The presidential candidate needed a domestic agenda. Education is a popular political cornerstone, especially since nobody knows what it does! Nobody knows why it does it! Nobody knows how it does it!

So his political “spinners” designed an educational “scam” directed toward marginalized minority children:

1. “Dummy-down” a test of achievement so a high percent of kids can pass it.
2. “Drop-out” those who do not pass it so that it looks like an even higher percentage have passed it.
3. “Boot-strap” the test by tying it to “The Accountability Movement” and labeling it The Standards of Learning or SOL.
4. “Gussy-up” the SOL by attaching it to the most elevated of ethical missions, “No Child Left Behind.”
5. “Bait-and-Switch” the SOL by decentralizing accountability to each of the 50 states.

Voilé! Just like that, the “spinners” had thrown out a “sky-hook” and produced the centerpiece of the candidate’s domestic agenda.

What’s wrong with that, you ask?! Everything! In the vernacular of the Spinners, “This dog don’t hunt!”

For one thing, “show-off” test-makers design tests beyond their own capacities (it’s “The Pauper Principle” to go along with “The Peter Principle”).

For another thing, those fraudulent things which are dedicated to children in need are bound to accomplish the opposite effect indeed! They did! The children fell further behind!

On the one side of The Thinking Wars are those people who lead us retrogressively to the fast-disappearing Conditioned Responding standards of an earlier time. Led by politicians, these “Luddites” would have us achieve “Standards of Learning” defined in terms of requirements of The Industrial Age through which we passed 40 years ago.

On the other side of The Thinking Wars are those people who understand that in America today, nearly 80% of the jobs already require thinking skills. These people see the requirements for thinking escalating from Discriminative Learning Systems to Generative Thinking Systems. This is because the movement of globalization “farms out” production jobs requiring Conditioned Responding to “cheaper” employees from less educated cultures in more attenuated economies. Moreover, increasingly, globalization is also yielding service jobs requiring Discriminative Learning, including delivering services as well as producing products, to learning cultures and commoditizing economies.

Here is what we know so far:

• America’s leadership has generated the greatest world growth in prosperity in the history of the world.
• The Freedom Functions have accounted for American leadership in generating prosperity.
• America has retrogressed in her level of Freedom Functions in the first part of the 21st century.

The critical question is this: how can America regain its pre-potent leadership role in generating world socioeconomic growth?

The Freedom Models

American leaders must retrace their own paths in generating prosperity:

• The Freedom Functions were part of the evolution of American civilization focusing on its dominance in Free Enterprise.
• The New Capital Components were part of the empowering evolution of The Freedom Functions.

In other words, New Capital Development or NCD made The Freedom Functions possible.

In Figure 5, we may view the operations of the NCD components and Freedom Functions in The Freedom Matrix. As may be noted, the NCD components directly empower The Freedom Functions. This means that the higher the levels of functioning on NCD, the higher will be our functioning on The Freedom Functions.

Figure 5. The Freedom Matrix

In Figure 6, we may view The Freedom Model which adds the third dimension of the enabling Human Processing Systems. In other words, the processes enable the NCD Components to empower The Freedom Functions. Once again, the higher the Human Processes, the higher will be the empowering NCD Components.

Figure 6. The Freedom Model

In summary, the Recovery Architecture emphasizes the elevation of all dimensions of The Freedom Model:

• Human Processing
• NCD Components
• Freedom Functions

America must rededicate herself to the dimensions that made her great. The dimensions are operational and replicable. We did it before and we can do it again! And again!

In 2007, a mere five years later, America had dropped from its powerful generative leadership positioning in the marketplace. We may view the levels of NCD Components in Figure 4. As may be noted, the U.S. has dropped on all of these NCD Systems:

• MCD Positioning driven by Commercialized Marketplace Positioning (Level 3.0);
• OCD Alignment driven by Technology Systems (Level 2.0);
• HCD Processing driven by Planning systems (Level 2.0);
• ICD Modeling driven by Operational Systems (Level 2.0);
• mCD Tooling driven by Conditions rather than Standards (Level 4.0).

Figure 4. Levels of NCD Components (2007)

How did American business drop so precipitously on all of these NCD indices? Probabilities indicate that the causes are “over-determined.” Possibilities project that the causes are “under-generated.”

Pre-potent among causes, the governmental sponsorship of Multinational Corporations as our market leaders has undermined Entrepreneurial-Driven Free Enterprise. American corporations have accepted more passive-dependent, “Chain-of-Command” roles in the evolving Command-and-Control Economy. With the dominance of the Multinational Corporations has come an undermining of the risk-taking initiative of the American entrepreneurs. They now experience themselves as “stalked targets” rather than “poised hunters.” With their decline, a general malaise has spread to the performance and spirit of Americans.

In summary, American-born corporations have come to see themselves as sub-contractors of the Multinational Corporations. Committed only to their stockholders, they have taken what the defense gives them.

Indeed, along with the Multinationals, they are “selling out” to the highest totalitarian bidders—without any commitments to the freedoms that bore them.

Financial capital accounts for 15% of Economic Productivity Growth or E.P.G. In this regard, it is interesting to note that our economists have never sought out the other capital ingredients. We did and here is what we found.

The other 85% of E.P.G. is accounted for by human and organizational processing ingredients. Defining capital as “most important,” we have defined these ingredients as “The New Capital Development Components” of Free Enterprise.

In other words, the means to accomplishing The Freedom Functions are The New Capital Development or NCD Components:

• MCD—Marketplace Capital Development or Marketplace Positioning;
• OCD—Organizational Capital Development or Organizational Alignment with MCD Positioning;
• HCD—Human Capital Development or Empowered Human Processing to implement OCD Alignment;
• ICD—Information Capital Development or Information Modeling to implement HCD Processing;
• mCD—Mechanical Capital Development or Mechanical Tooling to implement ICD Modeling.

Together, these Components define the New Capital Development required to achieve and elevate The Freedom Functions.

We may view the levels of NCD Components in Figure 3. As may be noted, the U.S. rates at or near the highest levels of all of these NCD Systems:

• MCD Positioning driven by Generative Marketplace Positioning (Level 5);
• OCD Alignment driven by Marketing Systems (Level 4);
• HCD Processing driven by Inputting Systems (Level 4);
• ICD Modeling driven by Vectorial Systems (Level 4);
• mCD Tooling driven by Operational Systems (Level 5).

Figure 3. Levels of NCD Components (2000)

Together, these NCD Components provided the U.S. with the New Capital it requires to achieve and elevate The Freedom Functions. The robustness of NCD Components was an accelerating variable for generative leadership in the 21st century.

Once again, over the last century, the U.S. defined the emerging requirements of The Global Marketplace:

• Free Cultural Relating,
• Free Enterprise Economics,
• Free Participative Governance.

These are the requirements for entry into the 21st century marketplace. They also define the American Mission. Currently, the same subject-matter experts gave very different ratings in 2007.

Cultural Relating

In 2007, the U.S. is rated at level 2.0 on Cultural Relating, reflecting her growing suspicion and hostility following the 9/11 terrorism attacks and her inability to translate “spy in the sky” intelligence data into meaningful “feet on the ground” information upon which she could base strong and operational security systems. In the absence of operational thinking systems, America writhed in agony and engaged in random and non-responsive and inappropriate initiatives emphasizing cultural competitiveness and the resultant cultural dependency reactions.

Figure 2. Levels of The Freedom Functions (2007)

Economic Enterprise

In 2007, the U.S. is rated at level 2.0 on Free Enterprise (see again Figure 2), reflecting its shift in government sponsorship from a vision of an entrepreneurial-driven free enterprise system to Government-Reinforced Multi-National Corporations which by their very nature conduct “Command-and-Control Economics.” In spite of their origins and support from American Freedom Functions, the Totalitarian Multi-Nationals relate competitively and attempt to reduce their markets to dependency upon “Command-and-Control Strategies.”

Participative Governance

In 2007, the U.S. is rated at level 2.0 on Participative Governance (see again Figure 2), reflecting the increasing totalitarianism of the party in power and the reactive authoritarianism of the opposition: rather than being consulted as the constitutionally-mandated policy-makers, We the People, the citizens, feel imposed upon by the authoritarian inquisition: Either _______ or _______!

“Either you are a patriot or you’re disloyal!”

Summary and Transition

In summary, it is clear that America had indeed taken a “U-Turn on The Freedom Road.” America receives low ratings on Cultural Relating, Free Enterprise, and Participative Governance. The newly-minted Government-Reinforced Industrial-Military Complex or “GRIM Complex” has placed America’s citizenry as well as American destiny at risk.

• Competitive Cultural Relating places Peace at risk—internally within the nation and externally in the Global Village!
• Command-and-Control Economics places Prosperity at risk—internally within the nation and externally in the Global Marketplace!
• Authoritarian and Totalitarian Governance places Participation at risk—internally within the nation and externally in the Global Courts of Law and Justice!

In transition, Peace, Prosperity, Participation are the historically-evolved American visions of American destiny.

Over the last century, the U.S. defined the emerging requirements of The Global Marketplace:

• Free Cultural Relating,
• Free Enterprise Economics,
• Free Participative Governance.

These are the requirements for entry into the 21st century marketplace. They also define the American Mission. Historically, this is how the U.S.A. was rated by subject-matter experts in 2000.

Cultural Relating

Simply stated, a nation must relate culturally—within, between and among cultures—in order to join The Global Marketplace. American leaders have always set their goals high on Cultural Relating (See Figure 1). Even transitionally when they retreated to independency or competitiveness, they never surrendered the ideas of collaborative relating. While their definitions of interdependency may have been limited, they were nevertheless striving toward it.

In 2000, the U.S. was rated at level 4.0 on Cultural Relating, reflecting its commitment to collaboration without real motivation for interdependency (perhaps as a function of the conflict of individualism with consensus), except within rare homogeneous cultural groupings.

Figure 1. Levels of The Freedom Functions (2000)

Economic Enterprise

The U.S.A. has been dedicated to Free Enterprise at the highest levels. Succinctly, the U.S. Constitution, protecting private property and, in an amended form, civil and economic liberties, provides a strong foundation for the nation’s free and dynamic economy. In addition, the U.S. has taken the leadership in promoting free trade, not only with neighbors in the Western Hemisphere but with nations around the world. While not yet having realized its mission of Universal Free Enterprise, the U.S. has been the world leader, par excellence.

In 2000, the U.S. was rated at level 5.0 on Free Enterprise, reflecting its aspirations for reciprocal trade at the highest levels (See again Figure 1). Whatever the obstacles, and however they were resolved through Collaborative Processing, there would be no vision of The Global Marketplace without America’s highly initiative leadership; there would be no standards for Prosperity and, thus, for the evolution of the American and World Civilization!

Participative Governance

The U.S. has also been dedicated to Participative Governance at high levels. While its citizens are guaranteed pre-potent policymaking functions by the U.S. Constitution, its representative democracy often migrates into a “role reversal” where citizens serve politicians and bureaucrats. Nowhere has American promotion of democracy been more problematic than in attempts to impose it upon foreign cultures. Participating begins with relating to other’s frames of reference before empowering them to achieve their own unique purposes. That is the true nature of democracy. There is no freedom without empowerment! There is no empowerment without relating!

In 2000, the U.S. was rated at level 3.5 on Participative Governance (See again Figure 1), reflecting the inconsistent nature of its attempts at making representative governance work; stumbling that led precipitously to representative self-aggrandizement; stumbling that yields disastrously to authoritarianism by default.

To sum, in 2000, the U.S. received relatively high ratings on The Freedom Functions:

• Collaborative Relating,
• Free Enterprise Economics,
• Mixed Representative and Authoritarian Governance.

The good news was that, however “ugly” externally, the U.S. continued to relate collaboratively internally and with friends and neighbors. Moreover, the U.S. was convergent externally and internally with its path-finding Free Enterprise Mission. The bad news was protecting a democratic image in an authoritarian manner externally while meaningful participative governance was dissembling internally.

Clearly, continuous growth curves move to incorporate the continuous growing leader (see Figure 5). In so doing, the growth curves increase size as well as variability. The growth curves ask our enduring question: “What is the most productive way to conduct our human journey?”

Figure 5. Continuous Growth Curves Incorporating Exemplary Leaders

The answers are formulated in “The Freedom Dilemma.” Two diametrically-opposed responses. The first response is formulated in sharpest relief by China’s divergent philosophy:

“One Nation—Two Systems!”

Nowhere is this contradiction in terms seen in sharper relief than in Totalitarian China’s superordinate relationship with Hong Kong’s Free Enterprise. The question may be answered by differential future performances:

“Who will influence whom the most?”

Meanwhile, China will continue blithely on its path of embracing Free Enterprise Benefits by “hijacking” the technologies of America’s R & D without the costs of generativity.

The second response is a profound one for America:

“Can America maintain its exemplary generative leadership of Free People
as the source of Free Enterprise?”

To answer this question fully, We the People must consider “The Two World Wars” in which we are now engaged:

• The “War Within” with Multinational Corporations now dominating policy-making with Command-and-Control Economics;
• The “War Without” with China and Russia and other “Control Freaks” whose mentalities are hard-wired to stasis while their soft underbellies are harvesting the benefits of change.

The compounding factor is the alliance between the Internal and External Totalitarian Forces. When the “Enemy Within” becomes America’s “First Column” (not the Fifth), then the “Enemy Without” becomes a monopolistically positioned Totalitarian Adversary.

Indeed, this is a “race-to-the-end”—either the end of generative civilization as we have known it; or the end of the totalitarian restriction that civilization has placed on itself.

• Either The Totalitarian Forces will be empowered to develop intellectual generativity and social responsibility.
• Or The Freedom Forces will suffer the loss of the great traditions of helping and thinking that gave them Generative-Innovative Positioning.

Siccinctly, either we will be led into a Grand New Age of Enlightenment or back to the Redundant Dark Ages with which we are already too familiar.

In transition, there is a “Gathering Tsunami” of socio-economic explosiveness. The burning question is whether it will generate “World Peace through World Trade” which Tom Watson, Sr., promised us—

Or “World Domination through Market Control” which the Multinationals and China guarantee us!

The “Gathering Tsunami” may be a force for “The Ascent to Light”—

Or the waves may be a redintegration of “The Gathering Storms” of the past leading to yet another “Descent Into Darkness!”

The “blindness” of the Totalitarian Position is that it attempts to control the freedom source of all our generativity. It attempts “to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

Falsely based upon the assumption of finite physical resources and the need for continuous conflict to control them, Totalitarianism has repeatedly besotted human history by retarding and, indeed, murdering its own families.

Firmly rooted in the potentially infinite Human Brainpower, Freedom has generated the “breakthroughs” needed to guide its own changeable destiny.

“The Freedom Dilemma” is always the same:

• Can we educate, empower, and release people to take us places where we have never been?
• Or do we indoctrinate, intimidate, and control people to go no further than the shrinking boundaries that we have established?

“The Freedom Course” is the course to which God directed us: For each of us to use our Brainpower as the pre-potent resources in The March of Civilization.

“The Control Course” is dedicated to isolating our powerful neuronal structures from real-life intellectual experiences and attenuating their contributions to The March of Civilization.

“The Freedom Course” creates whole new universes of possibilities.

“The Control Course” produces only repeated conditioning trials to the extinction of our one universe of probabilities.

It is all about Human Brainpower:

• The Tsunami wave is dedicated to generativity!
• The Tsutsumagushi mite is dedicated to hollowing out brainpower—to become brain dead!

Human history will record what we do.

God will judge us!

Quo vadis?

The central tendency in a Free Society becomes mobilized (See Figure 4). The first stage of Freedom-Building may be conceived of as a Focusing Stage. In a sense, the main body of the variance targets the cultures of marginal people. The people observe the success of the marginal peoples’ operations. And if a significant number of its people—perhaps ten to twenty percent—are attracted to the success, they mobilize to incorporate it.

During the second stage of Freedom-Building, the main body of variance begins to Approach the successful marginal people (). The curve begins to be skewed in the direction of the marginal people as the society seeks to incorporate their productive potency.

In the third stage, the society begins to Incorporate the successful marginal people. In the process of being skewed fully in the direction of the marginal people, there is a tendency for the tail in the other, less functional direction to diminish in size. Thus, people at the less functional end of the continuum are mobilized to move toward the main body of variance ().

In the fourth stage, the society begins to Embody the successful marginal people. In a sense, it has mainstreamed the successful attributes and made them the mode rather than the deviation. At the same time, it is eliminating more of the variance from the less functional end of the continuum.

Finally, in the last stage, the society actually seeks to Enhance the attributes of the successful marginal people. It models and, thus, represents what was once deviant. Also, whether inadvertently or not, it sets the stage for the new variations off the now “mainstreamed theme.” Thus, by representing the attributes of the once-marginal person, society creates the conditions for the development of newly marginal people who will serve to move society still further in the direction of effectiveness.

In summary, Freedom-Building produces people who are more variable in a relative sense and more healthy in an absolute sense. A society dominated by such a system is always skewed toward the fully-functioning person. Such a society is always creating variability by its expanding tolerance limits and its evolutionary growth disposition. Such a society is always moving toward effectiveness and, thus, toward health.

Figure 4. The Movement Toward Increasing Variability in Free Societies

Freedom-Building is a Changeability System. Rather than to replace one restricted source of variance with another as in a revolutionary system, it adds variance in an evolutionary manner. It works effectively when there are healthy aspects of the system to be incorporated and these healthy aspects, in turn, evolve in a free society. It grows by minimizing intervention or control and maximizing variance. It maximizes existing sources of variance by adding incrementally without fundamental alterations.

In the beginning, people are in trouble because they have too few responses available to them. Along the way, fewer people are in difficulty because more people have larger repertoires of responses. In the end, such a system has extensive variability among people functioning at high levels of whatever index is employed.

Such a system is consistent with the laws of science and nature. It is organic in terms of utilizing its own resources as the sources of its own power. It is dynamic in terms of evolving constantly in more and more efficacious forms. It conserves energy in minimizing its investment and maximizing its return. It allows evolution to work at a maximum rate in maximizing the contribution of humans to humans.

The key to the development of a relatively more variable and absolutely more healthy society is the variability of fully functioning peoples or exemplars. Fully func-tioning people are, by definition, more variable on certain specialty dimensions than the society in which they exist. (Indeed, Free Individuals are Infinitely More Variable than All Other Totalitarian Societies Summed Together!) It is precisely this variability that makes it attractive for society to move toward fully functioning people to incorporate them. It is also this same variability that distinguishes fully functioning people from other marginal peoples who are dysfunctional but with whom totalitarian societies tend to confuse the fully functioning person.

In turn, the key to the fully functioning peoples’ variability is their marginality—the ability to see things from a unique perspective; to see the subtle nuances of old dimensions; to develop the full richness of new dimensions. It is this marginality that enables the fully functioning people to actualize their potential and to give society the opportunity to actualize its potential.

For example, all of the movements with “Human” adjectives began in America with approaches to successful, marginal peoples: Human Relations, Human Resources, Human Potential, Human Capital, Human Rights, Human Sciences, Human

Technology. This is seen in the Great American Civil Rights Movement that moved from Physical Slavery and Intellectual Servitude through Ethical and Legal Mandates toward Fully-Functional, if not Morally Operational, Human Rights. It has left the “segregationists” behind to expire at the tail of the moving curve only to encounter the “elitists” and the “classists” and others. So what else is new? The movement continues toward the healthy and related people.

Another illustration is Globalization. As the nations move from Dependency and Reactivity through Independence and Competition, to Interdependence and Reciprocity, they encounter the same experiences: Movement to incorporate the marginal peoples or the high performers. Healthy civilizations require this movement, whatever the protestations of “The Luddites.”

In conclusion, the healthiest societies are moving in the direction of the Actualizers— the once marginal peoples whom other societies sought to eliminate. Actualizers are the sources of creativity and productivity whom constructive societies seek to cultivate. Such societies are moving in the direction of their own Self-Actualization. Such a society is within our grasp.

We can understand the evolution of cultures best with a comparison of the curves of Totalitarianism and Freedom:

The central tendency in an Unfree Society becomes institutionalized (See Figure 3). The first stage in Totalitarianism may be conceived of as an Ignorance Stage, and ignorance is always intentional. As can be seen, the logical goal of facilitating peoples’ or culture’s development toward a higher level of functioning is ignored. This situation occurs when those in the mainstream treat all marginal people () the same: high functioning people just as well as low functioning people. It is just too much work for the comfortable people to become productive people. At most, they need energy to adapt to their circumstances; they are caught up in an incentive system that demands very little and sometimes even rewards them; they care not about the people around them; they get away with vague concepts of efforts at work; they are concerned only with being critics, diagnosing others from an external frame of reference. They seek to institutionalize these characteristics and make people over in their images. That way they will always be comfortable and never be vulnerable—even as they die, physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually.

Figure 3. The Movement Toward Restricted
Variability of Unfree People

What happens during the second stage of Totalitarianism, a Stage of Restriction, is that the variability becomes more and more restricted. This is accomplished by channeling the extremes on any index into the mainstream. Thus, the highs and the lows become fewer and less prominent and the central tendency is accentuated.

This restrictiveness is carried to an extreme of “Leptokurticism” during the third Stage of Elimination. During this stage, those marginal peoples—high and low—who were not “mainstreamed” for one reason or another are eliminated. Thus, the central tendency is further exaggerated as the peoples come increasingly to look like each other.

The fourth stage may be conceived of as a Destructive Stage, although the process has been destructive throughout. Finally, all variance is destroyed and encompassed within one single dimension on any one index. We see this most clearly in advanced stages of all authoritarian societies. The people are made over in the image of their leader or council of leaders.

The fifth Stage of Institutionalization may also be considered the Disappearing Stage. Since all peoples appear as one, they can be represented as one. Indeed, the one can be reduced until it has disappeared. The culmination of the institutionalization of humankind is the disappearance of humanity. We see this most clearly in the advanced stages of all totalitarian societies. The people are made over in the image or their leader or leaders. And their leaders are one-dimensional people with one principle of operating—either you are controlled or you are eliminated. In the end, such a system self-destructs.

Even when such a system is overthrown, as in a revolution from within or without, the stages are usually repeated: One source of restrictive variance is replaced with another. Surely, there is utility in doing this when a system is diseased. However, such a program kills or cures. It does not grow, because it maximizes intervention and control and abandons or eliminates sources of variance.

The fundamental assumption of The Probabilities Sciences that dominate our civilization in all areas is this: that all phenomena are normally distributed. Normal curves are “Bell-Shaped” curves (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Normal Curve

As may be noted, the curve rises from minimal frequencies to converge in great numbers at maximal frequencies, and then attenuates again to minimal frequencies of distribution. Some measure (mean, medium, mode) of the maximal frequency of distribution is considered the central tendency of the curve. All phenomena are represented by their degree of deviation from the central tendency.

This assumption has been of great service to civilization. The “tolerances” of tools and machines are calculated by their deviation scores. The “quality control” of products and services is dictated by deviation scores. Indeed, “functionality” of people is estimated by some measure of their deviation from the central tendency.

For example, the “Standards of Learning” of “No Child Left Behind” legislation are calculated by the individual child’s deviation scores from some central tendency of the entire population. Sadly, when teachers begin the school term in the Fall, they observe their students in order to estimate where they will fall on the curve. James Brown said it best in his music:

“If you’re white, you’re all right.
“If you’re black, step back.
“If you’re brown, hang around.”

Unfortunately, the assumptions of normal distribution are false and the implications of their applications may be disastrous.

Nothing in God’s natural universes was created to distribute normally!

Normalcy dictates Monoliths!