What Was The Three-Fifths Compromise?

There are few things that are less understood than the 3/5th of a human that our Founders put into our Constitution. There are few things that have been so misrepresented to Americans throughout history. Why did they do this? Was it purely a racist issue? Did they believe that you couldn't count slaves as full human beings because of their race? Of course some did, but is that why it was in the Constitution? No.

The arguments over how to count representatives to the Congressional House Districts seemed to be at the top of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention agenda that hot summer of 1787. The disagreements often only masked an even more important but unspoken, difference over slavery between members from the Northern and the Southern sections. Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas had enough population, at the time, to block antislavery legislation under the new proposed House of Representatives structure, but already ominous trends seemed to put the South on a path of permanent minority status. First the precedents being set that summer in the Northwest Ordinance suggested that slavery would never cross the Ohio River. More important, the competition posed by slave labor to free labor, combined with the large plantations guaranteed by the custom of the eldest son inheriting the land pushing the younger sons out to find their own way, made a surety that immigration to Southern states would consistently fall behind that of the North. Fewer immigrants meant fewer Congressional Representatives, so the House was in jeopardy in the foreseeable future. To ensure a continued strong presence in the House, Southern delegates proposed to count slaves for the purpose of representation -a suggestion that outraged antislavery New Englanders, who wanted only to count slaves toward national taxes levied on the states by the new government. Indians would not count toward representation or taxation.

On June 11, 1787, Pennsylvanian James Wilson who personally opposed slavery, introduced a compromise in which, for purposes of establishing apportionment and for taxation, a slave would be counted as three fifths of a free inhabitant. The taxation aspect was never invoked; the new Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, had a different plan in place, so it became a moot point of the compromise, essentially giving the South an inflated count in the House at no cost. Wilson's phrase referred to "free inhabitants" and all other person's not comprehended in the foregoing description, and therefore "slavery" does not appear in this founding document.

The disturbing designation of a human as only three-fifths of the value of another aside, the South gained a substantial advantage through the agreement. Based on the percentage of voting power by the five major slave states, Georgia, Maryland, Virginia, and the two Carolinas, the differential appeared as follows: 1. under the one state on vote proposal, 38%. 2. Counting all inhabitants, except Indians, 50%.
3. Counting only free inhabitants, 41%. 4. Using the eventual 3/5th compromise numbers 47%.

Delegates to the Constitutional Convention thus arrived at the point they all knew would come. Americans had twice before skirted with the issue of slavery or avoided dealing with it. In 1619, when black slaves were first unloaded off ships, colonialists had the opportunity and responsibly to insist on their emancipation, immediately and unconditionally, yet they did not. Then again, in 1776, when Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence and included the indictment of Great Britain's imposition of slavery on the colonies, pressure from South Carolina and other Southern States forced him to strike it from the final version. Now, in 1787, the young Republic had a third opportunity, perhaps the last without bloodshed, to deal with slavery. Yet, its delegates did not.

Several examples can be cited to suggest that many of the delegates thought that slavery was already headed for extinction. In 1776 the Continental Congress had reiterated a prohibition in the non importation agreement against the importation of African slaves, despite repealing the rest. During the war, various proposals were submitted to the Congress to offer freedom after the conflict to slaves who fought for the Revolution. Southern colonies blocked these. After the war, several Northern states, including New Hampshire (1779), Pennsylvania (1780), Massachusetts (1783), Rhode Island (1784), all expressly forbade slavery in their Constitutions, adopted immediate or gradual emancipation plans, or had courts declare slavery unconstitutional. Most encouraging to anti-slave forces, however, in 1782 Virginia passed a law allowing slave owners discretion on freeing their slaves.

Jefferson's own "Notes on the State of Virginia" imagined a time after 1800 when all slaves would be free, and Madison labeled proslavery arguments in 1790 "shamefully indecent," calling slavery a "deep-rooted abuse." Founders such as Hamilton, who helped start the New York Manumission society, and had established their antislavery credentials. Perhaps the most radical, and surprising, was Washington, who, alone among the southern Founders, projected an America that included both Indians and freed slaves as citizens in a condition of relative equality. He even established funds to support the children of his wife's slaves after her death and , in his last will and testament, freed his own slaves.

Slavery was also an economic drain on the South, the main crop of tobacco was stripping the land of it's fertility. Slavery would have died out for purely economic reasons if not for the invention of the Cotton Gin by Eli Whitney later on creating a huge economic boom in the South and global demand for their cotton, energizing slavery and putting us on a collision course for the Civil War.

The compromise over slavery did not come without a fight. Gouverneur Morris, one of the most outspoken critics of slavery at the convention, attacked Wilson's fractional formula and asked of the slaves counted under the three-fifths rule, "Are they admitted as Citizens? Then why are they not admitted on an equality with White Citizens? Are they admitted property? Then why is not other property admitted to the computation?" Massachusetts' Elbridge Gerry echoed this line of thinking, sarcastically asking why New Englanders would not be allowed to count their cattle if Georgians could count their slaves.

Morris and others, including Jefferson, recognized that slavery promised to inject itself into every aspect of American life. Consider "comity," the principle that one state accepts the privileges and immunities of other states to encourage free travel and commerce between them. Article IV required states to give "full faith and credit" to laws and judicial decision of other states. Fugitives from justice were to returned for trail to the state of the crime, for example. Almost immediately, conflicts arose when slaves escaped to northern states, which then refused to oblige southern requests for their return. Northern free blacks working in the merchant marine found themselves unable to disembark from their ships in southern ports for fear of enslavement, regardless of their legal status. Seven Southern coastal states actually imprisoned free black sailors upon their arrival in port. At the time, however, the likelihood that the southerners would cause the convention to collapse meant that the delegates had to adopt the three-fifths provision and deal with the consequences later. Realistically, it was the best they could do, although it would take seventy-eight years, a civil war, and three constitutional amendments to reverse the three-fifths compromise.

Modern historians have leaped to criticize the convention's decision, and one could certainly apply the colloquial definition of a compromise as; doing less than what you know is right. Historian Joseph Ellis noted that "the distinguishing feature of the Constitution when it came to slavery was its evasiveness." But let's be blunt: to have pressed the slavery issue in 1776 would have killed the Revolution, and to have pressed it in 1787 would have aborted the nation. When the ink dried on the final drafts, the participants had managed to agree on most of the important issues, and where they disagreed, they had kept those divisions from distracting them from the task at hand. More important, the final document indeed represented all: "In 560 roll-calls, no state was always on the losing side, and each at times was part of the winning coalition." The framers were highly focused only on Republic building, acting on the assumption that the Union was the highest good, and that ultimately all problems, including slavery, would be resolved if they could only keep the country together long enough.

From the onset, the proceedings had perched perilously on the verge of collapse, making the final document truly a miracle. When the convention ended, a woman buttonholed Benjamin Franklin and asked him what kind of government the nation had. "A Republic, madam, If you can keep it." Franklin replied.

If Passion Is Possible Why Settle For Less?

The secret ingredient in any venture in life is passion. Passion is a game changer, if the Dream is Big enough the facts don't matter. If you have a passion for something then you will see magic happen, not only will you find a way to see your dreams come true, others will follow. People follow passion. We see so little of it around us, it is a natural attraction. It draws positive people to you like moths to flame.

We only are given one chance to live our lives, what are you doing with yours? Are you going through the motions in autopilot where you go to work, go home, go to work, go work, home, work, home without any real punctuation marks to make it something other than a rut? Have you ever driven through a traffic light and wondered if it was red or not? Does one day run into another in seamless sameness?

Mark Twain once said, "Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72."

Henry David Thoreau said, "Most men live lives of quite desperation and go to their graves with their song still in them."

How sad is that,we know instinctively that those comments are true, don't we?

Why is this? What happens to the dreams inside we bring out of childhood? How do we start going through the motions of our lives and quit actually living them? I think it starts when we decide to start settling for safety and security instead of chasing our dreams. I believe that is why we see so many people taking anti-depressants and encumbered with addictions of all sorts. We are built to dream. God created us with dreams inside and we only function correctly when we are chasing them. God said, "Without a vision, my people perish." The sad thing is when you give up passion for security you have traded for a mirage.

Life is far too short to live it without a passion in your life. For me, I want to have a passion in everything I do. If it deserves my time and attention, doesn't it deserve my passion? I don't care if it is my marriage, my children, career related, spiritual faith, patriotism, hobbies, whatever, if it is worth your time, it is worth passion. If passion is one of the options, it should be the only acceptable one. I refuse to go through life timid or bored.

A friend and mentor of mine, Rick Setzer, taught a question we should always ask ourselves, especially if we are starting to get stale in our vision. "Are you working your business or are you chasing your dream?" There is magic in the latter.

If you have a true passion, your are contagious. I once had a wonderful lesson in passion and its effect on others. My wife had read about a orchid nursery in Indianapolis that was one of the largest in America. She wanted to go buy orchids for all the ladies in our family for Christmas. I went with her and we were blessed with this amazing older gentleman as our guide and salesman. He looked like he had just been found on some deserted island, long gray hair and beard, skinny and gaunt, probably in his 70s, but had a twinkle in his eyes that captured you. He was a scientist who had traveled the world's jungles searching for new species of orchids most of his life. This was his collection of over 5,000 species he had found. He taught us all about them with a passion that sucked you into his world, so much so that I ended up raising orchids for the next ten years. I had never had a thought of them before walking in, but his passion was contagious. I will never forget that powerful lesson.

So, are you building your business, or our you chasing your dreams? Are you making a living or our you making a life? It is up to you, it is simply finding your passion and never working another day in your life!

The Lamplighter

In days of yore there were men who were employed as Lamplighters in their cities. The street lamps of the day were either candles, oil lamps, or some other wick based lights. Each night the lamplighter would walk into the night and light the way for others. Everyone would be able to see their way due to that lamplighter's illumination.

In the late seventies I attended a convention where one of the speakers challenged each attendee to live their lives as lamplighters showing the way for others to follow. To be the person who didn't hide their light under a basket, who didn't live in the light, but hide it for your own purposes. The challenge was to light the way for others who you saw following, and for others who you may never know you lit their way as well.

This imagery burned into my mind, I knew that I wanted to always live as a lamplighter for those who I could reach out to assist in lighting their ways, and hopefully for many more than I may never know. Through the years I have learned that I am most happy when I am doing just that. If it is trying to show the light for others politically, showing people how to improve their professional situations, or most importantly to see the true Light of the World. It is lighting those lamps that warms the heart.

May I challenge you to light the lamps as you go through life to show the way for others to follow? To be a Lamplighter.

Why It Is So Hard To Have A Reasonable Diaologue

Have you noticed how difficult it is to have a discussion politically today that actually has any depth? What is normally found is nothing more than people throwing talking points back and forth. Frankly, if you turn on the television so called experts, that is what they do as well. Little substance ever comes to the surface. Why? I have found in debating that I will put forth a blog that I had written from a deep dive study reading several books by several authors on the topic, but it is dismissed out of hand since I wrote it. Yet they counter it with an opinion piece from the media, not even an investigative article, or with a Wikipedia post. People Wiki is fine if you know nothing about a topic and want a quick overview, but please do not take it as a factual account because you never know how accurate it might be.

I believe it is caused by several things, but nothing more so than the lack of quality education in our school systems going back into the 50s when we as a nation quit teaching our children history, economics, philosophy, and civics well. There was, starting then an assault on our history revising what those Progressives who took over our education system wanted us to learn. It truly began with the five volume American History written by President Woodrow Wilson in 1902. Wilson, a devoted racist, erased the stories of all the African American heroes of the Revolutionary and Civil War, as well as those who were early Congressmen after Reconstruction. It wasn't until recently some have been reinstated.

One of the most quoted books about American History by historians is Alexis de Tocqueville "Democracy In America," written during the Andrew Jackson administration. This book was reedited in 1956 and this "new" edition was reduced from the 804 pages plus another 166 pages of Appendix and became only 317 pages, removing every mention of the vital importance faith in God and religion had in the American system of government and every day life. One of the most important books, and if you read it published after 1956 you only read 35% of what Tocqueville wrote.

Our history has been taught in the most boring, irrelevant, and most forgettable way possible. History is rife with stories of daring adventure, bravery, selflessness, good and evil, men and women who did extraordinary things against all odds. It is edge of your seat compelling stories, that our schools make as dry as dust, where dates are more important than what happened and why. Could this be on purpose so people will not "like" history and never learn it? If it was done intentionally it couldn't have been more effective and destroying a nation of its heritage. I am not sure it wasn't intentional.

Our news media has been bought and paid for by political parties starting in the early 1800s. By 1840 partisan concerns linked the post office branches and the party-controlled newspapers by reducing the cost of distribution through the mails. From 1800 to 1840, the number of newspapers transmitted through the mails rose from 2 million to almost 140 million at far cheaper rates than other printed matter. Postal historian Richard John estimated that if newspapers had paid the same rate as other mails, the transmission costs would have been 700 times higher.

"The new party system with its media partnerships, by 1840, had compromised the independence of the mails and a large part of the print media with no small consequences. Among other defects, the subsidies created incentives to read newspapers, rather than books. This democratization of the news produced a population of people who thought they knew a great deal about current events, but who lacked the theoretical grounding in history, philosophy, or politics to properly ground their opinions." Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen.

If that was true in 1840, how much more so today with the 24/7 news cycle. We are bombarded nonstop with news on the Internet, Television networks, cable, radio, and print. However, without the depth of understanding of history, economics, civics, and philosophy people are tossed too and fro like a bobber on the never ending waves of the news reports.

We need to embrace our history, we need to learn it, understand who we are by understanding where we came from. Our schools won't teach it, so it is up to you to learn it and then to make sure that you kids learn it from you. Better yet, learn it together with your kids. Your Republic depends on it.

James Madison Had A Dream

The summer of 1787 changed the world when a group of men came to Philadelphia to take a look at the weaknesses that had been exposed in the Articles of Confederation. Uprisings such as Shay's Rebellion, a group of farmers who were threatening to overthrow the local governments,and courts to stop foreclosure proceedings on their farms.

The Convention was called, and it carried enough weight to actually see the states to assemble their representatives, probably due to learning that George Washington himself endorsed it and would himself attend. Obviously the General by his very presence and reputation made him a key player without saying hardly a word in session. Washington was a strong believer in throwing the Articles of Confederation out and creating a more robust document that gave much more power to a central government. He believed that the Union hung in the balance of just that. In his own experience of fighting the Revolutionary War he knew the destructive flaws in the Articles of Confederation and it's weakness to override the states by the central government when needed. His army starved and froze and was often understaffed due to states not contributing their promised provisions and recruits unless the battle was near them and threatening their own interests.

Another attendee whose very name and reputation was key to the eventual outcome and to the seriousness of the Convention was Philadelphia's own Dr. Benjamin Franklin. Franklin had spent twenty five of the previous thirty years before the Convention overseas. His experience during the decade following independence had convinced him of the need for a central government with the requisite "energy." He had learned that American diplomats abroad operated in a world of fierce rivalries and struggles for dominance. France and Spain, though nominally America's allies in the struggle for independence, were ultimately guided by their sense of national self-interest. Franklin came to realize that the new American nation would have to present a united front if it were to hold its own in the treacherous world of European diplomacy.

The youngest delegate, at 28, James Madison was the scholar. He had been working in the Congress under the Articles of Confederation and knew of its weaknesses and was the major driving force for throwing it out and starting all over with a new Constitution. He believed that those weaknesses posed at least an equal threat to liberty and, equally important, American unity. He watched frustrated as many of the independent state governments thwarted efforts to give the Confederation government the power to levy taxes or regulate commerce. In the spring of 1786, he began making extensive notes on the history of "ancient and modern confederacies," a project that led him across more than three thousand years of history, from ancient Greece to the cantons of Switzerland. In April 1787, he composed a private memorandum - thought one he obviously intended to circulate to others, which he titled,"The Vices of the Political System of the United States." It laid out in systematic fashion both his assessment of the weaknesses of the existing American governments, state and confederated, and his thoughts on the best remedies for those weaknesses. It was this writing that moved Washington to attend the convention after Madison had mailed him a copy. Washington wasn't interested in attending a convention of half-measures of trying to "fix" the current government, he wanted an entirely new one as did Madison.

Madison identified a dozen "vices" he believed to be fatal to the health of the republic. Several of those vices lay in the ways the newly independent states had overreacted to prior abuses of power by British royal governors. It wasn't surprising that state constitution makers deprived their new governors of the power to dissolve assemblies or to exercise and absolute veto over legislation, but Madison believed they had gone too far. Most of the new state constitutions vested the legislatures with the power to elect governors and most denied the chief executive even a limited veto. The result, in Madison's view, was that states frequently enacted "vicious legislation," too often prompted by the whims of public opinion rather than sober reflection. He was horrified by the irresponsible actions of the Rhode Island legislature, which allowed its citizens to pay off their debts in depreciated state currency.

The problem didn't lie with irresponsibility of state legislatures alone. Much of Madison's analysis focused on weaknesses in the Confederation government that allowed the self-interests of any one state to overwhelm the public interest of the nation. He chronicled the instances to which states had ignored their obligations to the union. He spoke of the many times that states wouldn't support their financial obligations to the war effort. "This evil, has been so fully experienced both during the war and since the peace," that he believed it could well be "fatal" to the very existence of the union. Equally upsetting to him were frequent instances in which the states encroached on the authority of the continental government,as in the case of Georgia's brutal war against the Creek Indians, waged without the Confederation government's consent. There were routine cases of individual states violating the terms of the Treaty of Peace with England, as in continued persecution of Loyalists, when it suited their interests.

Madison was also troubled by the tendency of "courtiers of popularity" - men like Patrick Henry, who possessed all the oratory skills that Madison lacked, to please their local constituencies while at the same time pursuing policies harmful to the broader interests of the Confederacy. Madison accepted the inevitability that citizens would work to promote their interests at the expense of others. However, contrary to the widely accepted view that liberty could best be protected in republics of limited geographic size, Madison argued that only in a large republic, where "society becomes broken into a greater variety of interests, of pursuit of passions, which check each other," could one prevent the provincialism and attendant injustice that afflicted states like Rhode Island, where Madison believed, a small faction of self-interested politicians had gained control of the legislator and subverted the public good. Only a shift in power from smaller state governments to a larger and stronger federal government would "render {government} sufficiently neutral between the different interests and factions, to controul on part of society from invading the rights of another, and at the same time {remain} sufficiently controuled itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the whole society." He believed that this shift of power was essential if America was to become a unified nation rather than a chaotic assemblage of quarrelsome states.

Madison's acknowledgement of the existence of "interests" in society and his desire to create a large, energetic government designed to neutralize - but not eliminate - those interests pointed in an entirely new direction. In Madison's conception, governments were designed not to embody virtue and the public good, but, rather, to mediate among the various interests in society and, in the process, allow the public good to be served. However, in other ways his vision of the virtues of an extended republic was distinctly traditional, reflecting classical republican attitudes about the importance of selecting virtuous political leaders. Voters who selected their leaders from larger districts would be choosing from a much wider pool of talent, a circumstance that would encourage the voters to select only "the purest and noblest characters," thereby ensuring that their representatives would be more likely to rise above purely provincial concerns and petty self-interest, and to represent the concerns of all the people.

Madison's "Vices of the Political System" ended on that conservative note. Never an optimist about human nature, he nonetheless hoped that he could persuade the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention, who, after all, were more likely to resemble to the pure and noble characters he hoped would govern the extended American republic, that it was time to transform a weak confederation into a strong unified nation.

Wouldn't you love to see those values come back again? Wouldn't be nice to have men and women of "the purest and noblest characters?"

What Cost Perfection

As we watch the ongoing debates and campaign cycle for the 2012 GOP nomination the standard so many set for their candidate makes it impossible for a human to attain without either being the single most boring person to live, or a liar.

The "conservative" voters are the most guilty of having no political savvy. They eat their own, the candidate has to be perfect, has to have 100% purity on conservative values throughout the entirety of their lives. No room for any indiscretions or change in thinking, once a flaw is found, scorched earth is used.

With these standards far too many of the political neophytes who populate the Tea Party movement and make up nearly all of the Libertarian population, would not support Ronald Reagan today even as they hold him us as a marble statue. I loved Ronald Reagan, worked on his campaign barnstorming from Indiana through Oklahoma and Texas for his campaign in 1980. However, Ronald Reagan wasn't perfect. For today's "conservative" voter, the fact that he was a lifelong Liberal Democrat voting for FDR four times would disqualify him for suspicion of RINOism. His being a president of a labor union, in Hollywood no less would be sure of it. If that wasn't enough, he was divorced and remarried Heaven forbid.

For that matter I am not sure which one of he Founding Fathers would pass today's standards. George Washington, married for money, was involved in some very shady land deals, was single handed responsible for the French Indian War. As a General he lost every battle but two Trenton on a surprise attack on Christmas 1776, and the final battle in Yorktown. Rumors ran rampant of his potential womanizing, including his favorite General Nathan Green's wife Kitty. Who always seem to show up in camp at the same time Washington would send the General on the road. Did they or didn't they, who knows? Is that why Martha burned all Washington's letters and papers at his death?

John Adams was known for his violent temper, and many feared he was a monarchist wanting to bring back hereditary royalty to America.

Thomas Jefferson, ran for the hills abandoning his role as Governor of Virginia for fear of the British. He likely fathered children out of wedlock with his slave, was thought to have had an affair with the wife of a friend in Paris. He paid James Cavander to write yellow journalism to destroy the political careers of one of Jefferson's best friends, John Adams, and of Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton was able to side step the accusations of Cavander by confessing he was not paying bribes to his post as Secretary of the Treasury, but in fact was paying bribes to the husband of a woman he was having an affair with. When Jefferson didn't pay off Cavander with a job in his administration it was Cavander who broke the story of Sally Hemmings.

James Madison, the father of the Constitution, partnered with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay to write the Federalist Papers to sell the Constitution ratification. He then turned on them and was the pen to attack them for his mentor Jefferson. Was he the first flip flopper, or was it Jefferson who has the uncanny ability of holding passionate beliefs for and against almost any subject of the day at the same time.

We can go on, Benjamin Franklin and his opiate habit, all night forays with women married and single. His son born out of wedlock and more.

I am not bashing any of the founders, I adore them one and all. However, they were men, not granite or marble. As men, they were not perfect. All of their decisions were not perfect, but their collaboration was miraculous.

So when I hear that Newt Gingrich is the most brilliant, most experienced, BUT, he has flaws, I want to scream.

Practices Change Principles Never Do.

In the many years I have been in sales I have often heard that "those old sales techniques don't work anymore with today's buyers." I heard that in the 70s, I heard it in the 80's, the 90's, the new Millennium, and today. It reminds me of the comments that "In our area," "In our market," that doesn't work. These are the two most consistent things I have heard for the last thirty five years. My answer has been and is, Practices Change Principle Never Do.

The principles of people skills stay fast no matter the practices that technology and social mores dictate. In my own career I have seen the beginning of the use of car phones, voice mail, faxes, pagers, email, text, instant messaging, and the explosion of social media. Each of these new "conveniences" seem to add hours to my day as I practice the principle of communicating with clients in their favorite method.

The argument that people have changed always makes me think of the story of Moses. This story will show you that people haven't fundamentally changed in centuries, it matters not where they were born.

Moses was out watching his flock when he saw a fire on the hillside. Being a good steward of his flock he had to go check it out before it spread and burned up his pasture. When he got there it was a single bush that was burning. He stayed to see if it would burn out when it consumed the bush of if it started to spread and he would need to put it out. It kept burning for the longest time, it didn't consume the bush, and it didn't spread, after a while he started wondering what kind of deal was this anyway. Keep in mind Moses was a busy guy, he had the flock of sheep and goats, he was married, had kids, had a father in law he was working for, he didn't have time to sit and watch a bush burn forever. Finally he asked "God is that you?" God answered "Yes, thanks for coming Moses, I had something I wanted to talk to you about so I used this bush to get your attention." (excuse the paraphrasing)

Moses, asked God, "Haven't you heard the cries of the Israelites, haven't you seen their suffering enslaved to the Egyptians?" "Why don't you do something about it God?" God answered, "I am doing something about it, I am sending you." That is when Moses panicked and starting making excuses. "But God, I can't do it, I am so busy right now, I have my father in law busting my backside taking care of the flocks, my wife has a Honey Do list that never ends. The kids are on traveling teams, call me again after the holidays and we can see if things lighten up. Just burn another bush or something then we can talk." God paid no attention to his "I'm Busy" excuse and kept closing on Moses going to Egypt and leading his people out of bondage. So Moses came up with his next excuse, "But God, I don't have any credibility there, I left there in the middle of the night to avoid being charged with murder, you need someone who has solid contacts there." God's answer to Moses, "Don't worry about your credibility, use mine, just say 'God Sent Me!" Finally Moses tried his final excuse, "God, if you think I can get up in front of people and give speeches you are out of your mind." Actually the scripture said, Moses said to the LORD, "O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue." God finally got frustrated and told him to just take your brother Aaron so he can talk for you.

You can see that Moses wasn't the same as Charleston Heston played him, he was a man who had fears, had excuses, had a low self-image, yet God used him to change the world. Did you recognize those excuses? If you tried to recruit someone to do a big project today you would hear, "I don't have time," "I don't know the right people," and "I am not comfortable speaking to groups." People haven't changed, not at a real personal level.

When I was 19 years old I was at a convention where Zig Ziglar was speaking. He changed my life that day with a comment that shook me to my core. Zig said that "if you are an outstanding salesperson you can manipulate people into almost anything." I was thinking darn right, that is how I got through school. Then he hit me between the eyes with, "If you are very good at sales you should never ever do that."
He then explained the difference between manipulation and motivation. They may actually involve the exact same set of people skills, but the difference is in your heart. If you are moving people to a decision for your own best interest and not theirs, that is manipulation. If however, you are moving people to a decision for their best interest that is motivation. Zig's signature saying of "If you help enough people get what they want, you will get what you want," is the natural outcropping of that.

The people skills and sales training I gained from reading Frank Bettger who wrote his book in the 1920s, or Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, and more of the greats who shoulders and industry has stood for decades are just as relevant today as at any time. The principles they taught have never changed, in fact the best sales training book ever written was the book of Proverbs. I challenge anyone to read a chapter of Proverbs every day for a year, there are 31 chapters so you read them almost every month. I promise you it will change your business and your life. The basic principles are found in those, it is the practices we have to adjust to. The key is learning out to change practices without losing the core principles passed down through the ages.