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In his historic veto address, Jackson declared war on the wealthy aristocracy attempting to subvert the American Republic.

His veto address should be read by everyone concerned with freedom and equality of opportunity.

Jackson, in part, stated:

“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.

“Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth cannot be produced by human institutions.

“In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society-the farmers, mechanics, and laborers-who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government.

“There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing.”

Jackson’s veto was a shot across the financial-elites broadside and could not remain unanswered, especially when the messenger was the sitting President of the United States of America.

Interestingly, Jackson was not a novice in his understanding of the ill-effects of paper money. In fact, he understood the debilitating effects of inflationary money (having studied at length the South Sea Bubble) better than many of the Eastern elites opposing him. He knew that paper money not backed by bullion was fraud upon the many for the benefit of the few.

Biddle, finally comprehending Jackson couldn’t be bought or bullied declared war, pulling out every political weapon in his extensive arsenal. Biddle purchased propaganda pieces in the newspapers in an attempt to refute Jackson’s charges and rally support for the Bank. For instance, he wrote to one editor,

“If you will cause the articles I have indicated and others which I may prepare to be inserted in the newspaper in question, I will at once pay to you one thousand dollars.”

A thousand dollars then is equivalent to twenty-five thousand today, certainly enough to bribe most editors into action. Biddle’s relentless assault only strengthened Jackson’s belief that the Bank’s influence was unhealthy and detrimental to a republican government.

In truth, money and power are just two sides of the same coin. Consequently, where money gathers, power is soon to follow and where power gathers, money is soon to follow.

Daniel Webster, the famed lawyer and presidential contender from New England, championed the Bank’s cause, becoming one of the Bank’s most ardent supporters. Ironically, although Webster had originally opposed the Bank’s charter, he found Bank religion when Biddle offered him a healthy legal retainer to aid in the re-charter movement.

In the midst of the Bank battle, Webster wrote the a revealing missive to Biddle,

“I believe my retainer has not been renewed or refreshed as usual. If it be wished that my relation to the Bank should be continued, it may be well to send me the usual retainers.”

Webster, along with the champion of the statists American System, Henry Clay, supported the financial-elites in their fight against Jackson as perks, power, and recognition were sure to follow with the Bank’s blessing. Webster, in fact, launched a lengthy attack on the Jackson’s policies, blasting his veto of the Bank.

Biddle, in addition, bought other influencers in Congress to oppose Jackson’s measures, dividing Jackson’s supporters into two camps. The first group desired the President to yield on the issue, hoping to maintain government decorum. In contrast, the second, encourage the President to finish what he started and end the unholy alliance between Big Banks and Big Government.

Jackson’s popularity suffered from the stream of paid propaganda unleashed by editors congenial to Biddle’s seemingly endless financial largesse. Indeed, numerous diatribes against Jackson’s policy permeated the press on a weekly basis.

Despite the funded politicians in Congress and rabid press editors willing to do Biddle’s bidding, he still stored one more ace up his sleeve.

Fearing that Jackson would remove the Treasury deposits from his Bank, starving the bank of the lifeblood of money necessary to maintain its special power base, Biddle declared to Webster,

“They will not dare to remove them. If the deposits are withdrawn, it will be a declaration of war which cannot be recalled.”

Following through on his promise, Biddle launched a campaign of loan closures across America, causing financial panic among the state banks and business community. They were forced to either pay back their loans or collapse into insolvency.

State banks and businesses screamed for relief, appealing to Jackson end the ward and submit to the Bank’s recharter.

Misreading the President again, the numerous bank and business closings only steeled Jackson’s resolve to end Biddle’s undue influence in the American economy.

Many state leaders, awakened by the inordinate power that the Bank held over the economy, began to recognize the truth of Jackson’s veto claims.

In truth, the President believed that any power capable of causing a panic of this magnitude was not healthy for the freedoms of the American people. He denounced the Bank’s action to his cabinet,

“The Bank has by degrees obtained almost entire dominion over the circulating medium, and with it, power to increase or diminish the price of property and to levy taxes on the people in the shape of premiums and interest to an amount only limited by the quantity of paper currency it is enabled to issue.”

Jackson understood the role that money-interest can play in causing inflation and market cycles; unfortunately, this understanding seems lost on today’s politicians and our Federal Reserve System.

Biddle once boasted to an intimate,

“In half an hour I can remove all the constitutional scruples in the District of Columbia. Half a dozen presidencies’ — of bank branches — a dozen cashierships, fifty clerkships, a hundred directorships, to worthy friends who have no character and no money.”

Clearly, Biddle was playing for keeps, understanding that money buys power and power produces money. Even in the midst of the Federal Government’s withdrawal of Treasury Deposits, Biddle remained confident of his ultimate victory, writing,

“My own view of the matter is simply this…The [instigators] of this last assault on the Bank regret and are alarmed by it. But the ties of party allegiance can only be broken by the actual conviction of existing distress in the community. Nothing but the evidence of suffering abroad [that is, in the country as a whole] will produce any effect in Congress…This worthy President thinks that because he has scalped Indians and imprisoned judges, he is to have his way with the Bank. He is mistaken.”

Biddle appears to have succumbed fully to the corrupting effects of absolute power. His dictatorial thoughts, writings, and actions are on display during this stage of the war. He shared with another confidante,

“My own course is decided, all other banks and all other merchants may break, but the Bank of the United States shall not break.”

Biddle truly believed, that by causing harm and suffering in America, he could control the political leaders of our country.

In hindsight, had it been any other President besides Jackson at this time, he would have been right. Jackson, however, stood his ground and eventually won the Bank war, despite receiving many battle scars along the way.

Re-elected in a landslide, Jackson proved that a person with conviction and character can stand his ground and win, no matter the size of the forces aligned against him.

Boldly, at one point in the battle, Jackson told his Vice-President Martin Van Buren,

“The Bank is trying to kill me. But I will kill it.”

Jackson example demonstrates a leader’s powerful effect upon others. When a person has the courage to stand strong, he strengthens the spine of others who recognize the truthfulness of his fight between right and wrong.

Courage, just like lack of courage, is contagious. Character is courage and integrity combined. Integrity is identifying what is right and courage is the ability to stand for truth even when it hurts.

Jackson accomplished many things in his life, both militarily and politically. However, I believe his finest hours were in his courageous stand against the Second National Bank.

May today’s leaders learn similar courage in today’s fight against tyranny.

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Orrin Woodward co-authored the New York Times bestseller Launching a Leadership Revolution. His first solo book, RESOLVED: 13 Resolutions for LIFE, made the Top 100 All-Time Best Leadership Books List. Orrin was awarded as the 2011 IAB Leader of the Year.

Orrin has co-founded two multi-million dollar leadership companies and serves as the Chairman of the Board of the LIFE Business. He has a B.S. degree from GMI-EMI (now Kettering University) in manufacturing systems engineering. He holds four U.S. patents, and won an exclusive National Technical Benchmarking Award.

He follows the sun between residences in Michigan and Florida with his lovely wife Laurie and their children. Orrin’s leadership thoughts are shared on his blog, orrinwoodwardblog.com.

Andrew Jackson was always a man of strong convictions. He stood by his love of liberty even when it hurt him politically to do so.

It takes courage to stand by one’s convictions, especially when a person is offered peace and financial rewards to surrender them.

Courage isn’t the absence of fear; rather, it’s the acknowledgement that one’s principles are bigger than one’s fears, regardless of the consequences.

In today’s “situational ethics” society, principles are sold out for pragmatism, making courageous stories like Andrew Jackson’s as rare as gold-backed currency.

Consequently, much could be learned by the study of Andrew Jackson’s stand against the “moneyed-interest” drive to re-charter the Second National Bank.

Indeed, through reading Jackson’s battles against the Bank, one yearns to find leaders with similar backbones to break the Federal Reserve monopoly on America’s money.

Let’s examine this historic battle between the President Andrew Jackson of the United States of America versus President Nicholas Biddle of the Second National Bank.

Jackson resided in the thriving American West, witnessing first hand the dire effects of inflationary banking policies in the western land prices.

Jackson learned the salutary lesson of hard money (gold and silver coins) versus the prevalent paper based inflationary policies loved by bankers and wealthy merchants.

Inflationary methods allowed banks to print paper, pretending the paper had value, even thought it wasn’t backed by gold or silver.

Without a check on the banks, like requiring banks to submit gold for paper dollars when requested, one can easily see how banks would fall into the trap of printing more paper than could possibly be redeemed on demand.

Profits for banks can increase greatly in the short term by interest collected on nothing more than paper, causing more money to flow into the marketplace which raises the prices of consumer goods as more printed dollars are available.

The splurge of printed money only corrects itself when consumers become aware of the inflationary policies of banks, quickly requesting gold for their inflated paper dollars before the banks runs out their reserves.

In theory, paper money should be a promissory note, representing gold, but easier to carry on one’s person. The minute the promissory note is not backed by real value (gold, silver etc), it becomes fraudulent with the bank benefiting by printing monopoly money at the expense of all consumers who now own dollars less valuable than before the fraudulent activity.

For example, if we doubled the amount of dollars in circulation today, giving everyone twice as much money as they have currently, each dollar would quickly fall to half of its former value, prices would rise as each person’s dollars bid up the prices in an attempt to purchase the means for living.

Printing money does not produce wealth, but it can benefit the few at the expense of the many, a temptation too lucrative to be left in the hands of government politicians and their wealthy patrons.

When Jackson was elected President of the United States, one of his missions was to end the syndicate of control over America’s money supply by three power hungry groups: foreign interests, big business, and big politicians.

Jackson believed that banks ought to run like any other businesses, having to sink or swim based upon their own business acumen, needing reserves to secure their loans provided.

But when a national bank receives the protection of the federal government to ensure its solvency, this is no longer free enterprise, but a form of fascism where government and business partner, reducing competition amongst banks, and increasing the cost of the entire system.

This would be similar to all automotive companies agreeing to fix prices on cars, certainly improving the profits for manufacturers, while decreasing the downside risk of the manufacturers, all of this, at the expense of the customers.

The Second National Bank received the deposits of the America, ensuring its solvency, providing a special deal for the bank and its investors at the expense of other banks and all customers.

Nicholas Biddle, the president of the Second National Bank, was not alarmed, at first, with Jackson’s rhetoric, having heard many politicians boast of drastic changes when entering office, only to conform into the system when elected.

But Jackson’s character was different, his campaign promises before aligned with his actions after election, necessitating a showdown between the President and the money interest behind the Bank.

Biddle and Jackson were opposites in upbringing and temperament. The former, a scion of a high-society Philadelphia family, did not like the rough and tumble behavior of the American political process. Choosing to avoid the masses, he preferred instead to do his work behind the scenes.

Jackson, on the other hand, loved the volatile political process and was elected by the populist mass of voters across America.

No two people better contrasted the opposing viewpoints in the American political arena. One, a believer in wealth and privilege for the chosen few; the other, an equal opportunity for all to rise based upon merit.

Jackson shared his disdain for the Bank in his first Presidential message proclaiming,

“Both the constitutionality and the expediency of the law creating this bank are well questioned by a large portion of our fellow citizens, and it must be admitted by all that it has failed in the great end of establishing an uniform and sound currency.”

Biddle, however, seemingly unconcerned initially, responded to Jackson’s message with a cool indifference. He wrote of Jackson,

“They should be treated as the honest though erroneous notions of one who intends well.”

Clearly, Biddle did not believe Jackson had the courage or fortitude to fight against the entrenched money-interest feeding off America’s body politic.

Biddle quickly discovered that Jackson’s courage was even greater than his rhetoric, when he confirmed Jackson’s intentions to end the Bank’s charter.

Undaunted, he quickly rallied his political supporters to his cause.

Surprisingly, two of the biggest and brightest political lights, both Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, were enlisted by the Bank in support of the crucial recharter initiative.

With Clay and Webster’s help, the Bank moved for an early renewal of its charter, hoping to force Jackson’s hand before his second term election.

Jackson, the moneyed-interest believed, would not risk his re-election on a veto of the Bank’s charter.

Once again, the special-interest elites had underestimated Jackson courage.

The Bank bill, with Clay and Webster’s support, passed both houses and arrived on Jackson’s desk for approval.

Most people would have bowed to the “inevitable” and approved the bill to ensure his re-election; Jackson however, was not like most people.

To be continued…

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Orrin Woodward co-authored the New York Times bestseller Launching a Leadership Revolution. His first solo book, RESOLVED: 13 Resolutions for LIFE, made the Top 100 All-Time Best Leadership Books List. Orrin was awarded as the 2011 IAB Leader of the Year.

Orrin has co-founded two multi-million dollar leadership companies and serves as the Chairman of the Board of the LIFE Business. He has a B.S. degree from GMI-EMI (now Kettering University) in manufacturing systems engineering. He holds four U.S. patents, and won an exclusive National Technical Benchmarking Award.

He follows the sun between residences in Michigan and Florida with his lovely wife Laurie and their children. Orrin’s leadership thoughts are shared on his blog, orrinwoodwardblog.com.

Once in a while in history, a LeaderShift occurs. It usually comes unexpectedly, and it transforms the world for at least a generation.

A LeaderShift is a basic change in who the top leaders are in society. Since leadership is so vital to any society’s success, such a change has huge impact on business, politics, family, industry and other facets of life.

Past LeaderShifts include:

• The switch from kings and chiefs to community fathers such as doctors, lawyers and town merchants.
• The 1880-1920’s transition from city fathers to titans of industry, like Carnegie, Morgan and Rockefeller.
• The 1940-1970’s shift from business tycoons to managers, spurred by the work of Edward Deming and innovators like Jack Welch and Sam Walton.
• The 1980-1990’s transition from managers to leaders, influenced by sages like Buckminster Fuller, Earl Nightingale and Jim Collins.

Today, we’re in the early stages of another great transition: a shift not from management to leadership, but from institutional leadership to societal leadership.

The most effective leaders in the years ahead will look beyond the success of their organization and innovate ways for their company to effectively address the needs of society.

In this shift, business leaders are becoming the key social leaders. As governments continue to mismanage and overspend, the rise of business leaders as social entrepreneurs will accelerate. The top leaders in society will be executives who utilize the unique efficiencies and competencies of their company to look beyond profits and restore a failing society.

This isn’t to say that profit will become less important; in fact, as governments struggle, private-sector success will be more critical — business leaders will seek both financial success and societal impact.

Just as the American model of free enterprise drove the Soviet system of totalitarian controls into the dustbin of history, the market approach of business leaders is distinguishing itself as the respectable and effective alternative to the top-down leadership practices of government finance, dis-innovation and dysfunctional bureaucracy.

In short, Washington isn’t going to fix our problems. As society continues to decline it is increasingly turning to business leaders for help.

Those who innovate in this trend will become the future leaders, and business leaders who don’t fill this role will see their careers and companies fall behind (like those who stay stuck in management and refuse to embrace leadership principles).

Forward-thinking executives and entrepreneurs can prepare for the challenges of this transition. Currently, the 5 Laws of Decline, as articulated by Orrin Woodward, are quietly undermining businesses and governments. Leaders can recognize these laws of decline — and effectively deal with them.

A dual leadership system has dominated our society, with the competing management of the economy and politics by an uneasy and unofficial partnership between government leaders and business leaders. This system is the first great casualty of the current LeaderShift, which is why our political institutions seem increasingly divided and divisive.

Due to the LeaderShift, this dysfunction in our governments will only escalate. Society will look to business leaders to fix things far beyond the traditional boardroom. The Bottom Line will be replaced by the Directional Line, measuring which direction each community, state, province and nation is headed and how this drives market success (or decline).

Leaders and boards that ignore the Directional Line do so at their institutional peril.

Perhaps the most powerful force of the LeaderShift is the rise of a consumer populace that expects its companies and their leaders to take the initiative and exert leadership in the face of societal challenges. As this trend swells, it will revolutionize the future of leadership.

These two roles — business leader and social innovator — are increasingly intertwined in ways that few companies (or leaders) are prepared to deal with.

Are you ready for the LeaderShift? Is your family, career, and company?

Oliver DeMille is the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.

Among many other works, he is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, The Coming Aristocracy, and FreedomShift: 3 Choices to Reclaim America’s Destiny.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

I’m excited for my new book, LeaderShift, and I think it’s incredibly important.

As my co-author, business leader Orrin Woodward, put it:

“Washington D.C. isn’t going to fix its problems anytime soon, so things are going to get worse in our politics and the economy until real leadership is found outside of government.”

In short, it’s going to up to people outside of Washington to fix America. That means you and me, and others who really care about freedom. Politicians just aren’t going to fix our problems, not in Washington, Ottawa, London, Sacramento, Albany or anywhere else.

If things are going to get fixed, the leadership will almost certainly come from business leaders, family leaders, and regular people who do what it takes to make a difference. Just like during the American founding. Except this time it will be a war or words rather than militaries.

The truth is that a LeaderShift is coming. The big question is, are you ready for it? Is your business or career ready? Is your family ready?

But just what is a LeaderShift? As we wrote in the book,

“Every once in a while in history, a LeaderShift occurs. It usually comes unexpectedly, and it transforms the world for at least a generation.”

Past LeaderShifts include:

• The historical switch from kings and chiefs as the top leaders to community fathers such as doctors, lawyers and town merchants.
• The 1880-1920’s transition from city fathers as the main leaders to titans of industry, like Carnegie, Morgan and Rockefeller.
• The 1940-1970’s shift from business tycoons as the top leaders to managers, spurred by the work of Edward Deming and innovators from Jack Welch to Sam Walton.
• The 1980-1990’s transition from managers to leaders, influenced by sages like Buckminster Fuller, Earl Nightingale and Stephen Covey.

Right now we are in the early stages of another great transition. This time, the shift is from political leaders as the top leaders to successful parents, teachers, business leaders, and other regular citizens standing up and making their influence and leadership talents felt in leading society.

This isn’t a partisan book. In fact, political parties are at the center of the problem, and what is needed to really get our nations back on track is for business and regular people to start making a bigger difference.

The book hinges on Five Laws of Decline, each of which is currently chipping away at the strength of many institutions, including government, family and business organizations.

Executives, entrepreneurs, parents and others who don’t understand these Five Laws, won’t know how to overcome them. And until non-politicians learn about and respond to the Five Laws of Decline, the economy will continue to face overregulation, over-taxation and growth-killing uncertainty.

LeaderShift is written as a fable, where the lead character is a successful business leader who realizes that politicians aren’t likely to fix our economy any time soon and sets out to find a solution to America’s decline. In the process, he applies the wisdom learned from years in business and from many of the greatest business books, puts together a team of business people to deal with our national problems, and creates a plan of how to really fix America.

When the team gets help from a surprising supernatural source, what happens next is a story you’ll want tell and retell. And the solutions in the book are a unique approach that can really work.

For years people have asked me how we can really fix America, and in this book I finally answer this question. Orrin and I list 9 specific changes that need to occur in our world. If they do, we’ll fix the nation. If they don’t, the decline will continue.

Freedom matters, and the future of freedom is simple. We need to fix our addiction to big government, put free enterprise incentive back at the center of our economy, and give real freedom a try.

Freedom works. Until we return to freedom, our trend of ongoing national crises and decline will just keep getting worse. It’s time for a real fix, and it’s only going to come from regular Americans doing the important things that can put us back on the right track.

Whoever you are, America needs you to be one of these new leaders.

A LeaderShift is coming! Are you ready?

Oliver DeMille is the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.

Among many other works, he is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, The Coming Aristocracy, and FreedomShift: 3 Choices to Reclaim America’s Destiny.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

There are at least four major views of how governments are likely to lead the world in the decades ahead and what we can expect of the 2st Century.

I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating because not enough people are thinking about it.

Here are the four possible futures:

1. Another U.S. Century: In this view nations will focus on high government regulation and coercion (at home and abroad). Local governments and international entities will be weak and national governments will continue to lead. Business will have little power.

2. A China and Europe Century: In this option nations will focus on regional security alliances. Local governments will be strong, national governments will be weakened and regional alliances of nations will dominate. Business will have moderate power.

3. A Corporate Century: In this alternative many big nations will break into smaller states (following the trend of the Soviet break-up) and major corporations will increase in influence economically and politically. Local, national and international governmental entities will lose power. Business power will greatly increase.

4. A Tribal Century: In this option, the things government does now will eventually become more local or provincial. People will turn to tribes (ethnic, religious, geographical or even economic) for security. Local and provincial governments will increase in power while national and international governmental institutions will lose power. Business will gain power in some locales and lose it in others.

All four possibilities are still highly possible right now, and any one of them could rise from our current trends. It remains to be seen which of these, or some other model, will prove more popular. For example, how will world Islam or the Green movement play into this?

Unfortunately, this entire debate is taking place almost exclusively among elites and their agents — the various experts working for governments, multinational corporations and academic institutions. This means that the era of widespread freedom and prosperity for the regular people is over — unless something changes.

A good place to start might be to subscribe to Foreign Affairs or The Economist and closely monitor what is going on in the world. And read The Federalist and Democracy in America in the other hand.

These are just a beginning, of course, but such a start is long overdue.

Those who don’t study carefully current events won’t have much say in what happens.

Oliver DeMille is the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.

Among many other works, he is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, The Coming Aristocracy, and FreedomShift: 3 Choices to Reclaim America’s Destiny.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Many Americans now feel that Washington is broken, that there is some unidentified, underlying problem with our nation that can’t be fixed by elections.

Voters put Democrats in power, then Republicans, but still the problems grow and Washington becomes more and more dysfunctional.

We know something is wrong, but we aren’t sure what to do.

The obstacle to overcoming our current slide toward decline may rest in a surprising place.

We tend to see the government as five distinct governments:

1. Our local city council, mayor, county commission, school board, sheriff and town office.
2. Our state legislature, governor and state agencies.
3. The federal Congress.
4. The presidency.
5. The Supreme Court.

This is the crux of the problem: the biggest problems are found in none of them.

In truth, there is a sixth branch of government, and its dysfunctions account for America’s most pressing challenges.

The sixth branch operates almost exclusively behind the scenes, it receives very little press compared to the other five, and it seldom comes under attack by the other branches or the media.

Yet this sixth branch eats up well over 80% of the national budget and accounts for most our debts and deficits. It also exerts more direct power over America’s citizens than the other branches combined.

The sixth branch of government is the federal-state-bureaucracy, and it makes most of the daily decisions of government and carries out most government actions.

By definition, those who work in the bureaucracy are unelected and therefore not directly accountable to voters. They serve at the pleasure of administrative superiors, many of whom have little experience working in the private sector and few of whom are displaced or replaced by elections.

Whatever the voters do, the federal-state-bureaucracy continues to run the government, push for increased budgets, and make thousands of little daily decisions and policies.

Add to this the millions of non-governmental workers whose jobs entail daily interaction with government bureaucrats and who by extension form a de facto quasi-governmental bureaucracy (such as employees at Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, or the Democratic and Republican parties), and we have what Eisenhower openly called the “military-industrial-complex.”

For example, in his book, In Fed We Trust, David Wessel, shows how the major decisions of the crisis were made by the head of the Federal Reserve and the Secretary of the Treasury, with their top staff members, not by the White House, leaders in Congress or members of the high Court.

Nor did any governor or state legislature have much say in the event, and our elected officials in Washington–who received most of the blame for the economic crash–were hardly involved in the most important decision-making processes.

The bureaucracy (some public, some from the quasi-private sector) led the event, and also our major national responses to it.

The Executive Branch and Congress did get involved, later, mainly to authorize stimulus spending. But the bureaucracy hammered out most of the stimulus plan, and then it implemented the stimulus once it passed Congress.

The bureaucracy does most of the work of government. As CNN’s Fareed Zakaria wrote in an article entitled “Can America be Fixed”:

“The United States has a gargantuan tax code that, when all its rules and regulations are included, totals 73,000 pages; a burdensome litigation system; and a crazy patchwork of federal, state, and local regulations. U.S. financial institutions, for example, are often overseen by five or six different federal agencies and 50 sets of state agencies, all with overlapping authority…

“The World Economic Forum consistently gives the United States poor marks for its tax and regulatory policies, ranking it 76th [among nations] in 2012, for example, on the ‘burden of government regulations.”

Most people realize at some level that the President, Senators and Justices aren’t actually doing most of the work of administering government, that this is done by staffers, appointed administrators and full-time government employees. But few of us take the time to articulate just how significant this is.

In fact, the federal-state-bureaucracy grid and the military industrial complex run most of what we blame on elected officials.

Our officials seldom admit this, of course, since helplessly pointing out that an elected leader has little influence on things isn’t a very effective campaign slogan.

Voters want to believe their candidates will fix things, not be told how little they can actually do.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt predicted how modern politics would run when he said:

“The country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to make a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

This advice set the tone for modern politicians, both during campaigns and while in office. It is also the chief governing strategy of the federal-state-bureaucracy.

The fact that each attempt to try something is expensive, and that once a government program is established it is very difficult to shut it down (and therefore we are still paying for a number of programs that have proven ineffective), is seldom pointed out.

As a result, the bureaucracy is continually expanding–along with the size and cost of government. Government that consistently grows–but doesn’t become more effective.

Zakaria noted:

“In 1964, 76 percent of Americans agreed with the statement ‘you can trust the government in Washington to do what is right just about always or most of the time’… In January 2010, it had fallen to 19 percent.

“More alarming: In 1980 the United States’ gross government debt was 42 percent of its total GDP; it is now 107 percent.”

When bureaucracy grows, so does dysfunction. If bureaucracy actually fixed our problems, it wouldn’t be so frustrating.

But with government debts, deficits, borrowing and levels of regulation at all-time highs, our problems just keep growing.

For example, since the passage of the new Health Care law, medical costs have skyrocketed.

If bureaucracy makes things worse, why do we support it?

The answer is enlightening: When our political leaders want to change things, they turn to bureaucrats for statistics, information and proposals.

When our elected officials weigh these “facts” and make decisions, they then turn over their plans to the bureaucrats for implementation.

In short, whatever voters and officials decide, bureaucrats ultimately run things.

Government by bureaucracy isn’t a new development, of course.

It is the fundamental operating principle of Chinese politics, for example. Confucius promoted bureaucratic rule as a kind of true patriotism, and endowed it with an almost religious fervor.

The word “Mandarin,” which can be translated as “government official,” has a long tradition, and indeed the Chinese system created two languages and cultures–the mandarins spoke the “official” language of Peking/Beijing, while people of the cantons (provincials) spoke the dialect of the masses.

The American founding generation rejected the British bureaucratic approach in the 1770s because they were deeply frustrated with the corruption and unnecessary complexities of the British ministry system and its labyrinth of Byzantine bureaucracies.

Today, however, Washington’s bureaucracy sprawls across all fifty states and around the globe–rivaling those of China and Europe.

Max Weber once pointed out:

“Power is exercised neither through parliamentary speeches nor monarchial enunciations but through the routines of administration.”

This observation has been around for decades, but few people have paid attention.

As long as our government is the bureaucracy, elections aren’t going to change things very much. And until our elected officials muster their courage and shut down the non-essential functions of government in order to force real spending cuts, our national decline will continue.

Free governments often start with lofty documents and ideals of freedom and greatness, but they decline when bureaucracy quietly takes over.

We are a bureaucracy now (in other places I have referred to this as a “Spendocracy”), and the only way back to freedom is to cut the bureaucracy.

Congress can do this voluntarily, which will be painful but is still possible, or we can wait for total government dysfunction and the inevitable crises that will bring our nation to its knees.

One or the other will occur.

Oliver DeMille is the co-founder of the Center for Social Leadership, and a co-creator of TJEd.

Among many other works, he is the author of A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the 21st Century, The Coming Aristocracy, and FreedomShift: 3 Choices to Reclaim America’s Destiny.

Oliver is dedicated to promoting freedom through leadership education. He and his wife Rachel are raising their eight children in Cedar City, Utah.

Why do civilizations rise, decline, and fall?

Civilizations as diverse as the Sumerians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and Chinese all declined, eventually falling under their own weight.

Is decline the natural condition of life, with growth being a temporary anomaly in the march of history?

Arnold Toynbee, an English historian, authored The Study of History, a classic multi-volume history of world civilizations. Wikipedia summarizes his tome,

“Civilizations arose in response to some set of challenges of extreme difficulty, when ‘creative minorities’ devised solutions that reoriented their entire society.

“Challenges and responses were physical, as when the Sumerians exploited the intractable swamps of southern Iraq by organizing the Neolithic inhabitants into a society capable of carrying out large-scale irrigation projects; or social, as when the Catholic Church resolved the chaos of post-Roman Europe by enrolling the new Germanic kingdoms in a single religious community.

“When a civilization responds to challenges, it grows.

“Civilizations declined when their leaders stopped responding creatively, and the civilizations then sank owing to nationalism, militarism, and the tyranny of a despotic minority.

“Toynbee argued that ‘Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.’

“For Toynbee, civilizations were not intangible or unalterable machines but a network of social relationships within the border and therefore subject to both wise and unwise decisions they made.”

Despite detecting uniform patterns of disintegration in each civilization, Toynbee insisted that leaders have a moral responsibility to end the cycle of decline through courageous “challenge and response” leadership.

Civilizations thrive when people unite around common visions for the future, developing specific cultural norms to fulfill the vision.

But leaders must constantly arise, who evaluate the vision with the current reality facing the community, meeting challenges head on in order to continue thriving.

Without leaders, the civilization will, as Toynbee said, commit suicide by no longer confronting brutal reality.

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Orrin Woodward is the co-founder of Team, a leadership development and training company, and the New York Times best-selling co-author of Launching a Leadership Revolution.

Named by the International Association of Business as a Top 10 Leadership Guru, he is dedicated to building leaders and entrepreneurs and promoting freedom and prosperity.

Orrin blogs regularly at Orrin Woodward. He lives in Port St. Lucie, Florida with his wife and four children.

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