An ancient Chinese parable is told of Yu Gong, a 90-year-old man whose travels to and from his home were inconvenienced by two large nearby mountains.

One day Yu Gong said to his family, “These mountains are too inconvenient. Why not get rid of them?”

His son and grandson responded, “What you say is true. We shall start moving them tomorrow.”

The next day, they began moving the mountain, carrying stones into the sea.

They worked nonstop through summer and winter, rain and snow.

Observing their work, a man said, “Yu Gong, you are so old. Do you really think it is possible to move the mountains?”

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Why can’t the freedom movement seem to get any traction?

Why have we lost battle after battle for at least the past century?

It’s because we tend to make the good the enemy of the perfect, the pragmatic the enemy of the ideal.

To be clear, it’s because the most passionate among us have adopted a rigid, dogmatic, uncompromising “either-or” stance in the fight.

Rather than winning hearts and minds in the trenches inch-by-inch, we drop rhetorical nuclear bombs and make enemies of potential supporters.

There’s one critical distinction that explains this tendency and, if understood, can overcome it and make all the difference to our success:

Do we view the fight for freedom as an election-cycle battle, or as a 100-year war?

These vastly different mindsets generate completely different strategies and tactics and produce completely different results.

If we view the fight as an election-cycle battle, the battlegrounds are primarily political and governmental.

The tactics include:

• Public, energetic, and angry marches and demonstrations
• Passionate, vitriolic, and partisan commentary that preaches to the crowd and riles the base but fails to win new supporters
• Literal, logical, and personal argumentation
• Directing energy primarily at getting individual political candidates elected

But in a 100-year war, the battlegrounds are cultural and educational, and the short-term tactics above shift to the following long-term strategies:

• Personal, lifelong, classical education in the quiet of our homes
• Respectful, thoughtful, open-minded discussion with people across the whole spectrum of belief, with the intention of winning hearts and minds, rather than simply spewing passion or proving how smart and “right” we are
• Symbolic, metaphorical, and artful story-telling and persuasion
• Directing energy toward reforming education, building families and communities, and becoming successful entrepreneurs (see the three choices in FreedomShift by Oliver DeMille)

In a 100-year war, we moderate our passion and smarten our strategy.

We heal the roots of our demise, rather than hacking at the symptomatic leaves.

We work from love, rather than anger.

We reform from the outside-in and bottom-up, rather than the top-down. In other words, we focus on fixing ourselves, rather than Washington.

We understand that studying Montesquieu in our homes is far more effective than waving banners in the streets.

We spend our time and energy teaching the rising generation the depths of freedom and political philosophy, rather than debating opponents in chat rooms and on radio and TV shows.

We build successful small businesses, rather than complaining about losing jobs overseas.

In a 100-year war, idealism and pragmatism aren’t mutually exclusive. We’re more concerned with direction than destination.

In other words, we don’t reject particular policies because they’re not ultimate, black-and-white ideals.

Rather, we judge them based on whether or not they take us closer to the ideal, however slight the progress.

In a 100-year war, we learn and teach principles, rather than fight candidates.

To be perfectly clear, we don’t waste time forwarding mass emails about the status of Obama’s birth certificate.

Most importantly, in a 100-year war, independent freedom lovers create an inclusive tent, rather than an exclusive club.

For example, many conservatives denigrate environmentalists, or as they’re disdainfully labeled, “tree-huggers.”

But many of these environment-conscious, thoughtful people are also highly-conscious and passionate about local, organic food production and sustainable agriculture — which is a primary battleground for freedom.

So rather than building on common beliefs and bringing these people into the tent of freedom, many conservatives banish them with narrow-minded labels.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is also a favorite target of many conservative commentators.

But wise freedom-lovers would do well to harness their energy.

The truth is that they raise a critical point that most conservatives fail to see: Vast inequities in wealth distribution and power are, in fact, killing America — every bit as much, if not more so, than governmental wealth redistribution from rich to poor.

The government does favor those with capital over those with little or none, big businesses over small businesses, which creates these unfair and unsustainable inequities.

We don’t have to occupy Wall Street with them, but we can at least be wise enough to recognize where we agree in order to work together toward a more free, just, and sustainable society.

We can start winning more friends and creating fewer enemies. We can be pragmatic coalition-builders, rather than dogmatic clique-builders.

I’m as passionate about freedom as anyone — freedom is my mission.

But passion alone isn’t going to win the fight for freedom.

The war will be won through wisdom.

Just minutes ago I finished reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.

Jane Smiley writes of the book, “This awed reviewer hardly knows where to begin.”

My sentiments exactly.

This is a literary masterpiece. The work of a genius. Overpowering. In the upper echelon of any list of classics.

Every bit as life-changing, heart-wrenching, and memorable — dare I say more so — as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Kite Runner, The Good Earth, The Help, The Grapes of Wrath, et al.

Infinitely more than a story about a preacher’s family in Africa. It is gorged with symbolism, bejeweled by poetry, boiling with justifiable moral outrage.

An unflinching exposition and enduring indictment of humans at their worst. A testament to our indomitable will to survive, an irresistible imperative to become our best.

Setting aside the masterful story — just the language alone is more than worth the journey.

I am forever transformed after reading it.

I will be reading every scrap of paper ever published by Kingsolver — two more books of hers are on the way to my doorstep as we speak, minutes after I finished this one.

This is all to say: I urge you to buy and absorb it as fast as humanly possible.

Before turning the first page, prepare your family for your absence; you will be engulfed.

Two days ago I published Monte and Laura Bledsoe’s letter, which detailed the infuriating inspection and threats by bureaucrats on their Quail Hollow Farm CSA on October 21, 2011.

They’ve now posted these four disturbing videos documenting the events.

I urge you to watch them.

The Bledsoes and people like them are my heroes.

It’s these types of people — entrepreneurial “mini-factory” owners, as Oliver DeMille puts it in The Coming Aristocracy — who will restore America.

As Oliver writes,

“…Others wonder how effective mini-factories can be in light of stifling regulation. That’s the whole point.

“By creating mini-factories, we both produce individuals with a pro-innovation, pro-free enterprise mindset who will ease regulation through voting, as well as organizations that by nature fight misguided regulation.

“It creates a drip system as an antithesis to bureaucracy and faulty regulation — drop by drop, on individual and organization at a time, the aristocratic system will be overwhelmed and deconstructed.

“In our current model of government and corporate dependence, aristocratic institutions, laws, and policies encounter only nominal resistance.

“More to the point, relatively few people are even aware of how burdensome our current regulatory environment is. Employees are largely shielded from red tape. Ironically, they feel its effect indirectly in almost every aspect of their lives, but few make the connection.

“Create a multitude of mini-factory owners and it’s a different story. Suddenly, freedom issues are brought to the forefront as more and more people clash with bureaucracy, and mass consciousness is awakened.”

Thank you Bledsoes, for having the courage to clash with bureaucracy and helping to awaken mass consciousness.

Watch these four videos now.

Forget all the wrangling over insurance companies and HMOs, Medicare and Medicaid, individual mandates and prescription drugs.

Scrap the bureaucracy and technocracy.

Getting to the root of health care reform in America doesn’t require a 2,000-page document and almost a trillion dollars in increased government spending.

You want real health care reform that actually cuts costs, leads to increased health, and cures root problems rather than plucking leaves off the diseased tree of American governance?

Simple: Stop all farm subsidies.

Consider:

1. The government subsidizes crops, particularly corn.
2. This leads to overproduction.
3. Surplus grains are used to 1) produce highly-processed foods, and 2) feed cattle and other livestock, which increases our meat intake.
4. These processed foods and abundance of corn-fed, highly-fatty meat substantially contribute to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other chronic diseases and health issues.
5. The government then wants to tax us to take care of all these problems.

As journalist Michael Pollan details in “this New York Times article:

“…the shift from supporting agricultural prices to subsidizing much lower prices has been a boon to agribusiness companies because it slashes the cost of their raw materials. That’s why Big Food, working with the farm-state Congressional delegations it lavishly supports, consistently lobbies to maintain a farm policy geared to high production and cheap grain…

“But as we’re beginning to recognize, our cheap-food farm policy comes at a high price: first there’s the $19 billion a year the government pays to keep the whole system afloat; then there’s the economic misery that the dumping of cheap American grain inflicts on farmers in the developing world; and finally there’s the obesity epidemic at home — which most researchers date to the mid-70′s, just when we switched to a farm policy consecrated to the overproduction of grain.

“Since that time, farmers in the United States have managed to produce 500 additional calories per person every day; each of us is, heroically, managing to pack away about 200 of those extra calories per day…”

Yes, I understand health care is more complicated than this and that other factors are involved.

Still, I’m confident that this one step would have far greater and longer-lasting impact on the health of our citizens than the maze of legislation found in Obamacare and other similar proposals.

The first and worst casualty of “expert culture” is the simplicity of common sense.

Beneath the layers of complexity, our problems are much simpler than specialized technocrats and myopic bureaucrats would have us believe.

Recommended Books, Articles, Movies, & TV

• “The Way We Live Now: 10-12-03; The (Agri)Cultural Contradictions Of Obesity” by Michael Pollan in the New York Times
• “You are What You Grow” by Michael Pollan in the New York Times
• “Back to Grass” by Corby Kummer in The Atlantic
• “10 Reasons to Cut Farm Subsidies” by Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute
• In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
• The Future of Food
• Food, Inc.
• King Corn
• Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution
• More Resources on Sustainable Agriculture

Here are this week’s must-read articles:

1. “The Roman Arena of the Death Penalty” by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

“People dress that need up in rags of righteousness and ethicality, but occasionally, the disguise slips and it shows itself for what it is: the atavistic impulse of those for whom justice is synonymous with blood. If people really meant the arguments of high morality, you’d expect them to regard the death penalty with reverent sobriety. You would not expect them to cheer.”

2. “Brother Beck Jumps the Shark” by Bryan Hyde

“Glenn Beck could use his considerable influence as a peacemaker — if he was willing to remove his ideological blinders. Instead he is choosing to foment that conflict by acting as a willing propagandist for the Israeli government.”

3. “Obama Rejects Obamaism” by David Brooks

“The White House has clearly decided that in a town of intransigent Republicans and mean ideologues, it has to be mean and intransigent too. The president was stung by the liberal charge that he was outmaneuvered during the debt-ceiling fight. So the White House has moved away from the Reasonable Man approach or the centrist Clinton approach.”

4. “On Empire” by Oliver DeMille

“The love of liberty is so natural to the human heart, that unfeeling tyrants think themselves obliged to accommodate their schemes as much as they can to the appearance of justice and reason, and to deceive those whom they resolve to…oppress…”

Tomorrow marks the 224th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution.

A study titled “How Well Do Americans Understand the Constitution,” which was released today by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, showcases how little most Americans know about our system of government.

A few highlights:

• Just 38% of the poll’s respondents can name all three branches of the U.S. government (executive, legislative and judicial). One-third are unable to correctly name any of the branches.

• 15% correctly say John Roberts is chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, but almost twice as many respondents (27%) correctly named Randy Jackson as a judge on TV’s American Idol.

• A majority of people (55%) incorrectly believe the Constitution was signed in 1776. That’s the year the Declaration of Independence was signed. The Constitution was signed Sept. 17, 1787.

That data is appalling.

But what concerns me more is the following two ironic comments about it from people who should know better:

In this Philadelphia Inquirer column about the survey, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote:

“These failings threaten the future of our democracy. If we don’t know what makes this country special and worth saving, how will we know how to safeguard its promise of freedom and opportunity?”

Well, Sandra, one of the things that makes this country special and worth saving is that it’s not a democracy.

We’re a constitutional republic — a distinction that matters profoundly, as I detail in chapter 18 of my book, Uncommon Sense.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC), said,

“Since knowing how democracy works predicts civic participation and support for protecting our system of government, these results are worrisome. The nation should be troubled by the extent to which civic education is downplayed in its schools.”

Yes, Kathleen, we should be very troubled by the lack of understanding regarding our forms of government — starting with the lack of understanding regarding the differences between republics and democracies.

Occasionally I find articles I want to shout from the rooftops.

But rather than posting a link to each one individually, I’m going to start a new feature on my blog where I give you my weekly round up of must-reads all in one shot.

So here are my first five recommended articles.

Take your time with these.

The internet is crammed to overflowing with time-wasting junk, but these are the real gems that must be savored, debated, remembered — whether you agree with them or not.

1. “Our History of Fear Started Way Before 9/11″ by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

“In times of danger or fear, we seem to feel it OK to curtail the freedoms — of religion, association, speech — codified in that ‘scrap of paper.’ We never seem to get that it is precisely in such times that those freedoms are most important and most in need of defense.”

2. “If it Feels Right…” by David Brooks

“When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all, like whether they could afford to rent a certain apartment or whether they had enough quarters to feed the meter at a parking spot.”

3. “Back to (the wrong) school” by Seth Godin

“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?”

4. “Journeys of Imagination” by Roy H. Williams

“What future do you believe to be real? Do you have the audacity to believe in a happy ending? Do you have the courage to move toward that ending with every action you take? Persons who are frightened, angry or bitter will see this and call you ‘naïve.’”

5. “Does Property Have a Purpose?” by Thomas Storck

“Property has its proper purpose; therefore it has its proper limitations. If society, via law or custom, makes acquisition of greater wealth than is necessary for a rational satisfaction of our human nature difficult, it is not acting in an unreasonable manner nor imposing anything which is contrary to legitimate human freedom.”

As much as I’d prefer him to the establishment, inconsistent, hypocritical, media-darling panderers in the Republican lineup, Ron Paul will never be our president.

However, he serves an invaluable purpose in the debate.

It’s not primarily to keep the other candidates honest, although he does help with that.

It’s not to remind us of the need to abide by the Constitution, although he certainly does that.

It’s not to showcase refreshing consistency, although he’s the most consistent candidate since George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, et al.

It’s to explicitly expose to the American people how perversely biased our media is, in order that we can learn to see past the vested interests and make more informed and wise decisions.

“Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.” -Joseph Story in Commentaries on the Constitution

Even and especially if you think Ron Paul is a crankpot fringe freak, if you believe in freedom, you should be disgusted by Paul’s media coverage (or rather, the lack thereof).

I’m assuming the media bias against him is so blatantly obvious that I don’t have to prove it.

Here’s a small sample from Jon Stewart’s Daily Show:

 
Every freedom-loving American, regardless of which political candidate they favor, should be leery of media censorship and agendas.

More than that, you should resent media bias.

Who are they to decide for you what candidates and issues matter to the debate? Do you really trust them to give you the full, un-spun truth?

If you resent Washington for trying to run your life, you should resent the media for trying to control and manipulate your opinions.

This is not to promote Ron Paul. It’s not to prove to anyone that his views deserve a full hearing.

Vote for Perry. Vote for Romney. Vote for Huntsman or Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, or Santorum. Write in your own candidate. Vote for whomever your intelligence and conscience dictate.

But whatever you do, don’t vote for the candidate that was force-fed to you by the biased media.

Intensely study all the issues. Give every candidate a fair hearing — digging deep past surface-level media coverage. Check them for consistency. Examine how they’ve proven (or not) that they’ll abide by the Constitution.

Then cast your vote with confidence that you weren’t a media stooge in a rigged game.

As a homeschooling family, my wife and I occasionally get the predictable, worn-out question, “But what about their social life?”

First of all, the question is utterly bizarre to me, given how much social interaction our kids get between several homeschool groups with tons of activities and outings, and myriad other activities, such as art classes, dance classes, cooking classes, Judo, flag football, etc., not to mention how much they play with neighborhood kids.

The idea that homeschoolers don’t get healthy social interaction is such a backwards, 20-years-ago perception.

Secondly, it makes me laugh when I think back to my public school experience.

Here’s what public school taught me about socialization:

• It’s okay — encouraged, even — to make fun of anyone “different” than you and your core group of friends, particularly the weak, weird, mentally and physically disabled, and poor.

• Within an “acceptable” range, everyone should dress, act, and think like everyone else, and those in any way and to the slightest degree outside of the norm should expect to be mocked mercilessly.

• Appearances are everything.

• You should only interact with those in your grade. Those in higher grades are cooler than you (and are therefore entitled to bully you and everyone else younger than them), and those in lower grades are less than you.

• You should compare yourself to and militantly compete with others.

• What your peers think of you is far more important than what you think of yourself, or what God thinks of you. Sacrifice everything for popularity.

• Don’t question authority; teachers and other authority figures know best. Stay in line. There’s an established, “right” way for everything — don’t deviate.

“The idea of learning acceptable social skills in a school is as absurd to me as learning nutrition from a grocery store.” -Lisa Russell

Based on most accounts I’ve heard, this is quite typical public school “socialization,” which is interesting in and of itself.

But here’s where it gets really interesting: Nowhere outside of high school have any of these been my experience, at least not nearly to the degree felt in high school.

Sure, I’ve experienced the very typical (and relatively benign) perceptions and comments regarding our non-traditional views on things like education, homebirthing, politics, etc.

But nothing even close to the overt and extremely aggressive ostracization, mocking, competitiveness, and bullying I witnessed in high school.

Rather than attending high school my junior and senior years, I attended a community college through a program called Running Start.

Not a single person in college ever cared about what clothes I wore, who I hung out with, what my interests were, how old I was, etc.

It was a completely different world than high school.

In fact, in college diversity was appreciated and encouraged much more than conformity. Everyone I interacted with was respectful and accepting.

It was encouraged to question commonly-accepted truths, habits, societal arrangements, etc.

Since leaving high school, I’ve never had a single friend who cared one whit about my fashion sense (or lack thereof, as the case may be).

I’ve yet to interact with an adult who thinks it’s really cool to make fun of those less privileged than them.

I’m still waiting for an adult to bully me because they’re a year older than me, or an adult to fear me because they’re younger than me.

If socialization outside of public school is nothing like, or is at least substantially different from socialization in public school, then what in the name of John Dewey are we socializing our kids for?

For those who disagree with my experience with and perception of public school socialization, who really value socialization and worry that your kids won’t get it outside of public school, I have a sincere question for you:

What do you want your kids to get from public school socialization (or socialization in general)?

I imagine your responses would include:

• You want them to be confident, emotionally mature, well-adapted, respectful, and considerate.
• You want them to be able to interact with, relate to, and positively influence anyone, regardless of age, race, culture, or any differences of opinions or perceptions.
• You want them to have the courage to stand up for what’s right, even and especially when it’s not popular.
• You want them to be a leader, not a follower.
• You want them to learn to strive for excellence, but without feeling the need to “beat” or denigrate others in the process.
• You want them to develop the maturity to respect authority for the right reasons without accepting it unquestioningly, and, as needed, to learn to question and change things wisely and effectively.

Right?

Well, we share those desires.

I’m not trying to convince anyone that homeschooling is better than public schooling — as a well-adjusted, socialized adult who believes in freedom, tolerance, and diversity, I wholeheartedly respect and embrace you, no matter your opinions on the subject.

But I am inviting those who advocate public school for the sake of socialization to question what your children are actually getting in the way of socialization.

As Manfred Zysk wrote in his thought-provoking article “Homeschooling and the Myth of Socialization,”

“A family member asked my wife, ‘Aren’t you concerned about his (our son’s) socialization with other kids?’. My wife gave this response: ‘Go to your local middle school, junior high, or high school, walk down the hallways, and tell me which behavior you see that you think our son should emulate.’”

And for those concerned that our homeschooled children aren’t getting enough or appropriate socialization, I’m inviting you to consider that there are other ways to achieve healthy socialization, and we’re not raising our kids to be cloistered, introverted misfits.

We’re not opting them out of society.

We’re just opting them out of the strange public school bubble that, in our experience, doesn’t even represent normal, healthy society.

In other words, we’re socializing them for what they’ll actually experience beyond high school.

Recommended Reading:

• “Socialization: Homeschooling Vs. Schools” by Michael Haverluck
• “Homeschooling and the Myth of Socialization” by Manfred Zysk
• “Public School vs. Homeschool Socialization” by Joan Vasquez