As we pursue our path or goals, sometimes we run into walls or chasms, or roadblocks.  The Student Whisper calls them chasms, but sometimes I feel like I have run into walls (running term).  Regardless of what you call it there is always the question of ‘is it the right path if I run into so many problems’?  During this time of pondering, it’s a great time to look for solutions, missing skills, recast vision, etc.  But what if the right thing to do is quit?
Seth Godin’s book ‘The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)’ might help.   I don’t know that I agree with all that he says, but I do like how he explains how to focus on things when things get tough.  He asks you to label whether what you are experiencing is a cliff, dead-end or dip.   The dip is explained as that place where you have to slog through to move to mastery.  You are putting in effort, but the results are not there or are dipping.  A very interesting insight.  The book will help you look at your journey in a new way as you evaluate your goals.  The author will also show you when and why it’s a good time to quit instead of persevering.     His ideas go well with my books on the Hero Cycle.  I want to attempt it all and at once, but that is just not possible.  As much as I would like to do it all, I have limits and knowing what those limits are is important as I decide what I want to do with my time.   Sometimes the best thing is to limit what I am doing so that I can put in the energy that is needed for the goal I have.  It is always so hard to say no to a good thing but much easier if I label what the best things are that I would like to do. 

​My first time through this book, I was not as impressed with this book.   However the book as grown on me.  I have made many notes in the book.  The one that I think has to most impact on this read is the importance we place on spending time for ourselves. 
 
“If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange.  What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it – like a secret vice!” (p. 43-44)
 
I think this can still be true today.  If I said, “me time” it is much more acceptable than to say, “this is my study time”.   I can’t tell you how many times I have violated the scheduled study time because I feel bad for saying no.  Or even when asked what I am doing the response can be ‘oh only study so you are free to help me’.
For me the lesson I need to learn, and practice is to just say ‘I am busy right now’ because it is important that I set time aside to do the things I like instead of trying to sneak it in late at night when I am tired.

I do agree with the idea that we have made a mess of the education system.  The question to me is really what do I do about it for myself, my family, and my community?

According to Sowell what of the biggest problems is that American children are missing thinking skills because of the institutions and the attitudes within the institutions.   So the system is broken.  Institutions are not going to educate children in order to help them think because they have a different agenda.   "All across this country, the school curriculum has been invaded by physiological-conditioning programs which not only take up time sorely needed for intellectual development, but also promote an emotionalized and anti-intellectual way of responding to the challenges facing every individual and every society" (p. ix). 

I think this leads back to the reason we have created schools.  Why did and do we think children going to school is important?  What value should schools provide to the individual?  There are many books out there that try to answer these questions.  

I believe the biggest problem of the school is that it "undermines the parent-child relationship and the shared values which make a society possible" (p. ix).  

The family is the foundation of a society.  If we destroy the family, we destroy society.   The best way to create a great society is to have great families.  Therefore the parent-parent relationship and the parent-child relationship is the most important within any society.    Building a principled, moral home culture is something we should take great time and effort to create and maintain.  

Families however can't do everything in a society alone.  That is why we work to create communities.  So that we can create a community where our family thrives.  In Freedom Matters by Oliver DeMille, the author talks about the state of balance needed between seven kinds of leaders to maintain freedom.  One of the seven leaders is educational leaders.  When any of the seven leaders combine their power with another's power imbalance is created and then their purpose in the community is skewed creating problems for the society.  We have definitely seen this happen.  In this case it seems that the government (one of the type of leaders) and teamed with several kinds of leaders to expand their power.  In the process we have weakened the power of the family hugely.  In this particular case the government leaders has combined with the educational leaders to expand their influence, changing the purposes of the education system.  The education systems' purpose is not to teaching thinking but to promote their personal agendas.    

Many people have pointed out the problems in the education system but nothing really has been done to restore its original purposes?  The original purposes are rarely even discussed.   Today's system is set up to hold and contain students for as long as possible.  Very little effort is spent on teaching reading and thinking skills.  If you don't believe me spend a couple of days in the classrooms and count up the minutes spent on teaching students to read especially those that struggle.   Then compare that with how many minutes they are away from home.   Of course that is Thomas Sowell's opinion that education programs should teach thinking.  Is there something more or better that we should be focused on?  I think so. 

Do we have clear guiding principles to lead us?  Are they the correct principles we should focus on or are they distractions from the best principles?  Do we know what success looks like for each of those guiding principles?  Did you know that education systems have worldviews also?  Which purpose do you think is the most important to support and why?

The education system has not failed because of lack of money!  The education system is a huge business with a lot of money flowing through it.   Any person who believes more money should be given to the system has not looked into how much money is being spent and measuring it with the results that are given.   

My belief at this point in time is that public (and charter) school is the last place you want to send your children.  It creates so much harm and so little good.     

​In his book ‘Dumbing us Down’ John Taylor Gatto shows how networks “drain the vitality from community and family” (p. 52).   In pondering his writings, I have come to believe that schools and networks are counterfeits of family and community.   Building strong families and communities is the most important work we can ever do. 
So much good occurs when families and communities are strong. People have purpose and belong.  Work serves people we know and love.  People have names, not numbers. In a strong family and community, every person matters and the whole person matters.  
The United States was established based on family and community.  We have since moved away from that home-centered focus. We have largely replaced families and community with networks.   
The results are devastating.  Isolation, loneliness, and depression have become more common than not.   We are fragmented, divided and often desperate.   Why is this so?
It is because Institutions and networks do not truly care about healthy, strong families and communities, but on what they can get from us. Their purpose is to ‘survive and grow’ (p. 65).  Their intention may not be destruction of the family and the community but that is what has happened. 
We are so focused on being part of the right networks and institutions that we have neglected the places where we find real worth and belonging.  We isolate ourselves in these networks. And we require our young children to isolate themselves! 
Starting with pre-school children are often isolated from their families and trained to stay with their group. They are regulated to compete with each other, to follow the rules and to receive their validation from their school networks.
If they “succeed” in school, they are promoted and sent to institutions of “higher education” whose primary purpose is to survive and grow.  If they do well in these institutions, they are promoted again. Their reward is to get to buy more stuff than those people who don’t perform as well.  Finally, once these superior achievers are worn out, they are isolated again in retirement “communities”. These are mostly pseudo communities composed of transients. 
A defining characteristic of these networks and institutions is this: we may believe we are part of a community but when we move out of those “communities” the people we know rarely continue to socialize with us. 
As a nation, we have tried to socially engineer “better families and communities” through school, networks and institutions. But those efforts have failed.  People are not better off; they are not happy or better educated.  They have not become their best selves.  Instead, we encounter many wounded and lonely people. 
It is time to return to family and community; time to read those books that show us how to build family and community; time to replace social counterfeits with the real thing. 

​“Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for a future that only He can see.”
To me, it is so much harder to practice this belief than state it.  I have wondered often how people have the courage to do such hard things.  Even through all Corrie’s story she shows this is a fundamental belief that she holds. 
Near the end of the book, Corrie shares a story of how a story in which ad bandage from a gangrenous foot was put on her face: “I ran sobbing down the corridor and washed and washed beneath the wall spigot in the latrine.  I would never step into that aisle again!  What did I care about the wretched bedpans!  I couldn’t bear…But of course I did go back.  I had learned much in the pat year, about what I could and count bear.”
What an amazing story of courage and trust in God.  This is a book that I just keep rereading.  There is so much wholeness of soul and healing of souls within a very broken world.  It does my heart good every time I reread this classic.

​I found this book a very helpful and challenging read.   I started this on Audible but there were so many things that I wanted to go back and re-listen to that I bought the book.  The format of the book made it very challenging to keep ideas straight.  It was challenging to keep the ideas straight in my head as the author moved back and forth between the two major visions he addressed.  So many ideas. I needed to summarize the main points at the end of each chapter.  Then I could reflect on those ideas and see where I personally fell.    Unfortunately, I don’t think that we can categorize the political struggles into just two categories.  We are too complex.  Experience and education change our thinking and beliefs.  It also changes how we view the world.  I think I can straddle both lines (the constrained and the unconstrained) in some situations, especially in areas where I don’t have a deep understanding of the factors and influences involved.   For the constrained vision the big idea is that human beings are flawed.  So, to best help society we need to understand the fundamental laws of nature, government, and economy and then constrain man in order to maintain a healthy society.   This is very different from the unconstrained vision that believes that we can perfect society if we have the right conditions.   I guess we all want to live in a utopia.  However, by definition utopia is an “imagined place of state were everything is perfect” (Oxford Languages).   
So, what if you believe that man is flawed but is perfectible through Christ?   It makes it hard to completely land in one group or another.  The book does not address this idea.  The focus is how man believes that he can perfect society if the conditions and teaching are right.  For me that is a flawed belief since I believe that man in his current condition is not omniscient enough to make decisions that will lead to a perfect society.  We just don’t understand ourselves, our world, or others well enough to begin to believe that we have the right to determine how everyone should live.  

​ “No number of policy victories can make up for the country’s loss of shared vision and the institutions of civil society that nurture it.” p. 8
I like the way that sounds and it resonates with the my beliefs.   In the book The Coming Aristocracy I highlighted:
                “Without shared values and standards of truth, there is no shared civilization” (O. DeMille, The Coming Aristocracy p. 89).
Where are these values first taught?  In the family.  To me the family is a vital force in civilization.  It is the foundation of civilization.  Dr. Roberts spends time talking about the importance of the family very early in this book.  I can picture in my head Little House and Little Britches scenes of what families looked like in the past.  They worked hard together and gathered around the table or fire together.  They understood ownership and hard work.  They had home businesses so to speak that they worked at every day.   It would be wonderful if our government made it easier to create this environment again.  A place where family, family work and family business could thrive without interference from the government.  I don’t think you can force this or legislate this.   
There are many points in this book that I agree with and several big points that I have concerns with.  Those points that I have concerns with revolve around family, education and economy.  I might be wrong, but I feel that Dr. Roberts things you can legislate this more with Sabbath Laws and Tax cuts and credits.    In the Coming Aristocracy it talks about the difference between Governance and Establishment principles.  It seems we turn to Legislative measures (compromise with the power players) instead of focusing on the principles and not compromising those principles.  If we are all equal before God and have been all given unalienable rights, we should all be equal before the law.   Single people or people without kids should not be punished for their choices.  Yes, I believe families are incredibly important to society but why legislate that?   I would rather see the 16th and 17th Amendment appealed instead of more legislation to benefit only those with families. 
If Communities want to have Sabbath Day laws, then let the town meetings decide that.  If families want to practice a Sabbath Day, then no one can stop them from choosing to not spend their time and money at places that don’t honor their beliefs.   For those that have work issues, I think it will be hard but possible to work with employers in a way that could benefit both.  This allows for each family to keep their personal Sabbath in a way that they believe.  I believe that everyone should have a way to practice their beliefs without laws to force one set of beliefs.  Yes, we are a Christian based society, however we have enough diversity that it would be unfair to impose Sabbath laws on those that have a different day for Sabbath observance.  Besides just because there is a Sabbath Day law, does not mean it will be followed the way the creator of the law intended. 
Dr. Roberts moves from Family and Family Practices (Sabbath Observance) to Education.   The books title is called “Schools Should Teach Piety”.  Intriguing title.   What does piety mean?  How is this enforced?  I am not sure I saw a definition for piety.  I did see “parental rights” along with many ideas about what is broken about the education system.  And then I saw some words that concerned me:  “We want to teach our students the right things to love (p. 90).   Who decides the right things?  Is that not what is happening now?   There is a government group in power that has decided what they believe is the “right things to love”.  How is that different from what?  Seems like it is still a force-based system to me.  I am not sure how piety fits in there.   I love the idea of having classics in the education models.  But who decides the classics?  Which classics?  Why?   I will hold out for the hope that parents will have more rights in the educational systems and wish to continue to make those choices myself.   I might get it wrong but that is okay with me because I think my goals in education are different from many people’s.  I love the idea of the Hebrew model of education where the focus is training on HOW to think and lead while caring about what is right and true.  I try to focus my time on learning wisdom still to this day so I would like to pass that model on to my family.
How can you talk about Saving America without talking about economics?  There has been a lot to say here.   Dr. Roberts talks about the need to fix our economy in a way that supports the small businessman.  Sounds good on the surface.   Small businesses should have the same opportunities and privileges as big business but that is not the plan to make all equal before the law with Dr. Roberts.  He would like to penalize and punish big businesses.  That is concerning to me.  There are some businesses I think that work better as large businesses (like phone services and internet to name just two I use every day).  I don’t believe it is far to punish a person for being too successful.   I do believe that EVERYONE should be equal before the law.  No special perks and privileges for the big guy or the little guy sounds like more freedom for all to me.  I would rather have a free enterprise system not more regulations.  We have so many regulations now.    I think that it is important to have small, localized communities and services based on the needs of each community.  I believe in regenerative agriculture and the potential that we bring to our communities as we revitalize the land and our communities.  I disagree with a legislated action that forces these ideas.  Force has never worked in my home, and I have never appreciated force (even and especially when it was for “my own good”).
In my head I picture a teeter totter that has Anarchy on the far end of one side and on the opposite far end is Tyranny (Making of America).  For me the perfect spot in the middle is where Liberty sits.  Just enough government to not have anarchy and mob rule but not so much that we have regulation and abuse of regulation.  It’s a hard spot to manage.   Even though I disagree with many parts of this book, I love the conversation I had because I read it.  I took the time to clarify and record my thinking.  I researched past books to help me better understand and support my ideas.  It was a great experience.  

This book had an interesting way of looking at leaders.  There were a lot of comparisons made between leaders and managers.   The author defines management is “about manipulating resources to get a known job done” whereas leadership is “about creating change that you believe in”.   As you read through the book Seth Godin emphasizes the need to build tribes instead of factories.  Tribes are about connection and growth whereas factories are about producing goods and services efficiently and without the individual needing to take responsibility. 
One quote that I really liked was: “Great leaders create movements by empowering the tribe to communicate.  They establish the foundation for people to make connections, as opposed to commanding people to follow.”    That is an interesting way to look at leadership.  I had not considered that before. 
When I finished the book, I asked myself “so what?”   So, what do I want to do with this information.    I was not sure but one thing I decided was that I need to stop doing is being a lurker.   Under the heading “Leaning In, Backing Off, Doing Nothing” Seth Godin shared a story about an online forum where he talked about those that chose not to engage but to sit and watch.  He made a comment that really struck home to me, “they were hiding, afraid of something that wasn’t likely to happen”.  Hmmm is that what I do?   I know that I am not fully engaging in (or investing in) the group so why am I there?   Do I lurk out of fear?  That was hard hitting but he might have a point. 
I have been pondering the areas that I highlighted and thinking about what my takeaways were.  As I was pondering, I was reading in a Steven Covey book this idea, “J. McDonald taught: “To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.”  Leadership is not so much a matter of techniques and practices as it is fundamental character and integrity, humility and morality.”
Seems like there are a lot of different ideas about what leadership is and what it looks like.  Leaders can guide, influence, and direct others towards a common vision or goal.  According to Mr. Godin we all can and should be leaders.  We just need to do what we believe in and step out to create a tribe.   Since being introduced to the Thomas Jefferson Education Model I find that I want to be more than a leader.  I want to develop statesmanship.    I am not able to articulate well what the differences between leadership and statesmanship are but one thing I do understand is that leaders can be good or bad.  They can uplift or drag down.  We have a lot of people in the world that lead but the question that I really want to ask myself is where are they leading?   What are they promoting?   Are they dedicated to serving the greater good?  Promoting freedom?  Uplifting society?   I think that is what I want to become more of.  A person who promotes freedom and uplifts wherever I go while serving the Greater Good.  

There are so many things that I disagree with.   Thanks to books like “The Coming Aristocracy” and “Free Enterprise vs Capitalism and Socialism” by Oliver DeMille I can have internal conversations regarding why I agree or disagree with ideas and ways that might be better solutions to the issues that were brought up this this book.  Because of the conversations I am having this book has value.   If you are going to read this book, then I suggest the books above be read first and then compare the thinking between the two others.  Which do you prefer?  Why?
I agree very much that the foundation of our civilization should be the family.  I just don’t believe you can legislate morality or culture.  People must choose to create a family culture.  Cities and states may make laws about Sabbath hours, but the federal government should not.   However, having Sabbath laws does not mean that people will choose to spend this time with their family.  They could be doing that now regardless of the laws.
I agree very much that the tax law needs to be changed but changed to support free enterprise (all are equal before the law – no special rules for any group).  Anything less is not in line with the Declaration of Independence.  Trying to legislate everything creates the environment we have now – full of corruption and abuse.   In my opinion anything that creates classes or maintains classes is against true freedom.  Regardless of its intentions.  To me any other form of economic system will create classes (to include Distributism, Socialism, Corporatism, mercantilism, crony capitalism, etc.).  There is a lot of helpful information in the books ‘Free Enterprise vs. Capitalism and Socialism’ and ‘The Coming Aristocracy’ by Oliver DeMille.
Both books helped me express clearly where I disagreed with the author’s point.  Without these books I would have still disagreed about some of the proposals but not been able to express clearly what I disagreed with nor could I name clearly the system that the author was talking about but not naming himself.   Without digging deeper into this author’s beliefs, I don’t really think this author supports the Freedom Party that Oliver DeMille explained in ‘The Coming Aristocracy’ which is:  Localist, Free-enterprising, Entrepreneurial, Familial, Individualistic, Creative, and Connective.  They are loyal to principles and people.   (p. 45-46)
Kevin Roberts talks about Familial, localist, entrepreneurial, and creative but his approach is through government force (regulation and law).  Doesn’t sound like it is based on the economy of free enterprise or the society of democracy (see Free Enterprise vs Capitalism and Socialism).   After reading this book, I felt that the author wants to just create a different aristocracy in America called the New Conservative Movement.  I would prefer to see programs that move us away from class systems and special rules for special groups.  I would prefer to see us all equal before the law (tax and regulation) and that we have more freedom from government.  I prefer the ideas of Free Enterprise Economies and Societal Democracy (small local focus for most of our needs with the old-fashioned town meetings involvement). 

A quote that struck me in this book is found at the end of the Chapter 'Happy Days' :  "The day was ending in perfect satisfaction.  They were all there together.  All the work, except the supper dishes, was done until tomorrow.  They were all enjoying good bread and butter, friend potatoes, cottage cheese, and lettuce leaves sprinkled with vinegar and sugar."

What a vision of what family can look like.  The satisfaction of being with your family, accomplishment of the work needed, and enjoyment of food and time together.   So simple sounding and so hard to pull off.

This book is full of nuggets about creating a successful home culture and community.  I think sometimes when we read these books as youth but don't re-read them as adults we miss out on a lot of lessons or ideas.