Three Simple, Yet Profound Truths for Freedom Fighters
November 30th, 2009 → 7:53 am @ Jeff Sandefer
The following speech by Jeff Sandefer was given on November 3, 2009 at the 2009 State Policy Network 17th Annual Meeting in Asheville, North Carolina. This is re-published with permission.
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As I was preparing this talk, I was wondering what it might feel like to be on the front lines, defending freedom, in times like this.
Do you feel as I do?
Are you still wondering how a President from Texas, a self-proclaimed “compassionate conservative,” could have understood so little about freedom and free markets?
Are you angry with men like Mark Sanford, who with so much promise, and so much to give, let personal appetites destroy their ability to serve?
Are you holding the Republican Party banner at arm’s length, like a soiled piece of cloth, wondering if we can ever wash off the stench from politicians who promised one thing to get elected, but spent money like drunken sailors once they were in office?
Does your heart, like mine, cry out for a Buckley or a Reagan or a Thatcher?
I am nothing more than an entrepreneur, a teacher, and a father of three. But I have had the honor of teaching with some of the finest entrepreneurs in this country.
And I have sat at Bill Buckley’s feet, and watched Margaret Thatcher from up close, and studied Ronald Reagan from afar.
If you feel as I do today, please listen closely to what I say next, for it embodies all that I have learned as an entrepreneur and a teacher:
Do not give up hope. For we freedom fighters have three simple truths, ancient truths, entrepreneurial truths, that are the secret to the American dream.
Embrace them, master them, and you not only change the world –- but you will change yourself as well.
I came here today because I believe that some of you in this room will change the world. Not in a small way, but in a profound one.
Because I have witnessed how the courage of ordinary people, armed with these three truths, can change the world.
Can the truths change your life as well? Stay with me for these next few minutes and I promise you’ll have your answer.
Let’s begin with a story from my friend Oliver DeMille, founder of George Wythe [University].
The year is 1764. A student named Thomas Jefferson is dumped by his girlfriend, an event so devastating that 20 years later he is still writing about it in his journal. Shortly thereafter, his best friend comes to him and says: ‘Thomas, we need to talk, I’m getting married.’
“Jefferson begins to congratulate his friend but is interrupted. ‘No Thomas, we really need to talk, I’m getting married….to her.’ Jefferson decides to give up on romance and rededicate himself to his studies.
“In that same year, 1764, John Adams is a teacher. He writes in his journal that he enjoys teaching because it allows him to escape the frustrating worlds of business and politics, and gives him a chance to think and learn. Later that year he will meet and marry Abigail.
“That same year, James Madison is 13 years old. He is a good student, but so quiet and shy that his parents wonder if he will ever amount to much.
“In 1764, George Washington is a businessman. His journal shows that his top priority that year is to pay off his debts, to which he has foolishly given a personal guarantee.
“That is the year 1764.
“A decade later, this same group of ordinary people will declare independence from the greatest power on the face of the earth, and sign it with their lives, fortunes and sacred honor.
“A decade after that, they will write and help ratify the United States Constitution, which Gladstone called the “greatest document struck by the mind and purpose of men.”
“But in 1764, they are just ordinary people, like us. Two students, a teacher, a businessman.”
So here is truth number one. We believe that ordinary Americans, armed with a worthy calling, can change the world.
We believe ordinary Americans are heroes awaiting a call.
Deep down, the left disdains the ordinary man or woman. To them, ordinary men and women are fools who must be shackled and managed and milked for the common good –- a common good defined by a ruling class who believe they are smarter and wiser and deserve power and influence.
But we know better.
The left can appeal to the dark side of the human spirit, to pride and envy, a lust for power and a desire for heaven on earth.
However, freedom fighters believe that ordinary Americans, armed with a worthy calling, can become entrepreneurial heroes.
So what is a calling? At our school, Acton, we believe a calling begins by using your most precious God-given gifts, doing something that brings you great joy, and solving a deep burning need in the world.
So here’s a question for you: Have you found your calling? Do you know your most precious gifts? Do you find great joy in your daily tasks, or just grumble through them?
Have you found a deep burning need in the world so intense that you would pledge your life, your fortune and your sacred honor — or are you just going through the motions?
We’ll return to this question in a moment.
Truth number two. We know how to turn good ideas into action, and action into results, in a way that makes the pie bigger for all.
We believe that ideas have consequences, but we know that results matter more than good intentions.
It turns out that ideas, by themselves are rather cheap. And potentially destructive. Global warming is an idea. So is egalitarianism. So is socialism. They all sound important –- even urgent –- even virtuous.
But the wrong ideas, those that try to perfect human nature or substitute the edicts of pseudo-intellectuals for the common sense of the average man, can enslave –- and even kill -– millions of people.
Have you ever wondered why the left, with so much more power at its fingertips — from government coercion, to the mainstream media, to our corrupt universities, to bloated left wing foundation — hasn’t just overwhelmed us?
It’s because, very simply, the left is incompetent. They create the Post Office; we create Federal Express and UPS.
The incompetent cannot deliver the mail or build bridges to somewhere or create companies that prosper -– they do not know how to make the pie bigger -– so their only recourse is to fight over the crumbs of decay.
So as we celebrate the magic of freedom and free markets, never forget that they require more than good ideas and vision, but also mastering the skills, tools and talents it takes to turn ideas into action and action into results.
Catholic philosopher Etienne Gilson, when asked to credit the church and clergy for the soaring cathedrals of Europe, nodded instead towards the skill of bricklayers by reminding that:
Piety is never a substitute for technique.”
Liberals not only have false piety to false gods, but poor technique, and that means with no power to create, no power to make the pie bigger, they can only consume and destroy.
I was in Russia in the early 1990’s and I saw firsthand what happens to people when you take away their freedom.
Some words from my journal from that trip:
People shuffle by, gray themselves, making due in a world more unreal than the left could ever imagine. Faintly, just faintly, everywhere you stand, there is the faint smell of urine.
“The young people are the lightest shade of gray; the middle age are darker; most have lost any sign of life.
“The elderly woman who cleans is the worst. Stooped almost to the ground, she moves in tiny steps, now more of a cleaning machine than a human being, sweeping dirt into the people’s dustpan, doing her duty.
“If she looks away, even for a moment, the trash and dirt are back, breeding in an unknown place, in an unknown way, but with a certainty that have made her what she is today.”
Barack Obama can make all the promises he wants, but I have seen what government power delivers in the end.
I have seen the final result, when people surrender their freedom in the name of the common good.
And that will not happen to my children.
Not on my watch.
We know how to turn good ideas into action, and action into results, in a way that makes the pie bigger. The left knows only how to fight over the crumbs of decay.
Writing papers and debating how many angels fit on the head of a pin – even a devoutly conservative pin, isn’t enough to guarantee freedom.
So how are you going to put your ideas into action? Are you personally committed to righting a specific wrong?
Will you run for office, and vote for what is right, instead of what will get you re-elected?
Will you launch a grassroots movement that will bring about change to your local schools?
Will you sweep away an outdated regulation and let the market do its work?
Who knows, you might even start the next FedEx or UPS, and put some bloated government bureaucracy out of its misery.
But you must take that first step, or you will never turn good ideas into actions, or actions into results.
We’ll return to this question in a moment too.
But now, the last truth. Liberty is right; slavery is wrong. Man longs to be free.
Yes, we can get things done. Yes, America is the richest and the fairest and the most powerful country on the face of the earth.
But we must appeal to something more powerful than expediency in the defense of freedom.
The Founding Fathers fought for liberty not for material gains or for power, and certainly not because liberty was expedient, but rather, because they thought that men deserve to live free.
I once had the pleasure to be with Lady Thatcher, watching her watch a small group of American businessmen cower during the 1987 stock market crash, as they questioned the future of capitalism.
Finally she had had enough. ”Gentlemen,” she reminded them, “ the most important word in the phrase ‘free markets’ is not the word ‘markets,’ but the word ‘free.’” Of course, as usual, she was right on target.
How often have you, like me, hidden behind some technical argument to make your point on a policy matter –- arguing our solutions are best because they work; that free market principles matter most because they make us rich?
If so, you do a grave disservice to the cause. Because the opposite of “liberty” is not “financial insecurity” but “slavery,” and we should not be afraid to say so.
Lower taxes, less regulation and a fair judiciary are not our goals simply because they work -– but because freedom is a gift from generations past, who fought and died so we could live free.
I’ll end with this….
Where are the Buckleys, the Reagans, the Thatchers, the Jeffersons, the Madisons and the Washingtons?
In this room. Today. But only if you are willing to embrace three simple truths.
The first: We believe that ordinary Americans, armed with a worthy calling, are heroes who can change the world.
And that starts –- here; today –- with you pledging to find your calling. Are you brave enough to take that first step?
The second truth: We know how to turn good ideas into action, and action into results, in a way that makes the pie bigger for all.
Will you leave here dedicated to putting your ideas into action? To finding a specific wrong that you will right, in a way that expands liberty and makes the pie bigger for all?
The third and final truth: Freedom and free markets are right because liberty trumps slavery.
In a world where taking a stand based on eternal truth is no longer in fashion, do you have the courage to defend liberty for liberty’s sake? To say that freedom matters because man was created to be free, and that our forefathers were right that freedom is worth fighting and dying for?
You are the best and brightest and most committed freedom fighters on this planet. Far removed from the cesspool of Washington, D.C.
If you aren’t going to leave here committed to finding a calling, to finding a specific wrong you will right, to seeking a cause that will roll back the power of government and set an example for others to follow, while having the courage to say that freedom matters because ordinary Americans have the right to become entrepreneurial heroes -– if not you, then who?
And if you are not going to start now, then when?
Thank you and God bless you.
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Jeff Sandefer is an entrepreneur, a teacher and a passionate defender of freedom.
As an entrepreneur, he founded his first company at age 16; recently he sold Sandefer Capital Partners, an energy investment firm with several billion dollars in assets.
As a teacher, his students at the University of Texas five times voted him the school’s Most Outstanding Teacher and he was named by BusinessWeek as one the top Entrepreneurship professors in America.
Seven years ago Jeff and a group of successful entrepreneur-teachers started the Acton School of Business – named after the Victorian scholar of freedom Lord Acton, who most famously said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
The school is dedicated to serving America’s next generation of principled entrepreneurs. The Princeton Review – the gold standard for business school rankings – has consistently ranked Acton as one of the top MBA programs in the country.
While teaching entrepreneurship is Jeff’s “calling,” he cares even more that his three children – Taite, Charlie and Sam – and their children and grandchildren, enjoy the blessings of freedom.
Jeff is a longtime board member of National Review magazine, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the Philanthropy Roundtable and the Harvard Business School. He also served for six years as the Chairman of the Acton Institute for the study of Religion and Liberty and is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society.
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Georgic Economics: The Genesis of Liberty
November 11th, 2009 → 12:01 pm @ Hyrum Lefler
A “Georgic economy” occurs when families plant seeds after preparing the ground; they then water, tend, protect, and eventually harvest.
In our modern day, it is experienced by families who adopt Georgic principles in their finances. It is compared to banking as well: Banks plant seeds (of capital) and harvests increase over time.
When America shifted from agriculture to industry they outsourced (unwittingly perhaps) the planting of seeds for their livelihood, to others. The professional farmers provided the food, and the professional financiers provided the capital.
We Americans now do the opposite of banks: We receive products first, then pay for them over time — providing bankers with a harvest.
In essence, Americans began choosing material comforts over economic freedom. We lost the principles of Georgics.
The Georgic economy is not a new concept or practice. It has peeked its perspiring head several times throughout history.
Adam was taught this economy by God in the Bible. We see it again with Abraham. It was then forgotten by the Israelites in Egypt — and it took God forty years to revitalize it in the people.
The Greeks had it early on; they cultivated it in their rocky soil, only to have the vine blossom in the Golden Age and wilt in the scorching heat of flamboyance and frivolity.
The Romans built a powerhouse economy using Georgic principles, but eventually rejected Georgics for bread and circuses.
The Intellectual Roots of Georgics
Virgil the Poet, coined the phrase to describe this economic genesis of liberty in The Georgics (29 BC) and had it read to Octavian, who continued his course for power, along with his people. He became Emperor in 27 BC, and the 800 year-old Republic continued imploding into the pompous Roman Empire.
Georgic economies found life in pockets and bore fruit in the Great Economic Revolution at the turn of the 1st Millennium (See Will Durant’s Story of Civilization Volume IV), in the Renaissance, and in Puritan England.
Many of the Puritans, known for their work ethic and devotion to God, sailed to American (beginning in 1620) and on American soil this economy blossomed, birthing the greatest movement of freedom that has ever spread across the world.
As the British surrendered to Washington at Yorktown, their drummers played the march “The Day the World Turned Upside-Down.” (see Siege of Yorktown.)
The world had turned upside-down; the Founding Era of our nation rested firmly upon the shoulders of a Georgic Revolution.
How is Liberty Secured?
Every burst of liberty on the landscape of humanity has been preceded, fueled, tempered, and preserved by Georgic revolutions.
We as Americans will not find and secure liberty by legislating it in Washington. It will not be securely founded if spurred on only by discussion, persuasion, rhetoric, and hype.
Liberty is a consequence of work — of hard work, sacrifice, patience, and perseverance.
Our government’s over-spending on social programs, subsidizing, and other fear-mongered policies, are symptoms of the real problem: We forgot, and eventually refused to admit, that we must first plant, before we can reap.
It is time, once again, to “turn the world upside-down.”
YOU are an American! Experience a Georgic Revolution in your own life, for thus it must spread across our land if we are to succeed in moving the Cause of Liberty with any permanence and authenticity.
We must do this as our Founding Fathers did. This must be pursued in the natural pattern: Georgic Revolution first, political revolution second.
The Founders lived the Declaration long before they ever signed it…
21st Century Georgics
November 11th, 2009 → 12:00 pm @ Hyrum Lefler
A key factor in maintaining freedom is sustainable economic forms.
Are you maintaining freedom through the financial principles and practices you are using? Have American families adopted the economic forms necessary for the preservation of a free people?
The average American household pays over 34.5% of every dollar earned to interest payments. Forget about the taxes — that is serious bondage!
Our system has become top heavy, threatening our economic solvency as a nation and necessitating large government bailouts to offset their blunders.
When a government is forced to tax its people heavily to keep economic centers of capital from collapsing, how can we expect it to reduce in size? To force such a thing is tantamount to economic collapse.
We have allowed our wealth to centralize and grow in the hands of OTHERS. We have given them our money and the control of it for the “magic of compound interest” and then turned around and borrowed from them with a price.
Families are the foundation of American stability and economic growth, and it is time for families to regain real control of the resources of the economy.
What do I suggest? We obviously cannot steal all of the money and put it in our families’ accounts.
No, I am suggesting that we have all of the resources we need, and they flow through our hands day after day, and we relinquish control of them day after day.
This is because we do not understand money; or, more importantly, we do not understand economy.
The Roman Poet Virgil wrote The Georgics in 29 BC.
The concept of “Georgics” that came out of this poem was widely debated and discussed in the founding era of our country. The word basically means “to work the land.”
In early spring-tide, when the icy drip
Melts from the mountains hoar, and Zephyr’s breath
Unbinds the crumbling clod, even then ’tis time;
Press deep your plough behind the groaning ox,
And teach the furrow-burnished share to shine.
That land the craving farmer’s prayer fulfils,
Which twice the sunshine, twice the frost has felt;
Ay, that’s the land whose boundless harvest-crops
Burst, see! the barns.
It was felt by many of our Founders that this connection to the land, to hard work, and the dependence on God that is pre-supposed when seeds are planted, had a profound effect of building an independent and free people — especially when coupled with the other foundations of freedom.
Up until 100 years ago, the vast majority of Americans worked the land with plows — they were farmers.
Short of a massive catastrophe, that isn’t going to happen in our time. What can be done in our day to bring the small family farm — or at least its principles — back to life?
We must first understand Georgics.
American families must become independent centers of the U.S. economy if our liberties are to be preserved. I am calling for a regeneration of organic, financial systems centered in and controlled by America’s families.
