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Saturday, September 30, 2017

Leadership Litmus Test---To Incite or Inspire?

Poet and sculptor do the work   
Nor let the modish painter shirk   
What his great forefathers did,   
Bring the soul of man to God,   
Make him fill the cradles right.

Under Ben Bulben
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS


Please view video at this point (link below)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fhnkihp6v8ez31q/Poetry%20in%20gov.mp4?dl=0

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My father exercised three aspects of leadership: goodwill (love), empathy, and power under control (humility). Naturally as a Methodist minister he sought to encourage and inspire from the pulpit and occasionally during everyday discourse. This is something I think that most expect from their religious leaders. But of course, this need not be the case. We are all-too-familiar with the fact that religion can breed fanaticism that incites the most dangerous and inflammatory human emotions. 

As for religion, also for politics.  While of necessity a great deal of a government official's time is consumed by narrative of facts and what can be called rational prosaic commentary, it is also undeniably true that a government leader need also address the hearts, mentality, and emotions of citizens for these elements of human nature form an intractable part of life (embodied rhetoric).

Today may we seek to embrace enlightened prose and authentic poetry and eschew rank diatribe and destructive doggerel.

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