“Where men are forbidden to honour a king, they honor millionaires, athletes, or film stars instead; even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.”
C. S. Lewis

The reasons behind the election of the man who currently resides in the White House can be found in this same question. Was he elected because he clearly articulated a vision of a morally upright, honorable America where all men would have the opportunity to excel and then reap the rewards of their success? or was he elected because he seemed “cool” and “hip” and represented “the latest ‘in’ thing”? To paraphrase someone he is fond of quoting, was he elected based on the content of his character – or on the color of his skin? I have no doubt that it was for the latter.

I have made no secret of my admiration for constitutional monarchy as a form of government, and Mr. Lewis has presented the chief argument in favor of that – the moral and spiritual reason. Many people will, of course, feed their “spiritual nature” with poison rather than food simply because the nature of man tends toward the wicked rather than the good. Those type of people will always be with us. The benefits of having a leader who represents honor and righteousness and justice and freedom go not to what I refer to as “Walmart people,” but to those who yearn for a leader who brings out the best in men rather than pandering to our baser instincts.

There are, of course, many forms of monarchy. What comes to mind for most people today is an absolute monarchy where the king lives as some sort of cartoonish, villainous character as often portrayed in movies. I suppose there is an example of that somewhere in history, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. No, we’re talking about men and women who have been raised from birth with the objective of leading a nation; who understand the realities and the give-and-take of any leadership position; who are motivated not by what they must do to get elected and re-elected, but by a sense of duty and responsibility.

Do phrases such as “constitutional monarchy” or “libertarian monarchy” sound contradictory? If so, open your mind a bit and consider what America has become – and what might have been a better choice. Consider it an intellectual challenge rather than a political proposal.

The Mad Monarchist is a blog that I read regularly. Today’s post is titled Rebutting Republican Myths and is a good starting point for an open-minded look at how government works. The author addresses the following objections raised against monarchy as a form of government, and then rebuts them:

• Monarchies are un-democratic!
• Monarchies are too expensive!
• Hereditary monarchy just isn’t fair!
• Monarchies are dangerous! What if the monarch is incompetent?
• Monarchy is an archaic throwback! It’s simply out of date!
• What about cruel monarchs like Nero or Attila the Hun? Surely no benefits could be worth risking leaders like that!
• Royals are too out of touch. They have no idea how regular people live.
• At best, monarchs are unnecessary. A president could do just as good a job.
• Monarchies must be bad or else there would be more of them!
• Monarchs are so set apart, they cannot represent ordinary people.
• Republics bring progress, monarchies only oppress.

Be sure to read the full Rebutting Republican Myths post.

Commemorative painting of the Stigler/Brown encounter by John D. Shaw, courtesy Valor Studios.

The following is taken from the Men Who Lead blog by best-selling author Marcus Brotherton. Mr. Brotherton’s post is titled, The Most Overlooked Command Ever. Be sure to take the time to read his original post and add his blog to your regular reading to learn more Lessons in Leadership.

On December 20, 1943, in the skies above war-torn Europe, two bitter enemies—an American B-17 bomber pilot and a veteran German fighter ace—met in what is undoubtedly one of World War II’s most remarkable encounters.

The American bomber, piloted by 21-year-old West Virginian Charlie Brown, was severely damaged. Bullets from German fighters had chewed the bomber to pieces. Others bullets had shot straight through the fuselage, and several crew members had been hit and were near death.

The German fighter plane, piloted by Franz Stigler, was poised to blast the bomber from the sky. It was Franz’s job to kill the enemy. His sworn duty was to triumph in blood.

In fact, encountering a wounded bomber was Franz’s lucky break. Other fighters had already done the initial damage, and when Franz flew up to the bomber, it was the most badly damaged airplane he’d ever seen still flying. That meant an easy target. And in the kill-or-be-killed quest to reach air superiority, the odds against the German’s survival were much worse than the American’s. Of the 40,000 German fighter pilots in WWII, only 2,000 survived.

But what happened in that tense moment when Franz and Charlie came to stare at one another across the frozen skies only can be described as other-worldly.

The American 8th Air Force would, in fact, classify the incident as top secret for decades.

The German military sealed the record as well. Franz was ordered never to speak of the act again, at risk of facing a firing squad.

What happened was, very simply … mercy.

Franz didn’t turn his machineguns on the Americans.

Instead, Franz risked his own reputation, career, and even life, to fly for miles in close proximity to the bomber’s wingtip, providing a “shield” for the damaged enemy plane.

Instead of killing his enemy, the German fighter pilot escorted the sputtering American bomber to safety.

Franz Stigler and Charlie Brown

Both men survived the war and became close friends.

See also the post, Compassion for Others – Even the Enemy.

Although it has been 17 years since I left the “corporate world” to start my own business, I can attest to how well these apply to the real world today – nearly 350 years after it was written. For example, knowing how to balance #10 and #17 can have a big impact on one’s career reputation.

Keep in mind that, like the writing of Machiavelli, this should not be considered advice, but wisdom. Understanding the actions of others – whether they be honorable or dishonorable – is a vitally important life skill. This type of information (this book and The Prince by Machiavelli) is not like the maxims of Robert E. Lee, in which each and every point describes the actions of a Southern gentleman. This is more of a catalog of how a wide range of people think and act. While the majority of what we find in this type of book is good, solid, practical advice, some of it would be abhorrent to any Southern gentleman. Whether it is advice to be followed or observations to be noted, they must be understood to successfully navigate through the often-rocky waters of life.

1. In your affairs, create suspense.
2. The height of perfection. No one is born complete; perfect yourself and your activities day by day
3. Don’t arouse excessive expectations from the start.
4. Never exaggerate.
5. Never lose your self-respect.
6. Never lose your composure.
7. Don’t be uneven, or inconsistent in your actions: either through inclination or choice.
8. Choose a heroic model, more to emulate than to imitate.
9. Understand yourself: your temperament, intellect, opinions, emotions. You can’t be master of yourself if you don’t first understand yourself.
10. Don’t hang around to be a setting sun. The sensible person’s maxim: abandon things before they abandon you.
11. Get used to the bad temperaments of those you deal with, like getting used to ugly faces.
12. Never complain. Complaining always brings discredit.
13. Avoid familiarity when dealing with people. It should be neither used nor permitted.
14. Know how to appreciate. There’s no one who can’t be better than someone at something, and none who excel who can’t be excelled.
15. Undertake what’s easy as if it were hard, and what’s hard as if it were easy.
16. Take a joke, but don’t make someone the butt of one. The first is a form of politeness; the second, of audacity.
17. Carry things through.
18. Don’t be carried away by the last person you meet.
19. Go with the flow, but not beyond decency.
20. Act as though always on view. The insightful man is the one who sees that others see or will see him.

I have just listed the main points here, so be sure to read the full post on Art of Manliness for a more detailed explanation of these points.

The Survival Mom blog is part of my daily reading. She recently had a post titled, “8 Vital skills to teach your children that will trump an Ivy League education” . This is a must-read post for anyone interested in providing future generations with the skills they will need to succeed in life. Here are the main points:

1. Communication skills
2. Creating a vision
3. Setting and achieving goals
4. Courage in the face of opposition
5. Confidence
6. Ability to encourage others
7. Honesty
8. Decision making

This was, of course, never intended to be an all-inclusive list – it is a way to shift our thought process away from what is just a current trend and toward those timeless skills that will always be in demand. I have just outlined the main points here. Survival Mom includes concrete examples of how to instill these skills in your children and grandchildren. Be sure to read the full post. Once you start thinking this way, I am sure you will come up with your own skills to add to this list. When you do, please post a reply and share your ideas along with ways to teach those skills.

Risk from Hazardous Journeys on Vimeo.

The only way that one can go through life without any enemies is to not take a stand on anything and agree with everything. That is not the life of the Southern gentleman. Living an honorable life means that we must take a stand on issues that most of society will disagree with. That does not mean violent conflict though – far from it. The Holy Bible tells us that we, as Christians, are to love our enemies. That says that we are expected to have enemies, otherwise why would be instructed to love them?

Who would fall into the category of an enemy of a Southern gentleman? Much of the Hollywood “entertainment” industry would be a good start – nothing beats Hollywood when it comes to destroying the traditional culture of The Old South and all that it stands for. Who would you count as an enemy – someone that you have taken a stand against? If no person or group comes to mind, then have you ever really taken a stand against evil?

The article not only discusses the reasons why it is so important, but why such a simple thing often seems so difficult. I know that I often have to remind myself of this and make a real conscious effort to make good eye contact when talking with others. I suspect that I am not alone in that.

Here are some of the key points. Be sure to read the full post.

Numerous studies have shown that people who make higher-levels of eye contact with others are perceived as being:

• More dominant and powerful
• More warm and personable
• More attractive and likeable
• More qualified, skilled, competent, and valuable
• More trustworthy, honest, and sincere
• More confident and emotionally stable

 

Why Eye Contact Is Vitally Important for Creating Positive Connections with Others

• Our eyes were made to connect.
• Our eyes reveal our thoughts and feelings.
• Eye contact shows attention.
• Eye contact creates an intimate bond.

Read the entire post here. This is indicated as “Part 1″, so watch for Part 2.

The Cumberland Sound was commissioned in 1944, the war ended in 1945, and the ship was decommissioned in 1947. What a short life for a ship with a crew of over a thousand. The Cumberland Sound was a sea plane tender. She was one of those unheralded service ships that kept the fleet going. You don’t see sea plane tenders in the war movies, and the men who served on them don’t have tales of glory to tell. They simply did their job and they did it well.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to take a glimpse into the past to see how men served. More than that, I hope you can come away with a greater appreciation for the importance of the unseen work that must be done. A leader understands that leadership means service to others.

Noah Webster

Any serious discussion about why the “American Experiment” has failed will eventually come to the same conclusion: The problem is not who we have in positions of leadership – the problem is who votes to put those people into positions of leadership. In a word, the fate of America is determined by Suffrage – who is permitted to vote.

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.”
Alexander Tyler on the fall of the Athenian Republic

Why would we place the fate of the nation in the hands of those who do not have a concrete and well-established stake in the future of that nation? Why would we place the fate of the nation in the hands of those who base their decisions on kumbaya-style feelings rather than on solid moral principles? Why would we place the fate of the nation in the hands of those who receive direct financial support from the treasury?

The question of who has the right to vote has generally been decided by the individual states. Early criteria typically included white male property-owners over the age of 21. The vote of men was presumed to represent the corporate vote of a household, with the husband being the head of the household. Back when it was clearly understood that the family unit was the solid foundation upon which all civilized society is based, there was little or no controversy about having only men voting. Society recognized that by having one vote per family, there was a built-in incentive to vote for candidates who would support the family. Further restricting the voting pool was the requirement that the voter be a significant property owner – one who had a financial stake in maintaining the all-important legal concept of private property rights. One who owned property was not likely to support someone who might be in favor of taking away property to redistribute to others. Yes, it was “unfair” to single women and to poor men – at least that is the way today’s society would see it.

The election that carried Thomas Jefferson to the White House sent Noah Webster to the statehouse. In 1880, Webster was elected to the Connecticut legislature. He served until 1807. As a legislator, he chiefly occupied himself with attempting to block bills eliminating the property qualification for voting – in the hope that no more fools and knaves like Jefferson would ever be elected again. He called men without property “porpoises” (by which he meant that they would swim in a school, and not think for themselves). He himself had earned the right to vote, he was keen to point out, by writing his spelling books. “I am a farmer’s son and have collected all the small portion of property which I possess by untiring efforts and labors to promote the literary improvements of my fellow citizens.” He would not stand for political decisions to be made for him by men who had no similar stake in the world. “If all men have an equal right of suffrage, those who have little and those who have no property, have the power of making regulations respecting the property of others,” he reasons. “In truth, this principle of equal suffrage operates to produce extreme inequality of rights, a monstrous inversion of the natural order of society.”

Despite Webster’s best efforts, the United States grew more and more democratic, as more and more states lifted property restrictions on voting, and declaimed in favor of universal suffrage. “The men who preached these doctrines have never defined what they mean by the people, or what they mean by democracy, nor how the people are to govern themselves,” Webster complained. As he saw it, democracy is rule by the people and the people are, generally, insufferable idiots. In his 1828 dictionary, he put it this way:

PEOPLE, n…2. The vulgar, the mass of illiterate persons. The knowing artist may judge better than the people.

One lone legislator, however ill-natured, could scarcely slow the expansion of the franchise. As his home state grew more democratic, Webster insisted that he “wished to be forever delivered from the democracy of Connecticut.” He would even be willing to make the great sacrifice of moving to Vermont, if that state could be “freed from our democracy,” adding, “as to the cold winters, I would, if necessary, become a troglodyte, and live in a cave.”

Noah Webster’s worst fears have come to pass.

(Note: portions of this post were copied from a book about Noah Webster, but I cannot locate the original source. I will add the source credit if/when I find it again.)