Leadership

Abraham Lincoln talked about a house divided being unable to stand. A Constitution that protected freedom in one place and slavery in another contradicted itself. You can protect freedom only. You can protect slavery only. If you try to do both, that divided house cannot stand. Likewise, you can have a Constitution that protects your life, liberty, and property from me taking or destroying it without your consent. You can have a Constitution that permits me to pollute and deplete, which destroy life, liberty, and property. If you try to do both, that divided house cannot stand. I'm not just stating my opinion. I wish I were. It keeps becoming more clear to me that as long as we have a Constitution that contradicts itself…

Thomas Jefferson wrote some of the most inspiring words on freedom and liberty, yet kept his slaves. To this day, people say as a result: He didn't mean all men are created equal or he wouldn't have done what he did. He did, so he must have meant all white men are created equal. The United States Constitution It's difficult to impossible to lead without credibility or integrity. Jefferson undermined both by violating the values he claimed. Meanwhile, Robert Carter III freed his slaves, but said nearly nothing publicly about it, even to his classmate, Jefferson. When Carter ran for elections, he lost. Every environmentalist with a prominent voice today is at best like Jefferson. They talk about sustainability but don't act it, so they…

Compiling resources on Robert Carter III for reference: Why do I care about Carter? A CNN article quoted Andrew Levy, who wrote a book on Carter, on why Americans seem to bury Carter’s story: Levy, whose books include a biography of Carter, “The First Emancipator,” has another suspicion: America doesn’t care – because it’s inconvenient. “It blows an enormous hole in this legacy we’re trying to balance for these founders,” he said. As Levy sees it, American history feebly attempts to level the founding fathers’ fondness for freedom with their ownership of humans by uncritically parroting their assertions that there was no pragmatic way to emancipate hundreds of thousands of slaves. Slavery was a necessary evil, to hear the founders tell it. “If Carter is…

[EDIT: I had no idea the New York Times would post its profile of me the day after this piece] Sorry for the in-your-face title and I don't mean any time soon, but I think it's a fair question. Other people have asked me the question when I describe my mission. Maybe you think I'm kidding myself that I could be so successful as to create enough animosity in others that they'd resort to a lethal level of animosity. I usually doubt I could reach that level, but I think I would be naive not to think of where my path leads. If I succeed at my mission, I will help many people choose to improve their lives by stopping spending money on things that…