Orrin Woodward: Life & Business

LeaderShift by Orrin Woodward & Oliver DeMille

Oliver DeMille and I explain the Five Laws of Decline (FLD) in our newly released NY Times bestseller LeaderShift. I originally developed the FLD back in 2008 to explain why companies and societies predictably decline. Indeed, learning to check the FLD is essential for turning around any ailing company or community. Not surprisingly, these five laws are thriving in American Government today. In fact, with the latest disclosures of the IRS targeting conservative groups, the Five Laws of Decline, if anything, appear to be accelerating.  The Founding Fathers intentions of a limited government to provide internal and external defense has been steamrolled by the FLD. Originally, the founders limited federal taxation through state checks and constitutional apportionment. Predictably, although America needed 200 years to reach a trillion dollar national debt, today, it increases over a trillion dollars every year. Evidently, the wisecrack who said, “How did you go broke?” “Well, it was slow at first, but really fast at the end,” spoke more truth than he realized.

President Obama vowed to hold the Internal Revenue Service accountable if reports of political targeting are proven true. “If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that’s outrageous. And there’s no place for it,” Obama told reporters. “And they have to be held fully accountable. Because the IRS as an independent agency requires absolute integrity, and people have to have confidence that they’re … applying the laws in a nonpartisan way.” In LeaderShift, we explain government expansion, writing, “There is no such thing as limited government without limiting the funds available to the government.” In effect, because the government today, including the IRS, has no real checks upon its powers, the FLD explain why continued crisis and bureaucratic overreach are expanding. LeaderShift, however, doesn’t just identify the FLD. It suggests real solutions to check them in American government today. By viewing society through the FLD lens, LeaderShift studies the tide while other pundits continue to talk about the waves.

Today, on the Dennis Miller Radio Show, at 11:15 am ET, I will be discussing how the FLD are destroying American freedoms through unchecked power-hungry organizations like the IRS. When the State increases its role in America, it does so through an increased use of force. Accordingly, as the coercive State increases, the voluntary communities within society correspondingly decrease, leaving more force and less freedoms for its citizens. Whomever said ignorance was bliss was plain ignorant, and ignorance of the Five Laws of Decline is one of the main reasons America is losing its freedoms and purpose. This is a call for all concerned Americans to get educated on the FLD and how to check them within organization, communities, and society.

Sincerely,

Orrin Woodward

In my ongoing reading of the classics and the leaders of Greece and Rome, I stumbled across a gem of a book by James Froude on Caesar. I had read much on Caesar, but the interpretations of Froude’s works left me with a much better appreciation of the challenges Caesar faced and what he attempted to do to reform the faltering Roman Republic. Caesar, like everyone else, certainly wasn’t perfect, but his mission was solid and his results were amazing given the constraints he was placed under. Caesar in his day, and in his way, attempted to expand the benefits of the Roman Empire to all provinces and end the Five Laws of Decline working upon the Roman Senate. Successful in politics, war, and leadership, he was assassinated by the threatened Senate. However, his reforms were still implemented, albeit belatedly, delayed by another round of civil wars before Augustus assumed leadership.

Interestingly, Caesar attempted to restore civil peace and was killed and, at nearly the same time, Jesus was restoring spiritual peace and was killed. Evidently, reformers, who threaten the status quo beneficiaries of the Five Laws of Decline, are rarely welcomed by the threatened groups. Even so, right is right, justice is justice, and peace is peace. As Teddy Roosevelt said, “There is no peace without justice.” Accordingly, each citizen ought to strive to check the FLD in his life and community, promoting peace with justice for posterity’s sake. The LeaderShift will demand nothing less than our personal best in this area.

Here is a portion of James Froude’s summary.

Sincerely,

Orrin Woodward

Caesar’s Assassination

“We have killed the king,” exclaimed Cicero in the bitterness of his disenchantment, ” but the kingdom is with us still;” “we have taken away the tyrant; the tyranny survives.” Caesar had not overthrown the oligarchy; their own incapacity, their own selfishness, their own baseness, had overthrown them. Caesar had  been  but the reluctant instrument of the power which metes out to men the inevitable penalties of their own misdeeds. They  had dreamt that the constitution was a living force which would revive of itself as soon as its enemy was gone. They did not know that it was dead already, and that they had themselves destroyed it.

The constitution was but an agreement by which the Roman people had consented to abide for  their common good. It had ceased to be for the common good. The experience of fifty miserable years had proved that it meant the supremacy of the rich, maintained by the bought votes of demoralized electors. The soil of Italy, the industry and happiness of tens of millions of mankind, from the Rhine to the Euphrates, had been the spoil of five hundred families and their relatives and dependents, of men whose occupation was luxury, and whose appetites were for monstrous pleasures.

The self-respect of  reasonable men could no longer tolerate such a rule in Italy or out of it. In killing Caesar the Optimates had been as foolish as they were treacherous; for Caesar’s efforts had been to reform the constitution, not to abolish it. The Civil War had risen from their dread of his second consulship, which they had feared would make an end of their corruptions; and that the constitution should be purged of  the poison in its veins was the sole condition on which its continuance was possible. The obstinacy, the ferocity, the treachery of the aristocracy, had compelled Caesar to crush them; and the more desperate their struggles the more absolute the necessity became. But he alone could have restored as much of popular liberty as was consistent with the responsibilities of such a government as the Empire required.

In Caesar alone were combined the intellect and the power necessary for such a work; and they had killed him, and in doing so had passed final sentence on themselves. Not as realities any more, but as harmless phantoms, the forms of the old Republic were henceforth to persist. In the army only remained the imperial consciousness of the honour and duty of Roman citizens. To the army, therefore, the rule was transferred. The Roman nation had grown as the oak grows, self-developed in severe morality, each citizen a law to himself, and therefore capable of political freedom in an unexampled degree. All organizations destined to endure spring from forces inherent in themselves, and must grow freely, or they will not grow at all. When the tree reaches maturity, decay sets in; if it be left standing, the disintegration of the fibre goes swiftly forward; if the stem is severed from the root, the destroying power is arrested, and the timber will endure a thousand years. . .

In ages less visionary which are given to ease and enjoyment the tendency is to bring a great man down to the common level, and to discover or invent faults which shall show that he is or was but a little man after all. Our vanity is soothed by evidence that those who have eclipsed us in the race of life are no better than ourselves, or in some respects are worse than ourselves; and if to these general impulses be added political or personal animosity, accusations of depravity are circulated as surely about such men, and are credited as readily, as under other influences are the marvellous achievements of a Cid or a St. Francis.

But enough and too much on this miserable subject. Men will continue to form their opinions about it, not upon the evidence, but according to their preconceived notions of what is probable or improbable. Ages of progress and equality are as credulous of evil as ages of faith are credulous of good, and reason will not modify convictions which do not originate in reason. . .

He fought his battles to establish some tolerable degree of justice in the government of this world; and he succeeded, though he was murdered for doing it. Strange and startling resemblance between the fate of the founder of the kingdom of this world and of the Founder of the kingdom not of this world, for which the first was a preparation. Each was denounced for making himself a king. Each was maligned as the friend of publicans and sinners; each was betrayed by those whom he had loved and cared for; each was put to death; and Caesar also was believed to have risen again and ascended into heaven and become a divine being.

Felix Morley

I have enjoyed reading several articles by Felix Morley. Although not knowing too much about him when I started reading, I can speak for his depth of thought on the subjects of society, state, liberty and freedom. After reading the first article, I searched for more and found this gem in Essays on Individualism.

Ideas have consequences and a LeaderShift cannot happen until more people educate themselves on the idea food necessary to maintain liberties and reduce the all-pervasive State down to a limited government again. The stakes are high as I believe Western Civilization hangs in the balance upon what today’s citizens do with their remaining liberties. Here is just a portion of Mr. Morley’s thinking.

Sincerely,

Orrin Woodward

Essentially, Society is the voluntary cooperative action of individuals in areas where the State is not concerned. But these areas are always subject to contraction if the State moves in to make cooperation compulsory. The rules of conduct laid down by Society and those laid down by the State are in both cases binding and in both cases find their philosophic justification in the theory of Social Contract. The essential difference is that the rules laid down by the State are legalized, with physical force behind them, whereas the rules of Society are primarily voluntary agreements and are better described as conventions. He who violates a social convention is likely to be ostracized, or excommunicated in the broad sense of the word. But he who violates a State law or edict is subject to imprisonment or even death.

On the moral scale, therefore, Society is a superior type of organization, since its authority is based on individual agreement rather than on external coercion. Morally speaking, it is reactionary rather than progressive whenever the State expands its authority at the expense of Society. Social security, federal aid to education, unemployment insurance, governmental handouts, subsidies, and interventions of every kind, not least so-called “mutual assistance” to allied governments-all these, however dolled up in a specious humanitarianism, are essentially reactionary measures, calculated to encroach on voluntary goodwill. Put arithmetically, the taxes I pay to support the expanding galaxy of governmental welfare measures diminish by just that much what I might contribute under the prompting of my own conscience through associations and in directions of my own choosing.

Rosseau’s fatal achievement was not only to establish the so-called “General Will” as a political dogma, but also to convince his followers that it is somehow in every respect superior to the individual will, which in any conflict of opinion, in any sort of undertaking, must give way. Clearly this theory, integrated with coercion, involves a most cynical view of human nature. It implies that no man can be trusted to “live a godly, righteous, and sober life,” no matter how needfully he may incline to divine promptings. On the contrary, he must be constantly and subserviently attentive to the orders of “Big Brother,” who by some perverted miracle and political hocus-pocus has come to embody a General Will.

John Milton, among the Protestants, stands out in this period for his affirmation that: “Our liberty … is a blessing we have received from God Himself. It is what we are born to. To lay this down at Caesar’s feet, which we derive not from him, which we are not beholden to him for, were an unworthy action, and a degrading of our very nature.” That thought profoundly influenced the formation of American government.

So it happened that the Social Contract ceased to be a self-denying ordinance and became instead a deceptively disguised instrument of oppression. We have not seen the end of it, for the “People’s Democracies” of the Soviet world are the direct and logical outgrowth of Rousseau’s conception of an unquestionable “General Will.” And the religious, but anti-Christian, fervor of modern Communism owes much more of its proselytizing strength to Rousseau than to Marx.

If the theory of the General Will had been voiced by itself, instead of being cleverly tied in with the valid conception of Social Contract, it would scarcely have survived, let alone prospered, as is the case. The major fallacy is too obvious. In the last analysis some ruler must interpret and promulgate what is assumed to be the General Will. The more sacrosanct this popular desire, the more authoritarian must be the power of those entrusted with its realization. A single, unified popular will implies a single, unified governmental purpose to make the will effective. This is the road to dictatorship; not to what Americans mean when they speak of democracy.