Posted on 02/21/2010 9:25:25 PM PST by blackbart.223
Yep. Read post 12.
Someting else to tink about.
Yes. I did. I also pointed out that fact. If you read a little further into the post you will see that. In any case thank you for your correction.
“Wake up.”
“Get it?”
Touchy, touchy.
I decline responsibility for any of your deficits in clarity. You can keep it all.
If my clarity is in deficit you could not posses any of it since I don't have it in the first place.
I had argued that delegating leadership roles was necessary because the democratic process is not suited to day to day decisions.
But there is another reason why free men absolutely need leaders. Consider what leadership is: vision, influence, inspiration, education, motivation, and organization. There is nothing that says that free men by virtue of being free have any of that.
The free men of FreeRepublic have an abundance of vision, but many free men exist who are devoid of vision. They are not educated on the issues, they are not inspired to better themselves, they are not motivated nor organized.
Leaders help overcome that inertia. They inspire, they educate, they motivate and they organize for results. But leadership like most things can be good or bad.
Good leadership can propel the country to new heights of prosperity and military preparedness and bring down evil empires through the sheer inspiration of their visions.
But bad leadership.... bad leadership can motivate the huddled masses to vote for unqualified and inelligible candidates for President. Bad leadership can result in inaction allowing terrorist nukes. Bad leadership can spend our wealth on stupid stuff, producing neither jobs nor infrastructure.
Free men need leadership in all areas of life. Political, Media, Business, Spiritual, Education, etc. We need political leaders that embrace the values this country was founded on. We need good leaders in the media that bring attention to important issues like the eligibility of the president instead of bad leaders that bring attention to rumors about Alaskan Governors children. And so on....
One last thing. Freedom creates an environment where leaders are abundant. Lack of freedom, silences dissent and with it vision, inspiration, and most of all motivation.
Your resonse is very well thought out and I thank you for not taking a cheap at my obvious spelling errors. My passion at times makes my use of the keyboard marginal. But with all respect I see a slight contradiction here. Free men by thier nature posses these virtues in the first place. Men who are not free often don't.
I think how you define leader is very important. To my way of thinking freedom creates pioneers. semantics I suppose. Good night.
I don't agree. There probably exists in all sets of men free and unfree, men who are endowed with these virtues. Freedom creates an environment where men with these virtues can express them and become leaders. Whereas, it's much harder to express leadership virtues in an unfree state.
But "all" free men do not possess these virtues, only some. There are many many free men who have no vision, no inspiration, have not educated themselves on the issues, no motivation, and consequently couldn't inspire others even if they had the skills to.
Free men can lanquish for years without proper leadership. They can be led down the wrong path with bad leadership. Hitler, for example, began as a leader of free men. But so did Churchill and Eisenhower.
The U.S. endured slavery for over 100 years. Where were the leaders? Oh there were some, but they were too few and ineffectual to bring about change. Yet the country was mostly free.
Edison, through his hard work, led a revolution in technology. But whose to say how long those inventions would have taken without his leadership. It's not a given that someone else would have risen up in the same time frame to lead in those areas.
Individual leaders make big differences. But there is much a people can do to train up their offspring with the values a leader needs. And likewise there is much a people can neglect to do to train up their offspring which can result in a lack of leaders.
Leadership is not a given. It's a choice, it's a product of training, it's a skillset, and it needs a set of core values to guide it.
Yeah, I think you are right, freedom is an environment where leaders can flourish. But not all free men flourish as leaders, many free men are followers and need leaders, and some free men are just in the way.
And what is your definition of "proper" leadership?
Edison did what he did because he had the liberty to do so not to mention he was genius. As to being a leader there was a big fight between Edison and Tesla as to which form of power transmission was best, AC or DC. Tesla's idea was adopted and Edison's was not.
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