Change?

This is an article I published with the Center for Social Leadership back on October 15, 2010.

I have re-posted it here to once again point out the need for engaged and active citizens.

 

Recently, someone ask me if I was happy with the changes in Utah State government (6 more Republicans in the House and 1 more in the Senate).

“What changes?” I said.

“You know, the legislature is more conservative now.”

“Really? When did that happen?” I inquired.

“I only see a changing of the guard, new representatives making many of the same old promises that nearly always get forgotten or reneged on. We don’t know if these new officials are going to make any positive changes or not until they have been in office long enough to prove themselves.

“Until then, (and maybe never), we will have no change.”

He squinted his eyes and stared at me as if I was speaking in code.

I continued, “Who is going to make sure they follow through on their promises? Who is going to call-them-out on bad decisions as they enact them, instead of waiting as usual for the damage to be noticeable to even non-observers after a three-term run of damaging behavior and failed campaign pledges?”

“Until and unless we change our behavior as citizens, no changes will likely occur except the changing of the names of the people holding office.”

My friend just looked away, oblivious to any meaning I was trying to convey.

This is more and more evident every time I reread The 5,000 Year Leap, or the writings of Jefferson, Adams, Tocqueville or review our founding documents—until We the People seriously and permanently assume our role as jealous protectors of our unalienable rights and actively engage in fulfilling our unalienable duties, we have no reason to expect positive pro-liberty change.

This of course would require American citizens to make some lifestyle changes of their own . . . don’t hold your breath.

But then there are my students and many others. Citizens who do care enough to learn what our unalienable rights and duties are and how to exercise them.

Thank you for doing your duty. Thank you for caring enough for future generations to take responsibility for your liberty and vouchsafe theirs.

The Bible says that you can’t pour new wine into old bottles. Neither can we expect old methods to produce different results.

We must learn how the founders established sound government founded in natural law and then reapply the original principles in new ways to refresh liberty.

If you care about liberty and if you are looking for ways to be a better citizen and even make a difference and a real change, here are a few recommendations:

Spend just one hour a day reading what I call New American Founder™ type material. A few examples are:

• The 5,000 Year Leap, Skousen
• An Education for Our Time, Bunting
• The Roots of American Order, Kirk
• The Revolutionary Writings of John Adams, Liberty Fund
• 1776, McCullough
• The American Classics Series (Jefferson, Washington, Franklin), NCCS
• The Federalist Papers, Madison, et al
• The Anti-Federalist Papers
• Democracy in America, Tocqueville

Other things you can do include:

• Invite one or two couples over for a meal and assign a small reading (no more than 5 or 6 pages) for dinner discussion.
• Consider attending your local city council meetings for a few months consecutively (it will only have the desired effect if you are consistent).
• Develop a family study program around local, state and national government. Teach your children the principles of government as it is happening on a daily basis—not in a static, disconnected manner.
• Consider running for a local office and plan to only serve one term.
• Find new ways to volunteer in your community, preferable outside of your own religion.
• Learn a new language.
• Watch less TV and play more with your kids.
• Court your spouse.

Yes, we need change. Only God knows how much change we need if we are to live in the republic the founders designed for us.

But the kind of change we have been hearing about for some time now (Obama change and conservative change) is nothing more than the same old thing—more and more government and less and less liberty.

I am in agreement with many of the Founders; regardless where we are, things can always be improved with the application of sound governmental principles.

But before we can apply them we must take the time and exert the effort to learn them.

A Life Changing Experience: Foundations of Liberty (FOL)

From a recent CNY912 newsletter article, a 9/12 group in Upstate New York.

Tina Giblin is devoted wife, mother, grandmother and concerned citizen.  She is an extension student of Monticello College and is active in local politics. She resides in Syracuse, New York.

For the past year and a half, many members of our CNY912 group and other 912 groups across this state and others have been taking a class titled Foundations of Liberty.

The class is as it is titled, a study of the foundations that started this great country and the liberties that the founding Fathers intended. It has been a life changing experience in so many ways!

The problem in writing this article was not in coming up with the ways that this class has changed my life but in limiting how many of those experiences I could fit into one article and of figuring out which one was the most life altering.

In order to attend this class, we had to do a lot of reading outside of the physical classes, which were daylong classes that took place very other month. Our CNY912 group decided to start a weekly book club to discuss the readings.

When starting this class, little did I know how important those weekly book club meetings would become to me.

For our classes, we have read the initial Charters of each of the original thirteen states and studied the reasons behind the writing of the Declaration.

In studying the biographies of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, we learned of the personal sacrifices each man made in order to serve their country.

We have read the original writings of the founders leading up to the Constitution and also the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers, which debated whether or not a stronger ‘national’ government or remaining independent was best for the States.

We have studied, discussed and debated the original rules governing who could vote and whether or not allowing almost everyone to vote, is a better. Now that was a lively debate!

One of the greatest gifts that I have received from this class, is a better understanding of my own religion (Catholicism) and a much stronger conviction in what I believe and why; I now know the history behind my Church – why it was founded, how it was founded, where it went wrong and where it stands today.

Yes, even religion was on the table in these classes and I am so glad that it was!

Lastly and most importantly I learned about the necessity of building relationships with ‘like minded’ people.

A year-and-a-half ago, I had really good friends within this group; today, I have family within our group.

One of the unexpected side effects to all this spending time together studying, sharing, debating and working together (or quite possibly it was intended by Dr. Brooks) is the trust and caring you come to have for people you have shared so much with.

In our study group and classes, you lay your heart on the table to reveal what you believe in, what it is that really makes you tick… and somewhere along the way, if you are lucky, as I was, you find yourself.

You find your vocation, what you were called for, and then the world opens up in a whole new way to you. For me, this has been the greatest gift of all. It has changed my life!

I know I can go out on a limb to try to change things, to try to make a difference, and I know I am not alone. If I need support, I have only to turn around and see my friends…. my family… and I know they will support me in whatever I do.

I cannot end this article without saying a little about the founder of this class, Dr. Shanon Brooks. Dr. Brooks is a co-founder and president of Monticello College, in Utah. He is the kind of teacher/mentor that we all strive to be.

His is not one to simply stand in front of the classroom and ‘lecture’ you. He makes you think, extracting thoughts and opinions from your comments.

He insists on you backing your statements with facts. He strives to make you aware of the motives behind your statements and, in doing so, makes you more aware of yourself.

He makes you want to do better, to be better. Early on, he stated that one of the goals of this class was to raise-up leaders.

Dr. Brooks leads you by example, until you can lead others by your example. He is a man of distinction and I have been truly blessed in getting to know him.

Attention Span: Our National Education Crisis, Part Three

Read Part One Here

Read Part Two Here

Fallacy Number 1: Learning should be fun.

Indeed, the lesson seems to be that everything should be fun.

The worst criticism of our time is that something is boring, as if that made it less true or less important or less right.

There is nothing wrong with fun, but there is everything wrong with a society whose primary purpose is to seek fun.

In American society, particularly among those under 40, the love of fun is the root of all evil. This is the legacy of the sixties—seeking fun has become a national pastime.

With respect to the education of an adult, fun is simply not a legitimate measurement of value.

Things should be judged by whether or not they are good, true, wholesome, important or right. Commercialistic society judges things by whether they are profitable, and even socialism judges whether something is fair or equitable.

But what kind of a society makes “fun” the major criteria for its actions and choices?
Consider how this lesson impacts the education of youth and adults. Learning occurs when students study. Period.

No fancy buildings or curricula or assemblies or higher teacher salaries change this core principle.

Learning occurs when students study, and any educational system is only as good as the student’s attention span and the quality of the materials.

Now, study can be fun, but it is mostly just plain old-fashioned hard work, and nearly all of the fun of studying comes after the work is completed.

In essence, there are really two kinds of fun—the kind we earn (which used to be called “leisure”), and the kind that we just sit through as it happens to us (entertainment). There are very few things in life as fun as real learning, but we must earn it. And this kind of fun always comes after the hard work is completed.

No nation that believes that learning should be fun, in the unearned sense, is likely to do much hard studying, so not much learning will occur.

And without that learning the nation will not remain free. Nor will people stay moral, since righteousness is hard work and just doesn’t seem nearly as fun as some of the alternatives.

No nation focused on unearned fun will pay the price to fight a revolutionary war for their freedoms, or cross the plains and build a new nation, or sacrifice to free the slaves or rescue Europe from Hitler, or put a man on the moon. We got where we are because we did a lot of things that weren’t fun.

Americans today believe that it is their right to have fun. Every day they expect to do something fun, and they expect nearly everything they do to be fun. Most adults eventually figure out that fun isn’t the goal, but many of today’s students firmly believe that learning must be fun; if not, they put down the books and go find something else to do.

Fallacy Number 2: Good teaching is entertaining.
Since fun is the goal, teachers must be entertaining or they aren’t good teachers. “He is boring,” is the worst criticism of a teacher these days.

The problem with this false lesson, besides the fact that some of the best teachers aren’t a bit entertaining, is that it assumes that teachers are responsible for education in the first place.

Now remember, I’m speaking of the role of adult and youth students to own their responsibility for their education.

This is not intended as license for parents and educators to abdicate the responsibility to be all that they can be as mentors.

But think of it: if we, as students, are waiting around for our teachers to get it right or else we’re not gonna study, who really loses?

Whose job is education anyway?

All of us have watched a movie with a bad ending, and since our goal in watching was to be entertained, we are upset that the movie ended that way. We blame it on whoever made the movie; it was their fault.

Our culture approaches teachers the same way—if we weren’t entertained or didn’t learn, it is their fault. “What kind of a teacher is he, anyway; I didn’t learn anything in his class.”

But if I don’t learn something in a class, it is my own fault, no matter how good or bad the teacher is.

Good teaching is a wonderful and extremely important commodity, but that is another essay, and it is not responsible for a student’s success. Students are. To tell them otherwise is to leave them victims who are forever at the mercy of the system.

And history is full of examples of students who owned their role and achieved greatness because they recognized that it was their job to supply the motivation and the effort to gain a great education.

Our society likes to blame its educational shallowness on its teachers because it is just plain easier to blame than to study.

And it is easier for parents and politicians to join the blaming game than to set an example of studying that will inspire their youth to action.

The impact on education is clear: We blame teachers and our schools for the problems, while we do everything except the hard work of gaining an education for ourselves, thus inspiring and facilitating our children to do the same.

The impact on freedom is equally direct: Students who have been raised to blame educational failure on someone else usually become adults who expect outside experts to take care of our freedom for us.

Even those who become activists tend to spend a lot of time exposing the actions of others, “waking people up” to what “they” are doing.

And whether “they” refers to conspirators, liberals, or the religious right, the activists seldom do anything about the situation except talk—in more shallow 30-second sound bite opinions.

A corollary of this false lesson is that students need a commercial every 8.2 minutes. We are conditioned to short attention spans, and therefore to shallow educations and nominal freedoms.

The reality is that unless you spend at least two hours on something, chances are you didn’t learn much. Without attention span, little is learned.

Fallacy Number 3: Books, texts and materials should be simple and understandable.

Now, mind you–I’m not suggesting that authors should be purposely obscure or irrelevant. I’m just returning to the idea that we, as students, must step up to whatever obstacles may be in our way.

It’s our job to do whatever it takes to get an education, no matter the quality or interest level of our materials.

But even beyond that obvious point, the problem with this error is that the complex stuff is actually the best, the most interesting, ironically the most fun, and certainly the most likely to produce individual thinkers and a free nation.

The classics, the scriptures, Shakespeare, Newton—works really worth tackling are the best and most enjoyable.

Consider the impact of simple materials on education.

For example, what kind of nation would the founders have framed had they been taught a diet of easy textbooks, easier workbooks, more quickly understood concepts and curricula?

A free people is a thinking people, and thinking is hard work—it is, in fact, the hardest work, which is why so little of it takes place in a society which avoids pressure and takes the easy path.

The only reason to choose easier curriculum is that it is easier, but the result is weaker graduates, flimsier characters, vaguer convictions and impotent wills.

Thucydides said it bluntly: “The ones who come out on top are the ones who have been trained in the hardest school.”

This is true of individuals and of nations.

I am not saying that everything that is hard has value, but I am saying that most things of value are hard. If your studies weren’t hard, really hard, chances are you didn’t learn much.

 

To be continued…..

My Experience At The Utah State Legislature: Part 6, Can We Improve Utah Government?

 Read Part One Here

Read Part Two Here

Read Part Three Here

Read Part Four Here

Read Part Five Here

There is a story about the late Congressman Bill Orton who was nick-named “No bill, Bill” for his tendency of presenting very few bills in Congress.

I think we could use more of that “No bill” approach here at the Utah State Capitol.

I learned a lot here but not about form or methods.  Being already quite familiar with the system, what I really learned was the philosophy of government of many of our representatives and what appears to be the standard for being a good representative of the people.

Don’t get me wrong; I have great respect for every member of the Legislature.

In spite of what people may say, I saw first hand the sacrifice and energy that these people put into the process.

I believe that they are all serving for honorable purposes.

But what happens if there is a dysfunctional understanding of the proper role of government to begin with? With bad information, even the most honorable member of a legislature can make serious mistakes.

I believe that the core responsibility of a disinterested (meaning self-less and others oriented) public servant is to first, do no harm; to protect and enhance if possible the rights and free exercise of the liberties of the people.

I believe that the statesmen’s job is to ensure that government operates at the most local levels first, and to minimize government whenever possible while still protecting rights.

Government has no right or responsibility to provide and nurture.  Government is force.  It should only be employed to protect.

Since government has no means of production, it can only provide by first taking. Often the process involves taking from the producers and giving to the non-producers.

There are a number of current members of the Utah House of Representatives who through the bills they presented and their engagement in debates exhibited a clear understanding of the governmental philosophy to which I adhere.

But there are many who presented bills and debated and voted in a manner that suggested they saw the role of government as providing and nurturing. I also witnessed voting that defies all logic. A Representative would vote on principle for one bill and then vote with an apparent loss of faculties on the next.  Unfortunately, those voting consistently on principle were in the minority.

One thing that really bothered me was the pervasive mentality that being a good representative means passing a lot of bills.

I personally heard members of the House say that they just really wanted to get some bills passed.  Wow, I thought the role of government was to protect rights, and since we already have a constitution in place to protect those rights, this would mean the passage of very few bills, and those that were passed would simply shore-up the liberties already guaranteed by the State and Federal Constitutions.

This concept of “we have to get something done” has got to go.  Here are my criteria for the passage of law:

1)   Does it increase or at least not decrease liberty?

2)   Does it decrease or at least not increase government?

3)   Is it constitutional?

In my opinion, no law should be passed that is out of step with these criteria. Only when the government moves away from providing and nurturing can individuals, families, churches, and communities step in and fill the void. Statesmen protect rights, defend independence and promote personal liberty.  So where are the statesmen?

I was also saddened by the lack of citizen involvement.  The definition of a republic is two-fold; representatives who act on behalf of their constituents and citizens who keep a keen eye on those actions.  As Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, “trust but verify.”  Outside of a few non-commercial/non-industrial lobbying groups such as Eagle Forum and a woman named Kristine who was at the Capitol representing herself (good for you), I saw virtually no citizen involvement.  The gallery was consistently empty of long-term vigilant citizens, but very busy with momentary visitors.

I want to thank Representative Brad Galvez for hosting me. His mentorship was kind, direct, and inspirational. He is one of the good guys.

In the final analysis, the old maxim “we the people get the government we deserve” rings true.  There is nothing that I saw at the Legislature that could not be resolved or improved with an infusion of citizen involvement.

Individual Legislators may disagree with this but that is only because they have grown accustomed to holding all of the responsibility and responding to our insatiable appetite for more and more oversight in the form of new laws. The best place to start is on the local level.

Here in Utah we have the Caucus system (more on this in a later post).  If we the people engage more at the local level and then consistently follow-up with our elected officials, holding them accountable as we hold ourselves responsible, I can see a huge improvement for future Utah government.

“Yeah, but. . .will I make money?”

A liberal arts education is your key to unlock the door of living for fulfillment, not just money. But can a liberal arts degree also make you money? Do the ideals of liberal arts have practical implications?

Absolutely.

Warren Goldstein, the chair of the history department at the University of Hartford, published a fascinating article entitled “What Would Plato Do?” in the Yale Alumni Magazine.

“I went looking for Yale graduates who’ve had extremely successful careers in the business world,” writes Goldstein.

“…all of them recommend the liberal arts for those concerned with prospering in their world…Almost all the people I interviewed spoke of learning, as undergraduates, a mode of analysis deeper and ultimately more reliable and more creative than what they learned in business school.”

For example, Susan Crown, a principal of the Chicago investment firm Henry Crown and Company and self-described social activist, says, “A liberal arts education teaches you how to think: how to analyze, how to read, how to write, how to develop a persuasive argument.
These skills are used every day in business. A liberal arts education also offers the ability to focus on large ideas.

We live in a world where everyone is multitasking, often skimming the surface and reacting to sound bites.

But as undergraduates, we had the opportunity to read great literature and history, to focus and to consider.

This developed a standard of depth and care that calibrates our work for the rest of our lives.”

Robert Rubin majored in history before becoming a commodities and currency trader at Drexel Burnham. “Because I was a well- educated person, I was able to use that education in the forging of relationships,” he says. “I did a lot of business abroad, in cultures where being liberally educated matters more than it does here.”

Charles Ellis asserts that liberal arts lay the groundwork for strategic management of people. Even though he majored in art history, he later founded and ran for 30 years, the international business            strategy consulting firm Greenwich Associates.

“Business management as it is now best practiced,” he says, “is the most liberating and creative and dynamic work people can be involved in: working all the time with human beings.

The only chance you have to be successful is to think of it as a humanistic engagement, as if everyone in your business is a volunteer and could get another job—and will get another job if you don’t deal with them in a way that they find important and meaningful, even exhilarating.

The more you can learn about them and how they work together, and have a chance to think in terms of a longer-term framework and broader vision— all this comes out of a liberal education.”

Donna Dubinsky, CEO of Numenta, was the business brains behind the PalmPilot and the newer Handspring Visor. She sees a strong analogy between history and business.

“Business is a giant jigsaw puzzle, with the market, product, right financial and people resources, understanding of the environment,” she reflects. “If all those pieces fit together, you do well in business.

If you focus on just some of the pieces, you won’t succeed.

History is a lot like that; you have to look at environment and technological development and philosophy and competition with neighboring countries. You learn to understand how critical context and complex systems are.”

Richard Franke, retired CEO of the investment firm John Nuveen & Co., adds, “Whatever has made you good and your firm a success is probably going to change within five years or so. You have to recreate the firm through an orderly process every five years.

If you hired only on the strength of the technical training a person has—well, you need someone who can think through a set of issues and come out the other side with a practical set of conclusions.

Because I was CEO of our company for 24 years, I had a unique opportunity to set the culture and to bring on people who could flourish in that culture. I looked for a liberal arts background.”

“Hire liberal arts majors in preference to business majors?” Goldstein asks. “Can Franke be serious? Yes, if the opinions of his peers are any evidence. Says Dubinsky, “I am not wild about business degrees for undergraduates; that’s a vocational-school sort of thing.

I would say, for an entry-level job, if I’m hiring people I would absolutely prefer a liberal arts degree to a business degree.”

Charles Ellis is still more emphatic: “For leaders and managers, an undergraduate degree in business is a genuine, serious mistake.

What you’re going to learn is an advanced version of bookkeeping; you never learn the most rigorous thinking taught in professional business schools. I don’t know anybody who recommends undergraduate study in business, certainly not over liberal arts, and I include science.”

Yes, you will make money with a liberal arts degree. In fact, such an education uniquely positions you for leadership.

At Monticello College, you’re going to dive into Socrates, Thucydides, Tolstoy, Jefferson, Dostoevsky, Durant, Machiavelli, Marx, Copernicus, Archimedes, Gandhi, Drucker, Kiyosaki and hundreds of other influential thinkers and classics.

You’ll come out the other side equipped to tackle complex business problems, organize community efforts, build a healthy family, and be a contributing citizen.

Attention Span: Our National Education Crisis, Part Four

Read Part One Here

Read Part Two Here

Read Part Three Here

 

Fallacy Number 4: “Balance” means balancing work with entertainment.

Today’s adults don’t usually find out what really hard work is until they graduate and have to support a family.

The average person supporting a family in modern America puts in over fifty hours a week at work; in most countries the amount is much higher.

But the American high school system conditions most students to attend class five hours a day and do outside study a few extra hours a week.

The rest of the time is filled with activities, friends and occasional family time. And this has become the standard for balance.

Most college students follow suit: they are in class three to five hours a day, they study a couple of hours a day, and they fill the rest of the time with activities and friends.

Again, this is considered “balanced.”

Once people get out of school and go to work, “balance” most often means the need to spend more time with their family.

But while in school, they say it to mean that they need to spend more time with their friends engaging in fun activities. Family time and study time are shoved aside.
One of my mentors, a religious leader from my faith, taught that the right approach to daily life is eight hours a day of sleep, eight hours a day of work, and eight hours a day of leisure.

And he spoke at a time when leisure didn’t mean entertainment.

Indeed, leisure means serving people, studying, learning, being involved in community service and government, and so on—whereas the slaves in Rome were considered incapable of leisure and so their masters gave them entertainment to keep them pacified.

The media age has tried to convince us all, quite successfully, that we need entertainment—and often.

I take the eight hours sleep, eight leisure and eight work quite literally—it is a solid and realistic approach to “balance.”

In all my years of teaching, I have never had a married, working 40 hours a week student complain about not having time to study. They all make the time.

Those who complain are always those wanting more time for entertainment, never those who want more time for work or family.

Every single one of those complaining that they want balance has been someone without a full or steady part time job. That is amazing to me.

The simple truth is that they are right—they do need balance. They need to start working and studying as if they were college students.

Studying a minimum, and I mean minimum, of forty hours a week in college is balance—it balances the pre-college years where most students did real, intensive study only a few hours in their whole life.

And a few college students actually studying enough to become Jeffersons and Washingtons is balance to a whole generation of college students playing around.

If you really want to invoke balance, I think you could make a strong argument that entertainment is not part of a balanced life—unless it is the leisure sort done with family or to learn or serve. Get rid of entertainment time, and fill it with studying, and you will start to find balance.

Until then, you will continue to feel unbalanced—and whatever you blame it on, the study will not unbalance you.

On occasion I have had students who did become unbalanced in the side of their studies, and I have recommended that they cut back and spend more family time. But this has happened perhaps three times out of hundreds of students.

In contrast, it always surprises me who tries to argue for balance—they are usually the ones in no danger whatsoever of becoming unbalanced studiers.

Fallacy Number 5: Opinions matter.

This is perhaps the biggest, most widespread and most fallacious lesson of the electronic age.

A time traveler visiting from history might well consider this the most amazing thing about our age. Everybody has an opinion, which can be delivered in 30 seconds or less, and these opinions are considered newsworthy, valuable, and a sound basis for public policy and individual action.

But an opinion is really just something you aren’t sure about yet–either because you haven’t done your homework, or because after the homework is thoroughly complete the answers are still a bit unclear.

Opinions are at best educated guesses, at worst dangerously uneducated guesses. In any case, opinions are just guesses.

Great people in history know and choose. Opinions are really nothing more than the lazy man’s counterfeit for knowing and choosing. Again, there is a place for opinion, but after the hard work is completed, not as a replacement for it.

In short—opinion is not a firm basis for anything except passing time (which may be one of the reasons the market won’t listen to more than 30 seconds of it at a time).

Imagine what the educational system might look like in a society that values opinions over knowledge. Or try to imagine the future governmental and moral choices of a society where all opinions are created equal, and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights.

Certainly such a society will not be wise, or moral, or free.

III. How to Increase Attention Span

Now, in pointing out these false lessons of the electronic age, my point is not that books are better than computers or televisions. There is nothing I know of that makes paper and binding inherently better than plastic and silicon.

Computers are better than books for many things, such as tracking and storing large amounts of information, speeding up communication and technological progress, and increasing the efficiency and even effectiveness of business.

Television is better than books for many purposes, including mass and speedy communication, business advertising and marketing, and entertainment options where important ideas can be portrayed and carried to the hearts of people more quickly.

My point is not that books are inherently better than electronic screens, nor is it that electronic media is bad. Nor is my point that the electronic media undermines our morals; the truth is that many books are at least as bad.

My point is that books are better than television, or the internet, or computer for educating and maintaining freedom.

Books matter because they state ideas and then attempt to thoroughly prove them.

The ideas in books matter because time is taken to establish truth, and because the reader must take the time to consider each idea and either accept it, or (if he rejects it) to think through sound reasons for doing so.

A nation of people who write and read is a nation with the attention span to earn an education and a free society if they choose.

The very medium of writing and reading encourages and requires an attention span adequate to deal with important questions and draw sound and effective conclusions. The electronic media arguably does not do this in the same way.

Now, idealism aside, the reality is that 30 second sound bites is how public dialogue takes place in our society, and we can either whine about it or we can adapt to the realities and develop our skills to be leaders.

A leader of public dialogue in our day must use the 30 second method; in fact, the reality is closer to 6 seconds than 30.

I am not saying that we should ignore this reality and prepare for 7-hour debates to impact public opinion. The electronic age is real and statesmen should be prepared to utilize it effectively.

But there is a huge difference between those who just polish their media technique and those who do so after (or at minimum, while) acquiring a quality liberal arts education.

Technology is a valuable tool, and a person who has paid the price to know true principles and understand the world from a depth and breadth of knowledge and wisdom, and then applies his or her wisdom through technology is much more likely to achieve statesmanlike impact.

His 6-second sound bites will not be opinions, but rather ideas that have been fully considered, weighed and chosen.

Indeed, and this is my most important point, in the electronic age your attention span is even more important than it was at other times in history.

The future of freedom may well hinge on one thing—our attention spans. And certainly your future success as a leader and statesman depends on your attention span.

One thing is certain: there will be no Lincolns, Washingtons, Churchills, Gandhis, or the mothers and fathers who taught them, without adequate attention span.

CONCLUSION

I wish I had some tricks to give you to increase your attention span.

But there is only one that I know of: discipline and hard work, hours and hours and hours studying, with hopefully some prayer and meditation in the mix.

There will be leaders of the next 50 years; I believe you will be among them. But only if you increase attention span.

Otherwise, you will be one of the masses, going along with whatever those in power do to society, led along by your “betters”—not because they are better morally, but because they have a longer attention span.

Too many leaders in history have been people without virtue, who ruled because they had the knowledge. Knowledge truly is power. In this day, it is time for people of virtue to also become people of wisdom.

I challenge each of you to be one of them.

Don’t let your habits of entertainment, your attachment to fun and slave entertainment stop you from becoming who you were meant to be. Become the leader you were born to be—spend the hours in the library. Let nothing get in your way.

Many things will arise to distract you; study will often seem the least attractive alternative for the evening. But you know better. You were born to be the leaders of the future.

Now do it—not in 30-second sound bites of opinion, but in seven to ten hour daily stretches of building yourself into a leader, a statesman, a man or women capable of doing the mission God has for you.

Endnotes:

1. Postman, Neil. 1985. Amusing Ourselves to Death. New York: Penguin Books. p.44
2. Ibid.
3. Thucydides, The Pelopponesian War, 1,1.84.4. For a fuller treatment of this subject, see Josiah Bunting III. 1998. An Education for Our Time. Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc.