Orrin Woodward on LIFE & Leadership

Inc Magazine Top 20 Leader shares his personal, professional, and financial secrets.

  • Orrin Woodward

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    Former Guinness World Record Holder for largest book signing ever, Orrin Woodward is a NY Times bestselling author of And Justice For All along with RESOLVED & coauthor of LeaderShift and Launching a Leadership Revolution. His books have sold over one million copies in the financial, leadership and liberty fields. RESOLVED: 13 Resolutions For LIFE made the Top 100 All-Time Best Leadership Books and the 13 Resolutions are the framework for the top selling Mental Fitness Challenge personal development program.

    Orrin made the Top 20 Inc. Magazine Leadership list & has co-founded two multi-million dollar leadership companies. Currently, he serves as the Chairman of the Board of the LIFE. 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.

    This blog is an Alltop selection and ranked in HR's Top 100 Blogs for Management & Leadership.

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Posts Tagged ‘liberty’

America – Conceived in Liberty: Died in Tyranny?

Posted by Orrin Woodward on April 25, 2012

Murray Rothbard has struck again! Through reading his fascinating, albeit frustrating at times, history of America Conceived in Liberty, I stumbled across some shocking stories. Rothbard is the type of author that even when I disagree with him, I find myself laughing and thinking. I enjoy authors who make their readers think because so few do today. Since recorded history, governments have violated people’s inherent rights, but how these poor precedents proceed in perpetuity is astonishing. Has anyone studied the history of the English postal system? I certainly hadn’t! Let me quote from the irrepressible sacred cow buster Murray Rothbard:

Murray Rothbard picturePostal service began in the early American colonies as freely competitive private enterprises of varying forms and types. Letters between neighboring villages were sent by special messengers, who were often Indians. For longer journeys, letters were carried by travelers or regular merchants. Letters to or from England were carried by private ship captains, who often hung a bag in the local coffeehouse to receive letters for shipment. The price was generally a penny for a single letter and two pence for a double letter or parcel.

Unfortunately, English precedent held out little hope for the unhampered development of a freely competitive postal service. In 1591 the Crown had issued a proclamation granting itself the monopoly of all foreign mail, and in 1609 the Crown’s proclamation extended its own monopoly to all mail foreign or domestic. The purpose of this postal monopoly was quite simple: to enable governmental officials to read the letters of private citizens in order to discover and suppress “treason” and “sedition.”

Thus, when the Privy Council decided in 1627 to allow merchants to operate an independent foreign post, the king’s principal secretary of state wrote sternly: “Your lordship best knoweth what account we shall be able to give in our places of that which passeth by letters in or out of the land, if every man may convey letters under the course of merchants to whom and what place he pleaseth…how unfit a time this is to give liberty to every man to write and send what he list….” And in 1657 when the Commonwealth Parliament continued the English governmental postal monopoly, the preamble of the act stated a major objective: “to discover and prevent many dangerous and bigoted designs, which have been and are daily contrived against the peace and welfare of this Commonwealth, the intelligence whereof cannot well be communicated, but by letter of script.”

The first government meddling in the postal service in America came as early as 1639 in Massachusetts. At that time the government appointed Richard Fairbanks to be a receiver and deliverer of foreign letters for the price of one penny; no monopoly privilege was granted, and no one was prevented from using other postal intermediaries. The Dutch government in New Netherland went far beyond this when in 1657 it awarded itself a compulsory monopoly of receipt of foreign mail; anyone presuming to board a vessel first to obtain his own mail was fined thirty guilders. Ship captains were fined heavily for carrying letters for anyone except the government postal monopolist.

In other words, America’s “snail mail” postal monopoly has nothing to do with efficiency (I guess we all knew that :)); it has nothing to do with the poor economics of this generation; and it has everything to do with the State’s desire to spy on people’s thoughts, plans, and actions. This, mind you, from our English forefathers, whose ideas of liberty were modeled in the creation of America. The postal system is one area where we shouldn’t have applied English principles. If government has the right to spy at will, where does this right end? If someone disagrees with the ruling power, does that person have the right to open letters, emails, tap phones, etc? England’s unethical precedent is still affecting America’s postal system to this day.

I love history, but this isn’t the type of lessons I learned in school and neither will you. Since Big Government funds the schools, no one should be shocked about this. Sadly, with today’s further government interventions like the Patriot Act, to name one among many, civil liberties are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Harry Truman, an avid reader, once paraphrased Solomon when he said, “There is nothing new under the sun, only the history you don’t know.” We must educate ourselves on real history and not the government fed history from our schools and other government-funded institutions.

The battles fought over freedom today may be different in detail but astonishingly similar in principle. Yes, America was conceived in liberty; I pray it doesn’t die in tyranny.

Sincerely,

Orrin Woodward

Posted in Freedom/Liberty, Leadership/Personal Development | Tagged: , , | 12 Comments »

Leadership, Life, & Liberty

Posted by Orrin Woodward on March 20, 2012

When I was 26 years old, I joined community building for one of the strangest of reasons – to get my baseball cards back. Although inexplicable to me, since I typically didn’t join anything, I realize now that God was opening up the door to my destiny. Through community building, my leadership inabilities were quickly revealed, forcing me to undergo nearly 12 years of intensive hands-on experience before finally mastering the fundamentals of leadership. The culmination of this leadership journey occurred on a private-island retreat when Chris Brady and I began a long conversation on the principles of leadership that led to our #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Launching a Leadership Revolution.

With this initial success, my perspective changed from leadership success to life success. I started studying the principles of holistic success in a purpose-filled life, rather than just effective professional leadership. Eventually, this led me to write RESOLVED: 13 Resolutions for LIFE, which shares my personal philosophies on living a life that matters. In truth, without the leadership principles learned and applied that led to my personal freedom from a 9-to-5 job, I would never have found the time to invest in the reading of thousands of books needed to write RESOLVED. Professional leadership success, in other words, allowed me the free time to learn, apply, and share the 13 resolutions.  God’s blessings in one area ought to be used as blessings to others when possible. In this case, my leadership blessing led to the free time needed to capture and share the resolutions for enhancing people’s lives.

While writing RESOLVED, however, I realized that without liberty, a resolved leadership life is nearly impossible. For what good is a road map to success if a person isn’t free to drive? This led me to my third great quest for knowledge and understanding, seeking the principles underlying spiritual, economic, and political liberty. Many questions have been asked and answered during this quest. Who were the greatest “apostles of liberty” in the history of mankind? What did they teach and why? What can we learn from these men and women today? Why is liberty so important? If any of these questions are of concern to you, then stay tuned to this blog as we discuss the story of liberty and its importance in today’s society.

Sincerely, Orrin Woodward

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1U1Jzdghjk]

Posted in Faith, Finances, Orrin Woodward | Tagged: , , , | 5 Comments »

Fiat Money, Income Taxes, & Freedom

Posted by Orrin Woodward on February 21, 2012

Permitting government to produce fiat money is like giving a compulsive gambler unlimited poker chips. In neither case should we be shocked when runaway debt and excuses are all that ensue. Indeed, Alexander Hamilton, in a 1790 paper to the House, wrote, “The emitting of paper money by the authority of Government is wisely prohibited by the individual States, by the national constitution; and the spirit of that prohibition ought not to be disregarded by the Government of the United States.” Thomas Jefferson, furthermore, concurred, saying, “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks…will deprive the people of  all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” Even the founder of Keynesian Economics, John Maynard Keynes, opined on the dangers of fiat money, writing, “Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of Society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

Nonetheless, despite the many warnings on the dangers of fiat money, in 1913, the Federal Reserve was created. The name “Federal Reserve” is a misnomer, since this privately held company isn’t federal and doesn’t have reserves. In truth, because the Federal Reserve is a private company, it, unlike our government, is designed to make money. It accomplishes this by loaning money to our federal government for fees plus interest. However, in order to ensure the interest debt was serviced promptly, the income tax amendment, not coincidentally, was passed in 1913 also. By permitting direct taxation on a citizen’s income, the income tax amendment erased one of the last checks (proportional taxation of states) remaining upon government’s nearly unlimited avarice. The founders, by regulating the taxation with the State populations, tied the federal government’s hands, ensuring the individual citizen’s wealth was free from government expropriation. Sadly, with the passage of the income tax amendment, this federal constraint was removed. Since 1913, individual citizens, instead of the respective citizen’s state, have had the unequal task of squaring off against the federal government (IRS) whenever a tax dispute arises. This was not the intention of the founders.

It’s time to educate ourselves on our history, or we are doomed to lose our birthrights. Leaders must arise and educate communities around the world. Sincerely, Orrin Woodward

Posted in Freedom/Liberty, Leadership/Personal Development | Tagged: , , | 18 Comments »

American Politics – Right or Left Equals Lost Freedoms

Posted by Orrin Woodward on December 29, 2011

In one corner we have the Right. They claim that America needs a huge military/industrial complex to protect our country. Strangely, in order to do so, it is claimed that it requires military personnel in a hundred plus countries and military bases in 63 of them! Isn’t this a costly endeavor when a nation is going broke? In addition, the military complex provides gun-boat diplomacy (open your markets or else) for large corporations to sell merchandise protected by the military paid for by the shrinking middle class.

In the other corner is the Left. They claim that America needs a bigger government to regulate those greedy capitalist who are exploiting the people. Although I agree with the assessment, the answer – more government power – only allows the greedy business people to buy the greedy government, thus the power to control their markets. Plus the bigger government requires even more tax dollars (similar to the Right and military complex), leaving the citizens reduced to mere serfs at the beck and call of numerous regulations.

What if both the Right and Left were a Hegelian maneuver of thesis, anti-thesis, leading to the inevitable synthesis of larger State power and control, regardless of which side wins an election? What if, in other words, the Right/Left dichotomy isn’t even the real battleground? America was founded on limited government bound by the Constitution to ensure the beast never escapes it clearly delineated powers. Oh how far we have traveled from this ideal.

Today, whether one votes Right or votes Left, what a person actually votes for is less freedom and more Government/Big Business/Banker control. Until the citizens change the framework of the debate for Right/Left to Freedom/Tyranny, nothing will change. Asking money-hungry Government (it takes money to get elected) to regulate money-hungry Big Business is like asking Al Capone to regulate prohibition. History has provided endless examples of the illicit partnering of Big Business and Big Government to feather their nest at the expense of the citizen’s freedoms and pocketbooks – Federal Reserve, Income Tax, Railroads, Savings & Loans, etc.

Let’s change the debate this electoral season. Let’s start asking our candidates how they intend to reduce Big Government. By reducing Big Government, it will automatically reduce the ability of Big Business to buy the power needed to set up monopolies, thus ensuring true free enterprise for the benefit of all citizens. Free enterprise is the only system where the consumer has the choice to vote with his money and support or withhold these if not happy.

Why give government this control when they have proven repeatedly they are incapable of withstanding the bribery of Big Business? Let’s put the power back in the citizens hands where it belongs. Idealist? Maybe, but what is the point of getting involved unless we have ideals to shoot for? Time is short, America cannot continue on its present path of fiscal insanity, power lust, and ethical wasteland forever.  What part will you play in the restoration of the American Dream?

As of today, I am officially no longer a Republican or a Democrat. I am now going under the long forgotten term called American. I refuse to allow our political pundits to divide us any longer. Americans must unite around freedom not fight around force. In my opinion, each citizen has a moral responsibility to stop dividing between the false dichotomy of Right/Left and start uniting around the true division of Freedom or Tyranny. I choose Freedom, how about you? Sincerely, Orrin Woodward

Posted in Freedom/Liberty, Leadership/Personal Development | Tagged: , , | 42 Comments »