An Invitation to Build Heritage

Heritage is a gift or blessing we receive, build upon, and then pass down to others. What are you doing and learning that you can pass on to others? Where are you in the Patriotic Sequence as a pilgrim, pioneer, hero, or patriot? Repeating this sequence using great ideas you discover as you go is how you will create purpose, happiness, and ultimately heritage and legacy. 

This last week we celebrated the life of my mother who is turning 90 years old. Her own mother was the first female in her family to gain a college degree in their county in 1918. So, inspired by that example, my mother decided to go back to school to finish the college degree that she set aside when she got married 70 years ago! She is pioneering a new future for herself at 90! 

But why wait until you are 90? You can start now! Reading great books and discovering great ideas will bring you through the Patriotic Sequence continually over the course of a lifetime.

Education is Freedom

When you stop learning and creating new paths for your life you will atrophy and die! I hope you have enjoyed the Patriotic Sequence as inspired by “America the Beautiful” and Katharine Lee Bates. Remember: education is freedom. You will only be as free as what you know. One of my modern mentors and heroes, Ronald Reagan, put it this way:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

Ronald Reagan

I want my children and grandchildren to know that Linda and I have done all we could to pass on this gift of education and learning to them. G.K. Chesterton is credited to have said, “Now in history there is no Revolution that is not a Restoration… All the men in history who have really done anything with the future have had their eyes fixed upon the past.”

And as such this begins with you and me because we can only control ourselves. I have never felt more alive or energized than when I look into the eyes of the next generation of Americans. I see it in their faces: Our best days are yet to come!

What Have You Left Undone?

No doubt there are challenges ahead for our nation and world, great and daunting challenges that will demand true servant leaders who are up to the task. I know the rising generation is up to the challenge. As you pioneer reading and the discovery of great ideas, it is likely your posterity will inherit a love of reading and will seek the right kind of education. 

In conclusion, I would ask: What have you left undiscovered or undone? What is yours to do? We are never too old to create and build. What will be your gift to family, community, or America? I am convinced that nothing—absolutely nothing—will do more to improve the world in our day and the decades ahead than restoring America’s heritage through education. Nothing else will make as much impact for freedom or spread as much influence for good. 

Unfortunately, the history of freedom is primarily the history of something that was not. “Liberty is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization beset in every age by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man’s craving for power, and the poor man’s craving for food.” The story of freedom, then, is “the deliverance of man from the power of man.”  (Lord Acton, “The History of Freedom in Antiquity”)

The right kind of education is a legacy, and a gift that will keep giving forever. My objective in both building John Adams Academy and creating Revolution in Education has always been to invite you and those who want to travel with you on this journey to exit “the cave,” liberate the captive, and build a life that will help youth find and apply the greatness that is inside them—if that is part of your mission. The ministry to learn and serve is so worth it! The next generation is yearning for us to teach them how to stay free. They deserve an education in human excellence. Begin now. Let’s not let them down.