Funding Is Half Way There

monticello_college_largeLast month we sent out an email (The Right Idea At The Right Time) comparing the beginnings of Monticello College to other now well-known colleges and universities.

We showed you the simple solution used by many institutions of higher learning centuries ago and how it stabilized those schools to become the great educational pillars they are today.

We laid out our building plan and shared our initial funding goal for phase one of this campaign which is to secure 100 individuals or families who support Monticello College and are willing to donate at least $25 per month for 24 months.

imagesWe are happy to announce that many of you heard our appeal and have committed to help us.

To date 32 donors are providing monthly donations totaling $1,357 per month, just short of 50% of our goal. To those who are currently donating, thank you so much, we appreciate your sacrifice and support.

If you have thought about supporting us but haven’t done so yet, please reconsider and help us rebuild our American tradition of liberty and independence through Monticello College.

If $25 a month is too much, any amount would help, not only financially but, sometimes feeling the support of others buoys’ us up in ways that are not easily measured.

As we mentioned in our first email, our curriculum is in place, the campus property is completely paid for, the first building is completed and in use, three mentors are currently teaching classes and three more are in training. The administration and faculty have been carefully selected and are men and women who have dedicated their adult lives to be instruments in the fulfillment of our mission:

Monticello College is dedicated to cultivating an education and environment that foster public virtue, induce moral character, and emulate the courage and foresight of the American founding period, preparing our graduates to guard the principles of liberty.

liberty1Help us to establish a training ground for public virtue, moral character, courage and foresight to guard the principles of liberty.

Liberty is our legacy.

To join our monthly donation campaign, please go to Robert Morris Foundation. For other donations and to keep up with the Monticello Campus Building Project, go to Campus Building Project.*

 

* All donations to this campaign will/should be indentified as Robert Morris Foundation/MC contributions.  The Robert Morris Foundation is a 501 (c) (3) philanthropic organization that has partnered with Monticello College.Funds raised via this campaign may only be use to develop the campus of Monticello College.

A Renaissance in Social Leadership

I actually wrote and posted this article in 2009, but I felt that it was a good time to take another look.

 

In Lee Iacocca’s book Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, he strikes a poignant cord—with all of these problems we are facing, where is the outrage?

And now that he mentions it, where the heck are all of the leaders?

Why is no one other than “beltway fever” politicians putting forth answers, and bad ones at that.

Why are we all just standing around waiting? And what are we waiting for?  Where are the ordinary men and women who are the legacy of this great nation?  The Sergeant Yorks, the Mr. Smiths, the Rosa Parks’, the Preston Tuckers and the adherents of Cincinnatus?

Where are the everyday leaders in society, who have the common horse sense to solve these problems?  Whether it be a trillion dollar bail out, or government provided health care or the fall of the dollar or something as simple as living within your means—where is the sound thinking and the “Yankee Ingenuity” America is so famous for?

With all of the resources in our modern society- family, media, community, business, church, local government and education, we should have at least a few really good solutions being discussed and promoted from every tavern, small business, restaurant, board room and dining room table.

I study history, and I have to tell you, it doesn’t look good.  Historically, no nation (outside of the city-state called  Nineveh) has ever noticed their own folly in real time.  We are no exception.

Like other nations from the past, we either assume that we are smarter than the last civilization who tried to borrow their way out of debt (or dig their way out of a hole) or we are so ignorant that we don’t have any idea what is happening at all.  Either way, our existing course adds up to a really bad time.

So I will take my own admonition and offer a solution, one that I believe has been the salvation of this nation many times in the past and is likely to be the hope for us now.  I call it A Renaissance in Social Leadership. It is generally agreed upon by historians that the Dark Ages came to an end by the advent of a period known as the Renaissance.

This was a period most known for ordinary people and aristocrats alike, who seeing a need in their families, towns, cities and nations, determined to improve themselves and provide much needed societal leadership through rigorous study and the revival of many of the arts, sciences and knowledge lost during the previous 400 years.

Many of these self-appointed leaders believed that the church and the government (who had been the steward of the people’s hearts and minds for so long) were not fully meeting the needs of the people and determined to do something about it.  Thus began the Renaissance.

Today I believe it is time for such a renewal: a Renaissance of Social Leadership.  I see a vast need for a Renaissance in education, and creativity, and relationships and values.  A Renaissance of Social Leadership means a rejuvenation of individuals, marriages, families, and communities.

A Renaissance of Social Leadership means a rediscovery of the joy of learning for learning’s sake, the development of personal mission and a focus on unleashing your personal genius.
What can one person do? And what does this mean in everyday living? It means that rather than just waiting around to be told what to do, we as citizens need to take a leadership role in our communities.

It means that mothers and fathers need to start acting like the stewards that they really are and can be.

It means that rather than following the media blindly, we should hold them accountable.

It means that we should be actively engaged in our local governments, anxiously following and being involved in our immediate governance.

It means that we should all be pursuing a lifetime education for ourselves and taking an active ownership in the elementary and secondary education of our children.  And demanding a lot more from higher ed.  It means demanding, encouraging and providing businesses in our communities that are beneficial to society and who give back a lot.  And it means living a life style that is in tune with our spiritual selves.

Although the tactics may be complicated, the strategy is simple—we must take our lives back.  We must stand up, assume responsibility and demand that government limit itself, that media stick to reporting the news instead of trying to make it.

We must be loyal husbands and wives, dedicated mothers and fathers.  We must participate in education by example, not coercion.  We must purposefully get out of debt and create family financial stability.

This Renaissance will happen.  But it may have to smolder for decades unless and until you and I decide to do something about it.  No government, no church, no civic organization will or can do it on its own for they are made up of people.  This must be a Renaissance of the people, of marriages, of families, and of communities.  The time is now for each of us to decide—more of the same—or do we step into our god-given greatness and lead?

 

Why Colleges Don’t Teach the Federalist Papers

The May 7th, 2012 issue of the Wall Street Journal printed an article entitled:

WHY COLLEGES DON’T TEACH THE FEDERALIST PAPERS

by Peter Berkowitz

At America’s top schools, graduates leave without reading our most basic writings on the purpose of constitutional self-government.

Berkowitz begins his article:

It would be difficult to overstate the significance of The Federalist for understanding the principles of American government and the challenges that liberal democracies confront early in the second decade of the 21st century.

Yet despite the lip service they pay to liberal education, our leading universities can’t be bothered to require students to study The Federalist—or, worse, they oppose such requirements on moral, political or pedagogical grounds. Small wonder it took so long for progressives to realize that arguments about the constitutionality of ObamaCare are indeed serious.

He then lays out the origin of this forgotten road map to freedom,

The masterpiece of American political thought originated as a series of newspaper articles published under the pseudonym Publius in New York between October 1787 and August 1788 by framers Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison.

The aim was to make the case for ratification of the new constitution, which had been agreed to in September 1787 by delegates to the federal convention meeting in Philadelphia over four months of remarkable discussion, debate and deliberation about self-government.

By the end of 1788, a total of 85 essays had been gathered in two volumes under the title The Federalist. Written at a brisk clip and with the crucial vote in New York hanging in the balance, the essays formed a treatise on constitutional self-government for the ages.

The Federalist deals with the reasons for preserving the union, the inefficacy of the existing federal government under the Articles of Confederation, and the conformity of the new constitution to the principles of liberty and consent. It covers war and peace, foreign affairs, commerce, taxation, federalism and the separation of powers. It provides a detailed examination of the chief features of the legislative, executive and judicial branches.

It advances its case by restatement and refutation of the leading criticisms of the new constitution. It displays a level of learning, political acumen and public-spiritedness to which contemporary scholars, journalists and politicians can but aspire. And to this day it stands as an unsurpassed source of insight into the Constitution’s text, structure and purposes.

Berkowitz continues with a list of Ivy League and similarly rated undergraduate and graduate schools that lightly touch on or completely skip the reading of the Federalist.

Touching on the treatment of the Federalist by progressive ideology and the corruption of political science in general, he ends by pointing out the forgotten value and common sense of reading the Federalist Papers,

And thus so many of our leading opinion formers and policy makers seem to come unhinged when they encounter constitutional arguments apparently foreign to them but well-rooted in constitutional text, structure and history.

These include arguments about, say, the unitary executive; or the priority of protecting political speech of all sorts; or the imperative to articulate a principle that keeps the Constitution’s commerce clause from becoming the vehicle by which a federal government—whose powers, as Madison put it in Federalist 45, are “few and defined”—is remade into one of limitless unenumerated powers.

By robbing students of the chance to acquire a truly liberal education, our universities also deprive the nation of a citizenry well-acquainted with our Constitution’s enduring principles.

Over the course of 4 years, Monticello College students read all 85 Federalist Papers and 85 additional papers that are labeled “ANTI-FEDERALIST.” Why are the Federalist Papers a primary text at Monticello College?

If you have to ask, we need to talk.

Full Berkowitz article below:

Peter Berkowitz: Why Colleges Don’t Teach the Federalist Papers

At America’s top schools, graduates leave without reading our most basic writings on the purpose of constitutional self-government.

By PETER BERKOWITZ

It would be difficult to overstate the significance of The Federalist for understanding the principles of American government and the challenges that liberal democracies confront early in the second decade of the 21st century. Yet despite the lip service they pay to liberal education, our leading universities can’t be bothered to require students to study The Federalist—or, worse, they oppose such requirements on moral, political or pedagogical grounds. Small wonder it took so long for progressives to realize that arguments about the constitutionality of ObamaCare are indeed serious.

The masterpiece of American political thought originated as a series of newspaper articles published under the pseudonym Publius in New York between October 1787 and August 1788 by framers Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison. The aim was to make the case for ratification of the new constitution, which had been agreed to in September 1787 by delegates to the federal convention meeting in Philadelphia over four months of remarkable discussion, debate and deliberation about self-government.

By the end of 1788, a total of 85 essays had been gathered in two volumes under the title The Federalist. Written at a brisk clip and with the crucial vote in New York hanging in the balance, the essays formed a treatise on constitutional self-government for the ages.

The Federalist deals with the reasons for preserving the union, the inefficacy of the existing federal government under the Articles of Confederation, and the conformity of the new constitution to the principles of liberty and consent. It covers war and peace, foreign affairs, commerce, taxation, federalism and the separation of powers. It provides a detailed examination of the chief features of the legislative, executive and judicial branches. It advances its case by restatement and refutation of the leading criticisms of the new constitution. It displays a level of learning, political acumen and public-spiritedness to which contemporary scholars, journalists and politicians can but aspire. And to this day it stands as an unsurpassed source of insight into the Constitution’s text, structure and purposes.

At Harvard, at least, all undergraduate political-science majors will receive perfunctory exposure to a few Federalist essays in a mandatory course their sophomore year. But at Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Berkeley, political-science majors can receive their degrees without encountering the single surest analysis of the problems that the Constitution was intended to solve and the manner in which it was intended to operate.

Most astonishing and most revealing is the neglect of The Federalist by graduate schools and law schools. The political science departments at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Berkeley—which set the tone for higher education throughout the nation and train many of the next generation’s professors—do not require candidates for the Ph.D. to study The Federalist. And these universities’ law schools (Princeton has no law school), which produce many of the nation’s leading members of the bar and bench, do not require their students to read, let alone master, The Federalist’s major ideas and main lines of thought.

Of course, The Federalist is not prohibited reading, so graduates of our leading universities might be reading it on their own. The bigger problem is that the progressive ideology that dominates our universities teaches that The Federalist, like all books written before the day before yesterday, is antiquated and irrelevant.

Particularly in the aftermath of the New Deal, according to the progressive conceit, understanding America’s founding and the framing of the Constitution are as useful to dealing with contemporary challenges of government as understanding the horse-and-buggy is to dealing with contemporary challenges of transportation. Instead, meeting today’s needs requires recognizing that ours is a living constitution that grows and develops with society’s evolving norms and exigencies.

Then there’s scientism, or enthrallment to method, which collaborates with progressive ideology to marginalize The Federalist, along with much of the best that has been thought and said in the West. Political science has corrupted a laudable commitment to the systematic study of politics by transforming it into a crusading devotion to the refinement of method for method’s sake. In the misguided quest to mold political science to the shape of the natural sciences, many scholars disdainfully dismiss The Federalist—indeed, all works of ideas—as mere journalism or literary studies which, lacking scientific rigor, can’t yield genuine knowledge.

And thus so many of our leading opinion formers and policy makers seem to come unhinged when they encounter constitutional arguments apparently foreign to them but well-rooted in constitutional text, structure and history. These include arguments about, say, the unitary executive; or the priority of protecting political speech of all sorts; or the imperative to articulate a principle that keeps the Constitution’s commerce clause from becoming the vehicle by which a federal government—whose powers, as Madison put it in Federalist 45, are “few and defined”—is remade into one of limitless unenumerated powers.

By robbing students of the chance to acquire a truly liberal education, our universities also deprive the nation of a citizenry well-acquainted with our Constitution’s enduring principles.

Mr. Berkowitz is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His latest book is “Israel and the Struggle over the International Laws of War” (Hoover Press, 2012).

A version of this article appeared May 7, 2012, on page A17 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Why Colleges Don’t Teach the Federalist Papers.

 

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.

timeforchange 300x253 Change?

 

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:

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.

Does Anybody Understand This Stuff?: Part 7, Radical Economics – A Thumbnail Sketch of 4,000 Years of Economics

Read Part One Here

Read Part Two Here

Read Part Three Here

Read Part Four Here

Read Part Five Here

Read Part Six Here

Read Part Eight Here

Key Economic Points

The beginning of the 20th century saw an explosion of violent and radical application of various economic principles.

Philosopher King

First let’s lay out a couple of economic theories. Then we will visit their application.

Plato contributed the concept of “The ideal State” to the Western world.   The problem with his contribution is two fold:

1. Plato couldn’t have been totally serious in his ruminations of the “Ideal State.”

2. Even if Plato was serious, he said that Philosopher Kings would rule his imagined society.  In other words, you had to have Philosopher Kings for Plato’s Ideal State to work, and the people who adopted his rationale were far from that pious and                 honorable stature.

Hegel contributed the concept of the Dialectic:

The Dialectic is nothing more than a means to describe human progression. In a nutshell, Hegel’s Dialectic suggests that “reality” is a matter of mind and through the individual process of ideas and acting on those ideas, we eventually come to the perfect state of existence. He is attributed to explaining this process in these terms: your current understanding of life, “your reality” today he describes as “Thesis.”

Hegel’s Dialectic

No sooner does one become comfortable in that reality when it is challenged by a counter-reality called “Anti-thesis.”

These two struggle, and finally merge into a new reality called “Synthesis.” This synthesis now becomes the new thesis and the process begins anew.

Hegel said that this process continues for a lifetime, a continual process of refining, or perhaps until the synthesis becomes so pure that no antithesis appears to challenge it.

As a number of authors have suggested, Marx  took Hegel’s Dialectic and turned it on its head, or in other words, corrupted it.  Hegel’s whole point was that we don’t know where the Dialectic will take us, hopefully continual improvement. But Marx hijacked the Dialectic and contributed these several points:

1. The end goal is Plato’s Ideal State

2. The means of getting there is Hegel’s Dialectic (highly modified)

3. History is driven by a variety of economic factors (especially class conflict/warfare).  The control of the means of production* by the state is vital.

4. The way to speed up history is to promote the antithesis of the current thesis (In Hegel’s world, the antithesis is natural and comes about on its own, but Marx believed that he could actually analyze the current thesis and then create and direct the antithesis as a way to speed up the progression to a more ideal state.)

5. The ideal state could be achieved by revolutionary communism as a way to move toward         democratic socialism.

6. This Ideal State must be global.  It cannot be nationalistic.

7. The Proletariat (working class) must revolt against the bourgeois (middle class or merchant/landed gentry), because it is the middle class that exploits the working class. He doesn’t say much about the rich or upper class.

8. The vanguard of the proletariat (a small, highly-organized band of intellectual revolutionaries) will carry out the revolt for the proletariat, and then see that they are taken care of (AKA – the rich and upper class).

9. Morality is nothing more than bourgeois prejudice.

10. There is no God, and religion is just an opiate of the masses.

*Means of Production – the knowledge, ability and resources to provide for one’s self. See the Servile State.

 

Chairman Mao

Radical Economics Since Marx (since about 1890 or 1900)

Key Economic Points

1. Lenin– Sped up the dialectic with violent revolutions and military might.

2. Stalin– Socialism in one country can work.  National socialism is better than none.

3. Mao–    Return to Marxism, not Leninism or Stalinism.

4. Hitler– Biological Marxism.

5. Gorbachev– Return to Leninism.

6. European Socialism (ie, Sweden & Britain)- Fabian Socialism. Gradually increase in governmental power.  Government provides more and more and government takes away more and more.

7. United States Socialism- Changed the name to welfare and programs for the less fortunate, but does the same as European.  In fact, from 1890-1920 the Brits were very big in propagandizing socialism to American universities and circles of power.

 

Conclusion

All of these systems have been implemented since about 1900 or so, under the argument that it had to be tried before we knew whether or not it would work. In some cases they have taken on new faces but are still promoted under the argument that it has never really been tried.  All failures are blamed on the fact that implementation has been “half-done” instead of fully executed.

Today, Marxists are taking on a whole new philosophy:

  • No longer class conflict, but race conflict and cultural strife
  • Not economic but biological
  • Multiculturalism is, in some ways, the “New Marxism”
  • Herbert Marcuse, an influential 20th century philosopher known as the “Father of the     New Left,” promoted the concept that Western culture was the great evil. The non-western or anti-colonial cultures must be liberated from the great exploiters (American and European powers). A vanguard of the oppressed cultures must revolt and set up the social democracy where the liberated can thrive.  He suggested that the most likely groups to lead this revolution are:

-nonconformist youth (disenfranchised high school age students)

-young middle class intelligentsia (college students)

-ghetto populations (disenfranchised young men and women who seem to have not future, nothing to lose)

In light of the direction American education has taken over the past 50 years, this quote from Lincoln is chilling, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”

 

With the next two posts I will finish up the “Attention Span” article and then come back and finish economics.

Don’t forget that there are now 45 posts or mini lectures available on this blog.  These of course, are designed for 2 purposes:

1. to share my thoughts and feelings on the topics.

2. to give you a taste of what your children will experience as students at Monticello College  on campus or online. www.monticellocollege.org.