093: The democracy of football
Democracy is a system for determining how people will govern themselves. How democracy plays out is determined by the RULES that define it.
078: Is the United States a Democracy?
I learned in civic class, way back in junior high school, that the United States of America is organized as a federal republic. No problem. That's one of several ways a democracy can organize. The two ideas of democracy and federal republic seemed fully...
071: On becoming corrupted
Corruption is insidious. It can happen to the best of people if they are not vigilant. Politics and corruption are familiar companions when special interests want to secure favorable legislation that might not be in the best intetrest of the general...
068: Do you have itching ears?
Everyone is susceptible to being scammed. Even the smartest people can be fooled. President Lincoln is attributed with saying, "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the...
067: Disruptions provoke renewal
The history of the world is a history of disruptions. We human beings like predictability that gives us a sense of safety. We like to know what's going to happen next so we can prepare for it. Disruptions throw us into a state of panic as chaos swirls...
065: Disruption, chaos, and creativity
Chaos theory holds that systems tend to entropy toward an eventual state of unpredictability and chaos from which new patterns emerge. However, there is no way to predict what those new patterns will be. The possibilities are endless. The status quo is an...
064: Joy to your world
The news has always been filled with stories of conflict and doom. We get a false impression that danger lurks around every corner, that bad things are common, and that we don't have much hope for the future. In this episode of the Spirit of Leading...
062: Ethics, morality, and the law
Who's to say what's right or wrong? Is that the role of religion, the legal justice system, theologians, philosophers? Who? Culture is just the sum total of the behaviors we will allow. What will we allow, and who decides? With lawyers arguing on and on...
060: The truth about horizons and heavens
Relative truth is what we experience as truth as we observe it. Each of us has a vantage point (perspective). Imagine standing still near a railroad track. A speeding train approaches and starts to sound its horn. At first, the pitch of the horn is low,...
059: Practical idealism
Are idealists merely dreamers, hoping for pie in the sky? Do hardnosed pragmatists always have to win out with their winner-take-all attitude? In this installment of The Spirit of Leading podcast I take the position that idealism has a very practical...
058: the Language of Leadership
Given the current political climate in the United States, political discourse, and the way politicians speak and act, has risen to the front of public consciousness. We seem to be at a loss of how to respond to this language of belittlement, alternate...
056: A nation of laws. Is it enough?
We pride ourselves in the United States as being a nation of laws. We are not an authoritarian state run by a strong man or a dictator. We do not settle our differences at the end of our fists or by shooting it out in the streets between waring factions....