The Path of the Hero — Are you on it?

by Jacqueline Smith

The Hero in today’s society has changed from the hero of the past.  Heroes used to be statesman, creators and artists who changed the world with their vision, pioneers of industry, space, or the frontier.  Heroes always placed themselves last because they knew their path would be for the greater good of society, and they believed in public virtue.  The heroes of today have become celebrities.  These are self-centered rather than selfless individuals.  Today, our heroes are unclear as we have blurred the lines of the enemy.  It is politically correct to say, everyone is right, it is okay if they don’t believe or think the way I do.  There is no real enemy, therefore, no real hero.  We have lost basic archetypes that are universal.  When we see a film or TV series that brings those archetypes back, we cheer, and everyone relates to it. 

 Every person can and should be a hero.  We feel the tug from the inside, but the world tells us we cannot go on, we don’t have time, or we cannot possibly make a difference.  We can make a difference.  YOU can make a difference.  Are you hearing the call and heeding it, or ignoring it?  Are you ready to step onto the path of the hero?

 Join us today by bringing others in your area together to discuss the wonderful freedoms on which this country was founded.  Contact The S.T.A.R. Forum, and start a group in your area.

 

 

Because the print is very small here are the steps on the path:

1.  You are doing ordinary things in an ordinary life.

2.  You hear the CALL.  You feel something from inside of you that says you must act.

3.  If you refuse the call, you simply go back to doing ordinary things in your ordinary life (#1).  If you heed the call move to #4

4.  If you heed the call you find yourself a mentor, or you begin to rely on supernatural aid (God).

5.  You cross the threshold into the unknown, the abyss or the desert.  You are completely alone.

6.  You analyze your allies and your enemies.  You define who is truly on your side.

7.  Face questions that force you to see who you really are.

8.  Now you face your fear.  You are tested.  This test often in Hebrew contains the number 40.  Moses was on the mount for 40 days.  Christ fasted for 40 days.  Jonah was at Niniva for 40 days, Noah had 40 days and nights of rain, etc.  You must pass this test.

9.  After your test is passed, you receive special gifts or rewards for passing your test.

10.  Now you take the road back toward society.  This is lonely and hard.  This is your Gethsemane.

11.  You are lead to a rebirth or a resurection of self. 

12.  You head back to society with something necessary for society to heal.

What will your elixer be?  New type of energy, new mathmatics formulas, renewal of constitutional principles, renewal of alternative medicines in your area?  Will you hoist your title of liberty to rally others?  The possibilities are limitless.  Get on the Path of the Hero and find your personal mission.

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Memorial Day

Thank you to all the people who have sacrificed for our freedom over the centuries.  Our debt to you is great.

On thy grave the rain shall fall from the eyes of a mighty nation!
– Thomas William Parsons, poet (1819-1892)

Although no sculptured marble should rise to their memory, nor engraved stone bear record of their deeds, yet will their remembrance be as lasting as the land they honored.
– Daniel Webster, statesman (1782-1852)

They fell, but o’er their glorious grave
Floats free the banner of the cause they died to save.
– Francis Marion Crawford, writer (1854-1909)

The brave die never, though they sleep in dust:
Their courage nerves a thousand living men.
– Minot J. Savage, minister, author (1841-1918)

Peace to each manly soul that sleepeth;
Rest to each faithful eye that weepeth.
– Thomas Moore, Irish poet, entertainer (1779-1852)

They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this Nation.
– Henry Ward Beecher, clergyman, reformer (1813-1887)

Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet, educator (1807-1882)

28 Principles of Liberty from The 5,000 Year Leap

The following principles are taken directly from the book  “The 5,000 Year Leap.”  This book is a very easy read, but one that should be pondered greatly.  If you begin a new chapter of  The S.T.A.R. Forum in your area, we will ship you 10 books for the cost of the books only.  Please contact us with any questions.

28 Principles of Liberty

1. The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law.
2. A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong.
3. The most promising method of securing a virtuous and morally stable people is to elect virtuous leaders.
4. Without religion the government of a free people cannot be maintained.
5. All things were created by God, therefore upon Him all mankind are equally dependent, and to Him they are equally responsible.
6. All men are created equal.
7. The proper role of government is to protect equal rights, not provide equal things.
8. Men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.
9. To protect man’s rights, God has revealed certain principles of divine law.
10. The God-given right to govern is vested in the sovereign authority of the whole people.
11. The majority of the people may alter or abolish a government which has become tyrannical.
12. The United States of America shall be a republic.
13. A constitution should be structured to permanently protect the people from the human frailties of their rulers.
14. Life and liberty are secure only so long as the right to property is secure.
15. The highest level of prosperity occurs when there is a free-market economy and minimum of government regulations.
16. The government should be separated into three branches – legislative, executive, and judicial.
17. A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power.
18. The unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the principles of government are set forth in a written constitution.
19. Only limited and carefully defined powers should be delegated to government, all others being retained in the people.
20. Efficiency and dispatch require government to operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority.
21. Strong local self-government is the keystone to preserving human freedom.
22. A free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of men.
23. A free society cannot survive as a republic without a broad program of general education.
24. A free people will not survive unless they stay strong.
25. “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none.”
26. The core unit which determines the strength of any society is the family; therefore, the government should foster and protect its integrity.
27. The burden of debt is as destructive to freedom as subjugation by conquest.
28. The United States has a manifest destiny to be an example and a blessing to the entire human race.

See the stirring video based on these principles HERE.

14 Points to Success During a 4th Turning

14 Points from the Book “Our Home” and a speech by Dr. Oliver Van DeMille

by Jacqueline Smith

Imagine a peaceful life around you, even when the world is in turmoil.  Imagine your family close to you, and doing what they need to do, to keep things going during a difficult time in history.  Imagine working with others in your community so no one goes without.  Imagine building a great life, with more meaning than ever before.

How?  As we have been discussing different cycles of history, we can look to the last time we had a difficult cycle, and learn from it. The book “Our Home” by C. E. Sargent, was written in 1899 and is available on-line as an e-book, or purchased for your regular reading pleasure.  Purchase book    We gain insight into our future, by looking at our past.

Here are 14 things that you and your family can begin to do now.  There are many others, but here is a place to start.   This will require a change from 2nd or 3rd turning thinking, into 4th turning thinking.  And you might as well shift, because we are in a 4th Turning.  Are you ready? (if you need more information on the turnings click here and here )

1. Embrace the new and the now:  We are not in an economic crisis, this is the new economy.  Forget old goals, write new goals, including relationship goals, finances, and happiness.

2. Evenings and Sundays with family:  3rd turning was all about entertaining ourselves 7 days a week.  It is time to simplify and spend time with the people you love around you building things, making plans, and learning.  Besides, you probably can’t afford to do all the things you used to do.

3. Self-culture:  This is opposed to pop-culture.  High school is where you try to fit in, and our society has extended that culture into adulthood.  It is time to be great with who we are on the inside and not try to impress anyone.  Decide who you want to be, who you want to help, and be happy.

4. Individual rules for life:  Create your own set of standards to live by, your own rules that you will keep for life, regardless of what others are doing.

5. Raise adults: During 2nd turnings we raise accountants, lawyers, doctors, engineers. During 3rd turnings we raise children.  These are individuals who never grow up and take on responsibility.  They are the epitome of failure to launch.  4th and 1st turnings are all about growing up and taking life on.  The 4th turning mindset is about having accountability and responsibility for our lives.

6. Meaning:  Everything in a 4th turning will take on meaning.  Your trials, hardships, joys, and challenges will take on meaning, and we need to look for it during a 4th turning.  Read “The Hiding Place” for the meaning in the fleas.

7. Widows, orphans, grandparents, children, sick, unhappy:  During 2nd and 3rd turnings these are service projects every once in a while.  During 4th and 1st turnings these become our life. We will truly care for others and seek to fill their needs.  This will not be government forced charity, but actual charity, without pay, without reward, without recognition.

8. Marriage:  The central focus in a 4th and 1st turning is marriage.  Children will be vital and important to the 4th and 1st turnings, but their relationship will be secondary to the relationship with your spouse.  You will find meaning in your spousal relationship on a much higher level.

9. Initiative Education:  During 2nd turnings we give job training. During 3rd turning we teach job skills.  During 4th and 1st turnings we teach initiative.  The work ethic is re-born, and the people that will keep jobs in these turnings will be the ones with strong work-ethic and a initiative to act on their own. This also includes thinking outside the box and doing things against the standard.  This includes: Education alternatives such as charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling.  Medical alternatives such as chiropractors, acupuncture, herbal cures, and vitamins.  Downshifting alternatives such as leaving a high paying job to move out of the city, one parent leaving work to stay home with the kids, simplifying life.  If you need more education here is the best place to get it as an adult.  Monticello College.  No matter where you are in the country, their distance courses can help you.  But be prepared, these are transformational classes, not just informational.

10. Entrepreneurship:  During a 2nd turning people think that means you can’t get anyone to hire you.  During a 3rd turning it means getting rich as fast as possible, retiring, and relaxing.  During a 4th turning, it means you create something useful that employs others, that lives on, so you can create wealth, and fulfill your personal mission. (more on personal missions in another post).  For more information on how to be an entrepreneur go to our article on 3 Things We Need for Freedom to Win.

11. Produce Wealth: During a 2nd turning this means you get a steady job and save money.  During a 3rd turning it means you invest your money and get rich.  During a 4th turning you recognize the needs of others and you recognize the need for society to rebuild itself.  Then you can create a product, service, or organization to fill those needs, while providing for your family, and creating wealth to continually help society.

12. Creativity & Inventiveness:  Be creative in ways to get wealth.  Be creative in your frugality.  A great place to start is this blog on money http://www.themoneymuse.blogspot.com/

13. Resiliency:   Bounce back. Our country has been known for it’s resiliency as a nation. We will need to be a resilient individual. Look for reasons to get back up and start over.  It’s no time for a pity party.  It’s time to act. Pick yourself up, assist in picking up your neighbor.  Don’t allow yourself to wallow.  It will be hard, but it will get better, especially if you make that decision.  This is known as zero point.  A great place to read about that is here: http://nicktsmith.wordpress.com/2008/10/03/operating-from-zero-point/

14. Ambition:  In a 3rd turning if you were ambitious, you were a go-getter that moved up in the corporate world to obtain wealth.  In a 4th turning, ambition will mean the ambition to do the right thing, and make sure good wins.  It will be having the ambition to have public virtue. Public virtue is difficult to understand coming from a 3rd turning perspective, but it is vital to the success of a 4th and 1st turning.  A good example of doing the right thing for the sake of right is the example of many merchants in our founding era.  When the British came to take their supplies, they had a few choices.  They could sell their supplies and get gain, they could abandon their supplies and the British would still take them, or they could burn their entire shop to the ground, so the British would not have access to their supplies.  They chose the latter of the three choices.  That was public virtue.

FREEDOM CAN WIN!

The Tytler Cycle of Democracy

by Jacqueline Smith

Another great cycle in history is the Tytler Cycle of Democracy.  This cycle may look very familiar to you, and it may have been called a number of different names depending on where and why it was being taught..  We have often heard it taught as the “pride” cycle.   Remember that as you study this cycle, you personally may be in a different place in the cycle than others.  Some of your friends and neighbors may be as well.  However, society as a whole, will follow this pattern.

On the right side of the cycle we are a free people, we discuss things based on principle and we are governed by virtue.  While on the left side of the cycle we are issue driven, and business tends to run us more than anything.  This is a principle described inTocqueville’s Democracy in America.  In his book he explains:

“There is, indeed, a most dangerous passage in the history of a democratic people.  When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education and their experience of free institutions, the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint at the sight of the new possessions they are about to obtain.  In their intense and exclusive anxiety to make a fortune they lose sight of the close connection that exists between the private fortune of each and the prosperity of all.  It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold.  The discharge of political duties appears to them to be a troublesome impediment which diverts them from their occupations and business.  If they are required to elect representatives, to support the government by personal service, to meet on public business, they think they have no time, they cannot waste their precious hours in useless engagements; such idle amusements are unsuited to serious men who are engaged with the more important interest of life.  These people think they are following the principle of self-interest, but the idea they entertain of that principle is a very crude one; and the better to look after what they call their own business, they neglect their chief business, which is to remain their own masters.”  (emphasis added)

Difficult to put into words any better than that.    This book was written by a Frenchman in 1840.  Quite prophetic.  But lets look at this from today’s perspective.  What Tocqueville is saying is that as we have access to so much “stuff” and “entertainment” we will give away our freedoms, because we will not be paying attention to the people we elect or the laws that are passed.  We will just be too busy.  The very thing we want most will simply slip from our grasp, our freedom, and we will no longer be a country of self-rule.

As a free society, this cycle generally takes approximately 200 years to go from beginning to end.  The main reason we have stayed free is because of our republic.  But the more we move toward a democracy the faster we will lose our freedom.  We have lasted longer than two hundred years, but we are seeing the rapid loss of our freedoms.  The good news is, as a free society, we will not allow ourselves to stay in bondage very long and will spend most of our time on the right side of the cycle.

This image is difficult to read but it shows the cycle from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance.  During this part of the cycle public virtue runs things, and we are focused on Values, Principles and Forms.  Then we move from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, and from dependence back to bondage.  During this side of the cycle we are focused on issues.  Businesses run people, (and government).

Can you guess where we are?  Do you know what to do to pass through the bondage side of the cycle quickly?  Leave your comments and give us your thoughts.

Keep studying!  Freedom can win!

A Closer Look at the Fourth Turning

Time for a closer look at the 4^th phase – The Winter, or Crisis.

by Jacqueline Smith

 Our previous article (found here) explained a brief overview of a cycle in history known as a saeculum.  This 80 – 120 year period in history is made up of four (4) separate turnings.  Each of these turnings last on average 20 – 25 years.  We are now going to take a quick look at the types of people born in these turnings, and then take a closer look at just the Fourth Turning, since that is the one we are currently in.  We will also look ahead to a new founding.  What kind of founding?  That will be determined by the people of this great country during the next ten (10) or so years. 

Let’s begin with a look at archetypes.  During each phase an archetype of sorts is born.  In general, these types of people will be born, but remember there are always exceptions.

 

• 1^st Phase, or Founding  – Prophet  (they see what’s coming)
• 2^nd Phase or Awakening – Nomads (they don’t fit in, move a lot, change jobs)
• 3^rd Phase or Unraveling – Heroes (take the hard path, and fight the fight)
• 4^th Phase or Crisis – Artists (see the world as wonderful or horrible and express their views through a variety of mediums.)

 

Each archetype affects change in the next two phases following, when they are old enough to make a difference.  If you want to know which archetype you and your friends fit into, go to the previous article “The Fourth Turning – In a Nutshell” and find the year you were born.

Here is a breakdown of just one historical 4^th turning in American history.

 1770 – Boston Massacre – The Catalyst that pushes society into a 4^th Turning.

 1776 – Declaration of Independence – The alignment takes place.  In this case, the people aligned themselves with each other, and against the ruling power of England.

 1783-1787 – Revolutionary War – The Crisis shows itself.  There is death, sacrifice, and extreme hardship on those who fight for the cause.

 1787-1794 – The Constitutional Convention – The Resolution takes place.  A new founding is then created on self rule, in this case.

 Now, let’s look at today:

 2001 – September 11 terrorist attacks – The Catalyst.  This drove our country to changes in policy.  Our attack was suddenly different, so our defense was changed.  Therefore policy changed to enforce the new defense.  i.e. Patriot Act, Victory Act, etc.

 That’s what we know for sure about the 4^th Turning.  If the cycles hold, this may be what we can come to expect.  And we have questions for you to ponder, seriously.

 2008? – 2009? – The alignment. 

• Has it already occurred with our current election, or has the election created a need for a stronger alignment. 
• Are you going to be a part of it?  The people, who want freedom over oppression, democrat and republican alike, recently attended tea parties. 
• The people have begun to align themselves.  Where is your alignment? 
• Currently we are really only looking at two choices, freedom principles or socialistic principles.

 2012? – 2015? – The Crisis.

•  What event could come our way to really test our society?  Historically this time period in the crisis can be war, plague (or pandemic), famine, or economic depression.  It may even contain more than one. 
• Are you ready?  Do you know how to survive a 4^th Turning crisis?  This isn’t a doomsday approach.  This is reality if the cycles hold.  Something to think about.

 2028? – 2035? – The Resolution.

•  What will the resolution to our problems be?
• Have you studied enough to know what freedom really needs to look like? 
• Could you set up changes that will take us back down a path of freedom?  It took decades to get us on this path of socialism.  It may take just as long to undo many of those bad policies and thinking that got us here in the first place.  Maybe not. 
• Can you speak the language of the elite?  Can you enter the great debate on principles and theory, instead of embroiling yourself and others with issues? 
• Can you articulate your ideas so they are easily understood?

 It is important to understand that the people in the alignment will either be the people in the resolution or will dramatically influence it.  The people who signed the Declaration of Independence were also the people who put together the Constitution.

 You may have raised one of the HERO Generation of our day.  You may be one of the HERO generation.  Your grandchildren might be that generation.  But they are already here.  They are the children born between 1984 and 2001.  They will be the ones that will carry us through to the next phase.  It will require the Prophet generation, the Nomad generation and the Hero generation to pull this off.  The Hero generation must be shown why this battle for freedom really matters.  They must be educated in the principles of liberty. 

 We cannot look back in time and wish for the “old days”, we must look forward to a future of freedom.  Take the steps necessary to tip the scales back toward the side of freedom.  We have lost for many years.  But we can reverse the direction of this country.  If we are to survive the 4^th turning and come out with a founding that is of value, we must embrace it.  We must prepare for it.  We must be educated in freedom principles.

 Wouldn’t it be great to just take a pill and have this thing fixed?  Unfortunately, that is not possible.  The fix is in long-term thinking, education, reform, and de-centralization.  These things take time.  This isn’t scary, it’s exciting.  We can change the course of our country.

 Join us in the fight for freedom by dedicating yourself to move the cause of liberty forward.  Organize S.T.A.R. Forum groups in your own area.  The S.T.A.R. Forum is here to teach and assist you.  Email us, and we will send you updates automatically.  More information will continue to come forward.  We seek leaders in every city, who can influence others in liberty.  Freedom lovers everywhere…Unite. 

FREEDOM CAN WIN!