Category: History

What Does Our Future Hold? or You Can’t Fix Stupid

Fairytale of 2011  Once upon a time and in a land not so far away, there was a people who willing made personal economic decisions beyond their income capacity.  They borrowed money from lenders for not just houses and cars, but they borrowed money for clothes and vacations, homes far beyond their ability to maintain […]

Liber and Public Virtue – A 4th of July Tribute

I can’t think of a better way to celebrate and memorialize our Independence Day than by introducing you to this excellent and inspiring speech by the best teach and mentor I know, Dr. Oliver DeMille.   Happy 4th of July.   Liber and Public Virtue By Oliver DeMille A speech delivered by Dr. Oliver DeMille […]

A Model of Leadership Education, Part 6: An Abundance Mentality

This is part 6 of an 8-part article. Read Part 1 Here Read Part 2 Here Read Part 3 Here Read Part 4 Here Read Part 5 Here Building Your Two Towers At regular intervals during undergraduate enrollment, a mentor takes time to talk about the future.  What will you be doing after graduation?  What […]

A Model of Leadership Education, Part 5: The Proposal

This is part 5 of an 8-part article. Read Part 1 Here Read Part 2 Here Read Part 3 Here Read Part 4 Here   The Monticello College Proposal The day will again come when this nation will stand at a vital crossroads, and only statesmen of the caliber of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln will […]

A Model of Leadership Education, Part 4: The Ideal

This is part 4 of an 8-part article. Read Part 1 Here Read Part 2 Here Read Part 3 Here   The Ideal If we are to create the ideal college and offer the much needed Scholar and or Depth Phases to a new generation of American leaders, new foundings are needed.  But what is […]

A Model of Leadership Education, Part 3: So What Should it Be?

This is part 3 of an 8-part article. Read Part 1 Here Read Part 2 Here These ideas represent the highest level of the current debate, and while there are some good ideas here, nothing comes close to lasting solutions that will really make the difference.  So much for the current generation of deep thinking […]

A Model of Leadership Education, Part 2: Current Trends in Higher Education

This is part 2 of an 8-part article. Read Part 1 Here We are now in the eleventh, or current, generation of American higher learning. Excoriated by Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind and a host of other polemics outlining the decline of higher education, the universities nevertheless flourish in the market-for now. […]

A Model of Leadership Education, Part 1: The State of American Education

Part 1 of an 8-part article.   From the beginning of “these United States,” Leadership Education has been the number one resource extolled by the founding generation as a “must have” to continually perpetuate a culture of virtue and build citizens capable of maintaining liberty in the land. From the Northwest Ordinance to individual state […]

Let Us Dare: Writings From John Adams

In late 1765, John Adams began writing an essay entitled, “A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law.” He was 30 years old and just beginning to stretch his legal and political wings. His purpose for writing this essay was to contrast the tyranny of feudal and canon law with the glorious struggle for freedom […]

A Beginner’s Review of the Qur’an, Part 3: The Best Defense

This is part three of a three-part series. Read Part I Here Read Part II Here I asked my good Christian friend and Muslim expert, Mark Siljander, to weigh in on this subject. Here is his reply: “I would humbly suggest your students read A Deadly Misunderstanding. Many of their questions will be answered and […]

Krislyn Elliott & Lauren Swanepoel

Krislyn Elliott and Lauren Swanepoel act more like sisters than moms as they take really slow walks through the woods together, looking at and taking pictures of every plant they see & wishing they could remember their names and uses more thoroughly. They also like concocting herbal teas, salves, tinctures and strange drinks.

Krislyn is from Utah and has loved learning about plants since an unusually cool high school biology teacher took his classes on neighborhood botany walks. She has always been fascinated and constantly amazed at the power and beauty of plants.

Lauren is from South Africa, she and her family emigrated to Utah almost 10 years ago. They have fallen in love with the area and know more about this state & the great places to explore here than most Utah natives.

We both feel strongly about taking care of our families with natural methods and the abundant medicine we have growing right around us. We are trying to learn as much as we can about our magical local plants and are looking forward to sharing some of our favorites with you.

William DeMille

Director of Georgic Develeopment

William DeMille is a lifelong vegetable farmer. He studied Horticulture and Agronomy at Northwest Missouri University, Maryville. He holds a certificate in aquaponic engineering and production from Cornell University, NY, and another from GrowHaus Aquaponics in Denver, CO. He also studied soil regeneration and is a graduate of Dr. Elaine’s Soil Food Web School. He is the Director of Georgic Development for The Center for American Legacy Studies.

William is a farm consultant establishing several agricultural startups since 2005 in Missouri, Oregon, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada and he currently manages 2500 acres of grassland for the Ruby Mountain Foods Company.

His latest venture is a market gardening school called Georgic Revolution where he teaches a 17-week course onsite in Nevada covering soil health and vegetable production without the use of fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc. and where he operated a soil lab.

William lives with his wife Vernie in the snow capped mountains of Northern Nevada.

Lloyd Nelson

World Renown BD Expert

Lloyd Nelson has been practicing the art of Biodynamic (BD) Agriculture for over twenty years. He is a BD preparation maker, builder, artist, farmer, arborist, BD educator & consultant. He is co-founder of Biodynamic Source – a Colorado based non-profit specializing in high potency BD preparations – and he owns and operates a Biodynamic spray, fertilizer and consultation service. He has worked with small and large scale farms, vineyards, and orchards to transition to sustainable Biodynamic land management and Demeter BD Certification.

Vern Cox, PhD

Educator

Vern Cox is married to Joyce Christensen and they have 8 children. He has 3 earned degrees, a BA in psychology, and both a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in marriage and family therapy.

He has had a diverse and interesting career that started with the Bureau of Land Management, followed by a stint as a Learning Disabilities teacher, and finally a marriage and family therapist, working his way up to executive director of the High Country Counseling and Resource Centers that served two counties in Wyoming.

Dr. Cox served for several years on the board of a charter school. Dr. Cox remains heavily involved in his community and the home schooling movement.

He has extensive background in marriage and family counseling, having held a number of administrative positions during his first career. He holds a BA in Psychology and both a Masters and PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy. He lives with his wife and several married children on their multi-generation farm in Southern Utah.

Joseph Lofthouse

Educator

Joseph adopted the principles of landrace gardening in response to the harsh growing conditions in a high-altitude, short-season, desert garden. Instead of relying on expensive poisons, labor, and materials to coddle the plants, he encourages genetic diversity, cross-pollination, and survival of the fittest, allowing the plants to adapt themselves to the current and ever-changing ecosystem, thus simplifying gardening and seed saving. Joseph is the author of Landrace Gardening: Food Security Through Biodiversity and Promiscuous Pollination. Joseph loves eating, farming, swimming, hot-springs, sunbathing, bird-watching, running, yoga, leggings, kilts, playing guitar, singing, and living habitually barefoot.

Dan Brooks

Educator

Dan Brooks was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. During his first career, he spent 20 years working in and managing high-end restaurants and golf courses including extensive banquet/special events services and ice sculptures.

For the past 23 years, Dan has been a successful entrepreneur and family business owner in Las Vegas. He and his wife have 4 children and 11 grandchildren. He serves as a trustee for The Center for American Legacy Studies.

Shanon Brooks, PhD

Director

Shanon Brooks is the director of The Center for American Legacy Studies, an institution dedicated to helping families embrace and incorporate the Five American Ideals; Georgics, Liber, Providence, Public Virtue, and Liberty into their lives and communities. America exists because of Americans. Americans are the beneficiaries of a peculiar culture and way of living.

Over the past 75 years, that culture and way of life have been lost. Restore that culture and Americans will rebuild America to once again be worthy of John Winthrop’s 1630 admonition, “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”

Brooks has been a leader in alternative higher education for over 30 years, and is the author of two books: AMERICAN: Killing the American Dream and A Thomas Jefferson Education for Teens.

Dr. Brooks is a veteran of military service in the United States Submarine Fleet and holds a Bachelor’s degree in business administration, a Master’s degree in education, and a Ph.D. in constitutional law.

He and his wife Julia reside on the 80-acre conference facility of The Center for American Legacy Studies.