Work – DNC-Consulting

Flashes – First World Nation Problems

Bobblehead Doll Since Russia invaded Ukraine, no longer is the truth able to hide; America has been pursuing easy things, making America weak! Several years ago, I was in a used book store and found “Flashes from the Eternal Semaphore” by Leo J. Muir. I count myself extremely blessed to have found and purchased this treasured book! Mr. Muir explains that a semaphore is a means of using flags to send messages, and people have been using flags to send messages for a lot of the earth’s recorded history. The author declared that regardless of religion, certain truths are timeless, ageless, and failure to learn and live these truths brings destruction to civilization.

The first flash/truth is that pursuing easy things makes people weak. Consider for a moment a German proverb, “The hard is the good.” Work is an eternal principle; it does not change if you believe, or do not believe in, God, god, or gods. The need to work, to pursue difficult tasks makes boys into Men, girls into Women, and at the end of life reflects honor and dignity in a life well-lived. Yet, what do we find daily as the life to pursue, playing games, rest, recreation, and all the waste this involves.

I know not the source, but as a kid, I heard someone complain that the hardest and most difficult job in the world is being a person of leisure. As a kid, I had worked my fingers to the bone every day, going to bed bone-weary and mind tired. To hear this man talk blew my mind, for I would have given anything to have less work to do. Yet, during periods of unemployment, I have wept in frustration for not having a job that tasked my mind and body. In employment right now, I often look around and ask what else is there to do, for I feel like I am cheating my employer. Some call this a work ethic, I call is being responsible, professional, and honest in my dealings with my fellow-man.

A friend informed me that most people do not think similarly, and I wonder why. My friend said it was a “First-World Nation Problem.” He explained that in first-world nations, you have to go a long distance to find anyone who works like I do and thinks work is necessary. Mr. Muir reminds us, “There is no immunity from the penalty of indolence and irresponsibility.” Think of that, too much idleness, too many video games, not enough personal responsibility builds weak people, and there is no social or personal immunity, no vaccination, from the consequences.

What’s worse, First-World nations are passing this malady around the globe. We are sick from the disease of not working, akin to catching polio, leprosy, or a fatal case of pneumonia; the disease can be treated, but the effects are life-changing. You cannot achieve for your ability is curtailed. We have forgotten that “There is NO excellence WITHOUT labor” [emphasis added]. I remember assignments from K-12 that left me physically drained from the mental exertions, and I remember lazing my way through lessons; in both situations, the grade I earned was of my own creation! Believe me, my parents were exercised to see my low grades, and I had my school and home work increased to new levels to achieve learning that one lesson, “There is NO excellence WITHOUT labor.”

What do we see today? Students are allowed to graduate who cannot read, do simple math, and write their names. We see lowering standards for scholastic performance in K-12, which produces a slug of a student who expects to graduate college. Woefully unprepared people who were abused and allowed to abuse themselves during K-12 due to their skin color, economic situation, or English as a second language. What teachers do you remember from school, those who allowed you to slide, or those who believed in you, challenged you, setting high standards, and then teaching you how to meet those high standards?

I told my friend, and dear reader, I am telling you, the principle of work should not be sacrificed to “Leave no child behind.” If a person sets out to leave no one behind, they get to know their charges, work their charges, set high standards, teach how to reach those high standards, and then urge them on to new growth opportunities. Why did the school boards lower standards; they believe in growing a class of citizenry that can be controlled! Since the late 1800s, this has been the government’s intentional actions in America. Some will use their weakened minds and claim this is the dastardly work of a single political party, but the reality is that both political parties are neck-deep in the responsibility they have shirked and promoted by lower standards, and they call this “helping.”

No, do not for one second believe that this is a “First-World nation problem,” it is a problem made by conspiring men (and women) for the overthrow and destruction of freedom. They have been carefully creating a class of people who can be counted on to be controlled for personal political gain. Independent people, strong-bodied and minded people, scare those who desire to be a ruling class. Consider Putin in Russia; he wanted to rule, he has planned, crafted, killed, lied, and cajoled to rule, and he is a strong person ruling a weak people who have gotten sick on the pursuit of easy things. 117 Best Hard Work Quotes That Everybody Must See

Look at Cuba and North Korea; the people have had to be beaten and starved to weaken them into submission and keep them dependent on a strong leader. Yet, how quickly could those strong people throw off their oppressive governments if they had even 1/100^th of the opportunities their poorest neighbors enjoy. What happens in countries oppressed, the leaders become weak pursuing easy things, the people get stronger, and then the government is backed against a wall, and either the people overthrow the government, or the government is killed. Then the cycle begins again until the population is consumed by a neighbor (Ukraine being consumed by Russia) or democracy and capitalism are tried and found to be valuable. But democracy is only powerful if the law is held sacrosanct! Capitalism is only useful and helpful when the society employing it has morals, values, and is educated.

26 WORK Quotes About Hardships And Cooperation At Workplace | Brainy Readers What is weakening every oppressive regime around the globe; is a failure to honor the rule of law. The leaders pursuing easy things become weak, and their choices inevitably lead them into problems with the law. Think back a couple of years to the Chinese baby food or dog food scandals. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) blamed mid-level leaders for their roles in the scandals, but were these people really to blame or merely useful tools to help deflect blame from the flagrant and profligate rule-breaking of someone higher?

Pursuing easy things makes people weak! There is no escaping the damage pursuing easy things does to an individual and a society. Yet, how big are the entertainment industries? How expansive has the lure of taking it easy become? How prevalent have games become? An entire new technological industry sprung up to feed the appetites of those pursuing games? For a truth, Muir quotes Franklin for the following flash, “Laziness travels slowly and is soon overtaken by poverty.” How expensive have cellular phones become? How soon do those phones wear out and need to be replaced? Worse, how many politicians, Hollywood “influencers,” and hundreds of other sources exemplify not working, hide behind a “work-life balance,” or employ social media to display a life of plenty and ease without working? The only way to keep the American dream alive is through hard work!

Knowledge Check! King Solomon provided the only instruction that offers a modicum of relief and is quoted as the final flash, “In all, they getting, get understanding.” I know many people’s childhood was full of abusive relationships. From parents to teachers, to peers and government officials, you have been robbed, plundered, and the abuse is real. For all that, you remain an eternal being suffering a mortal existence. Thus, you have the choice to get understanding. You possess the power to throw off the abusers. Learn to learn. Learn to read. Learn math. Learn how to write. You hold the power, choose to exercise that power, and you will bless your life and the lives of those around you!

© Copyright 2022 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images. Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.

Working Man’s Ph.D.

In 1993 one of the biggest hits was a song called “Working Man’s Ph.D.” sung by Aaron Tippin. Aaron Tippin has the most colorful biography of all the country-western singers I know, including a commercial airline pilot, pipefitter, truck driver, welder, farmhand, and songwriter and singer. The lyrics for the song “Working Man’s Ph.D.” form the backbone to the point of this article and as a means of honoring those who have well-earned their working man’s Ph.D.

You get up every morning ‘fore the sun comes up
Toss a lunchbox into a pickup truck
A long, hard day, sure ain’t much fun
But you’ve gotta get it started if you wanna get it done
You set your mind and roll up your sleeves
You’re workin’ on a working man’s Ph.D

Consider the following line especially, “you’ve gotta get it started if you wanna get it done; You set your mind and roll up your sleeves.” How many times has grit been the only determining factor between starting and finishing a project? Starters are many, but enders are few. Those are the two elements for success, and every working man knows the recipe. Get your mindset and start by rolling up your sleeves. Preparation is key to finishing strong. 20th Maine

Now, cast your mind to those who have never learned how to be a working man. They have no grit, no ability to make up their minds, and cannot stand up to adversity and spit in adversity’s eyes. Yet, they talk a good line. They want you to think they know. But the lines on their brow and the lack of callouses on their hands tell another story entirely.

Take a moment and consider your first blister. Do you remember how you earned it? Do you remember what you were doing the first time you felt that sting? I do. My first blister turned into my first and most lasting callous. I was hoeing a row of peas in a garden; I was six. I was told that a blister from working is the mark of a man learning how to work. I earned that blister on a hoe handled that had been wrapped in duct tape to prevent splinters. After that row of peas, there was a row of corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and lawns to mow. By the end of the day, I was exhausted and sore, the blister was bloody, and I learned how to treat blisters so you could go to work the next day. Rocks

Let me tell you a secret; I love that blister and callous! I have burned that callous on many a stove and pan. I have cut that callous on several knives and received no injury. I have softened that callous while wrestling sheep in a shearing pen. I have milked cows and goats to the cows and goats’ misfortune with that callous. That callous has taught me many a lesson, including how to get a blister under a callous. In the middle of a cold winter, while splitting wood, that callous kept my hands sticking to the steel of the handle on the splitting maul. That maul handle had been replaced so many times that my father had taken the splitting maul to work and replaced the wood with ½” steel tubing. It heaviest splitting maul I ever used, but I never broke that handle off!

With your heart in your hands and the sweat on your brow
You build the things that really make the world go around
If it works, if it runs, if it lasts, for years
You bet your bottom dollar; it was made right here
With pride, honor, and dignity
From a man with a working man’s Ph.D

Consider something with me, think about your hardest task completed; what did you learn about “pride, honor, and dignity” about accomplishing that task? Hard work taught you a lesson that ease and prosperity could never teach. Lessons that you cannot pass along to another person except by teaching them the joys and pleasures of task accomplishment and hard work. Yet, in the world today, so many want to look down on hard work, and this is a thought process that needs reversing. Good Timber

I screwed up. I admit this freely. I took some money for raking my neighbor’s lawn and did a poor job. My neighbor fired me; she was right to do so. I felt so disgusted with myself for taking money and not delivering a good job, I went over and finished that job over my neighbors’ objections. I shoveled her snow for free that year. I did everything I could to discharge the debt I owed to this woman for teaching me that there is no honor, dignity, and pride in a job not done well.

My wife the other day asked me why I don’t quit jobs I have undertaken. She doesn’t understand the lessons I have learned; I cannot do a poor job. I cannot commit to doing a job and give less than my full potential and all of my talents, skills, and abilities. Even when it means I am surrounded by enemies in a hostile environment where my life is constantly threatened. I have to give it everything I have; I owe this debt to my neighbor that must be serviced. I have earned a working man’s Ph.D. as well as a couple of master’s degrees from the school of hard knocks; I owe too much to those who have taught me to forget these lessons.

Now there ain’t no shame in a job well done
From driving a nail to driving a truck
As a matter of fact, I’d like to set things straight
A few more people should be pullin’ their weight
If you wanna cram course in reality
You get yourself a working man’s Ph.D

There is a truth in these simple words, I wish to convey in the soberest words possible, “there ain’t no shame in a job well done.” There is no end of shame to a job poorly done. Consider the current president; why does the common person, those of us carrying working man Ph.D.’s, scorn the president? Why did the common person, those carrying working man Ph.D.’s, heap praise on President Trump? The simple truth and reality in the sentiment, “there ain’t no shame in a job well done,” but there is no end of shame in a job poorly done. Use any other person you care to name, John Wayne and Kim Kardashian, who gets the stain and who gets the praise of a job well and poorly done? President Reagan and Nancy Pelosi? Michael Jackson and Mother Teresa? Leadership Cartoon

The job doesn’t matter, driving nails, driving trucks, nursing babies, keeping a house, accountant, pipefitting, welder, buyer, etc., what matters is how well the job is completed. Do you take the job and do it well or poorly? For if you do it poorly, there is nothing but eternal shame, the work itself will always testify of your performance, and people will speak of your incompetence. Do it well, to the best of your abilities; even if a scoreboard might proclaim you are a loser, you have won victory and honor, pride, and dignity that can never be taken from you. How you perform the task is the deciding factor, not the job, not the task, not the scores and the statistics, your performance of the task’s duties.

When the quittin’ whistle blows and the dust settles down
There ain’t no trophies or cheering crowds
You’ll face yourself at the end of the day
And be damn proud of whatever you’ve made
Can’t hang it on the wall for the world to see
But you’ve got yourself a working man’s Ph.D

The hardest lesson I learned in the US Army was how to shave without looking at myself in the mirror. Then I had to learn how to live with my mistakes to shave and look myself in the eye. Right there and then, I learned the lesson contained in the following lines, “You’ll face yourself at the end of the day; And be damn proud of whatever you’ve made.” In junior high school, I read Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary,” and the following quote stuck in my mental craw. It comes out often to teach me more lessons.

“The soil of a man’s heart is stony ground. A man grows what he can, and he tends it. ’Cause what you buy, is what you own. And what you own… always comes home.”

Thank you! Hard work teaches hard lessons, but the lessons learned are worth more than gold and diamonds, and I wouldn’t trade a single lesson learned for all the money in the world and all the fame in Hollywood. Of all the degrees and titles I have acquired in this world, or will acquire, the only one I ever want is that of “Hard worker,” for that single title says it all. When the chips and markers are counted at the end of life, I want to be found pulling my weight. I might be disabled, I might be stubborn as a Missouri Mule with a mean streak a mile wide, but I want to be found pulling my weight.

Bobblehead Doll My deepest thanks to Aaron Tippin for his example and his incredible talent as a singer and person. I have met many military people who sing Aaron Tippin’s praises, and I am very grateful for the talent shared. May I encourage you to consider how well your studies are progressing on your “Working Man’s Ph.D.”

© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the images displayed.

Employee Engagement

Knowledge Check! Recently this topic was raised in a town hall style meeting, and the comments from the leadership raised several concerns. It appears that employee engagement is attempting to become a “buzzword” instead of an action item, and this bothers me greatly. Worse, many people lead teams with vague ideas about what employee engagement means and then shape their own biases into the employee engagement program, making a pogrom of inanity and suffering out of a tool for benefiting and improving employee relations.

When discussing employee engagement, we must first begin with a fundamental truth; employees do not work for a company, do not work for a brand; they work for a manager. An employee might like a company; they might enjoy having their professional brand aligned with a known branded organization. The employee might feel pride in associating with other employees under that brand. When the road gets difficult at the end of the day, an employee works for a manager. The relationship between a manager and an employee is one of trust operationalized and honed through shared experiences.

Employee Engagement – Defined

Problems According to several online sources, the definition of employee engagement is, “Employee engagement is a fundamental concept in the effort to understand and describe, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the nature of the relationship between an organization and its employees.” If you believe this definition, you will miss the forest for the bark you are fixated upon! Employee engagement is fundamental; it is not a concept, a theory, or a buzzword. Employee engagement is a relationship between organizational leaders and the employees, but employee engagement is not about collecting qualitative or quantitative data for decision-making policy-based relationship guidance. At the most basic level, employee engagement is the impetus an employee chooses to onboard because of the motivational actions of the manager they report to.

Employees must choose to engage; when they choose not to engage, there is no enthusiasm in the employee, and this can be heard in every action taken by the employees on the company’s behalf. Is this clear; employee engagement is an individual action, where impetus leads to motivated and enthused action. While organizational leaders can and do influence motivation, they cannot force the employee to engage! Thus, revealing another aspect of why the definition found online is NOT acceptable for use in any employee engagement effort! Leadership Cartoon

Employee engagement is the actions an employee is willing to take, indicating their motivation to perform their duties and extra-duties for a manager they like. Employee engagement is the epitome of operational trust realized in daily attitudes, behaviors, and mannerisms of employees who choose to be engaged in solving problems for their employer. While incentive programs can improve employee engagement, if the employee does not first choose to enjoy the incentive, the incentive program is wasted leadership efforts. The same can be said for every single “employee benefit.” If an employee cannot afford the employer’s benefits, those benefits are wasted money the employer needs elsewhere. Hence, the final point in defining employee engagement is the individualization of incentives and the individual relationship between managers and employees. Stop the one-size-fits-most offerings, and let’s get back to talking to people. Anton Ego 4

Reflective Listening

Listening has four distinct levels; currently, these are:

- - Inactive listening – Hearing words, seeing written communication, zero impact mentally. Mainly because your internal voices drown out the possibility of communication.
  - Selective listening – Hearing only that which confirms your own voices, opinions, and biases. While others are speaking, you are already forming your response.
  - Active listening – Show the other person you are paying attention to, engage with meaning in a reply. You are focused on removing barriers to get your point across.
  - Reflective listening – Paying attention to intent and content, reducing emotion, two-directional as both parties are engaged in achieving mutual understanding.

Chinese Crisis Inactive and selective listening can be heard through phone lines, instant messaging, text messaging, and easily observed during face-to-face communication. Worse, active listening launches trust, and when faked, destroys credibility, ruining relationships. Reflective listening can only achieve mutual understanding when both parties are choosing to listen intently and with the purpose of reaching mutual understanding. The most powerful tool in an organizational leader’s toolbox for quickly rectifying employee engagement is reflectively listening.

Communication occurs in two different modalities, verbal and non-verbal. Good communicators adapt their message to the audience using reflective listening and careful observation. Adapting the message requires first choosing, determining who the primary and secondary audience is, and then focusing the message on the primary audience. Next, adaptation requires prior planning, which includes mental preparation, practice, and channels for feedback. Finally, adaptation requires listening to achieve mutual understanding, careful observation, asking questions designed to lead to mutual understanding, and clarifying what is being said to achieve mutual understanding. The pattern described can be the tool that begins employee engagement but is not an end-all solution all by itself. Anton Ego

Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative inquiry is a growth mechanism that states that what a business organization needs, they already have enough of, provided they listen to their employees. Appreciative inquiry and common sense tell leaders who want to know and change their organization and how and where to begin. Appreciative inquiry-based leadership is 6-continuous steps that start small and cycle to more significant problems as momentum for excellence permeates through an organization. But the first step, just like in defeating a disabling addiction, is admitting there is a problem.

Here are the six operational steps for appreciative inquiry:

1. 1. Admit there is a problem and commit to change.
  2. Define the problem.
  3. Discover the variables and stay focused on the positive.
  4. Dream BIG!
  5. Design the future and outline the steps to that future.
  6. Destiny, create the destination you desire.

Bait & Switch Follow the instructions on a shampoo bottle, “Wash, Rinse, Repeat.” The appreciative inquiry model can be scaled, repeated, implemented into small or large teams, and produce motivated members who become the force to create change. Allow yourself and your team to learn, this takes time, but through building motivation for excellence, time can be captured to perform.

Of all the steps in appreciative inquiry, it must be stressed that focusing on the positive is the only way to improve people. Even if you must make careful observations to catch people doing good, do it! Focusing on the positive provides the proper culture for engaging as many people as possible. Criticism, negativity, aspersions, and insults all feed a culture of “Not my problem,” and when the employee claims, “not my problem,” they will never engage until the culture changes.

Organization

Andragogy - LEARN Employee engagement requires structural changes to the organizational design. Employee engagement is going to bring immediate change to the organization. If the leaders, directors, managers, supervisors, team leaders, etc., are not prepared for and willing to change, employee engagement will die as an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. As a business consultant, I have witnessed the death of employee engagement, and the death is long, protracted, and disastrous to the entire business. Worse, individuals refusing to change stand out like red dots on a white cloth as employee engagement dies.

Thus, the first step in employee engagement belongs not to the employee, but the employer, who must answer this question: “Are we a learning organization willing to change, or are we a knowing organization who does not need to change?” How the leadership answers this question will speak volumes to the employees closely observing and making their decisions accordingly. Depending upon how that question is answered will depend upon whether the business can move onto the second step or remain stuck on the first step.

Andragogy - The Puzzle The second step in employee engagement is training the organization to accept change and failure as tools for learning, growing, and developing. A toddler learning to walk will fall more than they stay up before they can run. The same is true when initiating employee engagement. Guess what; you are going to fail; can you as an organizational leader accept failing? Are you willing to admit you failed, made a mistake, and publicly acknowledge the blame and consequences? Are you willing to allow others to accept the praise for doing the right thing? Will you as an organizational leader accept change? How you answer these questions also speaks volumes to the employees you are trying to engage. Depending upon how you individually and collectively as a team answer these leadership questions will decide if you fall back to step one or advance to step three.

The third step in organizing employee engagement is total commitment. Are you onboard? Are all the leaders onboard? Being onboard means 100% commitment to the organization dreamed in the operational steps to appreciative inquiry. If not, do not launch an employee engagement program, for it will fail spectacularly! Never forget the cartoons where a character has one foot on a boat leaving the pier and one foot on the dock; they get wet and left behind!

Have FUN!

Semper Gumby Engaging with employees should be fun, it should be an enjoyable experience, and it should bring out the best in you! All because you want to see others engage, grow professionally, learn, develop, and become. Your efforts to teach engagement lead you to learn how to engage better. Seize these learning opportunities, choose to grow, but never forget to have fun. My best tool for engaging with employees, dad jokes! Really, really, really, bad dad jokes! For example, when Forrest Gump came to Amazon, what was his computer password?

1F@rr3st1

When you get that joke, laugh; but wait for others to get it as well! Employee engagement is fun, exciting, and can be the best job you ever had as a professional. Just believe in yourself, believe in and invest the time in appreciative inquiry, organize yourself and your business, and always reflectively listen. Never Give Up!

© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the images displayed.

NO MORE BS: Assimilation: A Plea to All Immigrants and Americans!

America continues to open its doors to a large group of new immigrants from countries worldwide, but especially from war-torn and ravaged lands. Welcome; I am glad you are here! A Mayor of London previously came to America and derided, denigrated, and demeaned America for asking immigrants to assimilate. Yes, America will ask you to assimilate; yes, this request includes those legal and illegal immigrants; yes, assimilation is hard, but the effort is worth it.

What is Assimilation?

Assimilation is only taking the best of your old culture, ideals, values, and beliefs and adding them to the best America has to offer. America is not a perfect country; we ask for your help to improve our country by adding the best of your experiences to our best experiences and building America into a greater nation. Why does America ask you to assimilate, even though it is hard; the answer lies in the principles of unity, responsibility, and achieving the “American Dream.”

What is the “American Dream?”

The “American Dream” is to realize freedom, all the benefits of liberty, shouldering all the responsibilities of freedom, and achieving these freedoms through work, education, and self-discovery. Many Americans need to be reminded that the “American Dream” has nothing to do with acquiring stuff. The “American Dream” has nothing to do with spending money, although great freedoms are found in earning money and spending that money according to your desires. The “American Dream” has nothing to do with purchasing a home, even though owning property is a cherished freedom. The “American Dream” is realizing freedom in all its glory and all of its reality.

The “American Dream” means failure, struggle, hard work, loss, gain, understanding value, and so much more. The “American Dream” has tragedy and heartache, misery, and the ultimate joy of achievement. Some of the hardest struggles in understanding the “American Dream” are found in sending loved ones marching to war and not seeing those same loved ones marching back home, and it is the “American Dream.” Understanding and embracing freedom, to see the best and worst of humanity and realize that freedom through a constitutional republic is still the best form of government available, even through all the imperfections. The “American Dream” means unifying around a single standard.

What is the single standard to rally around?

The US Constitution and the American Flag are the standards to rally around. Does rallying around this standard mean suddenly easy street, riches, and smooth sailing; absolutely not! Rallying around this standard means unifying, dropping the labels, the hyphenations, the separations, and realizing that we are better together than we are separate. Again, the “American Dream” is all about understanding freedom in all its glory, majesty, and terribleness.

The principles of unity are many, but also very few. Unity is all about choice; having a choice is all about freedom. Freedom is all about shouldering the consequences of making choices to become more unified or less unified; simple and complex, easy and difficult. Unity is not a paradox; unity is a learned principle. Consider the young child. Being a child is challenging, learning a language, culture, basic education standards, and growing. The same is true for immigrants. Many come here and are overwhelmed. Like children, simply asking for help becomes a great challenge, and many times that challenge is because immigrants do not realize that support is available and merely requires asking for help. Hence, the responsibility is all on you, not everyone else; this means the consequences for asking or not asking are also all on you; this is freedom.

The principles of unity are found in a common language and based upon the “Rule of Law.” America is the only country on earth where you can keep your tongue, and the national language, American English, can be a second or non-primary language. Yet, the choice to learn American English has consequences, and those consequences come with a cost. Learning American English is hard, requires work, and will not make sense until time and experience are added to learning. Not learning American English is harder and restricts freedoms: the ability to enjoy all America has to offer and forces you to forever remain outside America’s embrace.

Like language, the “Rule of Law” has consequences that allow more freedom or constricts freedom, all based upon your individual choices and how you evaluate the consequences. For example, break the law in coming to America, and you are not welcome even though many politicians will say differently to abuse and use you. Come to America legally, and you are expected to assimilate to become a citizen. Come here temporarily, as, on a visa, we will expect you to adhere to the “Rule of Law” and eventually return to your original country. Fail to return to your original homeland, and you are here illegally, which has consequences.

The principles of unity include understanding, learning, and choosing to plot your own path. No one is going to run your life for you. Choosing to run your own life requires learning, understanding value, and shouldering the consequences of good or ill choices. In America, you can choose to be homeless, and this is perfectly acceptable. You can choose to chase money; acquiring great riches is possible and completely acceptable in America. Acquire those funds legally, and America rewards them greatly. Acquire those funds illegally, and eventually, American Justice will prevail, and those funds will be lost in a very public trial. Again, we see unity combined with choices, leading to coming together under the same standard and enjoying positive consequences or refusing to come together under the standard and enjoying negative consequences.

The principles of responsibility go hand in hand with the principles of unity—many of the principles of unity overlap with responsibility principles. For example, fail to rally under the US Constitution’s standard, break the law, and watch how quickly the consequence leads to being forced to shoulder the responsibility to yield to unify affects you personally with the full weight and scorn of the American people. Do illegal actions, and you may sometimes not get caught and punished. Eventually, all of society will know how deplorable you are, and justice gets served in myriad different ways.

Consider dishonest politicians. Sometimes they do not get caught and exposed to the harsh reality of the American justice system. Still, they lose all the respect of voters, lose their title, and remain outcasts and pariahs in American society through the media retelling their stories, through a loss of income, and American society continually chastising them for their misdeeds. American culture can be very harsh for those choosing not to assimilate because the refusal to assimilate means a refusal to unify under a single standard, which requires everyone to do their part to make America better.

Making America better is not a job that can be neglected, evaded, shirked, forgotten, ignored, or refused. America is all about working together. Work requires sacrifice, learning, and correctly using freedoms to achieve more freedoms. Working together requires a common language; the common language signifies a common bond amongst those striving to achieve freedoms as a symbol of desiring more freedoms. Please, take the best you have, add it to the best America offers, and assimilate into America. Unify with us in a beautiful patchwork quilt of diversity and togetherness.

Diversity should never be sacrificed for unity, and unity must never be sacrificed for diversity and individuality. It takes both diversity and unity to make America. It requires sacrifice and responsibility to make America. It requires a willing mind and open heart to achieve freedom and understand that more freedom is possible with assimilation than without assimilation. The choice is yours, and the consequences are yours, choose carefully.

© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the images displayed.

NO MORE BS: President Abraham Lincoln on Welfare

The following remains a critical point regarding the government.

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” – President Thomas Jefferson

Do we understand the principle President Jefferson is trying to convey? Government actions can only injure. Governments cannot build, cannot pick winners and losers, and cannot improve the human experience. Governmental activities, taxes, fees, licenses, regulations, etc., are all designed to injure those governed. Thus, the need for smaller governments to reduce the potential for injury among the citizenries.

“If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. – Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854.” – Abraham Lincoln

Taking President Jefferson’s principle and President Lincoln’s conclusion together, we have reached the problem. Since the government can only injure and forfeited trust and confidence of the citizens is at stake, we must discuss the principles upon which the Welfare State in America has ballooned. Back in the late 1980s and through the 1990s, a common theme was found among politicians; there must be a work mandate for receiving government largesse through the Welfare Program. Unfortunately, the work mandate was never fully adopted by all the states, and the fundamental principles that built the Welfare State were never addressed.

“You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.” – President Abraham Lincoln

Yet, this is the exact purpose and goal of the Welfare State, to “permanently do for them what they should be doing for themselves.” As the first fundamental principle in the Welfare State bureaucracy, we do not help citizens become free but chain them to live as slaves.

The second fundamental principle of the Welfare State is to replace god, gods, and God, with the government.

“It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.” – President Abraham Lincoln

By replacing god, gods, and God with the government, people can be taught to live miserably and never leave the Welfare Plantation, which supplies job security to those who administer welfare programs. Hence, the Welfare State plantation is a jobs program for government employees, not a helping hand to lift the person to greater achievement. In the Welfare State, the only person greater than the recipient is the government’s bureaucratic gods.

President Abraham Lincoln makes two more connected points where the government’s largesse through the Welfare State bureaucracy and the American Citizen cross.

“If this country is ever demoralized, it will come from trying to live without work.”

“You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence.”

Work, the effort applied to a task, where time is traded for money, has redemptive qualities, and builds independence and initiative. I have traveled through enough government housing projects to know that by not requiring work, the citizenry is demoralized, the people are miserable, and the result is generations of corrupted drones who will not act independently and do not understand the need for individual initiative. Both of which were stolen from them for a “mess of pottage!”

President Trump was correct. Some people come to America just for Welfare Benefits because living on Welfare in America is better than working back home.

“If any man tells you he loves America, yet hates labor, he is a liar. If any man tells you he trusts America, yet fears labor, he is a fool.”

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

“That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence built.”

In this instance, labor is the work performed where time is traded for money and the experience of performing work. Yet, how often is work denigrated and derided by government employees, even as they show up to work at their jobs; too often. How often is work lamented by Hollywood types who are trying to keep people on the Welfare Plantation; too often. Why; because the second a person learns initiative and gains independence, that person will curse the time wasted living on the Welfare Plantation, be unsettled about politics, find a god, gods, or God different from government, and exercise their rights and freedoms under the US Constitution.

Government Largess 4 In the Welfare State, America’s governmental largesse steals products from growers to give to those who, after the second generation on welfare, no longer understand work or can perform work. America’s Welfare State is the envy of the lazy people the world over. I have been bankrupted through decisions I thought were right at the time but were not good at all. I tried to gain some temporary assistance through the welfare program and was ineligible because I made too much money the year before.

After spending three years rebuilding, I hit a snag. I tried to apply for welfare again, only to be told that I do not qualify for welfare because I receive money for my disability from military service. On both visits, the waiting area was full of non-English speaking single mothers with children. A key point because continuing to have children increases welfare benefits. One must conclude there must be a male person living in the home to help keep making welfare payments go higher. Yet, every application has no spouse and no male person residing in residence.

Government Largess 2 Hence, welfare leads to promiscuity, moral degradation, and lying. As an operations manager, I had several hard-working people who hired on as day laborers; I asked them if they wanted to come on full time, and was refused because if these hard workers got a full-time position, their girlfriends’ welfare would be cut. I was invited into these workers’ homes; their parents owned the home, three younger couples live in the house and the combined children. Grandma gets welfare for latchkey kids; each mother receives welfare rent assistance, food assistance, clothing assistance, school assistance for themselves and their children, and WIC. The amount of assistance for the same kids is received by four different people living in the same home. The grandmother said she was trained on obtaining maximum assistance for welfare and has taught her friends and family how to milk the welfare system.

An isolated incident; not quite. I have seen versions of this behavior practiced in a number of states, in multiple families, and every time it breaks my heart to see all this potential chained to the Welfare Plantation, but don’t forget the fraud.

President Abraham Lincoln makes two more critical points for consideration.

“You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.”

Yet, this is precisely what happens when government vilifies the wage payer to obtain votes. Look to any election, and you will see rhetoric that vilifies wage payers, but even with all the vitriolic messaging, the wage earner never is raised up. Remember the $15.00 minimum wage media frenzy, how many states who adopted the $15.00 minimum wage have the same or better employment; none! Because at the heart of the minimum wage is a government injuring wage payers and interfering with the market.

“You cannot have the right to do what is wrong!”

If ever there was a need for a motto to be chiseled in the stones of every government-run housing development, this is the motto! The Welfare State breeds dependence, which opens doors for time on a person’s hands. Time on a person’s hands, who is already dissatisfied, depressed, and disillusioned, equates to violence, riots, looting, crime, drug and alcohol use and abuse, and worse. All because a government allowed the “right” to commit crimes!

Where did the Welfare State begin?

The Summum Bonum of the roots of Welfare in the United States lies: in the following also from President Abraham Lincoln:

“The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation is the philosophy of government in the next.”

Why are the professors in college so important; because what they teach today becomes the people’s actions tomorrow. Therein lies the problem; too many professors know this and continue to preach, teach, and expound upon principles anathema to America’s health, growth, and future. The colleges get rich on government largesse, turning out the future, full of righteous indignation and no common sense. Who then proceed to influence government policy, which is emotionally satisfying but ruinous and nonsensical.

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God cannot retain it.” – President Abraham Lincoln

The professor teaching lies does not deserve the students’ admiration, the pay from the college, or the respect of position.

President Abraham Lincoln also provided the solution to the Welfare State:

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”

In the current state, America is in, finding the “real facts” is made difficult because of the media, Big Tech, and Hollywood’s complicity and collaboration. Yet, the truth remains, and the seekers for truth will find absolute truth. America cannot continue to have the current Welfare State, nor can America long survive having citizens and immigrants, including illegal immigrants, draining the Welfare State, vilifying the wage payers, and causing destruction at the slightest whim or fancy. Work is an eternal principle that must be re-enthroned as the method and means of qualifying for government assistance.

Government Largess Better still, return the powers of helping people to religions and non-profit organizations. Thus, releasing the government from stealing from farmers, illegally and immorally regulating prices, and interfering with the market as injuries to the productive class of citizens to benefit the few who refuse to work.

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