Dr. Robert Curry is a retired chiropractor from Southern California and a longtime friend and colleague of mine at Standard Process. I’ve always looked forward to our times together when I could listen to his cogent thoughts on historical events and his deep insights into the convergence of ideas and movements that shaped the American mind and nation. Bob has a special way of synthesizing and harmonizing movements of ideas and political currents that broadly shape our world.
In his new book, Common Sense Nation: Unlocking the Forgotten Power of the American Idea, Bob gives illuminating insights into the meaning and relevance of the language used by the Founders of this country. Just as our Founders would not easily understand the meaning of modern rap lyrics (nor do I), most of us cannot easily translate the intended, deeper meaning of the language used by the Founders. We thereby often miss the intent of the greatest political philosophy—and the most important movement for the benefit of mankind—in the history of the world.
In his foreword, renowned military historian and classics professor Victor Davis Hanson writes, “Curry emphasizes three forgotten pillars upon which the American idea was birthed and nourished.”
Those pillars are needed today as much as at any time in our history.
“Common sense realism,” as Bob calls it, built the greatest opportunity for individual expression and achievement ever known. It was the backbone of the American ascent. But now, as Bob writes, “With common sense realism no longer taught and defended in academia, and progressivism powerfully advocated in the public arena, the American Enlightenment began to fade from memory, and many Americans began to lose their grip on the American Idea. Cast adrift on the intellectual and political currents of the twentieth century, America has arrived at the present moment.” Lost and adrift. (See Sh*t Creek.)
Why does a natural health care oriented publishing company like Selene River Press carry a book such as this? The answer is quite simple. Because effective natural health approaches do not emerge through a collective state of authorized health care control run through Soviet-style councils and apparatchiks. Rather, fresh ideas, inspired exploration, and free-ranging debate are the ways to foster new developments and science while quickly discarding discredited concepts regardless of entrenched bureaucracy and institutions. Nothing great was ever discovered by a committee—and holistic health approaches are no exception to the truth of this rule. Health care as a heavily regulated field of endeavor is a complete anathema to the founding principles of the American Enlightenment and our common sense nation.
The unelected regulatory state overseeing all matters of health care have literally absconded with the actual use of words and their common meaning. Those who violate their permitted usage (in the opinion of the regulators) face life-altering penalties, including jail, confiscation of assets, and bankruptcy. For instance, today ruination can result from the common usage of words such as cure, treatment, diagnose, prevent, mitigate, healthy, disease…and on and on. To the Founders of this country, this abominable usurpation of language through the use of governmental force would be a fundamental violation of what was known to them as the Rights of Man, which they enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Therefore, it is of critical relevance that holistic health professionals understand the original meaning of “unalienable rights,” as Bob so clearly elucidates in this timely book.
Common Sense Nation can help restore clarity to our thinking on the critical issues of today. Not only in terms of politics, policy, and philosophy but to the very core of what it means to practice health care in a country that has forgotten the meaning of its very foundation.
Mark Anderson is an author, researcher, gentleman farmer, and owner of Standard Process West, Inc. He has been educating health professionals from all branches of the healing arts in the science and skills of therapeutic nutrition for almost 50 years. His foundation is the compiled works of Dr. Royal Lee, and his lectures are steeped in current peer-reviewed scientific studies and principles. He is also the heart and soul of Back to School for Doctors, the largest whole food nutrition conference in the US, held every year in Denver for over 3 decades.
For five decades now, Mark Anderson has been with Standard Process, training health professionals from all branches of the healing arts in the science of nutritional therapeutics. Along with the legendary holistic pioneer Bernard Jensen, Mark co-authored the critically acclaimed Empty Harvest: Understanding the Link Between Our Food, Our Immunity, and Our Planet.
Mark compiled, edited, and published three volumes from the works of Dr. Royal Lee, the “father of nutritional therapeutics.” He also developed and created the Selene River Press Historical Archives, a one-of-a-kind vast online resource for doctors, health seekers, and researchers. Free to all, the Historical Archives preserves the immense body of work produced by nutritional pioneers of the 20th century. The collection documents the origins of holistic thinking, a philosophy that is now bearing fruit. As Mark knows better than most, so-called “new discoveries” heralded by today’s scientific press as fundamental breakthroughs in health and healing can be traced back to discoveries made decades ago—and reported in the corpus of the Historical Archives. Mark believes that unless you want to be the ninth person to be the first to discover something, you better know your history. After all, what we often call “progress” is nothing more than the rediscovery of a truth encountered—but rejected—long ago. And too bad—credit is almost never afforded retroactively.
Products by Mark R. Anderson
Applied Clinical Nutrition (ACN)
Back to School for Doctors Series
Back to School for Doctors Series
