A Belief which I stress again and again in my classes here at Northwood Institute is the belief that we are at war - not a physical, shooting war but nonetheless a war which is fully capable of becoming just as destructive and just as costly. The battle for the preservation and advancement of liberty is a battle not against personalities but against opposing ideas.
Armies conquer bodies, but ideas capture minds.
In the past, ideas have had earthshaking consequences. They have determined the course of history. The system of feudalism existed for a thousand years in large part because scholars, teachers, intellectuals, educators, clergymen and politicians propagated feudalistic ideas. Under mercantilism, the widely accepted concept that the world's wealth was fixed prompted men to take what they wanted from others in a long series of bloody wars. The publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations in 1776 is a landmark in the history of the power of ideas.