FreeAmerica presentation by Glen Allport
The road to compassion and freedom
Thoughts on a Classical Liberalism for the 21st Century
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Freedom has been fading in America for more than a century – in America of all places, where “freedom” is the national slogan and where enormous personal freedom (relative to most times and places) characterized the nation’s beginning.
Despite that focus on freedom, we now have what seems a mixture of oligarchy and veiled military dictatorship, where torture is sanctioned, where habeas corpus can be ignored, where militarized SWAT teams have replaced your friendly local policeman, where federal budgets are multi-trillion dollar affairs and where the federal debt, figured as a business would have to, defies comprehension. The United States is now an aggressive empire with troops in 130 foreign nations, not the small-government republic that the framers bequeathed to us “if you can keep it” as Ben Franklin famously pointed out.
The modern freedom movement has spent decades trying to reverse this trend, and yet the trend has continued and even accellerated. More than thirty-five years after the Libertarian Party became a national advocate for smaller government, government is larger than ever. Decades of work by libertarian think-tanks and pro-freedom activists have done nothing to reverse or even to visibly slow the erosion of our freedoms.
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One must ask: why has the freedom movement failed so miserably? Why has the market rejected our offering?
Perhaps the product is not as desireable as we think it is, or perhaps we are doing a poor job of marketing.
There is a third possibility, however: perhaps we have not understood our product accurately or completely, and thus have been promoting a damaged or incomplete version.
If that is true, then it is no wonder we have failed in the marketlplace. We should fail in the marketplace, until we bring the product up to spec and learn to promote it properly.
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Expanding our market share, as it were, is more important than with most products. As presenter Anthony Hargis points out, “to oppose tyranny as a lone individual is always a mission of suicide; to oppose thru assemblies is sometimes successful.”
We must understand that any plan without a realistic approach for dramatically increasing public support will fail, and that failure will likely have catastrophic consequences. I question whether there is still time to create the necessary support, but without success at that task we are certain to fail at our primary goal.
We are trying to get the system to allow us our freedom – yet the purpose of the system is to prevent freedom. Clearly, we will need help from a very great many people to succeed – to get the “authorities” to allow even a small subgroup of people their freedom within the greater sea of tyranny.
Best of all would be to bring so many people to our side that tyranny itself cannot stand, and all are free. Even for a lesser victory, we must reverse the current situation, where the great majority of people do not know about us, or do not understand us, and either way do not support us.
Without an understanding of what people want and need, and of what freedom actually means, we risk not only failing but actually being counterproductive. We risk making things worse instead of better – as, indeed, we seem to have been doing these past several decades.
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The freedom movement has proceeded from the assumption that “freedom” means nothing more than lack of interference from government, and that people want this freedom by definition, even if they don’t know it.
Those assumptions may not be true. Indeed, I believe they are NOT true, and the poor results of our efforts suggest as much.
I have already suggested that our understanding of “freedom” may be inadequate. Since we have apparently been marketing something most people are not interested in, it behooves us to at least understand what people ARE interested in. It behooves us to consider what people actually want.
To encourage thought on those issues, I have three questions for you:
First: what kind of world do you want?
In particular, I am encouraging you to see and especially to feel the “better world” you hold in your heart. Be daring. Go deep, and ignore any thought that you are being silly or longing for the impossible. What kind of world do you want? You’ll need to see it in some detail, and to have a strong sense of what it feels like to live in this world, for the exercise to be useful. This is something I would like you to reflect on not only today but every day.
We will never succeed at interesting others in our vision of the world until we have both a solid intellectual understanding of that world and a deeper, more profound emotional sense of that world. This emotional understanding provides, unavoidably, a sense of loss and a sense of longing for a world that should be.
You have all that within you. Find it. Get familiar with it. Spend time with it. Others will sense that, and some will find that same longing within themselves. The longing, both in you and in others, will generate passion. The passion will be contagious. This is one of the keys to advancing the freedom movement from obscurity, to interesting curiosity, to upcoming minority, and eventually to success.
Without the passion, nothing happens. Without something to BE passionate about, we have less than nothing. And “freedom” as we have defined it, is NOT something that most people are passionate about – for good reason, perhaps.
“What kind of world do you want?” is a question and concept that people can and will be passionate about, if you can get them to take it seriously. And for that, you’d better have something real to offer. More on that shortly.
Second: as a way of expanding your answer to my first question, consider also the world you want your children and grandchildren to grow up in. What sort of world would give them the best chance for the best possible lives?
Third: what else, beyond the non-initiation of coercion, is necessary for such a world?
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The Nature of Freedom
Freedom involves more than being left alone, or we’d all go off into the forest as hermits and be done with it.
That would be quick, simple, and doable. Yet, clearly, this is NOT what we want.
Here is what I want, personally: a healthy society.
Naturally, any healthy society must be free. Running things via initiated coercion would never be conceived, much less done, in a truly healthy society.
Yet a healthy society would have much more to offer than mere lack of government interference.
A healthy society (or world) would include the necessary elements to encourage, protect, and sustain the division of labor and honest free-market activity. In such a world, people would feel a connection with each other, for one thing. A healthy society would include the compassion necessary to encourage even the poor, the sick, the disabled, and the disadvantaged to support the social order. A healthy society would be just and humane as well as free. That does not mean everyone would be equal in wealth, any more than they would be equal in height or beauty or athletic ability. It does mean that concern for one’s fellow man would be deeper and more widespread than one sees today.
More on this later, after we talk about paradigms.
[9 min ##]
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Paradigms
The contest between freedom and tyranny is an epic, world-changing struggle, and will be fundamentally a contest between paradigms. As I have already suggested, the freedom movement has failed so dismally because the paradigm it uses is broken and incomplete. If we want success, we need a new paradigm. First, some thoughts about paradigms in general:
* The term “paradigm” is vague and often misused, and has therefore developed a negative connotation. You’ll need to look past that to see the power and usefulness – indeed, the necessity – of paradigms to our task.
* Paradigms are tools of perception, not coercion.
* A paradigm is a framework for understanding. Paradigms give meaning to diverse sets of data, guiding action in useful ways – or in less-useful ways, depending on the accuracy of the paradigm.
* Paradigms are decentralized, potentially very long-lived, and extremely powerful; they are the perfect tools for changing a vast, emergent system like human society. Some paradigms – certain religions, for instance – have been at work for thousands of years.
* Progress is made in part by refining existing paradigms and by occasionally replacing current paradigms with newer and more usefully accurate paradigms. These are potentially seismic events; superstition vs. science, for example. The framework of science is more closely aligned with reality and has allowed huge progress for that reason.
* Paradigms work by harnessing the natural creativity, intelligence, and energy of millions of people. By not forcibly imposing a single plan, many plans and approaches may be taken. By not creating a centralized bureaucracy, a paradigm fosters the sincere, diverse efforts of many people.
* A new and more accurate paradigm makes things visible that until then were not, even if they were in plain sight. A good paradigm adjusts one’s vision so that “things make sense” in a way that is both satisfying and useful.
* Details may obfuscate rather than clarify until a paradigm makes proper sense of them.
* That leads to something you will have already noticed: Until others adopt our paradigm, THEY WILL MISPERCEIVE US in ways that will often seem bizarre. It is not possible to correct this with detail alone; only by helping others to see the broad sweep of the paradigm itself will we make real progress.
* Political examples of blinding via paradigm:
-- The left/right paradigm blocks one’s view of the fundamental element of coercion/non-coercion.
-- Marxism makes it difficult to see “compassion” as possible without government action (i.e., without coercion).
-- Modern libertarianism makes it difficult to see any need for love or emotional health; “freedom” is supposed to do it all.
The duality of love and freedom is obscured by both Statism and libertarianism. Classical liberalism was better balanced, and the split into left/right – including, at the extreme, Marxism/Libertarianism – has been a disaster, giving a huge boost to statist power.
* Unless we ourselves are using an accurate paradigm and understand it well, we will waste time and effort working towards the wrong goal.
* On the other hand, perfection is not necessary – in paradigms, or in most other areas of life (sports, science, etc). What is needed is a dramatically improved level of useful accuracy, not an unattainable perfection.
* Adopting a new paradigm generally requires repeated exposure to it; the resistance to such global change in thinking is very strong, especially (as in our case) when powerful feelings are bound up in the old, innaccurate paradigm.
[15 min ##]
* A single paradigm can solve many seemingly unrelated problems. Example: the germ theory (neither perfect nor complete, please note) gave scientists, doctors, nurses, parents, inventors, and EVERYONE a way to begin solving the problem of hundreds of different diseases that had previously been hundreds of different problems. The single tool of an accurate paradigm did what centuries of work based on faulty paradigms could not. Result: a doubling of average lifespan from 1850 to 2000, based largely on reduction in death from infectious disease. Infectious disease has not been ended, but billions of people have had longer and better lives because a new way of seeing the problem was developed and successfully promoted.
* Our current paradigm appears to others as cold, heartless, and skewed in favor of oil companies, the rich, Halliburton and other large corporations and special interests, in part – but only in part – because people do not understand that government power enables and encourages bad corporate behavior. There are other reasons our paradigm is unnattractive to the public, and the most important is this:
The freedom movement itself has failed to promote or even to understand the integrated nature of love and freedom.
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Love and Freedom
All men are brothers and each man is free.
— Rose Wilder Lane,
The Discovery of Freedom: Man’s Struggle Against Authority, 1943
* Love and freedom may be seen as two sides of a human duality, much like yin and yang. Emphasizing one over the other causes problems because an imbalance means that at least one side is below the healthy, optimal level. High levels of both love and freedom are necessary for a healthy society.
* We require love because we are all one. We are all connected. We are all brothers and sisters, and love is what we were born for. Yet we also require freedom because each of us is a separate and unique individual. We have our own thoughts and talents, our own preferences and desires. This natural diversity among individuals brings strength to the group.
* Early America focused on freedom at the expense of love; Marxism focuses on love at the expense of freedom. As a result, neither is a good example of either love or freedom. Consider two well-known flaws of the early United States:
First, slavery was allowed in some of the states. Second, American Indians were sometimes mass-murdered, their land was stolen, and the survivors were forced onto reservations.
In both cases, the target groups were not being treated with love or compassion.
It is equally clear that in both cases, the target groups were being denied freedom.
Love requires freedom. One cannot enslave or murder someone while treating them with compassion. Loving someone requires and includes allowing them the rights of life, liberty, and property.
* Likewise, freedom in human affairs requires love. Because people often see “freedom” as merely a lack of coercive interference, it is easy to miss the human element here. But we are human beings, not inanimate objects, and humans have needs beyond lack of coercion. In addition to personal needs for love and connection with others, the market and society itself require widespread emotional health (the foundation of love) to function well and to prevent a drift towards fraud and coercion. Love is the lubricant and anti-corrosive for a free society.
A widespread and severe lack of emotional health – the foundation of love – ensures a nightmare, no matter what the original political situation.
Nazi Germany is perhaps the best-known and most-studied example of emotional damage leading to epic tyranny, in this case including genocide and a world war. How could a civilized, well-educated, industrialized nation rapidly become a horror almost beyond imagining? One key reason (of several): widespread and severe mistreatment of children, as documented by Dr. Alice Miller and others. A nation of repressed, angry adults treated with coldness and cruelty throughout childhood and trained to obey without question will never remain free or civil for long, no matter what political or social structures are originally in place. [19 min ##]
Compassionate treatment of pregnant mothers, newborns, infants, and children is an absolutely key element in improving the world. Neurosis is a form of un-freedom more powerful than any political dictatorship, and adults shackled by high levels of emotional damage and who were not respected in their own childhood are not only unlikely to respect others – they will often be angry enough inside to enjoy the shackling, or worse, of other people. If we want a sustainably free society, we need to see to it that emotional health becomes more the norm, and neurosis – finally! – fades away.
I will talk about this in more detail a bit later.
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The Two Great Evils
If the combination of love and freedom is the goal, their lack is what we must address; it is the problem we must solve.
Emotional damage and tyranny represent low values of love and freedom.
Emotional damage and tyranny each feed upon, contribute to, and empower the other.
These horrors are so widespread that I have called them the Two Great Evils (in a column for STR). Fixing only one side is not possible; some unbalanced progress can be made, but a dramatic imbalance is not stable. As I said earlier, high levels of BOTH love and freedom are necessary for a healthy world.
A healthy world may be the only world compatable with human survival in the years ahead.
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An Earthly Paradise
For lack of a better word – and because this word fits perfectly – I call the free and compassionate world – the world we are made for – “Paradise.” There is nothing supernatural about this use of the term. It is simply a description of the real, uncorrupted, natural, and healthy society that people are born expecting and needing.
Paradise is, to me, nothing more or less than a world without widespread emotional damage or tyranny. It is a world where trauma to the very young is dramatically less common than today, and where freedom comes naturally in part because people are emotionally healthy enough to not see coercive power over others as acceptable or desireable. It is a world where people are healthy enough to respect and to feel connected to others, because they were respected and treated compassionately themselves as children.
Some intellectual understanding of freedom is also necessary, for reasons I discuss in my most recent column at Strike-the-Root.com, titled: “Feeling, Emotion, Intellect: Why Rational Thought is Not Enough.” The final section in the column summarizes the need for intellectual understanding:
One last point about the guiding wisdom of our ancient, lower-level brains: political liberty isn’t in the guidelines because the politics of very large groups was never an issue in the evolutionary past. Only very recently, as evolution sees time, have nations or even large cities been possible.
Humans are made for small groups: families, villages, hunter-gatherer clans. At such scale, people in the entire group can actually know each other, and the social rules engraved deep within us can operate properly; in turn, that makes the balance between authority (if and when any is useful) and respect for the actions and choices of others easy to find. Knowing who to trust (with Authority or with anything else) is also easier when one knows everyone in the group personally.
Put human beings into nation-states, mega-cities, or even medium-sized towns, however, and things change. The ancient reptilian brain and the limbic system are simply out of their element in such large groups. One result is that even reasonable emotional health (by current standards, at least) does not necessarily lead to wisdom concerning politics. In particular, the “caring parent” meme seems to get attached to the idea that a Compassionate Leader (or a Compassionate Group) should be (coercively) in charge of a nation. The coercion, exercised from afar by strangers with their own agendas, is not seen for the danger it is. This is where the freedom movement and resources like Strike-the-Root.com can be helpful. The “logical” aspects of the freedom movement (when not corrupted by old feeling) can help move people towards understanding a spectacularly important truth: that systematic initiated coercion never leads to positive long-term results, but instead empowers sociopaths and – far too often – leads to widespread misery and horrifying levels of tyranny.
Much other knowledge is missing from our built-in guidelines, of course: science and technology are the obvious examples. Such knowledge is often useful, but it is no replacement for emotional health. Indeed, how we use science and technology depends largely upon our levels of emotional health and our attitudes toward initiated coercion.
Which brings us back, as always in these columns, to love and freedom. More than logic; more than scientific knowledge; more than anything else you can name, love and freedom are the keys to improving this world, and – along the way – to improving individual lives.
What would you call a framework for describing and creating a world of love and freedom?
I call it the Paradise Paradigm. Nothing else seems to fit, and a name is necessary, because it is difficult to talk about something we don’t have a name for.
The basic thesis of this paradigm is that the human condition itself—individually and collectively—can be improved dramatically, over time, by increasing the understanding that proper early care leads to a healthier and more compassionate adulthood, and that a society of healthy people will be a healthy society.
Going one step further, a world of healthier societies must, in fact, be a healthier world.
Note that I am not only talking about the need to raise one’s own children well, or even to help other children in some manner. I am, in particular, advancing the idea that only the widest possible understanding of a paradigm on this topic, and an accurate one, will succeed at widely improving and eventually “saving” the world in the sense I am discussing here.
IN MORE DETAIL, the Paradigm has seven points:
1. The human world is as we make it.
2. The character of each adult is largely shaped in the earliest
months and years of life.
3. Consistent love and respect given early in life create healthy,
loving adults who respect others.
4. Any person or group which improves the lives of pregnant
mothers, infants, or children contributes to the goal of a
healthy world. To a lesser extent, improving the life of any
person contributes to the goal.
5. Enough healthy, loving adults will make a healthy, loving world.
6. Freedom is a necessary part of love. Unfreedom (coercion) is
abuse; it erodes and destroys love.
7. Change happens when enough people share the necessary
understanding.
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What we can learn from Marxism
You already know that Marxism has been the single worst political disaster in the history of mankind. (If you don’t, please read The Black Book of Communism as a start). The lesson, clearly, is that coercive, centralized control of all property and the means of production, and of society generally, is simply incompatable with positive outcomes.
But there is another lesson Marxism can teach us, and it is THIS lesson that the freedom movement has been unable or unwilling to comprehend:
Marxists were able to attract such a large, global following because the movement explicitly acknowledged the brotherhood of man and promised (albeit falsely) to create a more fair and compassionate world.
Do not underestimate the power and importance of the human longing for a better, more compassionate world!
Marxism became a stunning, world-wide movement in mere decades. This would be impressive even if Marxism were NOT based on lies and misunderstandings.
There is not nearly enough study and discussion in the freedom movement of the amazing rise to prominence of Marxism.
The Marxist paradigm involves creating a fair and compassionate world of brotherhood at gunpoint, using violent overthrow of society followed by a totally centralized, coercive government that owns EVERYTHING and controls all the means of production. This bizarre, almost insane paradigm was rapidly adopted by millions of people in a passionate, world-wide movement. Even today, after nearly a century of mass-murder, famine, poverty, and horrifying tyranny, millions of people are still passionate believers in, and supporters of, Marxism.
The most common explanation for the popularity of Marxism is probably that Marxist redistribution of wealth – steal from the rich, give to the poor – appeals to people’s greed and resentment. Some of that surely factors in, but the desire for a world of compassion and brotherhood is, I believe, far more powerful. The next example supports that viewpoint.
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The real protection of life and property, always and everywhere, is the general recognition of the brotherhood of man.
-- Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom, 1943
“Love thy Neighbor”: What we Can Learn from Christians
Another movement rapidly took over much of the world and, in this case, has survived for twenty centuries, growing to perhaps 2 BILLION converts worldwide. This movement is Christianity. Forcible redistribution of wealth is not a part of the program here, yet the same passion, the same willingness of many to work, to suffer, and even to die in the furtherance of the cause, has been shown by Christians as as it has by Marxists.
I believe much – MOST – of the appeal of Christianity has little to do with the Old Testament, and little even to do with much of the New Testament. Nor am I talking about the promise of an afterlife, although that certainly is a powerful element in the appeal of this religion.
The most important factor in the appeal of Christianity, I believe, is Jesus’ own teachings about creating a healthier, more compassionate and loving world. Listening to modern anti-Christian rhetoric – and in many cases, even to modern self-described Christians themselves – one would never know such an element exists, but it does and has always been at least as strong an attraction as the promise of a supernatural afterlife. For one thing, it is clearly a real, here-and-now, in-this-world element – and it addresses a powerful genetic imperative that every newborn arrives with and depends upon to survive.
For more detail on my assertions about Jesus’ teachings, see paradise-paradigm.net for my column:
Three Teachings on Compassion:
Largely Ignored by Christians, Jesus’ Own Words on Key Subjects Present an Insightful and Workable Approach for Creating a More Compassionate World
[An aside: Some of you are probably wondering about my religious beliefs. I am an athiest, although one who grew up attending Methodist churches. On the current anti-religious movement: Most of the problems attributed today to Christian belief (or to any belief system, “religious” or otherwise) actually stem from emotional damage – which also afflicts non-Christians, with similar results. People behave (and practice their religion) in accordance with their level of emotional health.]
The lesson the freedom movement can learn from Christianity is precisely the same lesson it can learn from Marxism:
The need for a loving, compassionate world is fundamental in human beings, and this need is strong enough that people will do and endure almost anything on its behalf.
If the freedom movement is to have any chance of success, it must learn that lesson thoroughly, and in the process transform itself into something more than it has been.
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Libertarians, Marxists, and Christians are not the only groups looking for a better world.
Everyone is.
As I suggested a few moments ago, we all have a genetic predisposition for a particular kind of environment. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Just as a narrow range of temperature and other physical parameters work best for human beings – and are therefore genetically inscribed, in a fashion, within us – so too are we designed for a fairly narrow range of social environments. I don’t mean humans cannot live in other environments, either physical or social – we are highly adaptable. For example, humans can live in the frozen wastes of the Arctic or in scorching, barren desert – if we have to, and assuming we have developed and can make the necessary tools for survival.
Likewise, we can live in cold societies, devoid of most compassion. We can live in barren nations where tyranny has withered or perverted most of human productivity and where “love thy neighbor” has been warped into “inform on thy neighbor.”
We CAN live that way, but we don’t want to. We aren’t MADE to live that way, any more than we are made to live in the frigid, perpetual night of an Arctic winter.
So I have two more questions for you to think about:
* What can we do for various groups of people to connect with their need for a free and compassionate world?
and
* How can we best explain the duality of love and freedom to them?
The goal is to help people find their own desire for a healthy, real world inside themselves – and to give them enough hope for attainment of such a world that they become passionate and relentless in working for that world.
As we gain experience, it will be useful to share what we learn with other members of the community, via email, columns written for STR, LRC, and other sites, and in other ways. Marketing is to some extent a trial-and-error process.
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Sensitive Dependence on Early Conditions
Free Societies in the Real World
Womb, Birth, Infancy, Childhood
Gold into Lead .PDF (display at presentation)
Additional suggested reading:
For A Breath I Tarry (Zelazny) -- fiction
Jack of Shadows (Zelazny) -- fiction
The Continuum Concept (Liedloff)
The Biology of Love (Janov)
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Summary statement:
It is time, and long past time, for the duality of love and freedom to be understood, adopted, and championed by the freedom movement and by every other group that honestly wants a better, healthier world. Neither love nor freedom can stand alone, because they really ARE a single, intertwined and interdependent duality.
This natural and unbreakable combination of love and freedom will be unstoppable – IF enough people embrace the concept in time.
--end--
Quotations for Freedom Conference
The most powerful factors in the world are clear ideas in the minds of energetic men of good will.
-- J. Arthur Thomson
It is very difficult for people to believe the simple fact that every persecutor was once a victim. Yet it should be very obvious that someone who was allowed to feel free and strong from childhood does not have the need to humiliate another person.
-- Alice Miller, For Your Own Good
Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
-- Henry Miller (1891 - 1980)
Be bold and mighty powers will come to your aid.
-- Basil King
The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.
-- Eric Berne (1910 - 1970)
The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.
-- Sir William Bragg (1862 - 1942)
The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what there is of it.
-- Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), Following the Equator
Observation of the Day: While talking with a statist recently, I realized that until the vast majority of people have empathy for others, the State will always be with us. As long as people don't care about others, don't care that others are coerced, stolen from and even killed, they will use the State to do these things to others to get what they want. I think every statist is a closet sociopath.
-- Rob Moody's "Observation of the day" for 12/31/04 (the day after Root Striker Joe
Bommarito went into a hospice)
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.
-- Martha Graham (1894 - 1991)
One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.
-- Randall Jarrell (1914 - 1965)
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
-- Epictetus (c.55-c.135)
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
-- Thomas H. Huxley (1825 - 1895)
An epigram often flashes light into regions where reason shines but dimly.
-- Edwin P. Whipple
The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.
-- Frank Herbert (1920 - 1986)
End and goal. Not every end is the goal. the end of a melody is not its goal; and yet: as long as the melody has not reached its end, it also hasn't reached its goal. A parable.
-- Neitzsche, from The Wanderer and His Shadow
Spanking does for a child's development what wife-beating does for a marriage.
-- Jordan Riak, NoSpank.net
If we are ever to turn toward a kindlier society and a safer world, a revulsion against the physical punishment of children would be a good place to start.
-- Dr. Benjamin Spock
Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value - zero.
-- Voltaire – 1729
(W)e can’t punish children into compassion.
-- Retta Fontana, "Let Freedom Ring" from <http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/fontana/fontana4.html>
We must offer our children the dignity we wanted from our own parents. When I honestly and humbly ask for help from my children as I would any friend, their response is a beautiful thing. If I act with coercive force in our relationship, I alienate them as I would any friend.
-- Retta Fontana, "Let Freedom Ring" from <http://www.strike-the-root.com/71/fontana/fontana4.html>
Misbehavior cannot withstand persistent kindness, courtesy and respect.
-- Norm Lee, author of "Parenting Without Punishing" www.nopunish.net