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"We Must Break the Sticks, One-by-One"
By Ron Ewart, President
National Association of Rural Landowners
There
is a fairly well-known story about a father with three sons.
The father is reaching a point in his life where he wants to pass on
his successful business to one of his sons. In many cultures,
the first born would get the job. But the father wanted to
make sure that the business that he sweat blood and tears and slaved
over for years and built up into a thriving enterprise, would survive
his replacement. So the father devised a simple little test
for each one of his sons to take, separately, without the other two
sons being present.
He
wrapped a bundle of kindling with a stout string to hold the bundle
together. He then presented the bound bundle to the first son
and told the son to break it. No matter how hard the
first son tried, he could not break the bundle. The
father then gave the bundle to his second son and
asked that son to do the same, break the bundle. Again, the
results were the same. The second son could not break the
bundle either. So finally, feeling a little disappointed with
his first two sons, the father gave the bundle to the
third son and said break the bundle. The third son
contemplated the bundle for a short while and then with great
deliberation, took out a knife, cut the string and then commenced to
break each kindling stick, one at a time. The third son got
the job.
My
father told of a similar story as young pattern maker during World
War II. Because of his skill as a pattern maker, he was exempt
from military service, but was ordered to the Bremerton Shipyards in
Bremerton, Washington to build the patterns for large valves,
fittings and propellers for war ships. He told me that when he
was presented with a blueprint for his first job, it was so complex
that he could not make heads nor tales out of it. As he sat
there with his chin resting on his two palms, he was feeling
helpless and lost in an impenetrable fog. He was stumped. Just
then an old-timer walked by and saw that my father was in a serious
dilemma and made a simple suggestion. He told my father
to look for something in the blueprint that he recognized
and then build on that. Sure enough, a piece of the
blueprint sprung out at him as something he knew and my father
went on to complete the pattern. It was a life-changing moment
for him and he passed that wisdom on to me.
So
much of life presents itself as a bundle of sticks, or a complicated
blueprint. If we try to take on the whole bundle of sticks, or
understand the entire blueprint all at once, we find the task too
daunting, get frustrated and turn away or give up. Thus
it is with our struggle to preserve, protect and defend freedom
and liberty. The bundle we must break appears to be
overwhelming, unless we take the bundle apart and start fixing (breaking)
the "sticks", one-by-one. Even armed with this
knowledge so many of us lament, "but there are so
many 'sticks', how can we possibly break them all?"
And indeed there are many "sticks". But if we don't
start breaking the "sticks" right now, more will be added
to the bundle until no matter how we try to take the bundle apart,
no matter how many "sticks" we break, many more will be
added to the bundle and the law of diminishing returns becomes
too powerful to overcome.
In
our quest to return to freedom and liberty, each "stick"
we break in the bundle must be a win for freedom and liberty, no
matter how small. It must be a win that can survive in spite
of all the other "sticks" that would tend to tear down
that win. With one win (a broken stick) it will give
us the motive and the incentive to break another stick and then
another and another.
To
give us any incentive at all to break the bundle, we must pick
a "stick" that we can win and pounce on it with all the
combined force of freedom lovers everywhere. We must break
that "stick" once and for all. That first win will
provide the incentive to take on the next "stick" and then
the next and then the next after that.
In
each community, each county, each state and finally all of America,
we must find the "sticks" we can break that will give us a
win, starting with one of the more simpler "sticks".
Start with a restriction, a law, or an ordinance and work
collectively to break (repeal) it. They (the
government) won't be expecting you to fight and we have found
that government backs up when vehemently confronted. Staircase
off of that "win" to the next restriction, law or
ordinance and repeal it. The strategy here is that people will
join winners but they will shy away from, or ignore
losers. Once engaged, you will find that freedom is infectuous.
If
you want to win, you have to want to win with every fiber of your
body because the task is hard, dirty, sweaty and tedious and only a
full press fight will secure a win. If you are comfortable and
do not care about freedom and liberty, then there is no incentive or
motivation to get your lips bloody in order to secure that win.
In
the end, you either choose freedom and are willing to defend it, at
whatever cost, or you choose enslavement. Hopefully, there
will be enough of us that will choose freedom. But time
is of the essence and "sticks" are continuously being
added to the bundle while we sleep.
©
Copyright June 11, 2007 - All Rights Reserved
Ron Ewart, President
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF RURAL LANDOWNERS
P. O. Box 1031, Issaquah, WA 98027
425 222-4742 or 1 800 682-7848
(Fax No. 425 222-4743)
Website: www.narlo.org
(Permission to post from the author.)