Learning Center

Values Bank

Timeless Value: This Values Bank is the byproduct of the research and development process for my books and corresponding nonpartisan political platform development. The Values Bank and books contain timeless principles to guide political, community and business leaders through challenging economic and political times, regardless of their position along the space-time continuum and ideological spectrum.

 

Nonpartisan Value: The value in the Values Bank has been deposited by many individuals from across the socioeconomic and ideological spectrums, including: nonpartisan economic philosophers, philanthropically-minded titans of industry, passionate historians, compassionate humanitarian leaders, courageous military leaders, relatively uncorrupted political leaders, innovative technological geniuses, inquisitive scientists, creative artists, and insightful spiritual teachers.

 

Non-Biased Value: The metaphorical DNA of this Values Bank is fundamentally rooted in nonpartisan and non-biased principles (What’s the difference between “unbiased” and “non-biased”?) Thus, nobody can legitimately or accurately pigeon-hole anything here into any particular myopic philosophical or ideological tradition. Read every word of this website and my books and you’ll see that it would be a tragic injustice to brand any of them with a partisan label.

 

Currencies of Truth, Liberty and Justice: This Values Bank contains the kind of value that cannot be quantified in a monetary currency, but it’s the currency that fuels the birth and economic rise of nations. Conversely, a lack of these values guarantees the economic fall and collapse of nations. These values represent the principles that guided the Founders of America and many other great political and business leaders and philosophers around the world throughout human history.

 

Unifying Value: These Values are not “liberal” or “conservative” values; they are not “Republican” or “Democratic” values; and they are not only American values – they are universal, nonpartisan values that nurture the development of human prosperity, meaningful relationships, robust economies, functional governments, and fulfilling lives for all people of all races who integrate these principles into their daily lives and organizational cultures. In fact, these values and the principles in my books are intended to authentically unite liberals and conservatives, the rich and the poor, and everybody in between, to confront a common adversary to political and economic freedom, which I reveal in my books. This is in stark contrast to the toxic and divisive clan warfare of the obsolete and destructive political party system today.

 

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None are so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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You must be the change you wish to see in the world. – Mahatma Gandhi

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We hold it a prime duty of the people to free our government from the control of money. – Theodore Roosevelt, 1912

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The real truth . . . is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson. – Franklin D. Roosevelt

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As the twenty-first century gets underway, the imbalance of wealth and democracy in the United States is unsustainable. . . . Either democracy must be renewed, with politics brought back to life, or wealth is likely to cement a new and less democratic regime—plutocracy by some other name. – Kevin Phillips, author of Wealth and Democracy

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If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost. – Aristotle

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Government is too big and too important to be left to the politicians. – Chester Bowles

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The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly. – Abraham Lincoln

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Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. – Benjamin Franklin

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The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust our own government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on them. – J. William Fulbright

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Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. – Thomas Jefferson

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Reason means truth and those who are not governed by it take the chance that someday the sunken fact will rip the bottom out of their boat. – Sri da Avabhas

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So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we’ll be called a democracy. – Roger Nash Baldwin

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Anything that keeps a politician humble is healthy for democracy. – Irish Blessing

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The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments. – William Edgar Borah

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Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow. – Elias Boudinot

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When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. – Frederic Bastiat

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Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it. – Nadia Boulanger

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Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. – Louis Dembitz Brandeis

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In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action. – Louis Dembitz Brandeis

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Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave. – Henry Peter Brougham

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The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves. – William Ellery Channing

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Our country was founded on a distrust of government. Our founding fathers gave power to the people to keep an eye on government. So when politicians say, ‘trust me,’ they’re actually being very un-American. – David Duchovny

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Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. – Harry S. Truman

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A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have. – Gerald R. Ford

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Inflation is taxation without legislation. – Milton Friedman

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It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad. – James Madison

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The basis of a democratic state is liberty. – Aristotle

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All virtue is summed up in dealing justly. – Aristotle

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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. – Aristotle

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Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. – Aristotle

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The best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class. – Aristotle

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A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility. – Aristotle

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Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. – Abraham Lincoln

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A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
– George Bernard Shaw

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It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. – David Brin

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The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves. – William Hazlitt

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The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution. – Hannah Arendt

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Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. – John F. Kennedy

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To perceive is to suffer. – Aristotle

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People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar. – Thich Nhat Hanh

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The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt. – Thomas Merton

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The history of man is a graveyard of great cultures that came to catastrophic ends because of their incapacity for planned, rational, voluntary reaction to challenge. – Erich Fromm

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Civilization is a race between education and catastrophe. – H.G. Wells

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One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person. – William Feather

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All men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by the protection of the law. – Charles de Montesquieu

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As men, we are all equal in the presence of death. – Publilius Syrus

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To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself. – Albert Einstein

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Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value. – Albert Einstein

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Value is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment. – Ludwig von Mises

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Where you find the laws most numerous, there you will find also the greatest injustice. – Arcesilaus

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Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. — Edmund Burke

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A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
Edward Abbey

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The More Corrupt the Republic, the More Numerous the Laws. – Ancient Historian, Tacitus.

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When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken. – Benjamin Disraeli

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A law is something which must have a moral basis, so that there is an inner compelling force for every citizen to obey. – Chaim Weizmann

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The welfare of the people is the ultimate law. – Cicero

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What power has law where only money rules. – Gaius Petronius

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Justice is truth in action. – Benjamin Disraeli

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The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to him his own. – Benjamin Disraeli

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We are not creatures of circumstance; we are creators of circumstance. – Benjamin Disraeli

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At present the peace of the world has been preserved, not by statesmen, but by capitalists. – Benjamin Disraeli

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A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy. – Benjamin Disraeli

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I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few. – Benjamin Disraeli

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The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. – Albert Einstein

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The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them. – Albert Einstein

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There is hardly a political question in the United States which doesn’t sooner or later turn into a judicial one. – Alexis De Tocqueville

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Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. – Ambrose Bierce

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I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians. – Charles De Gaulle

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Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

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Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it’s important. – Eugene McCarthy

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Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy. – Ernest Benn

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The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. – H. L. Mencken

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The problem with political jokes is they get elected. – Henry Cate VII

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The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly’, meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘ticks’, meaning ‘blood sucking parasites’. – Larry Hardiman

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Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate. – Mark B. Cohen (Note: This is a subtle but profound statement, which means: It doesn’t matter who wins an election because the distorted incentives within the existing toxic political culture in the federal government undermine the good intentions and behavior of all political candidates the moment they realize their re-election campaigns depend on special interest money. This alienates voters and causes them to become apathetic, which is deadly to Democracy. My books describe how to design a nonpartisan political platform that is designed to re-connect voters to a substantive Democratic process.)

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Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them. – Paul Valery

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We can have facts without thinking but we cannot have thinking without facts. – John Dewey

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Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. – Mark Twain

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The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next. – Matthew Arnold

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Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

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There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. […] Everything ought to be open, but not indifferently, to every man. No rotation; no appointment by lot; no mode of election operating in the spirit of sortition or rotation can be generally good in a government conversant in extensive objects. Because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a view to the duty or to accommodate the one to the other. – Edmund Burke

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The victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory. – Sun Tzu

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Resolution is not always based on who has the most force or supporters on hand but perhaps on who can be shamed into taking no action against those they oppose – this as per the view of Gandhi. – Open Politics Wiki

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There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. – Ludwig von Mises

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Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship. – Benjamin Franklin

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Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones. – Benjamin Franklin

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All money is a matter of belief. – Adam Smith

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A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away. – Ellen Glasgow

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If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion. – George Bernard Shaw

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We at Chrysler borrow money the old-fashioned way. We pay it back. – Lee Iacocca

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Diapers and politicians should be changed often. Both for the same reason. – Unknown

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In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. – Alan Greenspan

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In constant pursuit of money to finance campaigns, the political system is simply unable to function. Its deliberative powers are paralyzed. – John Rawls

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As long as there is debt, there can be failure and contagion. – Alan Greenspan

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The reason there are tens of thousands of lobbyists is because the ever-expanding federal government creates ever-increasing opportunities for abuse. The more the federal government does, the more lobbyists there will be to protect special interests at the expense of the common interest. – Jack Abramoff, the most (in)famous lobbyist

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We’ve blown past the ethical standards, we now play on the edge of the legal standards. – Chuck Hagel, U.S. Secretary of Defense, former U.S. Senator

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The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. – B. F. Skinner

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It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. – Albert Einstein

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Men have become the tools of their tools. – Henry David Thoreau

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Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. – Aldous Huxley

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Hope of ill gain is the beginning of loss. – Democritus

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. . . to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day. – Theodore Roosevelt

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I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. – Sir Francis Bacon

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The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. – Ralph Nader

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A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves. – Lao Tzu

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When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves.’ – Lao Tzu

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The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant. – Max de Pree

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A leader is someone who helps improve the lives of other people or improve the system they live under. – Sam Houston

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No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it. – Andrew Carnegie

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My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all. – John Lennon

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I was not a messiah, but an ordinary man who had become a leader because of extraordinary circumstances. – Nelson Mandela

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The role of a creative leader is not to have all the ideas; it’s to create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel that they’re valued. – Ken Robinson

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Never neglect details. When everyone’s mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant. – Colin Powell

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The speed of the leader is the speed of the gang. – Mary Kay Ash

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The hardest thing about being a leader is demonstrating or showing vulnerability… When the leader demonstrates vulnerability and sensibility and brings people together, the team wins. – Howard Schultz

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The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist. – Eric Hoffer

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The quality of a leader cannot be judged by the answers he gives, but by the questions he asks. – Simon Sinek

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You can judge a leader by the size of the problem he tackles. Other people can cope with the waves, it’s his job to watch the tide. – Antony Jay

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I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum. – Desmond Tutu

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I never could be a partisan leader – a man of one idea. – Joshua Chamberlain

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If I can be a leader, I will. – Lady Gaga

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I think almost every political leader is always told that the next speech they make is the most crucial one. – Iain Duncan Smith

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It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. – Confucius

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Action will delineate and define you. – Thomas Jefferson

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What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals. – Henry David Thoreau

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Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory. – George S. Patton

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You just can’t beat the person who never gives up. – Babe Ruth

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Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other. – Walter Elliot

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The most effective way to do it, is to do it. – Amelia Earhart

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A goal is a dream with a deadline. – Napoleon Hill

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Deserve your dream. – Octavio Paz

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Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction. – John F. Kennedy

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Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest. – Maya Angelou

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Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible. – Francis of Assisi

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As knowledge increases, wonder deepens. – Charles Morgan

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Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. – Buddha

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People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous. – Edmund Burke

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The more laws, the less justice. – Marcus Tullius Cicero

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Justice delayed is justice denied. – William E. Gladstone

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My great objection to the Constitution [is] that there is no true responsibility; and that the preservation of our liberty depends on the single chance of men being virtuous enough to make laws to punish themselves. – Patrick Henry

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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. – Edmund Burke

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More to come. . . .

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U.S. History

What is Your Personal Political Philosophy? Developing a personal political philosophy takes time. In fact, for many people it takes much longer than it should because there are many organizations and governments who have incentives to manipulate and distort the truth about various aspects of Democracy and the purpose of government.

 

The Truth Will Set You Free. “The truth will set you free” has become a cliche because this phrase is used so loosely and subjectively today in many kinds of environments, which usually have nothing to do with your actual economic or physical freedom. Truth does not exist merely because we say it is true; truth exists because it can be observed and validated independently of any particular organization’s agenda and biases. We should seek to explore nonpartisan and timeless truths, anchored in primary-source documents, and exemplified by the most beloved and positively impactful leaders throughout human history.

 

Original Text & Primary Source Documents. There was a time in American history when laws and regulations were written in clear, plain language. The founders of American Democracy understood the importance of clarity and they devoted great time and energy to making their original laws understandable so that ordinary Americans would comprehend the nature and consequence of the laws that controlled their lives.

 

The links below will take you to the corresponding primary-source documents. The unfiltered original text of these documents will give you valuable insight into how the U.S. Government was born, what the original architects of American Democracy intended when they wrote these documents, and how the U.S. federal government today has deviated far from the original purpose and intent of American Democracy.

 

George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796): In his last official communication as President of the United States, George Washington provides many words of encouragement and guidance to the young nation. One of the most profound aspects of this address was Washington’s explicit and dire warnings to avoid establishing a political party system in the United States. At the time, there were no political parties in the United States. This was because Washington and the other U.S. Founders said the party system had been a terrible source of injustice and abuse against the citizens in every nation that the Founders had observed prior to and during their lifetimes.

 

U.S. Bill of Rights (1791-Present): This is the original text of the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The Bill of Rights defines the fundamental human rights and liberties that are provided to American citizens. This document primarily describes the limitations imposed on the federal government to prevent abuses of government power that could harm individual American citizens.

 

U.S. Constitution (1787): This is the original text of the U.S. Constitution, which defines the rules and laws that the U.S. Federal Government must follow. Reading this document will give you a deep understanding of what the federal government can and cannot do. Developing an accurate awareness of the general principles within this document is the first line of defense for citizens to prevent their liberties from being eroded by politicians whose primary interests may not always be aligned with the interests of their constituents.

 

Declaration of Independence (1776): This is the document in which the original 13 American colonies declared their independence from the British Empire.

 

Federalist Papers (1787): In late 1787 three Americans (John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton) began publishing a series of essays and articles in New York state under the pseudonym “Publius.” These documents are collectively called “The Federalist Papers” and they were highly influential during the period before the U.S. Constitution was ratified by the thirteen American states. The Federalist Papers were instrumental in the political campaign to persuade New York state residents and politicians to adopt the new United States Constitution. Within The Federalist Papers, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay also explore many fascinating principles associated to governing a constitutional republic of independent states within a democratic nation.

 

Anti-Federalist Papers (1787-1788) (coming soon): Prior to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788, the new U.S. states fiercely debated the idea of replacing the existing confederation of independent state governments with a centralized national government. Opponents to a national government were especially concerned about the potential loss of individual liberty and the abuses of power by politicians within the context of a central government. As a formal response to the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers were written by famous early American statesmen like Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, George Mason, James Monroe, George Clinton, et al. The Anti-Federalists didn’t achieve their immediate goals, but their efforts resulted in the first 10 constitutional amendments, which became the U.S. Bill of Rights.

 

Thomas Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address (1801): Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, founded The University of Virginia, he beat John Adams to become the third president of the United States, and he was the most influential voice for the principles of liberty, security, peace, and Democracy during the volatile and uncertain period after the American Revolution. He was also the charismatic leader of the “Democratic Republicans,” which was the popular political movement that opposed the Federalists’ “big government” agenda. His First Inaugural Address is an homage to liberty and one of the most inspirational documents in American political history.

 

Anderson’s Constitutions (1734): This book profoundly influenced Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, among other U.S. Founding Fathers, who integrated many of the principles they learned from this book into the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Just like we don’t have to agree with all the ideology and religious principles in The Bible, Torah, Quran, I-Ching, Buddhist Sutras, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, Tao Te Ching, Book of Mormon, etc. to appreciate various lessons they can teach us, we don’t need to agree with all the ideology and genealogy of the Free Masons to appreciate the important historical role that this book and its nonpartisan principles served in the early development of American Democracy.

 

Additional Important Historical Documents Coming Soon. . . .