Author: brettfernau

Where are the Leaders?

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Where are the Leaders?

By Brett A. Fernau

What happened to the people who would stand in front of the crowd and say exactly what they meant to say, who spoke with certainty and conviction, who had examined the problems that they were proposing to solve and could set forth a way to attack those problems that everyone could understand?

Where are the people of moral conviction who are willing to stand up and speak the truth to their fellow men and women, who can tell the difference between good and evil and can explain that difference to their fellows, who know what is wrong or right, who know why it is wrong or right and are willing to stand up and say so?

Where are the people who know the difference between freedom and slavery, between independence and dependence, between winning and losing, between surviving and succumbing; who can make a decision based on the concepts of freedom, independence and survival as opposed to slavery, dependence and failure?

Where are the people with confidence in their fellow men and women to do the right thing, to step up and help move things forward; who know that a people with good leadership, along with goals that lend themselves toward survival and principles that lead to independence and responsibility will quite willingly contribute all their strength and all their energy to achieving those goals and living by those principles?

Where are the leaders today? The very concept of leadership has deteriorated to the point where we don’t know where to look anymore. Those people who purport to be leaders aren’t offering any concrete plans to solve the problems facing this nation. Instead they offer platitudes, bromides and generalities, or they blame the problems on someone else and offer nothing of their own. Neither our President, nor his advisors, have a clue as to how to increase prosperity, reduce our national debt, grow the economy, keep the peace, or solve any other problem we are currently experiencing. No, on the contrary, President Obama, his advisors and his minions in Congress only offer less freedom, higher taxes, fewer incentives, more government control, more restrictions, more obstacles and more confusion.

Where are the people who understand that more government is never the answer to any problem involving human freedom and prosperity? Government produces nothing, adds no value to the economy, and can only take away and restrict already existing freedoms. Where are the people who understand that government needs to get out of the way and let people get on with producing and trading and living and thriving?

Where are they? I don’t see any of them in our current administration, nor do I see any in the House or in the Senate. I don’t see any in the current crop of candidates seeking election in November. Perhaps the people we need aren’t politicians at all. Perhaps they are business men and women and artists and spiritual leaders.

Could it be that the people who would make the best leaders for this nation are already hard at work trying this keep this ship-of-state afloat, providing the products and services we need to survive in this modern world? Could it be that they don’t have the time to make speeches, appear on television and radio, or any of the other tasks required to make themselves into viable candidates for public office? Or could it be that they realize that once they declare themselves a candidate for some elected position, they would become a target for the muck-raking, disparaging, character-assassinating, destructive news media?

Who could blame those people, the productive, moral, law-abiding pillars of the community, for not stepping down into the slimy, stinking pit that politics has become? They’re already doing their best to keep us from economic and social collapse in the only ways they know how, in the only ways that work, by producing and providing and creating and employing, by setting an example among their fellows. They are laboring among us right now, and the United States Government is doing its very best to suck the lifeblood from them, because the only way that government can survive is by taking the wealth from those who create it and appropriating it for its own needs. If government protects and encourages the producers and the creators, then everyone wins. However, if government takes the wealth from those who create it and gives that wealth to those who do not, then ultimately production and creation will be destroyed. Thus does the society fall, and the economy collapse, and then whatever remains will feed upon itself until there is nothing left for it to eat.

We must turn from this self-destructive path before all of the productive, creative people have been destroyed. We must elect leaders who understand the fundamentals of a free, creative and productive society. We must elect leaders who have read and understand the Constitution of the United States and are willing to enforce it as it was written. We must elect leaders who understand the meaning of personal responsibility, who are willing to stand upon their principles, who can tell a right action from a wrong one, who will do the right thing, even if it isn’t the popular thing to do. We must elect leaders whose principles cannot be bought, sold or traded. We must elect leaders with a proven record of honesty and integrity. Unfortunately, it’s probably going to prove very hard to find people of this caliber who are willing to serve in public office, given the reputations of the previous holders of those offices. And if we do find them, we’ll have to help them clean up the muck and corruption that has become attached to most public positions. It’s a job worth doing, though, a job challenging enough even for the most able of leaders. With the right leaders and enough support for them, we can turn this country around and make these United States a place our Founding Fathers would be proud of. If they showed up here today, I’d be rather embarrassed by what they’d find, wouldn’t you? We’ve made an awful mess of what they originally created. Still, the founding principles are right there for us to read and there may yet be enough time for us to re-dedicate ourselves to those principles and see that they are applied. It’ll take some work, but most of us aren’t afraid of hard work as long as we can see that it’s for a good cause. What cause could be better than to take out all the trash and restore our country to a place we can all be proud of?

How to Become Extinct

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How to Become Extinct
Copyright 2010 by Brett A. Fernau

Why does a species become extinct? Primarily because it can’t adapt to changing conditions in its environment. If you base your source of nutrition on only one specific type of plant or animal and, for some reason, that plant or animal is no longer available, you die of starvation. If the ambient temperature must be within a certain narrow range for you to survive, then when it suddenly gets warmer or colder and you can’t find a way to warm up or cool down, you die. If you can only live under the water and the water dries up or if you can only live in the air and you are submerged in water, you die. If you can’t receive and store information about changes in your environment and use that information to predict what will happen in the future, you will eventually become the victim of your environment. Most animals operate in this manner. They can’t control their environment, nor can they predict or adapt to changes therein. The more successful species do indeed adapt and make themselves at home in a changing environment, as evidenced by rats, coyotes, some birds and lots of insects.

The human species is rather unique in its ability to adapt the environment to its needs, rather than adapting to it. Using our intelligence and creativity, we have the ability to find ways to survive nearly every place on earth and under almost any conditions. If humans are deprived of their intelligence and have their creativity inhibited or destroyed, they become subject to all the liabilities of being a simple animal.

If you took a young human and allowed it to grow to adulthood without attempting to teach it anything useful, but instead taught it that humans are no different than any other animal on earth, that they are only a collection of chemicals incapable of true creativity, that any desire for achievement and accomplishment is bad for the other humans because it makes them feel bad, that all humans are the same and so all deserve to receive the same things from life, that suffering is a virtue, that poverty is good and striving for abundance is evil, that possessions are meaningless and degrading, that no one ever really wins or loses, that activity and enthusiasm need to be controlled, that obedience is good and questions are bad, that you only get this one chance at life and then it’s back to the dirt from which you came, then you would have made a very, very good start in rendering that young human incapable of survival. If you then declared the human spirit to be a thing of fantasy and tried in every way to remove it from the public discourse, if you made nothing of all those who would infuse their fellow humans with a sense of right and wrong, a sense of moral behavior, of honesty, integrity, loyalty, courtesy, dignity and honor, you’d have gone a long way towards convincing your fellow humans that they are indeed inferior to animals and should be eliminated from the earth. If you then managed to convince your young human that all thought was illusion, that all effort was futile, and that nothing it could do would make any difference, you’d have created a rather perfect slave, just waiting for you to tell him or her what to do next.

Of course, when everything you are trying to teach your young human is based upon a lie, you won’t get quite the 100% result you are trying to achieve for your bold new world. You can’t eliminate the human spirit by saying it doesn’t exist. Oh, you can suppress it, sure, but you can’t kill it. There will always be that spark of creativity, that irrepressible flare of unexplained ability, which shines like a beacon to those who can still see. Even in the darkest of times there are those among us who shine and think and lead, who create, who build, who encourage, who act. The truth is that each of us has the potential to become able. To be “able” is to think, to decide, to create, to solve, to enrich, to enlighten, to enjoy. The only way to kill the spirit is to get him or her to agree that they’re dead. The lie only works if one agrees with it. You and you alone are responsible for what you have become. To the extent that you have agreed with the lie, that is the extent to which you have become unable. So, disagree. Create something, make a decision and stick with it, solve a problem, think a thought, express an emotion, make a speech, write a letter, talk to a friend, talk to a stranger, go for a walk, light up a dark place, build a house, go to the moon, build a dam to control a river, light a fire to keep warm, grow your own food, start a business, invent a new product, start a movement to make government responsible to the governed. Adapt the environment to better suit your needs, it’s what we spirits do best. We aren’t here to wait around for someone to do something for us. We need to do things for ourselves. Take control, move mountains, tame lions and set an example for your fellow beings of what it is to be an indomitable spirit!!