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Get to Work: It’s a Dirty Job Being We the People

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You may know the name Mike Rowe from his apprentice work on his television show “Dirty Jobs” or his witty, on the money guest appearances, on The Tucker Carlson Show.


Mike Rowe is a busy guy. His foundation, the Mike Rowe Works Foundation, is “a public charity that rewards people with a passion to get trained for skilled jobs that actually exist. As CEO of the Foundation, Mike Rowe spends a significant amount of time speaking about the country’s dysfunctional relationship with work, highlighting the widening skills gap, and challenging the persistent belief that a four-year degree is automatically the best path for the most people.”

According to Mr. Rowe each year he has a harder and harder time finding qualified recipients willing to sign on to a lifetime commitment to “work”.

Mr. Rowe also has a podcast called “The Way I Heard It.” Episode 104 is titled, The One Percenters. You may be surprised about the one percenters in his story. Spoiler Alert: It was America’s founders. They were a successful group that had had enough of big government in their lives.

Yesterday, there was an excellent op-ed in the WSJ about the importance of “We the People” in our democracy. “Citizenship is not a spectator sport” writes Don Willett. “’The only title in our democracy superior to that of president is the title of citizen,’ said Justice Louis Brandeis. Our Constitution is an exquisite charter of freedom, but freedom requires patriots, not passersby. It demands fierce defenders, not feeble bystanders,” writes Willett.

“Work” and “citizenry” go hand in hand. They are the two pillars of “America’s Forgotten Man” for whom the late great President Calvin Coolidge governed. Unfortunately, today, when many believe Judge Judy is a member of the Supreme Court, you and I know there’s a problem with “We the People.”

There’s a great divide in this country between working citizens and those with their hands out asking them, “What have you done for me lately?”

Here’s more from Don Willett’s piece:

The Framers were not tinkerers. They upended things. The Constitution inaugurated a revolutionary design. Madisonian architecture infused with Newtonian genius: three separate, coequal branches locked in synchronous orbit by competing interests. Ambition counteracting ambition.

But the truly extraordinary element? These three rival branches derived their power from three unrivaled words, inscribed on the page in supersize script: “We the People.” In an era of kings and sultans, nothing was more radical than the idea that ultimate sovereignty resides not in the government but in the governed.

Popular sovereignty isn’t just a theory; it is a duty. “Wherever the people are well informed,” Thomas Jefferson wrote from Paris in 1789, “they can be trusted with their own government.” This prognosis underscored what the Constitution presupposes: An enlightened citizenry is indispensable to American self-government.

Fast-forward more than two centuries, and We the People’s civic illiteracy is staggering.

Seventy-one percent of Americans can’t identify the Constitution as the supreme law of the land, according to a 2012 Xavier University study.

Ten percent of U.S. college graduates think Judith Sheindlin (a k a “Judge Judy”) sits on the Supreme Court, according to a 2015 American Council of Trustees and Alumni poll.

Read more here.

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E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

E.J. Smith is Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. His focus at all times is on preparing clients and readers for “Times Like These.” E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zildjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart (RIP) of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com To sign up for my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter, click here.