Leaders of Principle - OpEd

What is a leader of principle? I have done a recent Google search and found its use ubiquitous to the point of becoming a cliché. It is used mostly in the political context but for everyone from George Washington to Cho En Lei and for all of our national candidates at one point or another. It makes you wonder.

At The Citadel, producing leaders of principle for a global community is not a cliché. It is the goal to which we aspire for our students and for ourselves. I have been teaching Law and Ethics for Business Executives at The Citadel for the past three years, and the course has evolved beyond mere identification of legal rules and court decisions for the wary business executive. We do plenty of that, but increasingly as I have understood the essence of what makes a Citadel education unique, the course has become Law and Ethics for Leaders of Principle. In that regard some of our distinguished business and legal community leaders have helped in that transformation by their guest lectures and by the model of their purpose filled lives in our community.

While typically an entering class has students from 40 states and 10 foreign countries, you can assume that wherever they hail from, they are typical of youngsters anywhere. They are bright-eyed and full of dreams. They undertake the challenge of The Citadel for a complex assortment of reasons but with hope we will show them the way to success in life.

No matter what they have heard, knob summer is no picnic. Life for the next four years will be lived on a 24 hour clock, and the summer “Hell Week” is a shock to youngsters inexperienced in its rigors. Like recruits facing basic training in any military organization, they are stripped of their individual identity and forged into a unit. The Corps is not for everyone, but for those who endure, they emerge as knob privates on their way to becoming the Phoenix of legend. They are tougher, more resilient and with core values that will, with three years of polish, equip them to lead the Corps in their fourth year and assume their role as Leaders of Principle upon graduation.

To endure, a knob has learned that he is fallible and not the center of the known universe. He has learned that others depend on him or her and that his or her success is dependent on adapting to the group’s ethic. The knob also learns that the essence of leadership is service to that society of common values of which he or she is a vital part. Looking right on the parade ground on Friday afternoon is but a metaphor for the interconnectedness and the application of core values consistently applied.

At the center of this ethic are hard work, honesty, trustworthiness and loyalty. The cadet begins to understand “accountability” in a larger context of their responsibility to the Corps and enjoy the pride in themselves that comes from being true to that responsibility.

Ok, so far we have identified values that include a rigorous honesty, recognition of responsibility to something bigger than your own immediate wants, hard work, and acceptance of fallibility but ability to come back from failure better for the failure, tougher, wiser and more resilient. We also have defined leadership in the context of service to a community of common values. The constant repetition of the stress to achieve these traits builds a way of living that endures well beyond a cadet’s time at The Citadel.

The elusive impact of four years in this family of sufferers does not normally strike the uninitiated observer, but I have heard it said that former cadets can recognize the “initiated” who have endured either a Citadel education or that at one of the service academies. I have also heard it said that The Citadel is a place you are delighted to see in your rear mirror when you are done but also one that you ache to see out your front windshield after experiencing life post-graduation

I am fond of quoting John Adams on our Constitution being for “a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” He better than most of our Country’s fathers spoke to the nature of the world into which, both then and now, we are putting our young men and women when they graduate.

Ralph Parlette notes in his School of Hard Knocks, “Strength and Struggle travel together; the supreme reward for struggle is strength. Life is a battle, and the greatest joy is to overcome. The pursuit of the easy makes men weak.” That is hardly uplifting but accurate as to the unknowable road ahead. If we can prepare the next generation for that world and equip them with the ability to obtain satisfaction from surmounting whatever challenges they have ahead, both they and the society into which they enter as servant/leaders will be the better for it.

As they approach graduation, and have my course, what I am trying to do is to have them reflect on the behavior pattern that has been thrust on them while at The Citadel and leave the school with more awareness of the context in which they have been challenged. Hopefully they will come to accept their new behavior pattern with full knowledge of what they are doing and not mere habit.

This is not just a paean to The Citadel experience. It really is not for everyone, but I expect that The Citadel will expand at a modest rate consistent with its elevated academic standards and facilities to the point that it will be the largest military academy other than our national service academies. The point I ask you to think about is the state of education generally. What kind of society are we creating with young adults who think in the half hour cycle of a sitcom and feel entitled to their comfort? How are we to navigate the dangerous period into which we have sailed? I will be frank that it scares me, and it should scare you too.

Robert E. Freer, Jr.
Free Enterprise Foundation Founder and President
Charleston Mercury January 18, 2007; p. 16

Pollyanna New Year - OpEd

In 1913 Eleanor Hodgman Porter published the first of two novels about an orphaned girl, Pollyanna Whittier, who arrives in Beldingsville to live with her strait laced and strict Aunt Polly and transforms all about her from frowns to smiles and elevated spirits by her own inexhaustible optimism and determination. The books had such an impact on pre-war America, flushed with its growth into a world power, that being “Pollyannish” became part of our language to describe anyone who was optimistic to the extreme.

Surely it is clear, optimism as a philosophy of life will get you farther than pessimism; it is an editorial attitude of this newspaper. The challenges, both personal and national, we face cannot be overcome if we merely wring our hands and say the “sky is falling.” Regrettably, as a nation we haven’t even reached the state of consensus to agree as to the state of the heavens, falling or not. We remain in a Pollyannish state of denial.

While my view on our state of denial is not limited to energy policy, it is clearly accurate when applied to our national energy policy and practice. We continue to mindlessly gobble huge amounts of the world’s supply of fossil fuels, compromising our national security by our dependence on undependable foreign sources of supply. Our practices challenge our stated principles of non interference in the affairs of foreign states and require huge, unproductive expenditures for environmental control measures to protect our atmosphere from further degradation. What are we thinking? Even Pollyanna wouldn’t assume that continuation of our national energy addiction won’t lead to disaster.

The world produces 84.6 million barrels a days of crude oil. The United States consumes 20.7 million barrels a day. That is almost 25% of the world’s supply. To put our national jeopardy into context, we only produce 6.8 million barrels a day from domestic sources and can only refine 17.7 million barrels in domestic facilities. Please remember the use figures are not static but growing apace while the world supply figures are not. Additional unproven reserves are proportionally small and require a long lead time to secure. We are hung up on those 14.1 million barrels a day difference between domestically produced and imported daily consumption. Nothing short of a “Moon Mission” dedication by the nation will get us out of this mess.

Our enemies are counting on Pollyanna to prevail. They invented the earliest form of abacus and know how to bring us to our knees. By the way, don’t count on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It is a short term band aid of 700 million barrels. You do the math. It won’t last long. Any substantial interruption of supply, and our economy would implode.

Our technological sophistication would, as our enemies intend in best guerilla warfare manner, become the Achilles heel to bring us down. I will admit that the math is not quite as simple as projected because of allied source oil that might still be available in some amounts, but those societies are largely advanced as well, and in a jihadist warrior inspired interruption of oil to the West, market interdependence would end up working against the developed world.

We can, with dedication and the marshalling of the skills we do have, work our way out of this disastrous dependence, flip the dependence back on the oil supplying nations and spur our own economic development through the use of clean non-imported energy. What it takes to accomplish this is to adopt some variant of the following strategy with a determined exercise of national will.

It is beyond scandal to allow ourselves to have gotten into this mess. If we have the courage and the will, coming together to solve our energy dependence will propel our society throughout the 21st century and provide the economic underpinning to work on many of our other glaring problems.

If you consider bio-fuels to be what is growing in the neighbor’s cornfield, think again. A strategy based on corn grain, is, at best, a zero sum game from both a net energy and environmental perspective. It also cripples the important role corn plays in our being able to feed the third world and in regaining a positive balance of payments to underpin our currency. Bagasse from sugar cane works and perhaps the stalks of the corn plant and certain grasses may in time yield a positive exchange for the effort. They do nothing for the environment or to wean us from the internal combustion engine. In the short run for national security reasons, it may be worth the effort, but it is decidedly not where our effort needs to be concentrated.

In the transportation arena, we need to concentrate on non internal combustion solutions. U.S. and world suppliers of passenger vehicles need to receive every inducement we can think of to bring hydrogen cell vehicles to the market in large numbers. A gallon of gasoline has the same energy content as a kilo of hydrogen, but hydrogen vehicles get 2 to 3 times higher mileage.

We have sufficient resources to accomplish our conversion to hydrogen, and because of critical national security exposure, it is a process that government should be leading. Assurance of markets, incentive for research and national fueling availability all should benefit from government policy that reflects itself in the private sector. One unplanned benefit of this will be convergence of transportation, electrical, and chemical industries that may well facilitate product development and career opportunities not yet envisioned. While substantial conversion of our fleet should be a ten year goal, progress in the short term toward the goal would itself be an important curb on oil markets.

The transportation sector is not the only area in which we are exposed to foreign source of supply. Approximately 20% of our energy grid is supplied by oil and gas and is subject to the same limitations as indicated earlier in the article. We need to do all we can to reduce that dependence. Currently about 20% of our power generation is Nuclear. In this day and age, nuclear energy safety, cost and effectiveness as well as its environmental benefits should no longer be in question. It provides 75% of our clean energy now and is the only clear alternative to do so going forward.

All the renewable resource energy on which we can rely, can only be useful at the margins. Wind, photovoltaic, tides, geothermal should be encouraged, but we should not plan our future on their being able to bail us out. It is estimated that our need for electricity will be 45% greater in 2030. To avoid giving up the security purchased by effective hydrogen fuel cell conversion in the transportation industry, we must maximize all our domestic source alternatives both clean and fossil to secure our future.

While no new nuclear facilities have come on stream since 1995, a number are under construction or well along in the licensing process. Those planned or in licensing would only keep nuclear’s share of the market where it is today. To be secure, we need to do better going forward in replacing the 20% of foreign supplied energy stocks with domestic nuclear, renewable, and U.S. or Canadian fossil fuel sourced energy. While nothing in Washington is beyond politics, this, as a national priority must be beyond partisanship. The stakes are just too great.

If we begin in the new Congress to insist on immediate action to address this impending catastrophe, like Pollyanna at the end of book one, we may be able to say, “-Oh, I can- I can- I can walk! I did today all the way from my bed to the window... How good it was to be on legs again!” We have much further than the window to travel, but we must begin the journey today. Even Pollyanna would agree.

Robert E. Freer, Jr.
Free Enterprise Foundation Founder and President
Charleston Mercury December 26, 2006; p. 16

Duty - OpEd

As a young cattle rancher in Dakota territory, Theodore Roosevelt began his speech to a boisterous crowd of Fourth of July revelers in Dickinson with the following: “…But as you already know your rights and privileges so well, I am going to ask you to excuse me if I say a few words about your duties. Much has been given to us…and we must take heed to use aright the gifts entrusted to our care. It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it.” The future president continued…he liked “big things” and did not undervalue America’s material prosperity, “But we must keep steadfastly in mind that no people were ever yet benefited by riches if their prosperity corrupted their virtue.” Robert E. Lee, the paragon of virtue, pronounced “Duty, the sublimest word in the English language.”

As a nation we can agree to the ideal of duty, but we seem to have a heck of a time applying the principle to our lives. Our over emphasis on “rights”, human and otherwise, without a corresponding emphasis on responsibility has obscured the “duty” each of us has to protect this society from abuse. No one who enjoys its benefits should criticize our society unless they are contributing by their intellect, their physical labor or financial investment in its protection and betterment. Surely we cannot advance as a nation, if we are preoccupied with tearing down its institutions or leaders.

I have a real problem with those of our fellow Americans who denigrate the President’s elected service to our Country. I am not speaking about limiting free speech. Yes, we all have that. Just because “you can” doesn’t mean “you should”. Our society, though robust, does require decorum in how we express our dissent. What I object to is the sometimes vicious, almost always ill informed personal abuse heaped upon the president.

“43,” as he sometimes calls himself, to distinguish from his father “41” who also served as President, is the product of one of this country’s oldest “immigrant” families and one, which, as their actions for generations of service to this country confirm, does know the meaning of “duty.”

Differ with his policies if you want. Question the implementation of those policies with which you differ, but when you attack the character of this country’s president, or verbally disrespect him or his office, you reveal a personal character defect that is a far larger mote in your eye than any deficiency in our president.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s look at “duty” as it relates to the public debate regarding the administration’s leadership of our actions in Iraq.

The difference between success and failure in a protracted battle is often a matter of imagination and will power. Wars test a country’s mettle, and it is on the home front we aren’t doing so well. Those thousands of young men and women serving in the combat zone represent our Best, not second raters who would have done almost anything “better” if it had been available to them.

Many have volunteered for second and third tours of duty at great sacrifice to them and their families. They believe in their mission, and their actions represent an understanding of what duty is. They are living it every day.

If the will power of the public were equal to that of our troops, there would be no question of the victory of a free Iraq. And in any case, whatever national command leadership deficiencies our troops may be experiencing, we will still be better as a nation for their experience. For anyone to question their patriotism or their mental ability is the height of churlishness.

Duty begins with an emphasis on self respect. When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Who is that person? Is that person trustworthy; respectful of other’s rights, respectful of their own person and not abusive toward others or themselves? Individuals who respect themselves are emotionally invested in their community. Are you? Do you appreciate that it is the mutual dependence we embrace as citizens that builds strong communities and fulfilling lives?

I am fond of quoting John Adams regarding our republic being created for a “religious and moral people”. It is not “fit for any other.” While the right of dissent must be respected, our preservation is dependent on our mutual acceptances of core Judeo Christian values that are ingrained in our Constitution and The common law.

On that score, I fear we are failing. Our kids in Iraq get it, but our mass media don’t. They are particularly to blame in encouraging violence, crudeness, and the celebration of the lowest common denominator of behavior, all in pursuit of ratings. We are celebrating the banal, the self indulgent and the wholesale pursuit of pleasure. Is it any wonder that by most measures, there has been a coarsening of our social values and a weakening of the mutual ties that bind us as families and as a nation?

As we end 2006, let me urge all of us to resolve to strengthen our mutual ties in 2007, to humbly accept our deficiencies and work toward repairing our self respect as together, we strengthen the national bonds that make us a great nation.

Robert E. Freer, Jr.
Free Enterprise Foundation Founder and President
Charleston Mercury December 6, 2006; p. 16

The Bell Curve Election - OpEd

Well, after twelve years of trying, the dog finally caught the truck! It remains to be seen whether the Democrats will know what to do with control of Capitol Hill now that they have it, nor can we know whether the “Republicrats,” who lost control by forgetting who they were, will have the good sense to return to being Main Street Republicans.

What interests me from the perspective of national policy is the almost perfect bell curve of voters, representing a substantial percentage of independent or loosely affiliated partisans that swung this election from Republican control to Democratic. We have previously noted the growth in the independent block from 30% to almost 40% of the electorate. This is larger than either major party can claim and represents a real opportunity for political realignment.

If the utterances of the incoming Congressional Committee chairs are any indication, they realize the potential, understand they are on a short leash with a fickle public and are sounding a whole lot more middle-of-the-road than anyone can remember. The recent interviews with a newly humble Charles Rangel discussing the limitations of what he can do as Chairman of Ways and Means are a far cry from his histrionics as a minority member of the committee. Cliché though it be, control brings with it responsibility and accountability.

In this regard, I expect continuing low level warfare for the heart and soul of The Democratic Party. In order to capture the major portion of Bell Curve voters and turn them into Democrats, the party would have to disavow the liberal voters who are identified in the public’s mind as the heart and soul of their Party. Those Democrats who made up the Democratic Leadership Council that powered Bill Clinton to two national victories, only to be repudiated by the Democratic left wing, may now be its salvation. They certainly will be the power behind Hillary’s campaign, which in truth is already well advanced. The radical left will not go quietly, however, and many of its finest are in critical positions within the Party machinery to wage trench warfare.

For Republicans, it is a waiting game. Will Speaker Pelosi, representing one of the most liberal districts in the country, backup her new centrist voice with moderate proposals or replace her new found moderation with liberal action consistent with her record. I know where I would put my bet! Charlie Cook reports in his column that one long serving Republican has advised that he and his colleagues would do well to work with moderate Blue Dog Democrats to remain relevant in the new Congress. I suspect that advice will be ignored. In its place, I expect a replay of Newt Gingrich’s strategy from the 90’s of guerilla warfare leading up to a rematch in 2008.

Speaker Pelosi’s First 100 hour proposal is already under threat with not all factions of the Party willing to adopt broad lobbying reform. Other aspects of the program appeal to the Democratic base but will alienate small business by substantially raising the minimum wage.

The Democrats promise as well to promote stem cell research and authorize direct negotiation with drug companies to lower prices for Medicare. While the former is likely to survive a veto, it will be at the cost of a re-energized right to life lobby. As for direct drug price negotiations, while such negotiation, in the short term will be successful, the cost in the pace of new drug development is likely to be significantly slowed. The Drug companies are realizing significant profits currently, but the cost of new developments is so astronomical, many of these companies are only one failure or one law suit away from forced merger with a rival.

Other aspects of Democratic control will rile financial markets by threatening the existing tax cuts scheduled to expire in 2010 and the 15% tax on capital gains and perhaps, even threaten an increase in the top tax bracket to pay for adjustments to the alternative minimum tax that will trap an estimated 23 million taxpayers. The Washington Post recently estimated an additional 100,000 homes in the Washington Metropolitan Area will be captured by the drop in the level of its threshold amount that is already part of the law.

The forces of disunion in the Democratic Party are almost irresistible in the absence of White House Control. Any strategy hatched by party leadership to capture the “Bell Curve” will almost assuredly be scuttled by the rank and file. As for those Democrats representing “Republican” districts, they will be trapped between a party leadership forced to the left and energized campaigns already begun by many of the same candidates they overcame in this election. They will be hard pressed to fashion a winning strategy to overcome the rematch in the absence of George Bush on the ballot.

It appears that neither party is in a position to realize on the opportunity provided by The Bell Curve to sustain a realignment of the American electorate. Like the demise of the Federalists and the Whigs, the 40% of our electorate who hold the balance of power are likely to wander back and forth between the two major parties unless a new entity powered by leadership from within that speaks for their interest comes along.
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Robert E. Freer, Jr.
Free Enterprise Foundation Founder and President
Charleston Mercury December 7, 2006; p. 16

Thanksgiving - OpEd

Devoid of the commercialism of the yuletide season, Thanksgiving, has always been my favorite time of year. It is an annual gift we give ourselves before succumbing to the frantic dash to the end of the year and the challenges that await us there. No gifts other than a giving attitude are required at the Thanksgiving table. Just bring your love for your family and your prayerful thanks for our bounty and soak in the reciprocated feelings of those you care for the most. As we prepare for this special time, let’s reflect upon the many blessings of this land and carry with us into the New Year what is at the heart of this uniquely American holiday.

385 years ago, 46 hearty settlers in what is now Massachusetts, survivors of the horrible winter of 1620-21, joined with 91 Wampanoag Indians for a three day harvest festival to celebrate their survival and the Indian kindness that had made the difference. After their struggles, these pilgrims had much for which to be thankful. Their harvest, after their near starvation the previous winter, had been bountiful, and it seemed their foothold in this new land was now secure.

It cannot be said, however, that the holiday was an instant "hit". It was repeated in 1623 but not again until 1676. In October of l777, and in 1789, more than a hundred years later, George Washington, called the new nation to celebrate a national day of Thanksgiving. His message for 1789 was particularly eloquent. In setting Thursday, November 26, 1789 as a "day of Service" to that ..."Great and Glorious Being who is the...author of all the good that was, that is or that will be," Washington proclaimed it was the "duty of all nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits and humbly to implore His protection and favor." But again the holiday was to fall into neglect until rescued in the midst of that horrible war that would finally complete the promise of our War for Independence.

President Lincoln, not long after the Battle at Gettysburg, called for the last Thursday in November to be a day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father" who has provided the "large increase in freedom." His call restored Thanksgiving to a prominence from which it has not receded. It did take until 1941, however, for Congress to officially sanction the day as a national holiday.

Our presidents ever since have recognized the holiday with messages calling for our prayer and thanksgiving. Some messages have been more notable than others. In words to be echoed by his cousin three decades later, Theodore Roosevelt reminded the nation in 1901, "Let us remember that as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips and shows itself in deeds". Again in 1905, he added, "....We are not threatened by foe from without. The foes from whom we should pray to be delivered are our own passions, appetites and follies, and against these there is always need that we should war."

Cousin Franklin, in a similar vein thirty years later, urged the nation to prayer as follows: "During the past year we have been given courage and fortitude to meet the problems which have confronted us in our national life. Our sense of social justice has deepened. We have been given vision to make new provisions for human welfare and happiness, and in a spirit of mutual helpfulness, we have cooperated to translate vision into reality. More greatly have we turned our hearts and minds to things spiritual. We can truly say, 'What profiteth it a nation if it gain the whole world and lose its own soul.’ With gratitude in our hearts for what has already been achieved, may we, with the help of God, dedicate ourselves anew to work for the betterment of mankind."

Through wars, depressions, and the challenge of our western migration, our presidents have in their Thanksgiving messages called for us to be mindful of that eternal Power that binds us together and makes this nation of immigrants "special". Three centuries apart John Winthrop and Ronald Reagan would speak in similar terms to the special nature of this land we call our home. John Winthrop in the following stark words called us to our duty:

For we must consider that we shall be as a City Upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us,. ..we shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants and cause their prayers to be turned into curses until we be consumed out of the good land whether we are going...

Winthrop’s “City Upon a Hill” became Ronald Reagan's "Shining City on a Hill" and should be considered the harvest of John Winthrop's "Covenant". To John Winthrop, as to Ronald Reagan, both Roosevelts, Lincoln, Washington and thousands upon thousands of our settlers throughout the centuries, America beckons as the home of the New Testament, a land inclusive of all people thirsting to be free and to pursue their worship as they will.

Following this recent hard fought national election, we are not so much a nation of blue states and red, but citizens still thirsting to achieve that one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all to which we pledge our allegiance. While the quest is not yet achieved, nor may it ever be fully realized, we, as a people are freer than anyplace on earth to work toward that goal. The covenant continues so long as we strive with God's help towards that Shining City on a Hill.
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Robert E. Freer, Jr.
Free Enterprise Foundation Founder and President
Charleston Mercury November 23, 2006; p. 16