by Garry Spotts

Created on: July 21, 2009   Last Updated: July 23, 2009

The Crisis of Leadership is Rooted in a Crisis among Followers!

The real failure of leadership in our generation as in previous generations is the failure of followers. One of my favorite movies is a Neo-Futuristic Action/Drama plucked from the pages of a graphic novel, "V" for Vendetta. The main character, simply named "V" utters one of the most profound lines in movie history as he says, speaking to his female counterpart, "Evie";

"People should not fear their government; the government should fear the people!"

As is the case with many movies, it wants to set you to thinking. So I did think, most especially about the above quote. What is the function of government, when you distill it down to its most potent essence?

Ayn Rand writes in 'For The New Intellectual', "The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.

But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man's deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his."

Thomas Paine said, "Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; 'tis dearness only that gives everything its value... " (The Political Works of Thomas Paine pg 55)

The real crisis in leadership is that the followers feel that their freedom was won too cheaply. Those coming of age today have no abiding sense of the price

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