Month: December 2024

Those Infernal Republicans…

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The Infernal Republicans

The GOP (which is short for “Grand Old Party”) emerged as a political party in the mid-19th century as the anti-slavery party. The old “Whig” party was destroyed by its own corruption, so there was a political vacuum for a political entity to embody their political principles while also advocating for the swift elimination of chattel slavery.

The election of 1860 gave America their first Republican president in Abraham Lincoln. The 1860 election was a serious battle between the Democrats (pro slavery), Constitutionalists, and the Republicans (GOP). Lincoln emerged the clear winner, but he got zero southern support.

Lincoln ran on a platform of keeping the union together, not freeing slaves. In fact, his inaugural speech made clear that keeping all the States together was his most important goal. But the Southern States were having none of it. One by one, the states below the Mason-Dixon Line began to withdraw from the Union, starting with South Carolina.

At that point, Lincoln had a choice. He could respect the independence of the several states to make their own decisions about the Union. He could enter into negotiations with the secessionists in the hope of finding a compromise to keep the states together. Or he could slap the “traitor” label on those states who left and put together an Army to force the seceding States back into Union.

He chose the last option.

Lincoln believed that the nation was first and foremost a federation of subservient states…that the very nature of the “United States” was…”United”. Anyone or anything intent on separating individual states from that could not be countenanced. Lincoln attempted to levy 75,000 men from each state of the Union to form an army to invade the south and force them back to the federation at the end of the bayonet.

The result of this was the secession of more southern states. The battle lines were drawn.

The Republican Party in 1862 then introduced a new reason for the war. It wasn’t to put down a rebellion against a proper government…but rather a holy war to free African slaves from their cruel slave masters. All this, even though Lincoln had said keeping the Union together with slavery was acceptable to him.

The end of the Civil War ushered in the end of the free states. Under the Republican Party, the United States was an ascendent federal government served by individual states. And for the next 150 years, this belief carried weight as the US Constitution became weaker and weaker.

The Republicans from 1865 to 1901 expanded the power of the federal government and the territory of the United States in the western part of North America. The Republicans were “in bed” with big business, whose thirst for power and expansion of their commercial markets at the expense of the native tribes, racially non-Europeans, and former slaves could never achieve satiety.

In 1901 the United States had the first Progressive president. Was he a Democrat like Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Delano Roosevelt? No…it was a Republican.

Theodore Roosevelt wielded the federal government far beyond the scope of the United States constitution. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act legislation used the power of the federal establishment to reign in business monopolies even though there is nothing in the Constitution about the federal government having that power. Roosevelt also expanded the power of the President by adding departments to the executive branch who often acted through the courts to expand government power.

Here is my point: The GOP has never been a party of limited federal government…it has always been about using government towards a “virtuous” end. In short, the GOP is a Progressive party.

Since the ascendency of Theodore Roosevelt, the federal establishment has tyrannized the individual states and their people. It is the federal government that steals upwards of 60% of the money earned by the most productive Americans. It is the federal government that regulates far beyond the scope of the Constitution, choking entrepreneurs and absconding with their resources while adding horrible layers of bureaucracy. And now, thanks to the federal government, Ponzi schemes like Social Security, Medicaid, and Obamacare rape families of their money and destroy their access to healthcare by inflating costs beyond the capability of working people to pay.

A few weeks ago, the American people overthrew a corrupt and incompetent President. There is hope that the second term of Donald Trump – the GOP candidate – will bring transformation of the government and unleash economic growth and prosperity.

But Trump is a Progressive in the image of Teddy Roosevelt. He is not a libertarian of the Austrian / Chicago school…he is Keynesian. He supports tariffs, which the American customers pays. He supports providing minuscule tax cuts, but plans to expand government services. With a $36 trillion debt, the thought of balancing the budget by ending government programs and reducing spending doesn’t appeal to the populist…President Donald Trump.

I do not expect any significant change to the destruction of America’s soul from Trump.

Neither should you.

A Fresh Approach to Servant Leadership

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Leadership always got my attention as a young man. I saw a lot of leaders before I turned 21. I remember my athletic coaches by name. Many of the teachers who endured me as a student left impressions on me – some good, some less so.

Jesus’ disciples were also interested in leadership. In fact, we shared a common approach. I believed that leaders were “in charge” and told people what to do. This was modeled to me over and over growing up.

Eventually, I saw that this doesn’t work. People don’t like being pushed around…*I* certainly don’t. Then I was introduced to a new idea of leadership: servant leadership.

Jesus taught and practiced this approach. He washed his disciples’ feet. When they would fuss with each other about who was the greatest, he brought in little children and said, “This is what it’s all about.”

I was enamored. No more yelling. No more berating…just serve the people you lead. It made sense. I practiced servant leadership all my life from my mid-20s going forward.  The theory worked well. Occasionally, however, someone would come along that would take advantage of me. I had a female employee who accused me of being inappropriate with her because I gave her a sympathetic ear and a should to cry on. The accusation was baseless, but not uncommon in the 1990s. Servant leadership in this case led to one of the worst professional crises of my life.

When I worked on my Ph.D in leadership, I learned many approaches. The one that got my attention early on was “existential” leadership. Essentially, it meant determining a leadership approach not on the style the leader liked but rather the needs of the employee. When trust and competency was high, a leader could be more relaxed and laissez-faire. But where trust or competency was low, the leader needed a more active and even micro-managing set of behaviors.

As I was developing a better theory of leadership during my coursework, I had a staff member that received multiple counseling statements for sub-par behavior and performance. Eventually, I made the decision to fire this member of my team because he was so substandard and showed no capacity to learn from mistakes or corrective training.

This experience taught me that a leader must never put the desires or even needs of a substandard member before the mission of the organization. Supervisors have a duty to protect their organizations by not handing off problem people down the line. A good supervisor must look after the whole team, reward appropriate performance, promote those who excel, and (sadly) eliminate problem employees when they become a detriment.

Can a servant leader be an effective manager? I believe that is a case-by-case situation. Two important qualities of the employee make servant leadership appropriate: (1) High motivation and, (2) high competency.

As a leader of a brigade team, I had very competent subordinates. As a result, I did everything I could to simply keep everyone from distracting these teammates and make it easy for them to focus on their jobs. I could be a servant leader easily in this case because I had the right kind of people.

But shortly after my tenure ended at the brigade, I had another situation emerge where I helped send an employee out of the military and into civilian life. This teammate was so racked with personal and emotional problems that there was no way anything could bring redemption. I drove this person to the airport after making sure the out-processing steps were completed by the numbers.

I believe an expansion of servant leadership is important. Yes, leaders serve their teams and help them. But the first duty of a supervisor is to insure the team performs…that the team serves the organization’s mission by providing appropriate service to its customers. Sometimes the best servant leadership is to fire an employee or issue a reprimand or put together a P.I.P. (personal improvement program).

Servant leadership is still my go-to approach to leadership. But now its based in the real world…not in the “pie-in-the-sky” world of my youthfulness.