t have the right to insist that the schools we designed for a different era will function well now.</div>
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Those who worry about the nature of schools face a few choices, but it’s clear that one of them is <i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">not</i> business as usual. One option is smaller units within schools, less industrial in outlook, with each unit creating its own varieties of leaders and citizens. The other is an organization that understands that size can be an asset, but only if the organization values customization instead of fighting it.</div>
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The current structure, which seeks low-cost uniformity that meets minimum standards, is killing our economy, our culture, and us.</div>
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<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Frederick J. Kelly and your nightmares</i></b></div>
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In 1914, a professor in Kansas invented the multiple-choice test. Yes, it’s less than a hundred years old.</div>
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There was an emergency on. World War I was ramping up, hundreds of thou-sands of new immigrants needed to be processed and educated, and factories were hungry for workers. The government had just made two years of high school mandatory, and we needed a temporary, high-efficiency way to sort students and quickly assign them to appropriate slots.</div>
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In the words of Professor Kelly, “This is a test of lower order thinking for the lower orders.”</div>
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<img alt="“This is a test of lower order thinking for the lower orders.” Frederick J. Kelly" class="size-full wp-image-1189" height="193" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/images1.jpeg" style="background: transparent; border: 0px none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="262" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 4px 5px; vertical-align: baseline;">
“This is a test of lower order thinking for the lower orders.” Frederick J. Kelly</div>
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A few years later, as President of the University of Idaho, Kelly disowned the idea, pointing out that it was an appropriate method to test only a tiny portion of what is actually taught and should be abandoned. The industrialists and the mass educators revolted and he was fired.</div>
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The SAT, the single most important filtering device used to measure the effect of school on each individual, is based (almost without change) on Kelly’s lower-order thinking test. Still.</div>
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The reason is simple. Not because it works. No, we do it because it’s the easy and efficient way to keep the mass production of students moving forward.</div>
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<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To efficiently run a school, amplify fear (and destroy passion)</i></b></div>
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School’s industrial, scaled-up, measurable structure means that fear must be used to keep the masses in line. There’s no other way to get hundreds or thousands of kids to comply, to process that many bodies, en masse, without simultaneous coordination.</div>
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And the flip side of this fear and conformity must be that passion will be destroyed. There’s no room for someone who wants to go faster, or someone who wants to do something else, or someone who cares about a particular issue. Move on. Write it in your notes; there will be a test later. A multiple-choice test.</div>
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Do we need more fear?</div>
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Less passion?</div>
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<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Is it possible to teach attitudes?</i></b></div>
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The notion that an organization could teach anything at all is a relatively new one.</div>
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Traditionally, society assumed that artists, singers, artisans, writers, scientists, and alchemists would find their calling, then find a mentor, and<i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">then</i> learn their craft. It was absurd to think that you’d take people off the street and teach them</div>
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to do science or to sing, and persist at that teaching long enough for them to get excited about it.</div>
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Now that we’ve built an industrial solution to teaching in bulk, we’ve seduced ourselves into believing that the only thing that can be taught is the way to get high SAT scores.</div>
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We shouldn’t be buying this.</div>
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We can teach people to make commitments, to overcome fear, to deal transparently, to initiate, and to plan a course.</div>
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We can teach people to desire lifelong learning, to express themselves, and to innovate.</div>
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And just as important, it’s vital we acknowledge that we can <i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">unteach</i>bravery and creativity and initiative. And that we have been doing just that.</div>
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School has become an industrialized system, working on a huge scale, that has significant byproducts, including the destruction of many of the attitudes and emotions we’d like to build our culture around.</div>
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In order to efficiently jam as much testable data into a generation of kids, we push to make those children compliant, competitive zombies.</div>
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<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Reinventing school</i></b></div>
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<img alt="Monticello College meets every one of these criteria" class="size-full wp-image-1190" height="148" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/download.png" style="background: transparent; border: 0px none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="210" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 4px 5px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Monticello College meets every one of these criteria</div>
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If the new goal of school is to create something different from what we have now, and if new technologies and new connections are changing the way school can deliver its lessons, it’s time for a change.</div>
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Here are a dozen ways school can be rethought:</div>
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Homework during the day, lectures at night</div>
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Open book, open note, all the time</div>
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Access to any course, anywhere in the world</div>
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Precise, focused instruction instead of mass, generalized instruction</div>
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The end of multiple-choice exams</div>
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Experience instead of test scores as a measure of achievement</div>
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The end of compliance as an outcome</div>
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Cooperation instead of isolation</div>
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Amplification of outlying students, teachers, and ideas</div>
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Transformation of the role of the teacher</div>
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Lifelong learning, earlier work</div>
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Death of the nearly famous college</div>
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It’s easier than ever to open a school, to bring new technology into school, and to change how we teach. But if all we do with these tools is teach compliance and consumption, that’s all we’re going to get. School can and must do more than train the factory workers of tomorrow.</div>
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<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fast, flexible, and focused</i></b></div>
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It’s clear that the economy has changed. What we want and expect from our best citizens has changed. Not only in what we do when we go to our jobs, but also in the doors that have been opened for people who want to make an impact on our culture.</div>
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At the very same time, the acquisition of knowledge has been forever transformed by the Internet. Often overlooked in the rush to waste time at Facebook and YouTube is the fact that the Internet is the most efficient and powerful information delivery system ever developed.</div>
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The change in the economy and the delivery of information online combine to amplify the speed of change. These rapid cycles are overwhelming the ability of the industrialized system of education to keep up.</div>
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As a result, the education-industrial system, the one that worked very well in creating a century’s worth of factory workers, lawyers, nurses, and soldiers, is now obsolete.</div>
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We can prop it up or we can fix it.</div>
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I don’t think it’s practical to say, “We want what we’ve been getting, but cheaper and better.” That’s not going to happen, and I’m not sure we want it to, anyway.</div>
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We need school to produce something different, and the only way for that to happen is for us to ask new questions and make new demands on every element of the educational system we’ve built. Whenever teachers, administrators, or board members respond with an answer that refers to a world before the rules changed, they must stop and start their answer again.</div>
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No, we do not need you to create compliance.</div>
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No, we do not need you to cause meaningless memorization.</div>
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And no, we do not need you to teach students to embrace the status quo.</div>
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Anything a school does to advance those three agenda items is not just a waste of money, but actually works against what we do need. The real shortage we face is dreams, and the wherewithal and the will to make them come true.</div>
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No tweaks. A revolution.</div>
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<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Dreams are difficult to build and easy to destroy</i></b></div>
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By their nature, dreams are evanescent. They flicker long before they shine brightly. And when they’re flickering, it’s not particularly difficult for a parent or a teacher or a gang of peers to snuff them out.</div>
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Creating dreams is more difficult. They’re often related to where we grow up, who our parents are, and whether or not the right person enters our life.</div>
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Settling for the not-particularly uplifting dream of a boring, steady job isn’t helpful. Dreaming of being picked—picked to be on TV or picked to play on a team or picked to be lucky—isn’t helpful either. We waste our time and the time of our students when we set them up with pipe dreams that don’t empower them to adapt (or better yet, lead) when the world doesn’t work out as they hope.</div>
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The dreams we need are self-reliant dreams. We need dreams based not on what is but on what might be. We need students who can learn how to learn, who can discover how to push themselves and are generous enough and honest enough to engage with the outside world to make those dreams happen.</div>
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I think we’re doing a great job of destroying dreams at the very same time the dreams we do hold onto aren’t nearly bold enough.</div>
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<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The connection revolution is upon us</i></b></div>
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<img alt="download" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1191" height="150" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/download2-300x150.jpeg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="300" />It sells the moment short to call this the Internet revolution. In fact, the era that marks the end of the industrial age and the beginning of something new is ultimately about connection.</div>
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The industrial revolution wasn’t about inventing manufacturing, it was about amplifying it to the point where it changed everything. And the connection revolution doesn’t invent connection, of course, but it amplifies it to become the dominant force in our economy.</div>
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Connecting people to one another.</div>
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Connecting seekers to data.</div>
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Connecting businesses to each other.</div>
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Connecting tribes of similarly minded individuals into larger, more effective organizations.</div>
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Connecting machines to each other and creating value as a result.</div>
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In the connection revolution, value is not created by increasing the productivity of those manufacturing a good or a service. Value is created by connecting buyers to sellers, producers to consumers, and the passionate to each other.</div>
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This meta-level of value creation is hard to embrace if you’re used to measuring sales per square foot or units produced per hour. In fact, though, connection leads to an extraordinary boost in productivity, efficiency, and impact.</div>
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In the connected world, reputation is worth more than test scores. Access to data means that data isn’t the valuable part; the processing is what matters. Most of all, the connected world rewards those with an uncontrollable itch to make and lead and matter.</div>
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In the pre-connected world, information was scarce, and hoarding it was smart. Information needed to be processed in isolation, by individuals. After school, you were on your own.</div>
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In the connected world, all of that scarcity is replaced by abundance—an abundance of information, networks, and interactions.</div>
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<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What if we told students the truth?</i></b></div>
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Transparency in the traditional school might destroy it. If we told the truth about the irrelevance of various courses, about the relative quality of some teachers, about the power of choice and free speech—could the school as we know it survive?</div>
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What happens when the connection revolution collides with the school?</div>
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Unlike just about every other institution and product line in our economy, transparency is missing from education. Students are lied to and so are parents. At some point, teenagers realize that most of school is a game, but the system never acknowledges it. In search of power, control and independence, administrators hide information from teachers, and vice versa.</div>
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Because school was invented to control students and give power to the state, it’s not surprising that the relationships are fraught with mistrust.</div>
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The very texture of the traditional school matches the organization and culture of the industrial economy. The bottom of the pyramid stores the students, with teachers (middle managers) following instructions from their bosses.</div>
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As in the traditional industrial organization, the folks at the bottom of the school are ignored, mistreated, and lied to. They are kept in the dark about anything outside of what they need to know to do their job (being a student), and put to work to satisfy the needs of the people in charge. Us and them.</div>
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The connection economy destroys the illusion of control. Students have the ability to find out which colleges are a good value, which courses make no sense,</div>
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and how people in the real world are actually making a living. They have the ability to easily do outside research, even in fifth grade, and to discover that the teacher (or her textbook) is just plain wrong.</div>
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When students can take entire courses outside of the traditional school, how does the school prevent that? When passionate students can start their own political movements, profitable companies, or worthwhile community projects without the aegis of a school, how are obedience and fealty enforced?</div>
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It’s impossible to lie and manipulate when you have no power.</div>
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<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The decision</i></b></div>
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We don’t ask students to decide to participate. We assume the contract of adhesion, and relentlessly put information in front of them, with homework to do and tests to take.</div>
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Entirely skipped: commitment. Do you want to learn this? Will you decide to become good at this?</div>
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The universal truth is beyond question—the only people who excel are those who have decided to do so. Great doctors or speakers or skiers or writers or musicians are great because somewhere along the way, they made the choice.</div>
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Why have we completely denied the importance of this choice?</div>
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<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Exploiting the instinct to hide</i></b></div>
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Human beings have, like all animals, a great ability to hide from the things they fear.</div>
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In the name of comportment and compliance and the processing of millions, school uses that instinct to its advantage. At the heart of the industrial system is power—the power of bosses over workers, the power of buyers over suppliers, and the power of marketers over consumers.</div>
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<img alt="intrapreneurs_diagrma1" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1193" height="338" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/intrapreneurs_diagrma1-e1438019692367.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="450" />Given the assignment of indoctrinating a thousand kids at a time, the embattled school administrator reaches for the most effective tool available. Given that the assigned output of school is compliant citizens, the shortcut for achieving this output was fear.</div>
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The amygdala, sometimes called the lizard brain, is the fear center of the brain. It is on high alert during moments of stress. It is afraid of snakes. It causes our heart to race during a scary movie and our eyes to avoid direct contact with someone in authority.</div>
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The shortcut to compliance, then, isn’t to reason with someone, to outline the options, and to sell a solution. No, the shortcut is to induce fear, to activate the amygdala. Do this or we’ll laugh at you, expel you, tell your parents, make you sit in the corner. Do this or you will get a bad grade, be suspended, never amount to anything. Do this or you are in trouble.</div>
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Once the fear transaction is made clear, it can get ever more subtle. A fearsome teacher might need no more than a glance to quiet down his classroom.</div>
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But that’s not enough for the industrial school. It goes further than merely ensuring classroom comportment. Fear is used to ensure that no one stretches too far, questions the status quo, or makes a ruckus. Fear is reinforced in career planning, in academics, and even in interpersonal interactions. Fear lives in the guidance office, too.</div>
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The message is simple: better fit in or you won’t get into a good school. If you get into a good school and do what they say, you’ll get a good job, and you’ll be fine. But if you don’t—it’ll go on your permanent record.</div>
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Years ago, five friends and a I were put in charge of a 150 rowdy fifth-graders for a long weekend up in Canada. It was almost impossible to be heard over the din—until I stumbled onto the solution. All we had to say was, “points will be deducted,” and compliance appeared. There weren’t any points and there wasn’t any prize, but merely the threat of lost points was sufficient.</div>
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Instead of creating a social marketplace where people engage and grow, school is a maelstrom, a whirlpool that pushes for sameness and dumbs down the individual while it attempts to raise the average.</div>
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<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The other side of fear is passion</i></b></div>
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There really are only two tools available to the educator. The easy one is fear. Fear is easy to awake, easy to maintain, but ultimately toxic.</div>
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The other tool is passion. A kid in love with dinosaurs or baseball or earth science is going to learn it on her own. She’s going to push hard for ever more information, and better still, master the thinking behind it.</div>
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Passion can overcome fear—the fear of losing, of failing, of being ridiculed.</div>
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The problem is that individual passion is hard to scale—hard to fit into the industrial model. It’s not reliably ignited. It’s certainly harder to create for large masses of people. Sure, it’s easy to get a convention center filled with delegates to chant for a candidate, and easier still to engage the masses at Wembley Stadium, but the passion that fuels dreams and creates change must come from the individual, not from a demigod.</div>
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<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The industrial age pervaded all of our culture</i></b></div>
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There has been no bigger change in ten thousand years of recorded human history than the overwhelming transformation of society and commerce and health and civilization that was enabled (or caused) by industrialization.</div>
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We’re so surrounded by it that it seems normal and permanent and preordained, but we need to lay it out in stark relief to see how it has created the world we live in.</div>
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In just a few generations, society went from agrarian and distributed to corporatized and centralized. In order to overhaul the planet, a bunch of things had to work in concert:</div>
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Infrastructure changes, including paving the earth, laying pipe, building cities, wiring countries for communication, etc.</div>
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Government changes, which meant permitting corporations to engage with the king, to lobby, and to receive the benefits of infrastructure and policy investments. “Corporations are people, friend.”</div>
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Education changes, including universal literacy, an expectation of widespread commerce, and most of all, the practice of instilling the instinct to obey civil (as opposed to government) authority.</div>
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None of this could have happened if there had been widespread objections from individuals. It turns out, though, that it was relatively easy to enforce and then teach corporate and educational obedience. It turns out that industrializing the schooling of billions of people was a natural fit, a process that quickly turned into a virtuous cycle: obedient students were turned into obedient teachers, who were then able to create even more obedient students. We’re wired for this stuff.</div>
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The system churned out productivity and money from the start. This result encouraged all the parties involved to amplify what they were doing—more lobbying, more infrastructure, more obedience. It took only a hundred and fifty years, but the industrial age remade the entire population of the planet, from Detroit to Kibera.</div>
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The cornerstone of the entire process was how well the notion of obedience fit into the need for education. We needed educated workers, and teaching them to</div>
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be obedient helped us educate them. And we needed obedient workers, and the work of educating them reinforced the desired behavior.</div>
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As the industrial age peters out, as the growth fades away, the challenge is this: training creative, independent, and innovative artists is new to us. We can’t use the old tools, because <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">resorting to obedience to teach passion</strong> just isn’t going to work. Our instinct, the easy go-to tool of activating the amygdala, isn’t going to work this time.</div>
Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-33407407800006799722015-07-04T18:14:00.000-07:002015-08-25T18:20:22.463-07:00Prepping for the Forth of July<div class="p1" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Re-Posted by Dr. Shanon Brooks on July 4, 2015 </span><a href="http://www.monticellocollege.org/" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px; text-decoration: none;">monticellocollege.org/</a></em></b></div>
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<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men </b><b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">who signed the Declaration of Independence? Their story. .</b> .</div>
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Five signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured before they died.</div>
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Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.</div>
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Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army; another had two sons captured.</div>
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Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War.</div>
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They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.</div>
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What kind of men were they?</div>
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Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists.</div>
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Eleven were merchants.</div>
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Nine were farmers and large plantation owners; men of means, well educated.</div>
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But they signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.</div>
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Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags.</div>
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Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were taken from him, and poverty was his reward.</div>
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Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall, Clymer, Walton , Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.</div>
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At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to open fire. The home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.</div>
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Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife, and she died within a few months.</div>
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John Hart was driven from his wife’s bedside as she was dying. Their 13 children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children vanished.</div>
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So, take a few minutes while enjoying your 4th of July holiday and silently thank these patriots. It’s not much to ask for the price they paid.</div>
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Remember: freedom is never free!</div>
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As an added bonus for your 4th of July prep, here is an essay written by my mentor of 20 years – Oliver DeMille.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Liber and Public Virtue</strong></div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Oliver DeMille</em></strong></div>
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A speech delivered by Dr. Oliver DeMille at America’s Freedom Festival on June 30, 2000. Oliver DeMille is a well known author and lecturer on education and liberty. His works include: <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A Thomas Jefferson Education</em>,<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">1913</em>, <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Coming Aristocracy</em>, <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">FreedomShift, The U.S. Constitution and the 196 Indispensable Principles of Freedom, LeaderShift, We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident, </em>and several others.</div>
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The Liber</div>
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On July 4, 1776 John Hancock, as head of the Continental Congress, signed his name at the bottom of the newly written Declaration of Independence and sent it to the world. The rest of the signers didn’t sign until Congress reconvened on August 2. So for a month John Hancock’s name stood alone declaring independence from the greatest power on the face of the earth.</div>
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What motivates a man to voluntarily sacrifice his own safety, jeopardizing his family and all his earthly possessions on the lean hope that his neighbors and nation will support him, and even if they do, that his side has any chance of winning? What motivates a man to voluntarily submit himself to the legal and violent reaction that he knew would come, and which surely did come?</div>
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There are two phrases which have been forgotten today, but which help explain why a man like John Hancock, and so many others in his generation, would choose what they did at such high cost. These two phrases were the foundation of freedom on July 4, 1776.</div>
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In those days, the average farmer or housewife understood both of these phrases, and based on the response to the Federalist Papers, could have debated and discussed them openly. Unfortunately, in the year 2000, neither phrase is widely understood. The first phrase is public virtue, the second is Liber.</div>
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I have submitted these two phrases to thousands of people in seminars around the nation, and I have often stopped at this point in my presentation and asked how many people could give me a definition of Public Virtue or Liber. A few people have known Liber, and in most seminars several people raise their hand and try to define Public Virtue. A few have even come close.</div>
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So what do these phrases mean?</div>
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Liber is the Latin word for tree or tree bark, and since tree bark was used to write on and make contracts with, and processed to make paper for more writing and contracts, theword Liber can be associated with those who can read, write and engage in contract. With this definition, in the classical world of Greece and Rome, there were two classes of people: slaves and Liber.</div>
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There were varying levels and types of slaves and peasants, and likewise different types of Liber: from citizens to merchants to the aristocracy and royalty. But the fundamental difference between slaves and Liber was freedom, and Liber is the root word of Liberty. It is also the root of book, libro, and library.</div>
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Liberty is the state of being Liber. Liberty is not just the absence of bondage, but the fitness of the individual to act as a citizen.</div>
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Liber is also the root of the phrase “liberal arts”, such as in liberal arts colleges; the arts in a Bachelor of Arts or B.A. degree comes from the liberal arts. The liberal arts are the knowledge and skills necessary to remain free. As Robert M. Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago, put it: “. . . liberal education . . . is the education that prepares us to be free men. You have to have this education if you . . . are going to be an effective citizen of a democracy; for citizenship requires that . . . you do not leave your duties to be performed by others . . . . A free society is composed of freemen. To be free you have to be educated for freedom.”</div>
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What are those arts? Well, for the founders they were the arts of reading the classics and thinking clearly and independently.</div>
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The Founding generation was a generation of Liber, of men and women and children who could read the law and government bills and resolutions in detail and understand and debate them. These regular farmers and housewives read and hotly debated the Federalist Papers in New York in 1789.</div>
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History has proven that Freedom is not free. It must be earned. And one of the ways the Founding generation earned it was in becoming Liber: getting the kind of education required to remain free. And by education they didn’t mean diplomas or degrees, but knowledge gained from reading the classics of history, law, government, and the arts.</div>
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It is true that hardly any schools in our day focus on training people to be Liber, but the classics are still available and all we must do is take them off the shelf, dust them off, and get to work earning our freedom. If our generation loses the understanding necessary to remain free, we will lose our freedom. No society in all of history has avoided this inevitable consequence. Over and over in history, when the people of a nation stop being Liber and just become focused on getting jobs and making a living, freedom wanes and finally is sold.</div>
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Unless we pay the price to be a nation of Liber, we will not maintain the freedoms we so cherish and celebrate.</div>
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That is the first great word that we have forgotten since July 4, 1776—Liber, which means the body of citizens reading the classics and history and knowing what is required to remain free.</div>
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Public Virtue</div>
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The other forgotten key to maintaining our liberty and prosperity and ability to worship and choose freely is public virtue.</div>
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Benjamin Franklin said: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt . . . they have more need of masters.</div>
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Samuel Adams said: “I thank God that I have lived to see my country independent and free. She may enjoy her . . . freedom if she will. It depends on her virtue.”</div>
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The founding generation spoke of two types of virtue: private virtue and public virtue. Private virtue is morality, obedience to the commandments, doing what is right. And private virtue is essential to freedom: immorality leads inevitably to loss of freedom— personal and eventually national.</div>
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Public virtue, on the other hand, is a totally distinct concept from private virtue, though equally vital to liberty. Most of the people in our seminars who try to define public virtue say something like: public virtue is where government officials are moral in their personal lives, or public virtue is when leaders pass moral laws. But public virtue is even more fundamental than these things—it is one of the things which makes them possible.</div>
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In 1776 the term public virtue meant voluntarily sacrificing personal benefit for the good of society.</div>
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Consider the signers of the Declaration of Independence and their closest associates, their wives.</div>
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The signers and their wives epitomized both Liber and Public Virtue</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Robert and Mary Morris</strong></div>
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Like Robert Morris of Pennsylvania. Robert Morris was at a holiday celebration dinner when news came of the Battle of Lexington. The group was astonished and most people soon left for home, but Robert and a “. . . few remained and discussed the great question of American freedom: and there, within that festive hall, did Robert Morris and a few others, by solemn vow, dedicate their lives, their fortunes, and their honor, to the sacred cause of the Revolution.”<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[i]</strong></div>
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Robert Morris was self-educated and guided by a mentor, Mr. Thomas Willing, and became Liber through studying the classics. He started in business at age 21 and became extremely wealthy. In fact, he was known as the Financier of the Revolution. When the</div>
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Tea Act was passed, Robert Morris openly supported it though he lost thousands of dollars in his business.</div>
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When Congress went bankrupt in 1776, Robert Morris loaned $10,000 of his own money to feed and cloth Washington’s “handful of half-naked, half-famished militia.” In their day, this was a fortune. One historian wrote: “When Congress fled to Baltimore, on the approach of the British across New Jersey, Mr. Morris, after [fleeing with] his family into the country, returned to, and remained in Philadelphia. Almost in despair, Washington wrote to him, and informed him that to make any successful movement whatever, a considerable sum of money must be had. It was a requirement that seemed almost impossible to meet.</div>
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Mr. Morris left his counting-room for his lodgings in utter despondency. On his way he met a wealthy Quaker, and made known his wants. “What security can’st thou give me?” asked he. “My note and my honor,” promptly replied Mr. Morris. The Quaker replied: “Robert, thou shalt have it.”—It was sent to Washington, the Delaware was crossed [remember the picture with Washington at the helm?], and victory was won!”</div>
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On another occasion, when Washington was preparing for his attack at Yorktown, which turned the tide of the war to America’s side, he approached Robert Morris and Judge Peters. “’What can you do for me?’ said Washington to Mr. Peters. ‘With money, everything, without it, nothing,’ he replied, at the same time turning an anxious look toward Mr. Morris. ‘Let me know the sum you desire’ said Mr. Morris; and before noon Washington’s plan and estimates were complete. Mr. Morris promised him the amount, and raised it upon his own responsibility.”</div>
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Time after time Robert Morris gave his own resources and raised money on his own credit to keep Washington and his men going. One record remarked: “If it were not [proven] by official records, posterity would hardly be made to believe that the campaign . . . which . . . closed the Revolutionary War, was sustained wholly on the credit of an individual merchant.”</div>
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When the War ended, this self-made millionaire spent 3 1⁄2 years in debtors prison after he lost everything. His wife, Mary Morris, who was born to a wealthy family and educated in the classics, watched possession after possession disappear during the War. When Robert went to prison after giving so much to the cause of freedom, she tended a borrowed little farm and walked each day to the prison with her daughter Maria to visit her husband. Robert left prison a broken down old man and died shortly thereafter. The financier of the Revolution, and his family, understood public virtue—voluntarily sacrificing personal benefit for the good of society.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Thomas and Lucy Nelson</strong></div>
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So did Thomas Nelson, Jr. a signer of the Declaration of Independence from Virginia. He was Liber educated in the classics under the tutelage of his father and was later individually mentored by the celebrated Dr. Proteus at Cambridge. When the Revolutionary War started, he was called as the head of the military of the state of Virginia. “The sudden call of the militia from their homes left many families [destitute], for a great part of the agricultural operations were suspended.” General Nelson used his own money and resources to support many of his poorest soldiers, “and thus more than a hundred families were kept from absolute want.”<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[ii]</strong></div>
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The biographer of the Signers, B.J. Lossing, wrote: “Mr. Nelson made many and great [financial] sacrifices for his country. When, in 1780, the French fleet was hourly expected, Congress felt it highly necessary that provision should be made for them. But its credit was prostrate, and its calls upon the States were [ignored]. Virginia proposed to raise two million . . . dollars, and Mr. Nelson at once” set out to raise the money. “But many wealthy men told Mr. Nelson that they would not contribute a penny on the security of [Congress], but they would lend <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">him </em>all he wanted. He at once added his personal security.”</div>
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I have wondered which type of person I would be in similar circumstances—the men who made sure their bank accounts grew during the War, or the Thomas Nelson and Robert Morris type who gave their all. At one point in the War, Washington was losing and his men starving while the British were well supplied from American merchants. I have wondered whether in the same circumstances I would keep selling to the British, or do like so many American Farmers and Merchants did and burn down my own business, crop or livelihood. Can you imagine voluntarily pouring the kerosene on your shop, and hand in hand with your spouse lighting the match and walking away to bankruptcy—all because your side was so close to losing the war?</div>
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Thomas Nelson was elected Governor of Virginia when Thomas Jefferson’s term expired, and during the Battle of Yorktown, the one which Robert Morris funded and which turned the tide of the War to the Americans, Governor Nelson noticed that the American troops were firing at every home in town except his own personal home. The British had stationed a number of their officers in his home, perhaps believing that as the home of the governor and head of the state military it was safe. Governor Nelson positioned himself at the head of his troops and begged them to open fire on his home— and it was shelled by canon fire.</div>
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Within a month of this battle, his health broke and he shortly passed away. Thomas Nelson’s biographer wrote that “he descended into the grave honored and beloved, and alas! of his once vast estates, that honor and love was almost all that he left behind him. He had spent a princely fortune in his Country’s service; his horses had been taken from the plough and sent to drag the munitions of war; his granaries had been thrown open to a starving soldiery and his ample purse had been drained to its last dollar, when the credit of Virginia could not bring a sixpence into her treasury. Yet it was the widow of this man who . . . had yet to learn whether republics can be grateful.”</div>
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Lucy Nelson had been born wealthy and had helped Thomas make his fortune and rise to the Governor’s mansion. When he died early, broke and destitute, she was left to raise eleven children and eke out a living for three decades alone. When she died at eighty</div>
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years of age she was “blind, infirm” and still poor, and she willed her only earthly possession, $20, to her minister. The Nelson family understood both Liber and Public Virtue.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Samuel and Eliza Adams</strong></div>
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Another man, whose name is more familiar, also personified these forgotten virtues. Samuel Adams was educated by his father in the liberal arts through the classics.<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[iii] </strong>He attempted to go into business several times but he spent so much time studying the classics and reading about government and politics that he nearly went bankrupt in every business endeavor. He finally got a job as a tax collector through one of his political contacts. However, he had a hard time with this job also. As a biographer tells it: “Times were hard, money was scarce, and the collections fell [way behind]. Adams’s enemies raised the cry of [mismanagement].</div>
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“Then it came out that Sam Adams had refused to sell out the last cow or pig or the last sack of potatoes or corn meal or the scant furniture of a poor man to secure his taxes. He had told his superiors in authority that the town did not need the taxes as badly as most of these poor people needed their belongings and that he would rather lose his office than force such collections.” This job fell through like his other financial endeavors.</div>
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Another biographer wrote: “For years now, Samuel Adams had laid aside all pretence of private business and was devoted simply and solely to public affairs .. His wife, like himself, was contented with poverty; through good management, in spite of their narrow means, a comfortable home life was maintained in which the children grew up happy and in every way well trained and cared for.”</div>
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Sam Adams and his wife, Elizabeth Wells Adams (she went by the name Eliza), and all of their children sacrificed and suffered for the cause of freedom, including a son who was imprisoned. Even the family dog, a big Newfoundland named Queue, got involved in the War. In fact, Queue was “cut and shot in several places” by British soldiers, because every time a red uniform passed by the Adams farm Queue viciously attacked. Perhaps this dog understood the issues or at least the views of his master. As Eliza Adams’s biographer wrote: “[Queue] had a vast antipathy for the British uniform . . . and bore to his grave honorable scars from his fierce encounters.”</div>
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In 1763 Sam Adams gave the first public speech in the Americas against the British and the first call for Independence. He was so successful in stirring up support for the Revolution, that when the British later offered clemency to all the signers of the Declaration who would recant, Samuel Adams and John Hancock were purposely left of the list.</div>
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He was an instigator of the Boston Tea Party and was involved in almost every major event of the Revolution. He served in the Continental Congress and the records show that he was involved in almost every significant committee and spoke on nearly every important issue.</div>
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Once, in response to a suggestion to try to compromise with the British, Samuel Adams obtained the floor and said to the General Council of the States: “I should advise persisting in our struggle for liberty, though it were revealed from Heaven that nine hundred and ninety-nine were to perish and only one of a thousand were to survive and retain his liberty! One such freeman must possess more virtue, and enjoy more happiness than a thousand slaves . . .”</div>
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In a time when many people spoke against slavery but owned slaves, Samuel and Eliza Adams urged everyone to free any and all slaves, and then set the example by promptly freeing all slaves the moment they came into possession of them.</div>
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In 1774, when Samuel Adams was elected to Congress, he had no money for the necessary expenses, and his absence would likely have left his family destitute. A private letter, written on August 11, 1774, tells the story: some of his neighbors, their names kept anonymous, “asked his permission to build him a new barn . . . which was executed in a few days.”</div>
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A second benefactor repaired his house; a third invited him to a tailor’s shop and then had him measured for and purchased him a new suit of cloths which was later delivered to his home. A fourth presented him with a new wig and a fifth bought him a new hat. Three others purchased him six articles of clothing, including a new pair of shoes. Another community member slipped him a purse of money; when he searched it, it contained adequate gold to cover his expenses.</div>
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His kinsman John Adams wrote: “. . . Samuel Adams . . . never planned, laid a scheme or formed a design of laying up anything for himself . . . .The case of Samuel Adams is almost without a parallel as an instance of enthusiastic, unswerving devotion to public service throughout a long life.”</div>
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Another family that epitomized Liber and Public Virtue was the Francis and Elizabeth Lewis family.<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[iv] </strong>Francis was a signer of the Declaration from New York, was educated in the classics and built a successful business from scratch with the help of Elizabeth. They both gave their wealth and health for our freedom.</div>
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“Like Floyd, Livingstone, and Robert Morris, the other New York signers, Francis Lewis was [outlawed] by the British and a price set on his head. The enemy did not stop there. Very soon after they were in possession of Long Island, Captain Birtch was sent with a troop . . . ‘to seize the lady and destroy the property.’ As the soldiers advanced on one side, a ship of war from the other fired upon the house . . . . Mrs. Lewis looked calmly on. A shot from the vessel struck the board on which she stood. One of her servants cried: ‘Run, Mistress, run.’ She replied: ‘Another shot is not likely to strike the same spot,” and did not change her place. The soldiers entered the house and . . . destroyed books, papers, and pictures, ruthlessly broke up the furniture, and then, after pillaging the house, departed taking Mrs. Lewis with them.”</div>
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“She was carried to New York and thrown into prison. She was not allowed a bed or change of clothing and only the coarse and scanty food that was doled out to the other prisoners.” She soon died from the treatment and illnesses she sustained in prison. Francis lived without her for twenty-four more years; he never remarried, but lived to know the lonely price of public virtue.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Teachers of Liberty</strong></div>
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Consider the contribution of four great teachers of the Founding generation, three of whom were signers of the Declaration: George Wythe, John Witherspoon, Benjamin Rush and a man who is remembered simply as Mr. Lovell. Among them they mentored almost an entire generation of leaders in Liber and Public Virtue. Their students include John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Henry Clay, John Marshall, Hancock, Paine, four future U.S. Presidents, many future Supreme Court Justices, over sixty future governors, senators, representatives and judges, and as Professor Forrest McDonald put it, “enough other Founding Fathers to populate a small standing army.”</div>
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Biographer Robert Peterson said that George Wythe’s school alone “produced a generation of lawyers, judges, ministers, teachers and statesmen who helped fill the need for leadership in the young nation.” This was, in fact, George Wythe’s explicit agenda. The curriculum and message of these teachers, both on paper and through example, was Liber, private virtue and public virtue.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Roger and Rebecca Sherman</strong></div>
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Or consider Roger and Rebecca Sherman.<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[v] </strong>Roger Sherman, was apprenticed as a shoemaker and gained a Liber education reading the classics he placed on his bench in front of him while he worked on shoes. He started with mathematics classics and became a leading mathematician; for example, he did the astronomical calculations for an almanac that was published in New York when he was twenty-seven. He went from mathematics to a study of the law, and became a leading jurist in Rhode Island and later the only man to participate in the creation of and sign all four of the founding documents of the United States—all springing from the books on his cobbler bench.</div>
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His wife Rebecca was similarly self-educated in the classics, and when she married Roger she was twenty years old and took over the raising of Roger’s seven children from his first wife Elizabeth. She educated the seven children, plus the eight additional children she and Roger had, and she taught them Liber, private virtue and public virtue.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Other Examples</strong></div>
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So many other stories could be told:</div>
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Like Honest John Hart, who was “hounded and hunted as a criminal” while his wife lay dying.<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[vi]</strong></div>
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Or, Richard Stockton, who was thrown in prison, his lands were destroyed, and he ended up literally begging for food and money to keep his family alive.<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[vii]</strong></div>
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Or, Martha Jefferson, who fled with her two-month old baby in her arms to escape the invading British. The baby died soon after, and within two years she herself passed on from illnesses incurred during the conflict.<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[viii]</strong></div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Abraham and Sarah Clark</strong></div>
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But consider the Public Virtue of one more family, who more than self their country loved: Abraham and Sarah Clark.<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[ix] </strong>Self-educated in the classics, Abraham become known as “the poor man’s lawyer” because of his habit of service without pay. A poor farmer, his reading and study made him prominent and he was elected to Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence with the New Jersey delegation.</div>
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The British gave this simple man and his wife perhaps the cruelest punishment of all. They captured two of his sons who were serving under Washington, 25-year-old Thomas and young teenage Isaac, and threw them into the prison ship in the harbor. Then they informed Abraham Clark that his sons would be not be given food until he publicly recanted his signature on the Declaration of Independence.</div>
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He gladly offered his life, his freedom and all his possessions, but they weren’t accepted. The British demanded that he recant or his sons would slowly starve. Abraham and Sarah determined that they could give up their life. They could give up their fortune. But they simply could not give away their sacred honor, even to save the lives of their dear sons. They never signed the recantation.</div>
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Imagine, on a 4th of July in 1780, Abraham and Sarah Clark sitting at home meditating on the price of Public Virtue.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What of the Future?</strong></div>
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On the 4th of July in 1776 John Hancock, man of Liber and public virtue, signed the Declaration of Independence and sent it to the world with his name alone.</div>
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On the 4th of July in 1826, as if by divine mandate, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson passed away—on the same special day, only a few hours apart.</div>
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On the 4th of July in 1862 a bloody Civil War tested whether this union would survive.</div>
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On the 4th of July in 1943 Americans gave their lives in Europe and around the Pacific to keep the flag of freedom waving.</div>
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In this 4th of July in the year 2000, consider this question: How many Liber are there today in the United States?</div>
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And secondly, how many acts of public virtue fill the courthouses, congressional chambers or governors mansions across this land?</div>
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The answer tells us what the future of our freedoms will be.</div>
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But more importantly, how many homes are training young men and women to be Liber, to spend their lives in public virtue?</div>
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I know that we are busy going to school, making a living, enjoying the leisure our freedom gives us. But if we are too busy to read the classics and become Liber, to sacrifice our time and resources to protect our freedoms and build our communities, to stand for something, then we are too busy to remain free. Too busy to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.</div>
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Think ahead to the 4th of July in the year 2032. What will America be like then?</div>
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The answer depends on three things: how many Liber there are, how many people dedicate their lives to private virtue, and how much public virtue we choose between now and then.</div>
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The future of America depends on whether we are willing to stand for something. To become Liber, men and women of public virtue.</div>
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I believe that we will still be free on the 4th of July, 2032. If we are, it will be because someone, somewhere, pays the price.</div>
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Some of you have tonight felt the call to become men and women of Liber and public virtue. Do not ignore that call.</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[i]</strong>The idea of using the signers of the Declaration of Independence as examples of public virtue came from a speech I read by Rush Limbaugh’s father, and I appreciate his speech and the fact that his son has published and distributed it. None of the stories in this speech are taken directly from that speech; most of the stories hereafter, including all of the stories and quotes about Robert and Mary Morris come from two excellent books: B.J. Lossing. 1848. <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence</em>(hereafter Signers). Reprinted in 1998 by Wallbuilders in Aledo, Texas, 93-98; and <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Wives of the Signers, The Women Behind the Declaration of Independence </em>(hereafter Wives), also published by Wallbuilders, 155-168. I have not done independent research to verify the stories in these books. I highly recommend both of these books to students who choose to study further.</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[ii] </strong>Stories and quotes about Thomas and Lucy Nelson come from in Signers, 188-193 and Wives, 250-254.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[iii] </strong>Stories and quotes about Samuel and Eliza Adams come from Signers, 33-36 and Wives, 62-80.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[iv] </strong>Stories and quotes about Francis and Elizabeth Lewis come from Signers, 71-73 and Wives, 119-126.</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[v] </strong>Stories and quotes about Roger and Rebecca Sherman come from Signers, 50-52 and Wives, 92-98.</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[vi] </strong>See Wives, 144-147.</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[vii] </strong>See Wives, 132-139.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[viii] </strong>See Wives, 240-247.</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[ix] </strong>Stories and quotes about Abraham and Sarah Clark come from Signers, 90-92 and Wives, 147-149.</div>
Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-88094712495816930722015-06-22T18:06:00.000-07:002015-08-25T18:08:20.698-07:00The Economy Entrepreneurship Part 5<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Re-Posted by Dr. Shanon Brooks on May 28, 2015 </span><a href="http://www.monticellocollege.org/" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px; text-decoration: none;">monticellocollege.org/</a></em><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Read </span><a href="http://brushfireforum.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-economy-entrepreneurship-part-4.html" style="background-color: white; color: #db6700; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px; text-decoration: none;">The Economy Entrepreneurship Part 4</a><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[This is the transcript of a lecture Dr. Brooks is preparing to give around the country. Please contact him for more details.]</em><br />
<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></em>
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<img alt="download" class="alignright size-full wp-image-1134" height="275" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/download.jpeg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="183" />Eric Worre, entrepreneur, researcher, and film maker, related the conclusions of his most recent documentary, Rise of the Entrepreneur, “In our search for a better way to make a living, we’ve come to the conclusion, that becoming an entrepreneur is actually safer than being an employee. And through our look at the entrepreneurial options, one particular path kept coming up from expert after expert.</div>
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And I think most people will find it surprising, because it’s certainly a non-traditional business model. That model is for people to start their own business and become an entrepreneur through the creation of a network marketing business.”</div>
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Some people call it direct selling because the product is sold directly from the manufacturer to the end consumer, cutting out the middle man. Other people call it multi-level marketing or MLM because there are multiple levels of commissions paid.</div>
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The most common term used today is network marketing, because network marketing best describes using a large group of independent distributors, independent entrepreneurs, to distribute a product or service more efficiently.</div>
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A traditional company will spend up to 50% of their total revenue on marketing. Network marketing companies use a different approach. Instead of having that huge marketing expense, they utilize a network of independent distributors to do the marketing for them.</div>
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<img alt="Word-of-mouth-----source-Idea-Sandbox" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1135" height="257" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Word-of-mouth-source-Idea-Sandbox-300x257.gif" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="300" />Why are more and more companies moving to this model?</div>
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1. The old fashion “Word-of-mouth” advertising is still the most effective way to market goods and servicing, always out producing traditional media advertising.</div>
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Remember, talking about a service or product that you love on Facebook or Email or Twitter or Instagram is faster, unbelievable cheaper, and more effective than anything that ad agencies can conjure up.</div>
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2. Some products need to be explained or demonstrated, and an independent salesperson can do that more effectively than an ad campaign.</div>
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3. It’s completely efficient. The company only pays for the marketing of their product after the sale and not before, that’s 100% efficiency.</div>
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Imagine if Amazon allowed you to become an independent distributor and paid out 40% of its revenue to that distributor group. All you had to do as a distributor was recommend a product, and if a person bought it on Amazon, Amazon would take care of all the logistics, and you’d get paid for introducing the customer to the product or service.</div>
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Now imagine you got paid for every purchase that customer made for the rest of their lives. Well Amazon doesn’t offer this option, but network marketing companies do.</div>
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<img alt="network-marketing-program" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1136" height="266" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/network-marketing-program.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="300" />Who are some of these companies? There are those that you know well; Amway, Shaklee, Herbalife, and Marykay, but there are other companies that are associated with network marketing that may surprise you:</div>
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Citigroup</div>
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Bodyshop</div>
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Wiggles</div>
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Hallmark Cards</div>
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Nestle</div>
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Gillette</div>
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Colgate-Palmolive</div>
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Rexall</div>
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Sara Lee</div>
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Vanity Fair</div>
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Microsoft</div>
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IBM</div>
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Coca Cola</div>
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Xerox</div>
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GE Money</div>
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General Motors</div>
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Toyota</div>
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Goodyear</div>
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Firestone</div>
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85% of all buying decisions in our society are made as a result of word of mouth. Word of mouth is the oldest and most reliable form of advertising. We are recommending things to each other all the time, who’s you doctor, who’s your dentist, what law firm do you use, what stores do you shop at, where do you get your hair done, which barbershop do you use?</div>
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Dr. Ferrell commented that, “network marketing can educate consumers better than any other form of marketing. It certainly can do better than advertising, because advertising usually has a certain amount of hype to it, and you can only get limited information. Network marketing triumphs advertising.”</div>
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If you were a typical sales company and you wanted to sell a $1million of product per month you might go find 100 super star salesmen. The quota would be $10,000 per month.</div>
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So <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Network Marketing</strong>, as a distribution system, just flips the numbers. They use 10,000 happy, raving fans (distributors) of a particular product, and they don’t concern themselves with how much each distributor sells. If they sell just $100 or $200 a month and there’s 10,000 of them, you are selling $1m to $2m worth of product each month.</div>
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These companies allow people to become independent distributors at extremely low cost, and with no minimum time or sales quotes. Essentially they own their own business, and can engage in as much or as little sales as they choose.</div>
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In other words, the distributor gets all the benefits of traditional business ownership, without the risk.</div>
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Entrepreneur Cody Bateman said, “the key to network marketing is providing an opportunity for the masses to get involved. Providing an opportunity for the average person who doesn’t have the resources to start their own business.”</div>
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<img alt="images" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1138" height="194" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/images.jpeg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="259" />So far, this is fairly straight forward. But network marketing offers another benefit, and it is this benefit that makes it so interesting for entrepreneurs. <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Network marketing allows a distributor, to build their own network of other distributors and then compensates them on the sales created by the entire group.</strong></div>
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This is <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">no different</strong> than a sales manager and her team in corporate America. The salesmen get commissions on what they sell, but only the sales manager earns overrides if the team hits their sales goals. <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In network marketing, every distributor can have this advantage is they choose.</strong></div>
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Paul Zane Pilzer wrote, “Network marketing is the only industry, where your past doesn’t determines your future. It looks at your past and says, ok what can we train you to do so you can have a great future. Every other employer out there wants to exploit you for what you already know. Not teach you something new.”</div>
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Network marketing has the potential to save the U.S. and other world economies, because it is teaching millions of people world wide to be entrepreneurs rather than employees.</div>
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According to the Direct Selling Association, the sales from all the network marketing companies around the world combine are <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">$178Billion in retail sales annually.</strong></div>
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To give you an idea of how big that really is, the <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">NFL</strong> brings in approximately <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">$9B</strong>, the <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">music industry</strong> does a little more than <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">$16B per year</strong>, and the <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">movie</strong> industry does about <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">$80B</strong> in sales each year.</div>
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Using a conservative average, network marketing companies pay their distributors about 40% of their annual retail sales in the form of commissions, which comes out to about $71B of our $178B per year. That’s almost <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">$6B per month</strong> and it’s almost <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">$200M in commissions every single day.</strong></div>
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So it is certainly working and people are making serious money. Last year I attended a conference for network marketing professionals representing over 500 companies and nearly every country of the world. A roll call survey was done of people making $1M or more.</div>
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It was interesting to see maybe <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">100 millionaires</strong> there. But what was really astounding was to see the number of distributors who were earning at least <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">$50,000</strong>. There had to have been at least a quarter of the room standing out of the 8,000 attendees, that’s at least 2,000. This approach to entrepreneurship is working.</div>
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To take this point further, in the network marketing profession, there are roughly 500 people in the world who earn over $1million a year. <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">If you round that number up to $2million a year,</strong> that adds up to about $1Billion paid to those 500 top earners.</div>
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That takes the $71Billion paid out each year in distributor commissions that we mentioned before, down to $70Billion.</div>
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<img alt="corporate-pyramid" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1137" height="391" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/corporate-pyramid-e1435013357784.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: block; margin: 0px auto; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="450" />So where does the rest of the money go? 98% of the network marketing commissions goes to part time people making anywhere from a few hundred dollars a month to full time distributors making many thousands per month.</div>
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Everyday people are using the money they earn through network marketing to cover their mortgages and living expenses, to pay off debt, have more fun, and improve the quality of their lives and the lives of people around them.</div>
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There are 16 million Americans and 96 million people worldwide currently participating in network marketing.</div>
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The truth is that network marketing professionals work lot of hours and very hard work. To succeed, distributors need to develop themselves and their skill set because it’s a business like anything else. They need to provide leadership and training, but after all that, in the end many will tell you it’s just a better way to earn a living.</div>
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Life is too short and uncertain to spend it building someone else’s dream instead of your own. It’s too short, to be living at a fraction of your potential. Can being an entrepreneur be a challenge, yes it can, but in exchange you end up with the fulfillment of your dreams.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Conclusion</strong></div>
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Over 200 years ago, our ancestors founded this nation as entrepreneurs. It was an event that literally changed the course of history.</div>
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It was led by a group of unsatisfied people—people who were tired of being told what they could do and when they could do it.</div>
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People who were feed-up with their lack of choices and diminishing personal freedoms. People who were feed-up with their lives being controlled by others.</div>
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People tired of being oppressed and manipulated. They finally said, “ENOUGH, I’ve had it, and I’m not going to live like this anymore.”</div>
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Our ancestors were people who took full responsibility for what happened to them. It was that spirit that ignited a country and shaped this nation into a <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">GIANT</strong> in the free world.</div>
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Although that spirit has been seriously reduced, I believe that through entrepreneurship and network marketing it can once again re-ignite the hope for the<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> American Dream</strong> in all of us.</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Call To Action</strong> – If you are not satisfied with your current method of providing a living, if you what more from life, or if you are ready for the challenge and rewards of building your own business, contact me and I will be happy to introduce you to a number of options. Entrepreneurship is not perfect…it just better!</div>
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Dr. Shanon Brooks – 435 590 1661/sb@monticellocollege.org</div>
Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-76505575374694555192015-05-28T18:04:00.000-07:002015-08-25T18:08:20.694-07:00The Economy Entrepreneurship Part 4<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Re-Posted by Dr. Shanon Brooks on May 28, 2015 </span><a href="http://www.monticellocollege.org/" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px; text-decoration: none;">monticellocollege.org/</a></em><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Read </span><a href="http://brushfireforum.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-economy-entrepreneurship-part-3.html" style="background-color: white; color: #db6700; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px; text-decoration: none;">The Economy Entrepreneurship Part 3</a><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[This is the transcript of a lecture Dr. Brooks is preparing to give around the country. Please contact him for more details.]</em><br />
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So let’s move on to question #2: In this new economy, is it better to become an entrepreneur, or is it really safer to work for someone else?</div>
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<img alt="median-household-income" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-1127" height="194" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/median-household-income-300x194.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="300" />The average household income in the United States is approximately $50,000 a year. If you wanted to be part of the top 25% of income earners, you would need to earn at least $90,000.</div>
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To reach the top 10% would be a household income of $140,000, the top 5% $190,000, and to be in the top 1% you would need a combined household income of at least $380,000 a year.</div>
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So here’s the question–if you wanted to move up to the top 25% or 10% or even the top 5% of income earners (and who wouldn’t want to?), can you see yourself moving up to these levels with your current means of income?</div>
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Most of us have been taught to not even dream that high, but why? In today’s new economy, it is more and more feasible to be a top income earner if you are on the right path. What do you think would give you the best chance to move up to these top levels of income? In my opinion and in the opinion of many experts, the answer is to become an entrepreneur.</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<img alt="Entrepreneur" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1128" height="214" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/EntrepreneurWordSign1-300x214.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="300" />The concept of entrepreneurship has been around for millennia. The great explorers, the crusaders, the pilgrims, and the American west pioneers. The founding of this country was very entrepreneurial. Breaking away from Great Britain to be able to live as we choose, work as we choose, worship as we choose. It was the essence of being an entrepreneur.</div>
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Here is what a few entrepreneurs have to say about this life path:</div>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Zane_Pilzer" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Paul Zane Pilzer</a> – “Why in America where anyone could have anything, would people want to give up their freedom and become effectively a modern day slave, show up every morning at 7:30am leave at 5:30pm, sit down, shut up and do what your told.”</div>
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<a href="http://www.susansly.com/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Susan Sly</a> – “Think about the great entrepreneurs, they are visionaries, they have heart. They are willing to do today what others won’t, so they can do tomorrow what others can’t.”</div>
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<a href="http://www.richdad.com/about/rich-woman.aspx" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Kim Kiyosaki </a>– “In the world of entrepreneurship, there are no limits. You can make as much as you want depending on how much you want to work and how smart you are and how great a team you put together.”</div>
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But there are reasons people shy away from entrepreneurship, for one, it’s not easy. When people decide to become entrepreneurs and work for themselves, they have to make lots of decisions, but they are riskier than you might think.</div>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Harrington_%28entrepreneur%29" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Kevin Harrington</a> best known as an investor on “Shark Tank” shared this, “Any kind of a retail business with build outs, is extremely expensive. Even a small store such as the popular yogurt shops today can run $300,000 or $400,000 to setup.”</div>
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<img alt="images" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1130" height="193" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/images.jpeg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="261" />The typical business start-up story is the same, small or large, new or experienced, you are taking a risk and can win big or lose it all, and most entrepreneurs lose it all two or three times before they make it.</div>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Richard Branson</a> is a great example of this. As a very wealthy English Business owner and investor, he has lost at least 15 businesses over the years. 80% of all new U.S. businesses crash and burn within their first 5 years, many in the first 18 months.</div>
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Meanwhile, <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/15832/majority-americans-want-start-own-business.aspx" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">72% of Americans would love to be their own boss</a>, according to a current Gallup poll, but they don’t know how to get there. There are actually only four options for the average new Entrepreneur:</div>
<ol style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; list-style-position: inside; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 10px 2px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You can buy an existing business</strong> – The first question to ask is why are the owners selling? What’s wrong with it? Commonly it’s because they are tired, it is hard, or maybe they are not making the money they had hoped for.</li>
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<ol start="2" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; list-style-position: inside; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 10px 2px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You could buy a franchise</strong>. Here there is less risk and it is a proven system, but it is very expensive any where from $100,000 to $1 million.</li>
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<ol start="3" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; list-style-position: inside; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 10px 2px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">You could start something from scratch</strong>, a completely new business, but most people don’t have the confidence that their product or service idea would really go big, or they are afraid to borrow that much money, or they don’t feel they have the skill set to start a new venture, especially in our regulation ridden and litigious society.</li>
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<ol start="4" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; list-style-position: inside; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 0px 10px 2px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">They could become an investor in other people’s ideas and start-ups</strong>, but that can prove to be very risky indeed. <a href="http://www.dentresearch.com/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Harry Dent</a> says, “Venture capitalists, who are the very best and the most sophisticated at investing in new break-through businesses make it on 1 out of 11. That means 10 out of 11 are mediocre or fail, with most of the 10 failing. And Angel investors are lucky to get 1 out of 15 or 20.”</li>
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kiyosaki" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Robert Kiyosaki</a> relates, “A business is a team sport. Like I have to have accountants, I have to have engineers, I have to have system designers, I have to have office staff and management, I have to have maintenance and sales and marketing, I have to have mission statements, I have to have legal, and all that.</div>
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The average joe-smo, even me, I go out there, I don’t have the skills to put a business together on my own.”</div>
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The food and hospitality industry has even a greater risk of failure. Authorities say that 90% of all first year non-franchise restaurants fail.</div>
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<img alt="download" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1129" height="128" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/download-300x128.jpeg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="300" />Even though 72% of Americans say they want to be entrepreneurs and be their own boss, the bottom line for the four traditional options is that each takes money, sometimes a lot of it, they take expertise and they take time. All of that adds up to just too much risk for most people.</div>
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But what if there was a way that you could have all of the proven aspects of business ownership and still control your own life? What if you had the proven product, the proven systems already in place, proven training, and you were in charge. And you didn’t have to risk a ton of money.</div>
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What if you had all of these good aspects of business minus the employer? Do you think more people would be open to working for themselves in that environment?</div>
Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-22685943779775219752015-05-13T18:01:00.000-07:002015-08-25T18:08:20.684-07:00The Economy Entrepreneurship Part 3<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Re-Posted by Dr. Shanon Brooks on May 13, 2015 </span><a href="http://www.monticellocollege.org/" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px; text-decoration: none;">monticellocollege.org/</a></em><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Read </span><a href="http://brushfireforum.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-economy-entrepreneurship-part-2.html" style="background-color: white; color: #db6700; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px; text-decoration: none;">The Economy Entrepreneurship Part 2</a><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">[This is the transcript of a lecture Dr. Brooks is preparing to give around the country. Please contact him for more details.]</em><br />
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<a href="http://shanonbrooks.com/2015/05/the-new-economy-entrepreneurship-part-two/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #9d2727; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><img alt="Reliance-on-retirement-graphic2" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1125" height="300" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Reliance-on-retirement-graphic2-e1431320710449.png" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="400" /></a><br />Two years ago, Ted Siedle wrote a piece for Forbes Magazine entitled, “The Greatest Retirement Crisis In American History.” He wrote, “We are on the precipice of the greatest retirement crisis in the history of the world.</div>
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‘In the decades to come, we will witness millions of elderly Americans, the Baby Boomers and others, slipping into poverty. Too frail to work, too poor to retire will become the “new normal” for many elderly Americans.”</div>
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He says, “That dire prediction, which I wrote two years ago, is already coming true. Our national demographics, coupled with indisputable glaringly insufficient retirement savings and human physiology, suggest that a catastrophic outcome for at least a significant percentage of our elderly population is inevitable.</div>
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With the average 401(k) balance for 65 year-olds estimated at $25,000 by independent experts – $100,000 if you believe the retirement planning industry, the future decades many elders will spend in forced or elected “retirement”—will be grim.”</div>
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And that’s the upside. We are already seeing more and more elderly going back into the workforce to sustain themselves. This is known as the “work until you die” approach to employment. They can envision no other options.</div>
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If you ask the government, they’ll tell you that the national debt is about $17 trillion, and it is. What they don’t tell you is that’s only federal debt. There is another almost $3 trillion in state and municipal debt.</div>
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Add that to the $40 trillion is private debt and another $67 trillion in unfunded obligations such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and you end up with a combined debt burden and debt impact of at least $127 trillion. That’s 8.2 times the GDP. It doesn’t take an economist to see the writing on the wall.</div>
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<img alt="Harry S. Dent" class="size-medium wp-image-1126" height="300" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/157_1868532_hr-200x300.jpg" style="background: transparent; border: 0px none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="200" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 4px 5px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Harry S. Dent</div>
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And speaking of economists, respected economist Harry Dent said, “debt is like a drug, when you take it to excess it momentarily makes you feel good, it enhances your performance but it eventually kills you. ‘And that is what is happening, we are taking on more and more debt with less and less results, and this will likely continue until the debt gets so high that it crushes the whole system.”</div>
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70% to 85% of Americans hate their jobs or are not engaged in their work. Studies show that this negative emotional response to our work environment stems from a lack of personal ownership, a lack of freedom of creativity, overbearing office policies, and the inability to do what they enjoy or what they do best.</div>
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So it seems that the answer to our first question is not very glamorous.</div>
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Let’s paint a picture of the current American Dream. The American Dream is the story of the person who dreads going to work. Who is sick to their stomach on Monday morning with a 35% higher chance of a stress induced heart attack. A person who hates their alarm clock, and only gets a little glimmer of hope on a Wednesday because it’s “Hump” day.</div>
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Then they say “Thank God it’s Friday,” and they live for those two days a week where they get to be themselves, and don’t have to be around people they don’t like, and don’t have to play the workplace games and office politics. They don’t have to live the half-life they live during the work week.</div>
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The American Dream is working 50 weeks a year struggling to keep our sanity, spending hours ad nauseam in traffic, just to be able to have two weeks for vacation, only to realize that we’ve traded a “vacation” for a “stay-cation” because we’re so over-extended with lifestyle debt we can’t afford to go anywhere.</div>
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There has to be a better way.</div>
Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-58588711856079603362015-05-10T17:50:00.000-07:002015-08-25T18:08:20.690-07:00The Economy Entrepreneurship Part 2<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Re-Posted by Dr. Shanon Brooks on May 10, 2015 </span><a href="http://www.monticellocollege.org/" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px; text-decoration: none;">monticellocollege.org/</a></em><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Read </span><a href="http://brushfireforum.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-economy-entrepreneurship-part-1.html" style="background-color: white; color: #db6700; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px; text-decoration: none;">The Economy Entrepreneurship Part 1</a><br />
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As an educator, speaker and business owner, I have spent my entire career helping thousands around the U.S. and Canada to change their thinking and to become entrepreneurs. And I strongly believe that there is in fact a better way to succeed in making a living and making a life.</div>
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<img alt="MP900387741" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1120" height="214" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/MP900387741-300x214.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="300" />The career landscape has changed dramatically, and many are still working in a model that is completely out of date. What worked for previous generations just isn’t working very well for anyone in the workforce whether they are close to retirement or just entering the job market.</div>
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Today we will explore three important questions:</div>
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<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What’s really going on in the workplace today?</li>
<li style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In this new economy, is it better to become an entrepreneur, or is it really safer to work for someone else?</li>
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To answer these questions we have consulted some of the most knowledgeable experts and thought leaders in the field of entrepreneurship such as:</div>
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Les Brown (Entrepreneur, motivational speaker, author)</div>
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Paul Zane Pilzer (Economic advisor for both Reagan and Clinton)</div>
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Robert Kiyosaki (Author, Entrepreneur)</div>
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Susan Sly (Entrepreneur and Author)</div>
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Harry S. Dent (Economist, Author)</div>
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Dr. O.C. Ferrell (Prof. Economics University of New Mexico)</div>
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Chris Brogan (Journalist, Author, Marketing Consultant)</div>
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Ali Brown (Entrepreneur)</div>
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Brian Tracy (Entrepreneur and Author)</div>
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John Assaraf (Entrepreneur, Life Coach)</div>
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Richard Brooke (Entrepreneur, Author)</div>
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Sandra Yancey (CEO/Founder, EWomenNetwork)</div>
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Bob Proctor (Entrepreneur, Motivational speaker Author)</div>
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Kim Kiyosaki (Entrepreneur, Author)</div>
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Mark Victor Hansen (Entrepreneur and author)</div>
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Cody Bates (Entrepreneur)</div>
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Jack Canfield (Entrepreneur and author)</div>
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<img alt="SANDRA YANCEY" class="size-medium wp-image-1121" height="149" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Sandra-Yancey-May-5-300x149.jpg" style="background: transparent; border: 0px none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="300" /><div class="wp-caption-text" style="background: transparent; border: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 4px 5px; vertical-align: baseline;">
SANDRA YANCEY</div>
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My intention is to give you new information to allow you to make better choices that are not limited by an outdated model, as we all navigate this thing called the New Economy.</div>
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So let’s start with question number one: What’s really going on in our working world today?</div>
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Let’s look at unemployment. 30-40% of Americans are not working. But if you’ve been unemployed for more than six months, the government removes you from the unemployed list and pretends that you’ve dropped out of the labor force, according to Paul Zane Pilzer in a 2014 interview.</div>
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Pilzer has served as economic adviser to two US presidents and is a well-regarded economist and author. Pilzer stated, “I’ve often said that unemployment particularly structural unemployment, that’s unemployment due to technological changes, is the first sign of economical growth.</div>
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‘Think of it this way…there are ten people living on an island. They go out every day and fish. One day new technology shows up, a missionary brings them a net. Now using the net, one pilots the boat one throws the net—two fishermen can do all of the work that ten used to. That’s a 500% increase in productivity in one day—two doing the work of ten.</div>
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<img alt="32caf20a2c1be949ddbe130af82f9d1b" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1123" height="199" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/32caf20a2c1be949ddbe130af82f9d1b-300x199.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="300" />‘Now the island has a big problem. 80% unemployment, but the island still has all the wealth of the fish because the two people produce as much fish as 10 did. Of course looking back through history, these changes use to take hundreds or thousands of years and during that time we went into farming, and transportation some of us became doctors and some teachers or lawyers and we developed all of these new professions and new manufacturing jobs.</div>
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Today these changes are occurring literally in one day, when a new technological advance occurs, and we don’t have the social structures to deal with it or the ability to retrain all the unemployed people.”</div>
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On a global basis, everything is being turned upside down because of the rapidly advancing technologies. These new technologies while improving some things, are leading to the elimination of many jobs and consequently large numbers of unemployed who are not prepared for the new advanced technology jobs that now exist. And any training of new jobs will not happen in a university or college—their just too slow.</div>
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Robert KIyosaki, Author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, stated, “The idea of job security in the information age has been obsolete for ten years, but it is still taught in our school system and that is where the problem starts. There is not real-time financial education in our schools and people are still trained to be employees and work for that paycheck.</div>
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<img alt="robert-kiyosaki-residual" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-1124" height="169" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/robert-kiyosaki-residual-300x169.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 0px 15px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="300" />‘Middle class income has been in steady decline since the 1980’s, and all the while, parents are still telling their kids to go to school and get a job—it literally makes no sense.</div>
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‘As middle class incomes continue to decline, what happens to those people who are dropping out of the middle class? They are now re-labeled the “working poor.”</div>
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‘We are told that poverty in on the decline. Be that as it may, at the same time the number of the working poor is rising, people who are working fulltime but still on food stamps, those numbers are going up.”</div>
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If you’re going to control your future, you won’t be using an old method such as the 40/40 plan. The idea of graduating from college, finding a career with one or two companies and working 40 hours a week over 40 years—that day is over.</div>
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Some people say that if they can’t find a job, they should just go back to school to get even more qualifications, another outmoded approach. These perpetual students simply end up going several more years unemployed with not work experience and expanding their already choking student debt. By the way, national student loan debt has now exceeds $1 trillion.</div>
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As I mentioned earlier, the U.S. Census Bureau data shows that in actual purchasing power, wages of college graduates have been decreasing for the past ten years.</div>
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The average person, who has been working a lifetime in America today, is ending their working career with an average of $41,000 in assets. We’ve literally created a system where people earn just enough to survive while they are working. So, what happens when they’re done working? What happens during retirement?</div>
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Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-46708846569424894762015-04-17T06:47:00.000-07:002015-08-25T18:08:20.687-07:00The Economy Entrepreneurship Part 1<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Re-Posted by Dr. Shanon Brooks on April 17, 2015 </span><a href="http://www.monticellocollege.org/" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; line-height: 18.4799995422363px; text-decoration: none;">monticellocollege.org/</a></em><br />
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The world is changing faster than ever. What used to take decades, is now taking years or months. And indirectly as a result of these changes, we have two looming crises, the elderly retirement crisis and the college-grad employment crisis.</div>
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Rumor has it that corporate America is not a safe place to work anymore. We’ve seen our friends get laid off or maybe we’ve been laid off. Some of those who are still working have had their pay cut. So Americans are overworked and underpaid and they seem to have less time and less freedom.</div>
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And there’s something wrong with society when we can measure at a national level, a 35% increase in the chance of a heart attack every Monday morning as people rush off to their jobs.</div>
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As of April 3, 2015, the Economic Policy Institute reported that,</div>
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In a complex economy, conventional measurements fall short. At 14.5 percent, the unemployment rate of workers under age 25 was slightly over twice as high as the overall unemployment rate, 6.7 percent.</div>
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But in today’s labor market, the unemployment rate drastically understates the weakness of job opportunities. This is due to the existence of a large pool of “missing workers”(3.3 million-adds at least 3 points)—potential workers who, because of weak job opportunities, are neither employed nor actively seeking a job.</div>
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In other words, these are people who would<em style="background: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </em>be either working or looking for work if job opportunities were significantly stronger. Because jobless workers are only counted as unemployed if they are actively seeking work, these “missing workers” are not reflected in the unemployment rate. http://www.epi.org/publication/missing-workers/</div>
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Technology is accelerating and job security is rapidly declining. It just doesn’t seem like the 20<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; font-size: 13.3333330154419px; line-height: 18.1818180084229px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span> century models of making a living are as reliable as they used to be. In nearly every aspect of our lives we are adopting newer and better way to do things, but when it comes to earning a living, we are still stuck in the old ways.</div>
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We live in the greatest country on the planet but there are a lot of people sitting around being cynical. I say get a clue, there is a huge difference between “3rd world problems” and “1st world problems.” People are complaining and whining about the upsets of the old model when the obvious conclusion is to leave it and embrace the new model, the new economy, and that is what we are here to talk about today.</div>
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<img alt="images" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-1107" height="229" src="http://shanonbrooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/images1.jpeg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="220" />Since so much of our lives revolve around our work and the way we make our living, many people are thinking, there just has to be a better way.</div>
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The biggest challenge facing our world today is not making money, but what to do with all of the displaced unemployed people. With all of this transformation around us, people are being forced to make changes in employment and lifestyle, but they are frozen by indecision, afraid of making the wrong new career choice or afraid they don’t have the right skill set.</div>
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<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s time to face the truth: the industrial age is dead.</strong></div>
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And as a result, going to school to be educated for employment is fast becoming an obsolete idea. A steady paycheck and the security of a single employer is an anemic industrial age idea.</div>
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Watch for Part Two</div>
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Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-3118572732341424042014-11-16T08:27:00.001-08:002014-11-16T08:27:35.247-08:00WTH is Wrong With America - Part 3<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Re-Posted by Dr. Shanon Brooks on November 15, 2014 </span><a href="http://www.monticellocollege.org/" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px; text-decoration: none;">monticellocollege.org/</a><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Read </span><a href="http://brushfireforum.blogspot.com/2014/10/wth-is-wrong-with-america-part-2.html" style="background-color: white; color: #db6700; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px; text-decoration: none;">Part 2 of WTH is Wrong With America</a><br />
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<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Before we talk about how to increase personal financial
autonomy, let’s be very clear on the current state of financial autonomy for
the vast majority of Americans today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8d9f-VHEhx9C-yGIUTUJIe3WDKmBq5_uqbYKbN6VezOFO0FXKzFWh3MJ2HUwGWK3p1PjkLB3K5knIKloBePjfUhXLFojWsqmoj_Mi9OYhtMZYl4SVSBTlTaeDu0N0Zd-32SIChpLwNaY/s1600/320px-Sign_of_the_Times-Foreclosure-300x225.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8d9f-VHEhx9C-yGIUTUJIe3WDKmBq5_uqbYKbN6VezOFO0FXKzFWh3MJ2HUwGWK3p1PjkLB3K5knIKloBePjfUhXLFojWsqmoj_Mi9OYhtMZYl4SVSBTlTaeDu0N0Zd-32SIChpLwNaY/s1600/320px-Sign_of_the_Times-Foreclosure-300x225.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">A few Google searches produce a frightening collection of
articles, books, newscasts, editorials, and government statistics all pointing
to a condition never before experienced by the United States of America–WE ARE
BROKE. WORSE, WE ARE IN UNRECOVERABLE DEBT.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">The United States government has put the nation in debt several
times before over the past 200 years. But it was always recoverable. Today not
only are we swimming in a bottomless pit of national debt, the middle class has
adopted the policy for their personal affairs. Over the past year, I have
interviewed every couple in my classes and in other environments (over 150
couples now) to assess their financial health. These couples range from low to
high middle-class income levels, which means anywhere from $40,000 to $500,000
gross annual income. Virtually every family I have interviewed has admitted to
living at or above their income.</span></div>
<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><br />
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="outline: 0px;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">This translates to having no
discretionary income and almost universally spending all income on consumer
debt maintenance.<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNpGGQWvb-8EtHKBkjp9NwF3Xx4tK8YzYThrvZTkihZBdCgfjrFjpRb_WBWI47y0e7hEMlBt9rWFKg_AfqjXKWdDVyaxV9q8tX4qp5IvuZ2BuNa-8PTNjySNJjxMmRn9GsJOYZibX19_w/s1600/Blog-Post-1-Picture-300x207.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNpGGQWvb-8EtHKBkjp9NwF3Xx4tK8YzYThrvZTkihZBdCgfjrFjpRb_WBWI47y0e7hEMlBt9rWFKg_AfqjXKWdDVyaxV9q8tX4qp5IvuZ2BuNa-8PTNjySNJjxMmRn9GsJOYZibX19_w/s1600/Blog-Post-1-Picture-300x207.png" /></a></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Few of these couples have any kind of retirement plan beyond a
nominally preforming 401k and more than 75% of these couples have no will or
revocable trust in place.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">This phenomenon was the focus of a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsiedle/2013/03/20/the-greatest-retirement-crisis-in-american-history/" style="outline: 0px;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #9d2727; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Forbes Magazine article in early 2013</span></a>. I quote, “we are on the
precipice of the greatest retirement crisis in the history of the world. In the
decades to come, we will witness millions of elderly Americans, the Baby
Boomers and others, slipping into poverty. Too frail to work, too poor to retire
will become the ‘new normal’ for many elderly Americans. ”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">The author goes on to say:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<em style="outline: 0px;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #666666; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Corporate America and the
financial wizards behind the past three decades of so called retirement
innovations, most notably titans of the pension benefits consulting and mutual
fund 401(k) industries, are downplaying just how bad things are already and
how much worse they are going to get.</span></em></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<em style="outline: 0px;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #666666; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Americans today are aware that
corporate pensions have been virtually eliminated and that the few remaining
private, as well as the nation’s public pensions, are in jeopardy. Even if you
are among the lucky few that have a pension, you cannot rest assured that it
will be there for all the years you’ll need it. Whether you know it or not,
someone is busy trying to figure how to screw you out of your pension.</span></em><i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></i><em style="outline: 0px;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #666666; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Americans also know the great
401k experiment of the past 30 years has been a disaster. It is now
apparent that 401ks will not provide the retirement security promised to
workers.</span></em><i><span style="color: #666666; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></i><em style="outline: 0px;"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #666666; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">As a former mutual fund legal
counsel, when I recall some of the outrageous sales materials the industry came
up with to peddle funds to workers, particularly in the 1980s, it’s almost
laughable—if the results weren’t so tragic. </span></em></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">The National Institute on Retirement Security published a report
in June of last year entitled:<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.nirsonline.org/storage/nirs/documents/Retirement%20Savings%20Crisis/retirementsavingscrisis_final.pdf" style="outline: 0px;"><em style="outline: 0px;"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; color: #9d2727; padding: 0in; text-decoration: none;">The Retirement Savings
Crisis: Is It Worse Than We Think? </span></em></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Here are a few highlights:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">1. Account ownership rates are closely correlated with
income and wealth. More than 38 million working-age households (over 45%) do
not own any retirement account assets, whether in a employer sponsored 401k
type plan or an IRA.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">2. The average working household has virtually no
retirement savings external to employer sponsored programs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">3. The collective retirement savings gap among working
households age 25-64 ranges from $6.8 to $14 trillion, depending on the
financial measure. Based on recommended retirement account assets
(retiring by age 67), 92 percent of working households do not meet targets.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-size: 10.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></span><span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 18pt;">First
we have to change our thinking. The definition of insanity is to do the same
thing over and over again–expecting different results. We are going to have to
take charge of our own financial futures and begin thinking for ourselves. This
is much harder than it reads on this page.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">It was Adler who said that, “Anyone who has done any thinking,
even a little bit, knows that it is painful. It is hard work, in fact the very
hardest that human beings are ever called upon to do. It is fatiguing, not
refreshing. If allowed to follow the path of least resistance, no one would
ever think.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Herein lies a primal cause of much of our financial dilemma.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Too many of us have voluntarily allowed others to do our
financial thinking for us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">Our first step then in taking control of our
financial thinking is to acknowledge that the retirement
schemes that we have been taught in school and that permeate our culture and
workplaces are misrepresentations as best — fraudulent and criminal at worst.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">We find ourselves in this dilemma because we have forgotten our
heritage and the principles that America was founded on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 18.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 18pt; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt;">The founders understood that financial standing impacts
political standing. </span><span style="color: #7c7c7c; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 18pt;">To be free politically you have to be free financially.</span></div>
Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-510655271588706412014-10-23T08:32:00.000-07:002014-11-16T08:32:54.168-08:00Who Must Lead the Reformation<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Posted by Don Pinson on October 23, 2014 </span><a href="http://heritageministriesky.com/" rel="nofollow" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; color: #e86427; font-family: Arial, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 20.2800006866455px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">HeritageMinistriesKY.com</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEtjzpLD7Fhv0oPqngKQPZ9vqY2xs8fZXjPBEumEkfch7rxWInDcld3LtKmNnAkiFrJBh4AGwb1cCZivXM-k7pB7gRK3jXc1wVBq11XP8YokNkdswDu8SB0u-Y1E2YTTRqH89Xvk7q3LE/s1600/fa1e7077-9166-4d94-baf7-32aae2c02919.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEtjzpLD7Fhv0oPqngKQPZ9vqY2xs8fZXjPBEumEkfch7rxWInDcld3LtKmNnAkiFrJBh4AGwb1cCZivXM-k7pB7gRK3jXc1wVBq11XP8YokNkdswDu8SB0u-Y1E2YTTRqH89Xvk7q3LE/s1600/fa1e7077-9166-4d94-baf7-32aae2c02919.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<strong><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">What will it be like when liberty is gone in America? What will it be like when you can’t tell your
children about your faith in Jesus for fear that they might innocently repeat
it, be reported to social services, and then be taken away from you? You think that can’t happen in America? This is satan’s main design with the push for
homosexual law. And what has caused us
to get to this point of nearly losing our liberty? As humbly, yet as honestly as I know how to
say it: It’s because our Pastors have backed
out of the realm of civil government.
We’ve lost the Biblical understanding of it, thus God’s people have been
taught by our example---and sometimes by our words---to stay out of government. Yet, this is so different from Biblical
examples of government leadership.</span></strong></div>
<a name='more'></a><strong><o:p></o:p></strong><br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<strong><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Heritage Ministries of Kentucky Ezra, the Priest, understood fully
the role a spiritual leader should take in restoring a nation. Notice what he did. The Bible records in Ezra 7:10,<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<strong><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;"> “For Ezra had
set his heart to study the law of the Lord, and to practice it, and to teach
His statutes and ordinances in Israel.”<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<strong><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Ezra not only studied the moral law summed up in the Ten
Commandments, he began, “to teach [God’s] statutes and ordinances in
Israel”. That is, he began to teach
civil law in Israel as a part of his spiritual call from God. We as spiritual leaders have got to teach and
participate in civil government as Pastors did in America up through the early
1900’s. It’s a “Johnny come lately” idea
that spiritual leaders should stay out of government.<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<strong><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Every time you don’t show up at a Fiscal Court or City Council
meeting you’re saying, “I don’t care what happens in God’s institution of
government, I’ve got other things I want to do.” We’re saying, “I don’t care if my children’s
right to hear the Gospel of Christ in public doesn’t get protected; I’m too
busy to go to that government meeting.”
Sound ridiculously selfish? It
is!!!<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<strong><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">The people of God can change any culture they choose to, and they
especially can change a culture where they have the right to vote. Yes, it will take the power of God working
through us (not just our efforts), because satan and his demons will wage war
against us. His greatest desire for this
world is to control civil government so he can use law to hinder the flow of
the Gospel to the next generation. But
we can change our culture! It’s happened
before in American history. With the
Second Great Awakening, in the first half of the 1800’s, came a return to
Biblically based morality and, eventually, the end of slavery.<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<strong><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">We can change our culture.
But only if we choose to read the Bible through, over and over, so we
ourselves can first regain the Biblical principles of education, economy, and
government. If we refuse to disciple
people in these subjects because we’re afraid of what people think, or because
we think Jesus is coming soon, or because of our Biblical ignorance about these
institutions, then we work with satan in destroying the right to proclaim the
Gospel in public!<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Pastor, will you and I change, in order to include these subjects
in our preaching and teaching, without deserting the basic truths of the Gospel
of Christ? If we will, there is hope for
the liberty of the Gospel. If we don’t,
the church will be driven “underground” in America. As spiritual leaders the choice is ours. God commands us,<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;"> “I call heaven
and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and
death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed
may live”<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;"> (Deuteronomy
30:19)<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #1c1c1c; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">Think about it; because if you don’t, someone else will do your
thinking for you---and for your children!
And you won’t like what that brings to you. I’m Don Pinson; this has been Think About It.</span></strong><o:p></o:p></div>
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Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-63607197110178380962014-10-14T08:13:00.000-07:002014-10-14T08:13:05.864-07:00Turning Our Hearts<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Submitted by Stacey Buffinga<o:p></o:p></div>
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America has a sin problem. Have we turned our hearts away
from GOD?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6vjfPmehnaA9s3o81uNOid7ksHaAHddNCf2X873HarYgEOKUOuW8fX-2Auf5K8YCsg2-NUP8TlT2din9kvERhQUgkYOIGucY4EQdzBI4tzpQmGUPris29i7gzaSLt9uD6-ImlMzL3Qf0/s1600/father-please-heal-my-broken-heart_0.jpg.crop_display.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6vjfPmehnaA9s3o81uNOid7ksHaAHddNCf2X873HarYgEOKUOuW8fX-2Auf5K8YCsg2-NUP8TlT2din9kvERhQUgkYOIGucY4EQdzBI4tzpQmGUPris29i7gzaSLt9uD6-ImlMzL3Qf0/s1600/father-please-heal-my-broken-heart_0.jpg.crop_display.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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America was indeed founded by bible-believing Christians
and based on Christian principles. When they founded this country, the Founding
Fathers envisioned a government that would promote and encourage Christianity.
It was because of this that America became a great nation and a beacon of light
and hope for others.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Unfortunately, today I can see that this no longer rings
true, overall American culture has quickly decade in the last 40 years and it
is picking up speed, in the wrong direction. Just look at the current events
and the vile words and actions that are coming over the airways, movies and
television programs of today.<o:p></o:p></div>
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2ndTimothy 3: 1-5 has this to say.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This know also, that in the last days perilous times
shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters,
proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural
affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of
those that are good, traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more
than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof:
from such turn away.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yes, we are seeing this today and it is becoming more
prevalent with each passing day. Now the verse that reads; Having a form of
godliness, but denying the power thereof This means that there will be people
who will be going through the religious practice of attending church, Sunday
school, helping others and attending church functions but who hardly ever take
time to be in direct relationship with GOD, reading and meditating on His word
so that it would reflect in how they live instead of living a life that is in
contradiction to His word. This helps us to be transformed by the renewing of
our minds into his image. God’s power is in his word. Hebrews 3:1, Hebrews 4:12<o:p></o:p></div>
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Am I suggesting that GOD’s people may be partly to blame
for our country’s decay? Yes, I am and I think we should all ask ourselves,
have we, GOD’s people, knowingly or unknowingly, turned our heart away from
GOD?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Have we become so desensitized by what we see and hear in
your society today that we have allowed the demands of our busy schedules to
take over and we pencil time in for GOD when we can?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Are we watching movies and television programs that
promote the items listed in 2ndTimothy 3: 1-5?<o:p></o:p></div>
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We should be examining ourselves to be sure our life
reflects what is pleasing to GOD in accordance to his word. Matthew 6:21
reminds us that for where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also. Where
are you spending the majority of your time?<o:p></o:p></div>
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According to GOD’s word it is GOD’s will for everyone he
has called to be a living sacrifice- totally devoted to him. This is confirmed
in Romans 12: 1-2 and 1st<o:p></o:p></div>
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This can only be accomplished by spending time in GOD’s
word, reading and speaking so that word is planted in your heart so that it may
manifest it’s self in your life, sanctifying you and refreshing you daily. This
is confirmed by John 15:3, Eph 5: 26 -27 and Proverbs 4: 20-23.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We can’t have a personal relationship with the “Father”
if we do not know his word. Remember John 1: 1-4 and verse 14 makes it clear
that Jesus is “The Word, the Word made flesh” and Jesus is the only way to come
to the Father confirmed in John 14:6 and 1 John 2:23 and that eternal life is
that we know<o:p></o:p></div>
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GOD and Jesus confirmed in John 17:3.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I encourage all to read and meditate on Ephesians 6 and
to be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might. So put on the whole
armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For
our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities,
against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the
spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Wherefore take up the
whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and,
having done all, to stand. Stand on the solid rock of our foundation; Jesus
Christ!<o:p></o:p></div>
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While we may have had a part in the moral decay of our
country the good news is that we play an essential part in turning this around
and having our land healed of its moral decay by GOD.<o:p></o:p></div>
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2 Chronicles 7:14 states; If My people who are called by
My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their
wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal
their land.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s time we honor GOD by turning our hearts back towards
him and for us to be the people that GOD has called us to be. The called, the
chosen, the faithful!<o:p></o:p></div>
Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-81746684151614629352014-10-05T11:15:00.001-07:002014-10-14T08:12:01.720-07:00Christianity in Home Life<div align="center">
by Charles Orr</div>
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Nowhere is Christianity more beautifully displayed, than in the home. It changes the home of wickedness, strife, and contention — into a peaceful and delightful Eden. It converts the home of the wicked — into a palace. It drives away discontentment, uneasiness, fear, and darkness — and showers contentment, peace, and sunlight into every heart.</div>
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Recently we saw some people speaking their testimonies in a public meeting, and telling of the blessedness of salvation. Yet in their homes, we found them irritable, impatient, and contentious, which is very unlike Heaven.</div>
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But, thank God, true Christianity brings a <i>Heaven</i> to the home — as well as in the public life. Christianity is Christ in the heart, and where Christ is, there is Heaven; consequently a Christian has a Heaven within him, and he has this Heaven at home as well as abroad. Praise God!</div>
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<i>Christianity in home life </i>makes all . . .<br />
<i> </i> love and kindness — between <i>brothers and sisters;</i><br />
love and dutifulness — between <i>parents and children;</i> love, peace, harmony, honesty, and faithfulness — between <i>husband and wife.</i></div>
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Christianity makes a home — a Heaven. A Christian home where all is love and tenderness and devotion — is the sweetest and most sacred spot on earth. A home where Christianity is crowned a queen in every heart — is an Eden. The heart of God is filled with delight as he looks down upon such a home. His presence dwells there and causes this home to be a<i>beautiful oasis in this wilderness world of sin</i>. Alas, that such homes are so few! Sin destroys the happiness of man and makes many a home a hotbed of contention, strife, and confusion! Jesus came to put away sin and establish "on earth peace, good will toward men."</div>
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The HUSBAND'S Duty to His Wife</div>
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The Bible tells man what should be his behavior toward his wife, and a Christian must live and do just what the Bible says, without any modifications. The reader has already agreed with me, that to have a Christian <i>experience — </i>is to live a Christian life.</div>
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The husband is to regard the wife as the weaker vessel, and thus give her honor, support, and protection. "Likewise, you husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered." (1 Peter 3:7)</div>
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The husband must look upon his wife with <b>respect</b>, and because of her feminine sensitiveness, have an especial care for her in spiritual things, and be her support in temporal things. Women have trials peculiar to their own gender, and a husband can scarcely be called a husband, much less a Christian, who neglects to console and comfort them, and throw as much joy and sunlight into their lives as possible.</div>
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When Hannah wept because she had no son, her husband sought to comfort her with these words: "Hannah, why are you weeping? Why don't you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don't I mean more to you than ten sons?" (1 Samuel 1:8) May God help husbands to so dwell with their wives, that when the wife is in discouragement and sorrow — they can cheer them by recounting their love, devotion, and goodness to them — <i>Why is your heart grieved? Am I not good and kind to you?</i></div>
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Husbands must <b>love </b>their wives as themselves. "So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord the church." (Ephesians 5:28-29) The care <i>Jesus </i>exercises in nourishing and cherishing the church — is illustrative of the care the husband should manifest in nourishing and cherishing his wife. "Husbands, love your wives — and do not be bitter against them." (Colossians 3:19) All hasty, sharp, cross, unkind, cutting, bitter words — are forever put away by the Christian husband, who loves his wife. Cross, hasty words — are not the fruit of a Christian spirit; and if you have not ceased from them — God has better things for you.</div>
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The WIFE'S Duty to Her Husband</div>
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Nowhere is wickedness more greatly revealed — than in a wicked woman — and nowhere is Christianity more beautifully exemplified — than in a pure, chaste woman. "A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband." (Proverbs 12:4) "Her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband trusts in her. She will do him good and not evil. all the days of her life." (Proverbs 31:10-12) These words are beautiful and should encourage a wife to a life of faithfulness and devotion — that she may be a crown to her husband, and be valued far above rubies.</div>
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The wife who will honor and respect her husband, and seek to please him — will find a joy in her own heart. "Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her." (Proverbs 31:28)</div>
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Wives should <b>love </b>their husbands (Titus 2:4) and <b>respect </b>them: "Let the wife see that she respect her husband." (Ephesians 5:33) The wife is to respect her husband, as the Christian reverences God. To reverence God is to be submissive to Him, and to look upon Him as our Lord and protector, adviser, etc.; to fear and obey Him, yet be in perfect freedom. Such should be the attitude of the wife toward her husband.</div>
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"Wives, <b>submit </b>yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord." (Ephesians 5:22) Too few women comprehend the full meaning of this text. Just as the Christian consecrates, resigns, and submits himself to the care and control of God — so the wife is to submit herself to her husband. Just as the Christian leans in loving confidence upon God — so the wife should lean in loving confidence upon her husband; and the husband's conduct toward the wife should be such as would encourage her to trust and confide in him — as God's conduct toward us encourages us to trust and lean upon Him.</div>
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When the husband and wife are kind, loving, and gentle toward each other; when <i>she </i>in her weakness feels her dependence upon him, and lovingly, trustingly looks unto him as her defense; and <i>he </i>in his strength and delight folds her in his strong arms of protection with a feeling of responsibility to nourish and cherish her — then they can testify that they have a Heaven in their home.</div>
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Unless we have attained unto such a life — we have not attained to Bible Christianity, nor to domestic joy and happiness.</div>
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The PARENT'S Duty to Their Children</div>
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Most parents believe they love their children — but true Christian love of parents toward children, comprises more than many have understood. They may love them in a sense — but the parent that feels provoked toward the little one and threatens to <i>slap </i>it, calling it some <i>ugly name</i> — he does not love the child with a Christian love. How many fathers and mothers under provocations, are making severe threats to punish their children, at the same time calling them "ugly brats," "little imps," etc. Such parents are not Christians — no matter what may be their profession. They do not comprehend the true nature of Christianity, if they believe themselves to be Christians while having such harsh feelings and using such evil terms toward their children.<i> Christianity is far more beautiful than this!</i></div>
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Parents are commanded to <b>train </b>their children up for God and Heaven: "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord." (Ephesians 6:4)</div>
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They must <b>teach </b>them God's Word: "Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them." (Deuteronomy 4:9) "Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." (Deuteronomy 11:19) They must tell them of the <i>judgments </i>of God, as given in His Word: "Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation." (Joel 1:3)</div>
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Parents are to <b>provide </b>for their children: "If anyone does not <i>provide </i>for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family — he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever!" (I Timothy 5:8) Parents who through indolence fail to comfortably clothe and sufficiently feed and give them educational and religious advantages according to the Bible rule — such parents cannot be termed Christians. Parents cannot possibly be Christians and use their money for liquors, tobacco, or amusements — and then fail to comfortably clothe and give their children a sufficiency of wholesome food, or fail to give them proper educational and religious advantages.</div>
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Now, elders and deacons are commanded to <i>rule </i>their children well, and have them in <i>subjection </i>with all gravity (I Timothy 3:4,12). Elders are an <i>example </i>to the flock; consequently it follows that all Christians must <i>rule </i>their children well, and have them in <i>subjection</i>. Parents cannot have the approval of God on them — no matter how much they may pray and how active they may be in the religious life — if they allow their children to <i>disobey </i>them and go in the ways of sin!</div>
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We have known many parents to pray for the salvation of their children, and all the while were allowing them to attend worldly amusements, dances, etc. Such prayers go unanswered, and such conduct brings the wrath of God upon the parents. For the sake of your soul, and the souls of your children — restrain them from evil ways! Prohibit them attending worldly places of amusement — but take them with you to the house of God.</div>
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Great <i>responsibility </i>is laid upon the parents. They have a child whose <i>eternal destiny </i>depends largely upon the training it receives in youthful days. We would love to write much more on the subject — but must forbear, only adding these words of exhortation to every parent: As you value your own, and your children's eternal happiness — get your soul filled with divine love and the Holy Spirit — so that you can set a <i>godly example </i>before your children — and then seek help from God to train them up in the ways of righteousness!</div>
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The CHILDREN'S Duty to Their Parents</div>
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While it is the duty of the parent to teach his child — God makes it the duty of the child to heed the parent's teaching. "A wise son hears his father's instruction." (Proverbs 13:1) Children are commanded to <b>obey </b>their parents: "Children <i>obey </i>your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honor your father and mother." (Ephesians 6:1-2) Obedience to parents is well pleasing to God. "Children, <i>obey </i>your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord." (Colossians 3:20)</div>
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Many boys and girls at the present day are found to utterly disregard their parents' commands and wishes. Such children have not yet experienced the power of regeneration — no matter how many church meetings they attend! Children, God commands you to love, honor, and obey your parents — and unless your <i>faith </i>causes you to <i>do </i>as He commands — you have no promise of Heaven.</div>
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<span style="color: green;"><b></b></span><i></i><span style="color: green;"><b></b></span><span style="color: green;"><b></b></span><i></i><span style="color: green;"><b></b></span><br />
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"Blessed are all who fear the LORD, who walk in his ways. You will eat the fruit of your labor; blessings and prosperity will be yours. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your sons will be like olive shoots around your table. Thus is the man blessed who fears the LORD." Psalm 128:1-4</div>
Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-86014106691956339442014-10-02T04:43:00.000-07:002014-10-02T04:44:09.355-07:00WTH is Wrong With America - Part 2<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Re-Posted by Dr. Shanon Brooks on October 1, 2014 </span><a href="http://www.monticellocollege.org/" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px; text-decoration: none;">monticellocollege.org/</a><br />
<br />
Read <a href="http://brushfireforum.blogspot.com/2014/09/wth-is-wrong-in-america.html">Part 1 of WTH is Wrong With America</a><br />
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I mentioned in Part One that there can be no political
autonomy without financial autonomy. I think the collapsing of American
political autonomy is clear to the most casual observer, but what exactly is
financial autonomy?<o:p></o:p></div>
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If I have a job and can pay my rent and have enough money
for food until my next pay check – isn’t that being responsible? Aren’t I free
to do as I please?<o:p></o:p></div>
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What Is Financial <o:p></o:p></div>
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Let’s take a minute and really drill down on this
definition.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Financial refers to the monetary resources of a
government, a company, an organization, or an individual; revenue.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Autonomy is of Greek origin and literally means “having
one’s own laws;” self -governing or not being subject to outside control. It
refers to a kind of independence or freedom known to few in America today.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The word “free” has Saxon and Hebraic roots.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In Webster’s 1828 Dictionary of the English Language,
free is defined as, “being at liberty; not being under necessity or restraint;
not enslaved; not in a state of vassalage or dependence.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Since our language has the capacity to describe a certain
state of being – that of financial Autonomy, I ask the question – Why are so
few Americans financially free?<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Why are so many of us, a pay check or two away financial
disaster? America is the freest nation on earth…or is it?<o:p></o:p></div>
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We certainly have the freest system of government, the
freest system of protection of rights, and a culture more free of a class
system than any in the world –but if we voluntarily place ourselves under the
control of another power, the freedom guaranteed by our system of government is
meaningless.<o:p></o:p></div>
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If we structure our lives in such a way as to be
constantly dependent or at the biding of institutions, what does it matter that
our politically rights are intact–if we never use them.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One of the first indications of a dependent people is
that they stop asking questions and challenging norms. To question and
challenge (which was a virtue 100 years ago) established money and government
systems was at the very heart of the American Revolution–just read the
Declaration of Independence–it is right there in print. But today it is almost
unpatriotic to not have your money in the bank or to insist on paying-off debt
or being debt free.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Misery really does love company.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When debt is a normal part of daily life, when
governments have debts that are impossible to pay-off, when businesses cannot
survive without debt, when it is normal to carry an on-going (usually maxed
out) credit card balance even for things such as clothes and food, that society
is dependent on and indeed in vassalage to whomever is providing the money.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Speaking of government or other powers, Alexis de
Tocqueville said:<o:p></o:p></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary
power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to
watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and
mild.<br />
<br />
It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that
authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary,
to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should
rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.<br />
<br />
For their happiness such a government [or bank] willingly
labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that
happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their
necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns,
directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their
inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all
the trouble of living?</blockquote>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIY8hzED5_TDuFhWU2qhC_m1MfgCvd4yxavlGEhBDI9EE3xKnZf420yekqEKjBxT8sZ1eVuhFHYpMaozRvFq26Wh7xqY5WqvXBH9JSFAan6D7aCO-zbg2tus24O_ktsrPlH0c7znXbsbc/s1600/house.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIY8hzED5_TDuFhWU2qhC_m1MfgCvd4yxavlGEhBDI9EE3xKnZf420yekqEKjBxT8sZ1eVuhFHYpMaozRvFq26Wh7xqY5WqvXBH9JSFAan6D7aCO-zbg2tus24O_ktsrPlH0c7znXbsbc/s1600/house.jpeg" /></a></div>
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Financial Autonomy then can be defined as the ability to
fund your life by-way of private business or investment, without dependence on
governmental subsidy or corporate salary.
This does not mean being rich, but it does mean living within one’s
means, or having achieved enough monthly residual income from private sources
to meet monthly expenses independent of any outside influence.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Financial Autonomy means avoiding the trap of Clason’s
Law – always living right at or above your income. By the way, if you have
little or no savings <i>(60% of Americans have less that $25,000 saved for
retirement</i>) or lack a solid retirement plan (minimum of $1.5 M) or if you have
a long-standing credit card balance–you are living Clason’s Law.<o:p></o:p></div>
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HOLDING A LOAN FOR 3 DECADES IS NOT THE SAME AS HOME
OWNERSHIP<o:p></o:p></div>
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HOLDING A LOAN FOR 3 DECADES IS NOT THE SAME AS HOME
OWNERSHIP<o:p></o:p></div>
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Technically, if you hold a balance on a mortgage or are
making payments on a car or a boat, you are in the clutches of Clason’s Law.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Being independent means just that—being dependent on no
one or institution.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So if I have a job, am I independent or not?<o:p></o:p></div>
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I have heard this question a hundred times, “Well if I
don’t have a job, how will I get money?” Therein lies the problem.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Remember, we fought a war over this very issue 239 years
ago, renewed the concept during the American Civil War, and again we
revitalized the idea during WWII and the subsequent Cold War. (By, the 1990’s
our wars were not being fought for independence but rather, they were wars
fought to maintain the very institutions predicted by Tocqueville above).<o:p></o:p></div>
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In fact, the pre-American and American civilization and
culture of the 1700’s and the 1800’s and into the first quarter of the 20th
century were in complete abhorrence to Clason’s Law. The first credit card was
not available until 1952 and consumer credit was seen as a very bad idea until
the 1980’s. Americans lived a comparatively lower standard of living during
this time, but American 18th, 19th, and early 20th century quality of life and
psyche of liberty were much higher than today and very much in tune with our
definition of Financial Autonomy.<o:p></o:p></div>
Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-59957572873047914662014-10-01T19:45:00.000-07:002014-10-02T04:49:38.090-07:00Book Review - Our Home by C.E. Sargent<div class="separator" style="background-color: white; clear: both; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17.152000427246094px; text-align: center;">
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<b style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17.152000427246094px;">Our Home, by C. E. Sargent</b><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17.152000427246094px;" />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmp9DYXI7QZpzbaAmDfDEibRjt_gOSZyfufkq5PYDkIJ18kokWTi1YqOewGJbgCeDQp8DyQ-atsqiIUYGQfbxIeX6juqRv1RMmX0Yp2zGK1r2zobeSnru1TTPO7jTVHZQ8d6FK0o7FY4w/s1600/our+home.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmp9DYXI7QZpzbaAmDfDEibRjt_gOSZyfufkq5PYDkIJ18kokWTi1YqOewGJbgCeDQp8DyQ-atsqiIUYGQfbxIeX6juqRv1RMmX0Yp2zGK1r2zobeSnru1TTPO7jTVHZQ8d6FK0o7FY4w/s1600/our+home.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17.152000427246094px;">Our Home Vol I & II was written to help parents become what they should be. All aspects of home life are covered, with examples and ideas of how to establish the kind of home the Lord expects of us. This book is about the sanctity of family and family life. Discusses time-honored virtues and values only found within the family circle. Deals with raising and educating children.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17.152000427246094px;">Eric Wilson’s Review: I struggled with this month’s review, do I have to like it or be willing to pass this book on to a friend? After consideration I deemed I do not have to “love” every book I read nor am I the final arbitrator of a classic so…. There were some good parts but also some less good parts to borderline ridiculous. This book was recommended by Glenn Beck, Dr. Brooks, and DeMille, all whom I respect and trust their opinions. That said there is a whole lot of great nuggets of principles, values, virtues, and helpful foundational thinking for family and the life education of children. That said there are also other parts that I would question but understand the author included. Over all thought it was not well written, the author’s perspective is from a college aged kid, with neither children nor experience, at the dawn of the first turning with a clear artist archetype (if you don’t understand the last statement read the Forth Turning by Howe and Straus). To a middle aged father of three, Calvinist, and nomad archetype at the leading edge of the forth turning I just could not connect with this book fully. I said all of that to say this, read it for yourself with a discerning mind. There is a lot of great information you can glean and people a lot smarter than me that recommend this book.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17.152000427246094px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 17.152000427246094px; text-align: -webkit-center;">Find this and other books in our recommended </span><a href="http://brushfireforum.blogspot.com/search/label/literature" style="background-color: white; color: #5378ae; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 17.152000427246094px; text-align: -webkit-center;">reading list: Click here</a>Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-8372793781437201292014-09-29T11:12:00.001-07:002014-10-02T04:43:52.685-07:00WTH Is Wrong With America - Part 1<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Re-Posted by Dr. Shanon Brooks on September 23, 2014 </span><a href="http://www.monticellocollege.org/" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px; text-decoration: none;">monticellocollege.org/</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitfd6IyVixSwzsbzJAsw4J5o-_ij53LBT_z5tUZraf2G5ohNd3CBCre2tVFjzGovdb4kEmsXUSyyvoo8uj2GHQOXDMnooIsSLbktMkPFWTZWVstGlDpoxu51oNREBpsf9coIziCoOVoE4/s1600/Shanon-Headshot-Edited-Sepia-199x300.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitfd6IyVixSwzsbzJAsw4J5o-_ij53LBT_z5tUZraf2G5ohNd3CBCre2tVFjzGovdb4kEmsXUSyyvoo8uj2GHQOXDMnooIsSLbktMkPFWTZWVstGlDpoxu51oNREBpsf9coIziCoOVoE4/s1600/Shanon-Headshot-Edited-Sepia-199x300.jpg" /></a>I've been angry for a while now.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When I turned 50, I took pause and reflected on my life,
presuming that I was at the halfway point (yes, I intend to live to see 100).<o:p></o:p></div>
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I thought about my childhood in the 60’s and early 70’s.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I reminisced my high school years and realized that my
topsy-turvy life to that point had pretty well mirrored the turbulence of the
era.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I remembered my fear of possibly being drafted into the
Vietnam Conflict (I missed it by several years, but the possibility still
seemed very real at the age of 15) and my full participation in the Cold War
aboard a nuclear submarine shadowing Soviet ships of war.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Shortly after my military discharge, I became painfully
aware of the poor state of my country and just how much had been lost, and I
dedicated the balance of my life to the restoration of the America given us by
her founders.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But then came 9/11 and the torrent of bad choices made by
the American citizenry and its political leaders following that tragedy. The
Patriot Act, the continuation of wars that we could never hope to win with the
adopted management policies—that were and still are being used—the gargantuan
unjustified economic bailouts and the rapid decline of the US dollar by the
alarming leadership of the Federal Reserve, and the unabashed implementation of
socialized medicine by all three branches of the federal government destroying
any hope of restoring liberty and personal responsibility.</div>
<a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><br />
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So by the beginning of 2011, I was disgusted with our
“stage four” situation and began contemplating what could be done about it.
Obviously, there was no political party to look to, and political activism by
concerned citizens was having no more real impact than it had during the
previous two decades.<o:p></o:p></div>
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By 2013, the pain I was feeling in my heart about the
decline of my country began to turn to indignation towards those responsible
for leading my country down this slippery slope. Short of building our college
and impacting a few hundred students a year, for which I still feel very
determined, I felt powerless regarding the country at large until fate brought
a few outstanding individuals into my life that sparked some real creativity, turning
my indignation into a steady slow fury, and leading to my current process of
thinking. What follows is that process.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Considered one of the ten most influential books in the
United States, Man’s Search for Meaning, has sold over 10 million copies and
has been translated into 24 languages.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In this pivotal volume, Viktor Frankl chronicles his
experiences as an Auschwitz concentration camp inmate during World War II.<o:p></o:p></div>
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At one point he states that freedom is a dangerous and
destructive force unless it is tempered or harnessed by personal
responsibility.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Think of it—without an active, personal sense of
responsibility, the almost proprietary concept of American freedom could
actually be a destructive force that does harm and diminishes human dignity.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The message of this series of posts is—freedom—political,
economic, religious, gender, and racial.<o:p></o:p></div>
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My goal is to give you a lot to think about, and to
motivate you to make some changes in your current approach to financial and
political autonomy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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This is not another rant about politics, political
parties, or Washington discord; as much as those topics might warrant another
hearing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I respect and honor all actively involved citizens
regardless their political leanings because the greatest act of citizenship and
the strongest check on abusive government is the actively involved citizen.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I do not see others with different political views from
mine as the problem. The problem—are
those who do nothing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This post is about the attack on the American family and
the millions who allow it to happen by default. I am choosing the word “attack”
because whether is it intentional or not, the end result of American politics
today is the serious assault on small business owners and the American family.
And the majority of the country is watching it happen without lifting a finger.
Few would disagree when I say that the
fault is our adulterated political system and its political parties.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Speaking of political parties—which party is safeguarding
the sanctity and financial stability of the family? Which party?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Neither. Unless you see more and more government subsidy
as the right solution.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Which party puts the interests of our children ahead of
their own power struggles?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Neither. In fact, both republicans and democrats are
heavily promoting an educational system that seems more interested in mining
student and family data than preparing our children for successful, secure, and
happy futures.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Both parties continue to pass mountains of law that make
it harder and harder to provide an honest family living. As true as this is, it
could not be happening if the majority of Americans took a stand against it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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So why are most Americans standing idly by watching the
destruction of our once most beloved nation? That is the question that I want
to take a few posts to explore.<o:p></o:p></div>
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America is sick. The test results are back and they
confirm that our beloved nation is suffering from a potentially fatal illness
called Enervation. Enervation is the lack of desire or the inability to do
those things that must be done to protect ourselves and our families from
corporate and/or governmental abuse.<o:p></o:p></div>
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To give you an example, let’s talk about the adoption of
Universal Health Care! Or Obamacare! Or The Affordable Healthcare Act! Whatever
you want to call it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There are two clear opinions. You either love it or you hate it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But that’s not the problem.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The problem is that in a democratic society like ours,
these kinds of things should be part of the daily discourse. Something this
divisive should stimulate tons of adult dialogue, sit-ins, shaved heads, local
political debates, protests…And on both sides of the aisle.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Where is the heated and loyal support in favor of such a
social remedy? Where are the avid public supporters of Universal Health Care?
On the other hand, where is the public outrage against such a measure? Where are the protests? Those against this
law should not rest until it has been abolished. Those in favor should stay vigilant against
it being over turned.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The illness of Enervation from which America suffers is a
lack of political will. Political will or political autonomy is a by-product of
personal responsibility. When we cease to be personally responsible for our
surroundings and our communities—our reality, we lose power to maintain or
change it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But how do we lose our sense of personal
responsibility? The loss of personal
responsibility occurs when we lose our financial autonomy. How does this
happen? How do the citizens of a nation with the greatest system of government
and the most freedoms of any nation on earth, become so apathetic?<o:p></o:p></div>
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To answer this I want to share some predictions from
Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy In America. In the 1830’s during his first
American tour, Tocqueville, a French aristocrat and jurist said that if
Americans did not vigilantly guard their freedoms through personal
responsibility, they would lose them Democracy in America Image[Americans] are constantly
excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to
remain free.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of
these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once.<o:p></o:p></div>
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They devise a sole, tutelary [guardian], and all-powerful
form of government, but elected by the people.They combine the principle of centralization and that of
popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for
being in tutelage [guardianship] by the reflection that they have chosen their
own guardians.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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In other words, because Americans wanted to avoid
personal responsibility, Tocqueville predicted that they would create
governmental institutions that would protect them from cradle to grave. But because they wished to remain free, they
would naively believe that by retaining the power of suffrage they could
control the very individuals who would keep them in this enervative state.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Tocqueville uses the term “guardian” several times, so I
looked it up to get a better perspective: Guardian<o:p></o:p></div>
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A person lawfully invested with the power, and charged
with the duty, of taking care of a person and managing the property and rights
of another person, who for defect of age, understanding, or self-control, is
considered incapable of administering his own affairs. – Black’s law
Dictionary, 6th edition<o:p></o:p></div>
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According to Tocqueville over 170 years ago, government
dependence leads to the eventual need for 100% federal guardianship including
health care to housing to food to personal finances. When Financial Autonomy is
gone, our sense of personal responsibility weakens and shrivels. Shrinking
personal responsibility will always lead to a lack of political will.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Since 87% of all American hate their jobs and the vast
majority are experts at living Clason’s law (living above one’s income), the
average American finds themselves in financial “survival mode” and feels little
hope of securing the American Dream of Financial Autonomy. As they cannot
succeed at providing properly for themselves, they cannot even conceive of how
to help others or the nation at large.<o:p></o:p></div>
Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-58427622700583902512014-09-12T19:34:00.000-07:002014-09-12T19:34:00.319-07:00Book Review - Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand<div style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17.152000427246094px; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtyuSQgT46MNEb525tpmNDVRJMoz_cUgznQSfPKrYsgu9LMlFED_Gt1HQTFraVYdqTiumDycmGZwA83C-qBOlVOypU0tIYOqEtm3WbizO3V2NvSlAeJ1wxl4q-wVGErtBM0iAP7n0Y3GoM/s1600/AtlasShrugged.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; color: #5378ae; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ea="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtyuSQgT46MNEb525tpmNDVRJMoz_cUgznQSfPKrYsgu9LMlFED_Gt1HQTFraVYdqTiumDycmGZwA83C-qBOlVOypU0tIYOqEtm3WbizO3V2NvSlAeJ1wxl4q-wVGErtBM0iAP7n0Y3GoM/s320/AtlasShrugged.jpg" style="margin: 5px; padding: 0px;" width="184" /></a><strong>Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand</strong></div>
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With this acclaimed work and its immortal query, "Who is John Galt?”. Ayn Rand found the perfect artistic form with this classic Atlas Shrugged to express her vision of existence. This is the story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world—and did. Was he a destroyer or the greatest of liberators? Why did he have to fight his battle, not against his enemies, but against those who needed him most, and his hardest battle against the woman he loved? What is the world’s motor—and the motive power of every man? You will know the answer to these questions when you discover the reason behind the baffling events that play havoc with the lives of the characters in this story.</div>
<br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17.152000427246094px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17.152000427246094px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17.152000427246094px;">Tremendous in its scope, this novel presents an astounding panorama of human life—from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy—to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction—to the philosopher who becomes a pirate—to the composer who gives up his career on the night of his triumph—to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad—to the lowest track worker in her Terminal tunnels.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17.152000427246094px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17.152000427246094px;" /><a name='more'></a><br style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17.152000427246094px;" /><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 17.152000427246094px; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
Eric Wilson’s Review: Surprisingly it has taken me this long to formally write a review of this book. I have just recently completed this book for yet another time and it is even more relevant today and keeps getting more pertinent every day. You must be prepared, when you read this book, to check every premise at the root of your convictions. Getting past some of the run on dialogue and flowery descriptions of scenery there lays a frightening analogy of what we see today. At its core this book is a philosophical journey of human nature and at its meaning it continues as a warning to everyone. If you read this and it does not make the hair stand up on the back of your neck; if you don’t think it can happen here and is happening now – check your premises because one of them is wrong. <span class="readable"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Find this and other books in our recommended <a href="http://brushfireforum.blogspot.com/search/label/literature" style="color: #5378ae;">reading list: Click here</a></span></center>
Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7163535764859967553.post-40680013764792670052014-08-29T05:50:00.000-07:002014-08-29T05:50:18.560-07:00Attention Span: Our National Education Crisis Part 1<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Re-Posted by Dr. Shanon Brooks on August 29, 2013 </span><a href="http://www.monticellocollege.org/" style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px; text-decoration: none;">monticellocollege.org/</a><br />
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On October 16, 1854, in Peoria, Illinois, Stephen Douglas finished his 3-hour address and sat down. Abraham Lincoln stood.</div>
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He “reminded the audience that it was already 5 pm,” and then told them that it would take him at least as long as Mr. Douglas to refute his speech point by point, and that Mr. Douglas would require at least an hour of rebuttal [1].</div>
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He recommended that everyone take a one-hour dinner break, and then return for the four additional hours of lecture. The audience amiably agreed, and matters proceeded as Lincoln had outlined.</div>
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“What kind of audience was this? Who were these people who could so cheerfully accommodate themselves to seven hours of oratory?”[2]</div>
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This was only one of seven debates, and many people attended as many as they could.</div>
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In contrast, I was invited as a guest on the early morning NBC station newscast in Yuma, Arizona the day after the Columbine High School tragedy in Littleton, Colorado.</div>
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The primary purpose of my visit was to deliver lectures at the local community college and then give a speech at an annual foundation banquet—the title of my speech was along the lines of “What Jefferson Would Do to Fix Modern Problems.”</div>
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The Columbine coverage took up most of the hour, and when it came time for our interview the anchor turned to me and said, without any preview, something like: “What would Thomas Jefferson think about this Columbine tragedy—you have 30 seconds.”</div>
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I don’t remember my exact answer, but I tried to communicate that Thomas Jefferson would not try to analyze and solve such a problem in thirty seconds, and until our means of dealing with serious national problems stops being handled in 30-second sound bite opinions we will continue to see such problems—indeed, they will get worse.</div>
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With that our interview was over, we unhooked our microphones and left the studio.</div>
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But the event has troubled me ever since. Hundreds of television professionals asked similar questions over the next few days, and have done so repeatedly with hundreds of events since—answers are given in thirty second sound bites, people shake their head at the day’s latest shocking news, and then they go on about their work.<br />This is how we deal with problems in America today—and then we conclude by calling on government to fix everything.</div>
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We express opinions–in soundbites on television, at work and social events, and in restaurants and taxis. Then we shake our heads and go back to our lives.</div>
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We live on a steady diet of opinions, opinions, opinions. In 30-second doses. And then we forget and move on.</div>
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What is the difference between these two audiences—those who listened attentively for seven hours to Lincoln and Douglas and came back for more, and those of us who hear and express opinions lightly and then move on?</div>
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Not to put too fine a point on it, but these two audiences are drastically different—in their culture, their education, their habits <strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; color: #1c1c1c; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">and in their capacity to be free.</em></strong></div>
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The group who heard Lincoln were capable of education, and capable of freedom. The latter group is largely incapable of either unless something changes.</div>
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Specifically, a great education ultimately comes down to one thing. Those who have it can gain a superb education. Those who don’t cannot. A nation of people with it can earn its freedom. A nation without it is either not free or in the process of losing its freedom.</div>
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If you are going to be a successful leader in the future, you must develop this trait. It is not just a nice thing to have, or a good thing—it is essential; it is vital.</div>
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Without it you cannot be a statesman and the world will be led by whoever has it—whether they are virtuous or not, good or evil, dedicated to moving the cause of liberty or some other cause.</div>
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You will probably not like to hear what I have to say about it—because it will mean that you have to change, and change is hard; I didn’t like it when I learned it–because I had to change.</div>
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Jefferson probably didn’t like it either, but he did it. Lincoln probably didn’t like it; but he did it. You must have this trait if you want to be a successful learner and become a leader.</div>
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The nation must have leaders with this trait if it is to stay free.</div>
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So, if I say things you don’t like, ignore that. Don’t ask, “Do I like what he’s saying?” Ask, “is it true? And what changes will I make because it’s true?”</div>
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Each of us needs this trait because each of us wants to fulfill our mission in life, to really make a difference in the world. So, even if it is hard to get this trait–and it is–it is worth it, and it is important.</div>
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The vital trait I speak of is attention span.</div>
Eric Wilsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01387532937866197448noreply@blogger.com