Why is Common Sense Not So Common

0:00Welcome to the Real Power Family Radio Show, brought to you by Family Success Triangle. Where we talk about how we achieved financial freedom in two years, by the time we were 30. If we can do it, so can you. We will bring you the people who can help you achieve financial freedom, time freedom, and location freedom. Learn how we integrated our business, investing and homeschooling into everyday life. Now, here is the Real Power Family, Eric, Lila, Devon, and Ethan. Welcome to the Real Power Family Radio Show, I'm your host, Eric Warren. We have Lila and Ethan here. Devon is still in Greece, but he should be back for tomorrow's show we hope, unless he sleeps through it because he's so jet lagged. I was going to make the joke of someone should really pull him out of the deep fire because he's been in Greece for a long time. I hope it's for you, Calo, but I think mom, didn't you say he's on a plane? He's flying home as of recording this, I think.

1:01Yeah, yeah, he's working his way home now. He was very excited to get to the UK where he could eat eggs again. Apparently that's not something they do in Greece. So, let's hope that he makes it through whatever his stops are without getting arrested going through whatever parts of Europe. You're telling me that when I went to Athens, no, not the one he was in the little restaurant here. I don't know why they called it Athens, oh, maybe because it was a Greek restaurant. And I got my Greek omelette that really wouldn't have happened because they don't normally serve extra breakfast there. You're going to have to ask Devon that just he was so happy about that and it made me laugh. That's the little things I think. Well, I'm glad he got his eggs and I really hope since he was in Greece for the last two weeks, at least it was, I hope it was beef, tallow, and not seed oils. I don't know what they do in the EU nowadays. Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah. I don't have to be mad now. Okay. Let's get on to something serious. Okay. Like, listen or comment.

2:01And as you will, my lovely wife, Lila, pays attention and reads all this stuff. What? One of our listeners wanted to hear. But she wanted to know why common sense isn't so common. And I think that's a good question. Wow. So do I. No one knows. Good show. Moving on. What is common sense? Really? It's a 47-page book from Thomas Payne. Yeah. That was good. We could go back and reread that. That should be required reading in school. No, common sense is what we believe to be obvious. It's the knowledge or ability to figure things out that everyone should be able to do and sit being common. It's like after driving for, it's whenever you see those warnings on like shampoo bottles that says, for external use only or on hair dryers that says, do not use while sleeping or whatever random warning labels, they stick on things.

3:05Okay. Not to big on California, but literally like 90% of the warnings in California. I'm telling you, your citizens are smarter than that. I've been there. I've talked to them. They literally have more than two brain cells. You don't need to put a warning on a trash bag. It says, this is not a toy or suffocation may occur because I submit that anyone that thinks it's a toy and can crawl into it is far too young to read. Not because they're too dumb, but because they're two or three and the parents probably know that already. I don't know. Some of these things that we think would be so logical, but you look at some parents they'll have a hot steaming cup of coffee sitting on the coffee table and their toddler is like, you know, walking around the table and falling over and knocking other stuff off and they don't think that maybe that kid might get burned by that hot coffee. You got to look at all of it. I will verify I had that steaming cup of hot coffee and I never once considered whether

4:08one of my children would get burned by it. I was much more after I made it through two or three cups of coffee, maybe I could have thought of that. But yeah, my priorities where they are and our kids lived. Doesn't this kind of go back to what you always told me Eric is about? One thing before you say this is a good thing that dad did when he was raising us, if say we did get burned by the coffee, it would use that as a lesson to say, don't mess with hot liquids, whether it's hot coffee or your hot tea or anything like that. So while it would be uncomfortable at the time, yes, he would and he'd make sure that we're okay. And then teach us, don't do that again. Yeah. Absolutely. It should be a learning experience because that's how we build more of the common sense so to speak because as as infants, you don't know that you're not born with it. You've got to use your experience and what you learn to have that common sense. And I think that's part of the problem today. As you can tell, none of this is planned out. We're just randomly working through a problem on the radio with millions of listeners to

5:12help us. I love where this is going though. If you look at it, maybe common sense and that's where I was going to try and start. Common sense is what we see from our own perspective. It is not a humanity wide thing. Things I believe that every person on Earth knows. Some people I believe everybody in the America or the Western civilizations know. But it might be common sense to a five year old living in the desert, not to pick up some of these rocks because that's very likely for rattlesnakes to be underneath there. And yet I consider myself a fairly intelligent person with reasonable and common sense. And when we went down to Tennessee and started working, found a rattlesnake underneath the camper. I never thought I'm like, Devon, climb under the camper and do this. And he goes, Hey, there's a snake down here and I looked at it and somehow I just knew

6:13it was a timber rattler. I don't know how I remembered that because the last time I really studied snakes and had to do with rattlesnakes was when I was in the army. Was that 15 more than 15 years ago? Yeah. So it's been further from your experience. So let's put all this together. Ethan says, maybe you have to learn these things as a child. And I think that common sense for some things like, Hey, don't touch a hot stove. Don't put your hand in a fire. But doesn't every child know that not innately? I don't think. But they do by the time they're three to five. Yeah. As they get older. Yes. So they might learn some things by watching their parents or watching other people make mistakes. But sometimes they will say make mistakes of their own and hopefully learn from that. And if they don't learn, it's not necessarily their fault. It's their parents fault. I firmly believe that everything that is wrong with my kids I caused.

7:14Now you're 16, your brother's 18. You get to make your own mistakes. But especially those first handful of years. Yeah. If you have terrible children that you can't control and you can't discipline, then you should look at the way that you raised them. That's not just, oh, well, you're so lucky. Lila, tell the story about how the lady chastised you while her kids were climbing up and down the shelving units at a grocery store. Yeah. I mean, obviously if our kids would do something, we would yell at them. We would correct them immediately. And some other parents didn't always feel that was appropriate. And I actually got yelled at for correcting my children because I wasn't nice about it. And she said, you have good children, you don't need to do that. And I said, yes, I have good children because I do that. Like it was a whole different paradigm. The whole time her kids are running and screaming and just making a disaster, I would have beat your butts. And all mom did was yell at you or talk very, very sternly to you.

8:15And she's like, you got the best kids in here. How dare you speak to them like that in public? And I'm like, yeah, because you have the best kids in here. And then we got your steak and shake story about, you know, you just let him win. How did you? Yeah. You just trained him and the kid threw himself on the floor and was banging his fist against this dirty mat where you walk in at steak and shake screaming because he wanted candy before he got his candy, before he got his milk shake and french fries, key one and candy. And mom, you know, embarrassed, tried to give it to him, thinking it'll make him quiet. But the problem is is what that child learned was the completely wrong lesson. They'll learn that if I want to get something, then just throw a tantrum and then mom will give it to me. That's the lesson that you're teaching your kid there. And Ethan had it been you. I would have literally walked you right back out of the restaurant, put you in the car and we'd went home like, you're not getting a milkshake, you're not getting any of that. No, you, you, we'll go home and eat something then because if you can't behave, you don't

9:17get any benefit. Well, I do have to feed you. So I believe that that is my duty as a parent. I definitely don't need to feed you a milkshake or steak and shake. You've lived off a ramen for a long time. Of course, you do it by choice now. I thought that was punishment the first time I gave you ramen. Yeah, that was supposed to be a punishment the first time and ever since then it has not been a punishment. I can't believe he's so much ramen that we were actually on our Florida trip, just Ethan and I staying in a hotel, not a very good one. We were there for one night and we just took the recommendation. The guys were rocket scientists. He's got it. Well, he lives there. He doesn't stay in hotels. So we stayed at a less than thrilling motel that advertises a great breakfast, the great breakfast consisted of orange juice and a waffle you made yourself. It was truly wonderful, but at least we had breakfast. So our dinner choices at the wonderful bar in restaurant consisted of a four-foot section

10:17of pringles, potato chips, there was some ramen and even I ate a ramen for dinner that night. Wow. Yeah, I got two or three romans, brought them to the room and I remember to get a fork with me. I learned. See, this is a learning experience when I was with Devon, California alone. I got a thing of ramen, but I didn't get a fork or spoon or anything to eat it with. So I had to get two of those little like stir sticks that you used to mix up your coffee or whatever. There's a terrible chopsticks and they're really short and it was not great. I learned from my mistakes, but we went to the room and my started making my ramen and dad's like, yeah, I'm hungry because we didn't end up eating dinner that day. I don't think or maybe we had a big lunch or note whatever it was and dad ended up getting one. So the terrible things we go through, all right, let's take a quick break and come back and talk about more common sense knowledge and is it really common? Are people getting dumber or maybe is it training, training, do you need to train common

11:23sense into people or is it an eight? That's the question I want to ask. We'll be right back. Hello, this is Devon. I'm an investor, speaker, bestselling author and part of the real power family. From the time I was born, my parents have integrated me into their business and investing. They taught me that anything is possible. It was just natural to buy my first rental property at seven years old without any of their money. After buying a few more, I wrote my first book at 11, titled If I Can Do It So Can You. Then, after my first book helped so many people start investing, I decided I wanted to focus on people closer to my age. So I wrote a series of books for teenagers and young adults that teaches them the basics of business and investing. All in a fun, fictional format, surrounded in high school drama, get a copy of the garage and Atlas Goldnobble, as well as if I can do it so can you, available on Amazon now. And don't forget to listen to the Real Power Family Radio Show Monday through Friday

12:26at 7 a.m. on the Brushwood Media Network. Welcome back to the Real Power Family Radio Show. Today's episode is about common sense. Is it common and do you have to teach it or is it just innate? Is it something that we kind of just know? That's the question dad wanted to ask. Dad, what do you think the answer to that question is? Alright, I remember from some medical training that I did that babies are only born with two fears. The fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. That's it. So I don't know if that is accurate, there's been so many studies and so much learned about the brain. I don't even know how they came up with that. But that is at one time what I was taught in either a psychology or physiology class of some sort at some university I went to. So if that is true, then common sense can't be innate. And I believe that it seems so logical like a Marjorie Wildcraft was on the show I believe

13:27in the first season. And she's like, she has this book about a snake bite which we bought the book, we read the book. It's really important for us down in Tennessee because we just don't have venomous snakes in Ohio. So other than the environmental hazards I dealt with in the army, you kids have never grown up with snake. Oh, you get a big black snake, but it's not really a big deal. It's not like we have. The only snakes we've ever dealt with is what is it? The milk snakes that live in our library that one of those fell on top of me. That was not awesome, but yeah, they somehow, no matter how many holes you seal, they make it in to the ceiling of the library because it's a log cabin. But they make it and they live in and outside and one of them, I don't know how it made it up in this huge oak tree with no branches at the bottom and two of them fell out of the tree. Like, I'm like, man, there goes a six-foot snake just, well, there's this huge thump right behind me. And then I kind of slow those, and then there's another one that falls. While we're having a bonfire, I guess they didn't like the smoke up there or something. Maybe.

14:28Yeah. But other than that, I mean, they're not so this is something we don't know, whereas a child in India or a child in, you know, the Mahavi desert, even growing up around Las Vegas, or in some of these other places, really, we've got what copperheads and timber rattlesnakes are pretty prevalent in our part of Tennessee. Correct. So you learn to do different things. I never considered going into a cave could be dangerous other than falling rocks. And then I realized we put up that trail cam and sure enough, the bobcat, once I learned more about bobcats, sits right at the top, looking to pounce on anything, walking in or out of the cave. So you just got to learn some of these things. And I'm sure the first time we walked in there, some people would think, are you crazy don't do that? Some of our neighbors are like, what are you doing going in there? So to an extent, it's part lack of experience, right? Yeah. I've never experienced it before, then we may not be familiar with something that may be common sense to somebody that does have that experience.

15:29I have shaken my head and I don't think that it's, running a business is not common sense. Common sense absolutely plays into running a business, but it's not intuitive to know what all you have to do. That being said, I get disgusted sometimes with Lyle and realized, wow, how can you not know this? And Devon's like, yeah, even I know that. But it's an aspect of the business that she's never done and I have always done. And I just look at her as well, you know, you're my partner, you're my equal more than that. And the real estate brokerage, you're way more than me because you're the broker. So I get it if you don't understand how do you some of my equipment or how to put on a roof and the construction company because you've never done that. But when it comes to, you know, taxes and not knowing how long stuff is depreciated for, I'm like, how can you not know that because you've handled most of that. And anytime I did have a question, like I would call our accountant and say, hey, I have this question. Can you help with that? I mean, I, I utilize the professionals that we talked about people having.

16:31Right. And that's where I'm like, even your secretary could tell me like, Eric, why are you doing this to my tenants? And it's just common sense. And I'm like, yeah, I don't deal with stuff like that, like having to talk to people. And how did I not know? Of course, it has nothing to do with what they're saying. They just want to vent. And once I figured that out, I let them come in. I'm like, hey, don't yell. My second come here. And then they yell until they run out of steam or I run out of patience. And I'm like, okay, you think you got that out of your system? Can we get down to what the actual problem is that I have some control over? Because I don't have any control over your dog or your cat or your daughter. If you want to talk about a problem with the house that you are running from me, stick to that problem. Why I don't talk to tenants because I'm just like, skip the preamble. I don't have time to listen to you. I go wine to somebody else so then come in when you actually get it. Write it down. How many times have I told people in your office? If you have a question for me, write it down and then edit it until you get it down

17:34to one sentence or less, okay? And right below that, put the page number of the systems to mean you'll that your answer is on. And once you do that, then you can come in and ask me your question. And as it turns out, it dramatically decreases the amount of interruptions I get at work, doesn't it, Lila? Absolutely. In fact, that was a great thing that you started because it saves time. It makes people focus. It makes them look for their own solutions using the system that we already have in place. Like so many things were saved just based on that one little thing. In Ethan, how many different places did we check into you sign that say, you read and agree, we just redid Ethan's paperwork. And it says you read and agree to follow the system as it is written multiple times, multiple times. And that half an hour that I went over because I don't look, I don't, he had a contract and expect you to read it. I thought it was common sense. Of course, you should read a contract before you sign it. Now, they're just like, oh, this is one more piece of paper I got to sign before I,

18:34he'll give me a paycheck here. Just get here. Just give them all to me. I'll sign them all quick. No, I go over to make sure you understand what you are agreeing to because how can I hold you to something that you don't understand. The problem nowadays is a lot of people will sign things or agree to things without reading them. Probably a whole topic for a different show. But. Well, and part of that goes back to what you and your brother talked about on some teenager takeover. They keep, you know, they have all these terms and conditions and it's, you know, 80 pages long and how much time do people want to spend? So they get used to just saying, yes, every time there's a computer updater, there's whatever. They don't even know what they're agreeing to. But they don't understand how important you, if you're going to make an agreement, you need to understand it because you've got to be able to fulfill your word. Your word has to mean something. But again, that's not so common either. Yeah, we also talked on that teenager takeover that knowing what's in those terms and conditions, that is enforceable. There was a thing on, it was Disney land, Disney world or Disney land. I forget which one.

19:34One got sick because of a food allergy, I believe it was. And yet they couldn't sue because they agreed to the terms and conditions to a free trial of Disney plus multiple years prior. And something like that, we shouldn't have a common sense laws. Somebody said, maybe Aristotle or Socrates or some brilliant philosopher said that a law should be written so that the common man can understand it, if it were chiseled in stone above the Colosseum while he was running in to see the game or the quote something that is close enough, but it should be really simple. We should never have a 6,000 page law, we should never have a 60 page law. Yes. It should be so quick and this is what it means period. And if the average joke can't understand it, they pass more laws. And it seems like common sense that nobody could ever follow all these laws, which brings me back to Atlas Shrugged when they're talking to Reardon.

20:36And he's like, well, if the right people don't break the laws, then what good are they? There's simply, there's a bargaining, they're not there to get you to follow the rules, but there's a bargaining chip. And that seems totally illogical to me. But I bet if you talked to members of Congress and they were honest, they'd say, well, yeah, obviously that's common sense. So what is common sense? It's easy to say common sense isn't so common anymore, but I believe it deals with the things that we hold deep and true to us, our morals and our ethics and the way we were raised and all of our life experiences up to this point. So it becomes common sense a year from now might, you might not have considered common sense a year before. And what about when we get AI? Everybody has to relearn that and the kids at first and the Silicon Valley, the people that are really using it, they'll be like, well, hello, yeah, that's common sense. But I have zero common sense when it comes to AI because I've literally never used it.

21:40And I don't think that even Devon who thinks he knows something about it knows anywhere near enough to start taking for granted that this is common sense because it'll probably change. And once, definitely in two years, it'll be wildly different from what it is today. Yeah, I like this topic. Good job to whoever recommended this. We will be back in just a minute. Have you ever loved one benefacted by inflation? Yes. We have the product for you. Hard assets that hold their value like the real power family self-around are available at American Gold Exchange. You can visit American Gold Exchange at AMERgold.com or by calling 1-800-613-9323. Welcome back to the real power family radio show. Today we're talking about common sense and why it's not so common and we've covered that part of it is lack of experience. And I think part of the problem is we all like to stay in our comfort zone and not necessarily get out there and experience new things, but we need to be doing that so we can make

22:44better judgments on other things in the future. Eric, you told me a long time ago because somebody would ask a question and I would pull out my phone and I'd be googling it. And you're like, this is not how you understand how the world works. That's a great way to look something up immediately, but you cease to have your own thought process if all you're going to do is relate to a computer that's going to give you an answer that may not even be correct. And because it's taken out of context and if you're like, well, look up ROI and then you're trying to memorize the difference just like a school teacher. Yes. And we've got to get our favorite new school teacher, Stacy, over some of this and she even sat there and she had teachers very complex math and she's sitting in our Wednesday night dinner and talking about I have so much useless math or to my head and I had you have all of it. She got six years at college, more math. I mean, I hated calculus too. It was awful. I enjoyed Calc 1. I saw that, well, you know, I'll probably never use this, but I can see where there's

23:48a use for it. Calc 2. Unless you're like building bridges or skyscrapers, I don't even know what people use that for, but I guess the people building the bridges I drive across or designing airplanes, I kind of want them to know that if it is actually needed. But then again, I've seen a lot of airplane designers. They just threw together some parts in their garage and now they're a major airplane designer and they just made their plane out of drawings. They just sat down and pulled out of their head and it seemed like common sense to them once they wanted the basics, but she's sitting there with, you know, Calc, whatever she took, right? And probably only, Stacy and all this. I'm like, you know all that math and you can't do an amortization table on your head. You don't understand. I can literally, this is not fourth grade math, but I can teach this to a fourth grader. Of course, you give them a book to look it up in, which my mom used to have a little brown amortization book. Or now everybody just downloads the app on their phone, right, Ethan? Probably, yeah. And they just download the app on their phone and then they can do the amortization.

24:54But if you, that's needed in her new business, in business in general, especially in buying things where you're using get, yes, that's not out of all the mass she learned. Business math was never taught to her. And it's so interesting. I believe everybody needs to, everybody needs to live in a house. You've got to have some type of shelter. And more than half the people in America buy a house greater than 50% or buying it, wouldn't it become in sense why wouldn't the school system teach about amortization and how it's going to affect you to get a 30 year loan? Even more than that, Eric, how many people get a car and have a car loan? So even if you're not buying a house, you can still use that same information so it should absolutely be taught because at some point, somebody's going to need to know that. And the first time Lila heard that word, she probably re-ended the dictionary and looked up what does amortization mean. I did. See, you know me so well. Larry kept using that word to me.

25:54He was my very first mentor. I'm like, I don't know what that means. And of course, I'm a guy. I'm too embarrassed to ask. I went home. I looked it up and then I looked up the formula for it. And then I opened up Microsoft Excel and I typed in and I created our very first loan calculator. And then I wrote an amortization table, the same one we still use today. Yes. I wrote that the day I learned what the word amortization meant from my mentor Larry. So that was in like 2003. And here we are. 23 years late. Yeah. You can download your own version on your app, but I wrote one out and Microsoft Excel because I needed to understand it. I wanted to see the variables that went into and I wanted to know the math behind it. I didn't want to push on the pedal on the right and go faster. I wanted to know why does that pedal make me go faster. And I think that that deep understanding makes a huge difference when it comes to understanding the world or using that information in the future.

26:57So I think I think you had the right method all along and schools don't teach that kind of thinking, but they really should they pushed too much of the memorizing regurgitate and to break this down into and I'm using my wife not to pick on her, but it's the perfect example of a government education. Yes. She was so much quotes smarter than me. She got better grades than me in high school and college, but I understood and she would memorize and regurgitate and forget and I'd struggle through, but once I got it, I got it forever. Yes. Like what Ethan does because I forced the children to learn how to do with that right? Well, and because you learned it that way, you could also apply it to other topics like it was one of those things that just floored me when I met you because you'd learn something in chemistry and you'd apply it to cooking at home and just like all this stuff that I would have never known to even put together. So I think I think the process that I learned was so terrible that while I had good quote

27:58unquote good grades, I wasn't actually learning anything. I think I think we got to watch when we're outsourcing education to a third party that what are kids learning because they need to learn how to think through a problem. It's not important to learn dates and it's important to learn how to think through things and understand the world. That's really the goal, isn't it? It's just bringing you back to more and more. Your basic beliefs and understandings of things is what common sense really is. Imagine if you just memorized Ethan, the pedal on the right makes you go faster or slower that see he just took a test on this. He just had a driver's license. The pedal on the left of a normal car, not an advanced piece of technology like your stick shift truck. Gone. Well, all the way on the left, some of them is in emergency. Stop. They're only two pedals. You drive in an automatic because we got to relate to everybody that's on their 30. Yes.

28:58It's a lot. No, I meant the emergency brake, but yeah, they're the normal brake. Okay. Close you down. Two pedals. Don't screw up this really simple analogy. You press it and you memorize in a driver's training. If I press the press the pedal on the right, what happens? Speed up. If I press the pedal on the left, what happens? I sit down and here's the problem. If you don't understand just a little bit about how they work, you end up and then somebody like your mother would come back and argue with me, well, I needed a start. It was at the stoplight and it turned green. So I pushed the pedal on the right, but then somebody, I'm like, why'd you wreck the car? Why'd you run into somebody? Why'd you rear in them? Well, I pressed the pedal on the left just like we were taught. You pressed the pedal on the left and I'm like, well, that should have stopped. I didn't say, I don't know. And I said, did you let off the pedal on the right? She goes, no, but I was pressing the pedal on the left harder than the pedal on the right.

30:01And that's the problem. And no, that obviously didn't, well, not so obviously. That did not happen in my family, but if you just blindly memorize things without understanding, it really could be that ridiculous of a problem you create for yourself. And most people would just say it's common sense. So here is a real life thing that happened a late, I was the crazy dumb one here. I asked my mom, I'm like, hey, mom, I'm driving and I've been driving four wheelers and stuff, but now I'm driving her car for the first time. Which way do you put the, which way do you turn the turning signal on? And she goes, well, obviously the way you're turning, I go, but what way am I? She goes, move it that way. I go, it's not sticking up from the top of the wheel, okay? It goes up and down. And she just thought it was common sense because if you're turning the steering wheel like this, your left hand is going to turn on and automatically push it up to make a right turn and automatically push it down and make a left turn. But that didn't make sense. I'm like, no, no, no, that's not common sense.

31:03If you push it up, you turn right. If you push it down, the left flanker goes on. It's not like common sense would be, I moved the blinker to the right, it goes right, and move it to the left, it goes left. Like on a motorcycle, if you ever have turning signals there, but they actually have a, at least the one that I had had a sliding switch. And then everything happened in adjusting an airplane, Ethan. I go, why is it getting her adjusted trim? I adjusted the trim, it's worse. Which way do you move the way you want the nose to go? But if you grab a hold of the trim wheel and spin it from the bottom to the top, which way does the nose go? If you down bottom to top, say that again. If you grab a hold of the trim wheel and move it from the bottom to the top, so you're spinning the wheel up, which way does the nose go? The nose goes down. And so I'm talking to Dave from my first instructor. He was like, it's the way you want the plane going. I'm like, it ain't working. I want the nose to go down. It keeps putting harder up, pushing up.

32:04The thing is, you have to think about, he needs to explain that in a different way. If you think about it, like that wheel is an airplane, you're grabbing the tail of the airplane. But he didn't. He didn't. Yeah. Not comments. That was my whole, now it's so logical. When you're spinning the tail or the back, like Ethan said, you're moving the nose in the direction, the front of the wheel is going. Yes. But yes, if you were to say, now continue your explanation, Ethan, because that's not what he said. He just didn't understand why it didn't have any common sense. Yeah, the way I would explain it is. So the listeners can visualize. All you can see is essentially a thin white piece of plastic that looks kind of like a circle. And if you grab that, I would say, act as if you're grabbing the tail. So if you grab the bottom and pull it up, then you're going to pull the tail up in turn, pushing the nose down. And that will trim you to go down.

33:05But for all of you, like, seafaring people out there, it's the same as those horrible compasses that are always backwards. I love my directional gyro. I love the card compass. But no, when you're looking in a compass, you always got to turn the illogical the wrong way, because you're looking at the back end of the compass. That's if you haven't been looking, I'm used to reading a card compass, doing land navigation in the army. I carry a cup. But when you get on to a boat and they got this big thing in front of you, the spins, you're really reading the back end of it and out the front. So it seems like you're turning backwards. If you have been on a lot of boat, and that's the same way your magnetic compasses and most airplanes, although some of them are replacing with card compasses. So it's the same as the DG. All right, let's take a quick break before I start talking about a new G5, because that's where my mind went. We'll be right back. Brushwood, median network. Every parent wants the best for their kids. Today, many parents want to be more involved in what their children are learning daily

34:05by homeschooling. This is Lila Woolwind, the mom from the Real Power Family Radio Show. Homeschooling was a big part of our kids' success. If you want a homeschool and aren't sure where to start, check out our homeschooling page at realpowerfamily.com. Find out how we can help your family learn more. Just go to realpowerfamily.com and click on the homeschooling link at the top. Also, listen together to our Real Power Family Radio Show on the Brushwood Media Network or on your favorite podcast app. We want your family to find the success you're looking for. Welcome back to the Real Power Family Radio Show. Today is Common Sense. And where specifically are we going to go next? Not on a new G5. All right. Well, we can talk about what seemed like Common Sense to me. I've got a key to get a driver's license, Ethan. No. 16. How long do you have to get a pilot's license? If you want to vote or get a commercial pilot's license, how old? To vote 18. I did not know a commercial was 18, but that would make sense. Apparently, to buy tobacco products now, and certainly,

35:05I just thought it was Common Sense. Everybody knew that you could buy lottery tickets and tobacco products at 18, but you couldn't buy alcohol until 21. But then my dad's like, no, you could buy 32 beer, which is your average alcohol content of all the cheap lead American beers, right? You could buy 3.2% alcohol by volume beer. I think at 19 when dad was a child. But then if you built like in Greece, I bet they would serve your brother. I don't know if the age is 16 or 18 across your, but I know when I was growing up at least, obviously this doesn't mean anything to me anymore, because I'm 50. But I believe you could get like a glass of wine with dinner or something. I don't know. And feel free if you're listening to us from Europe. Tell me you're drinking ages over there now, and what they were growing 25 years ago or so. But you used to be able to buy beer 19, but you couldn't buy whiskey until you were 21.

36:06And now I guess it's alcohol tobacco. Oh, but you can be issued. I was issued at an M16. So your modern sporting rifle that was went to fully automatic, or actually, yeah, we had the fully automatic and basic training, the A1s and the three round burst. By the time I got to brag. And they issued me a nine millimeter. Because I was a medic. So here I am, but then I couldn't buy a nine millimeter pistol, the M92, until I was 21, even though they gave me one. And I was literally a firearms instructor with it before that time. So now it's just so weird that, oh, well, you're allowed to do this in the army, and people are fighting to change it. And then I think they changed the law. Someone had a rant. It was on, I know, it was a clip that went around on social media. But this was someone who joined the military when they were 17 or 18. And this was back in, I think, Vietnam time.

37:07So a while ago, not a new, not a young person. But he had went to combat for, I don't know how long. But he was under 21, and by the time he got back, he couldn't, he wanted to go back and get deployed again. And whoever he was talking to is like, why would you want to do that? You just got back. He's like, because here I'm a child. Over there, I'm a man. Because he went through, you know, a deployment. And yet when he got back, he couldn't buy alcohol. He couldn't buy a gun. And what he said, which I don't know if it was true, at the time he couldn't vote. Because the voting age was apparently 21 at the time. I don't know if that's true or not. Dad, you might know better. I never heard of that. But I was a baby when Vietnam ended. Not even, or right after, yeah, I was born right after it ended. So that would be a grandfather question. Maybe ask your grandmother, you're at her house right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, or I'll look it up. But so either way, the question is not,

38:09should children be able to do whatever? I believe that children should be able to fire handguns and automatic weapons, but not all children. Only I would never, that's not where you start them. Only ones that had many, many long sessions of training and have proven their responsibility. Wait a second, Ethan, and not even that. It's not like even though I totally trust you as a 10-year-old with multiple types of firearms, because you had been so well trained, I would never let you go out on your own at 10 years old with a firearm. It would be under my supervision. And when is the time where it's acceptable for you to do that? The government says it's 16. You can drive without my supervision if you check all these boxes. But I would easily have let you drive a year, maybe two years earlier. And even at 16, your driver's instructor said, look, he can do that, but don't let him do that. I'm like, no, he's not going to be driving the Santa Monica Boulevard. We're not going to put him down some crazy rush hour freeway

39:10the month after he gets his license. You're going to go drive around for months. And I might send you on a really long trek in Tennessee. But even the first time you're going to Savannah, which is a half an hour drive, you're taking your brother or somebody with you. Yeah, right? Is your brother great? No, and I don't care that he's 18. I care that he has had a driver's license and been driving for two years. He has not a question of age. I don't, and I think that goes for most things. It shouldn't be a question of age. It should be a question of responsibility and discipline. Yes. Someone I also saw a video of someone who was losing their mind because this father was buying like a 22 or something for his, you know, to train his like five-year-old or he might have been seven or something. And to rather him train him with a 30-odd six? Well, I don't think it was the matter of the 22. I don't know if that registered in her mind, but it was the idea that this father was buying a gun

40:12and would even consider letting this kid who she thought was, you know, like five or something, touch a gun. But dad, you were a firearms instructor. We grew up around like every week. You would teach a concealed carry course. And we grew up around guns. You guys went hunting and there was no shortage of you teaching us and you discipline us. I mean, we've talked about how you discipline Devon and I before. And we know we, I mean, you taught us even with Nerf guns, the safeties of using a gun. Always pointed in a safe direction. Always act as if there's a, the gun is loaded and there's a round in the chamber. Never point it at anything you don't intend to hurt or shoot at. Meaning don't point it at anyone or anything important. And it drove me nuts. Now your grandmother doesn't have any guns. And a handful of years ago, she was like, yeah, my, my husband wants to get a gun now. And I mean, she grew up. She was married to my dad for 18 years. So they're always guns around. But I guess she never really shot that much.

41:15And I know that her new husband, who she has been married to for over 20 years, he's not qualified. And I'm not teaching a 70 something year old, how to shoot a firearm for the first time. There is no way save I do not want them to have a firearm. Now, I wish they would have let me teach him when they were 50 or 60. But no, that's just, oh, I want this because we're getting older. That is not the right time to buy gun. If you think you're going to want it when you get old and you're a widow, we had a lady show up with a loaded pistol in her purse. And it was just the most horrible thing. And she was, oh, I don't know how to work that. I tried to teach her. She came to my class. We gave her a refund. We wouldn't take her money. But I was like, I won't, I won't give you a certificate. I won't sign you off. You need to come back and get more stuff. And we unloaded the gun. She was furious because she couldn't figure out how to reload it. I'm like, I am not letting you drive home with a loaded gun in your purse. Bouncing around with no holster and no safety on it and no.

42:16This is a really old, unsafe gun. The newest, the newer firearms are so much safer than the ones built 50 years ago, like massively safer. Well, and you guys had the experience to know where those safety risks were. And she didn't have that information. She needed to be relying on somebody with that experience to be able to figure out what is good to do, what should she not be doing? She should have taken that as a really good learning experience. And this brings up the thing of... So my dad has Alzheimer's really bad before he passed. And you know how into firearms, I mean, he was a platoon sergeant, infantry, Vietnam. So by the time he was like 18 or 19, he was fully qualified. He grew up hunting and had them. And we took away his truck keys. We wouldn't let him drive because he was making bad mistakes and watched him very closely. But I guess he didn't just take any gun out at any time but he was still safe with firearm. And it was getting to the point it was harder for him to remember

43:19how to start the different chainsaws he had. But he never once pointed a gun in an unsafe direction. It was so, it was just common sense and second nature to him because he had grown up and lived with that for so long and touched him and used him every day. But we watched very, very closely. And he got to the point where yeah, he can go walk around his farm and shoot. But he didn't really carry in public anymore. And honestly, I thought he would be fine with the firearm safety. But he's not thinking clear. If he has to make a decision as to whether it's okay to pull firearm, I don't know what's going through his brain. So should there be an upper age limit? I don't know. You get some of these people that are 80 or 90 and thinking clear as can be. And others that are fallen apart and they're late 60. So it's not just like not everybody is mature enough to drive at 16, but some are mature earlier. Yes, just it's competency not age. So let's talk about what this has to do with common sense right after this break. I'm Eric from the Real Power Family Radio show

44:21on the Brushwood Media Network. I'm here with my lovely wife, Alilah, who is known as the mom of the power family. And I gotta tell you, just 25 years ago we were sleeping on a mattress on a warehouse floor. Then we learned to buy more hard assets faster. Like Real Power Family Silver Rounds from American Gold Exchange. If you want to get your own Real Power Family Silver Rounds, you can call American Gold Exchange at 1-800-613-9323 or you can visit their website at AMERgold.com. Welcome back to the Real Power Family Radio show. Today we're talking about common sense and how common it is or isn't. And Eric, you were just commenting on the difference between age limits and competency. Ethan, we had something to add before we get back onto that. I just wanted to bring up, again, we were talking about firearms before we went to break and I want to bring up one more thing,

45:21which just really is, brings out the lesson of, people will say that guns kill people, but it's really guns aren't the problem. It's the lack of discipline with the people who have the guns. I mean, most of the problems, most of the injuries with firearms, I think are from people who don't know how to use them. They might, I look at kids, if they get their hands on a firearm, they might do what they see people do in movies, which again, breaks multiple of the safety rules that dad, you have taught my brother and I since we were, oh, who knows how young, very young, like three maybe. And that's where I was going, your grandmother, my mom, has all of these stupid Nerf guns, I can't stand, I really, really hate it. And she let you guys have wars shooting Nerf guns at each other, she's like, that's what the main, oh, you would never, did you ever shoot at your brother in our house with a Nerf gun? Mm, I don't think I can't remember. I would have beat you if I ever found out, but I assure you, you didn't have big Nerf wars,

46:23she's like, oh, there's bullets all over. I like, they had Nerf wars, all the cousins were here. And I'm like, no, you will never aim a firearm of any kind. I don't care if it's a cap gun, I don't care if it's a Nerf gun. You'll never aim in another human being unless you want them to die. There is no exception. You just don't do that. You keep your finger out of the trigger guard unless you want to shoot it. You don't aim at anything that you don't want to kill. And I don't care what kind of gun that's how you were raised. So I know it bothered me that she let you do that. And I finally accepted that that is one thing I'm just not going to, it's my mother's house and if I'm going to let you go over there, then I have to let you play by her rules. So part of the problem is understanding cause and effect, right? I mean, a lot of people get that wrong, but gotta look at what the politicians are doing, what's the media doing, they mess up cause and effect so often that I think it's hard for people to start understanding what real cause and effect is. You say that all the time. Well, since you brought that up and all started, where we really, when I first noticed,

47:25I don't know where it started, probably way before us. We really went overboard on these stupid participation trophies. And I thought, oh, a sports game where they don't keep score, that's not the real world. Yeah. And at the same time, we had all of these sitcoms where people literally sit around in a coffee shop. We'll look at cheers. I loved it. Yeah, same idea. But they had jobs. They would come in and complain about their jobs and Norm would show up and as it wasn't either post a worker. Yeah. Or Cliff, I can't remember which one. Yeah, but they would show and they had jobs. And then the bartenders were working with jobs and Sam had a job and they'd talk about that. But by the time you go another 10 or 20 years, you sit around on the coffee shop all day and nobody ever goes to their job. And that was kind of propagated as a myth. Hey, you can just live like this. But let us look. We're not trying, I know this turned to firearms. I'm not saying that a 16 year old

48:27should be able to buy a firearm. I am certainly saying there are ways. And I think they might even change the law in some states that you could get a concealed carry license if you showed proficiency with a pistol. And I'm like, well, I shot expert. Here's my most recent shooting thing. I have to redo that. I think it was what was it every year or so in the Army with all these different weapons. If I've got an expert pistol and I was so fast that I was doing my last qualification at Camp Harry for the guard. And I'm shooting a bread of FS 92, the M9. And I was like, the guy watched me. I shot so fast that it said I missed one. I didn't miss anything. Or I actually missed two. Like, no, no, no, no, I didn't miss anything. Rapid reload everything, everything. I hit the 25 yard target so quickly and it was automatically scored. I go, look up which ones it says I missed. He's like, you're still an expert. I said, I don't care. I didn't miss any. I won't, you know, 100%. But as soon as the target started coming up,

49:29I shot it so it came up and immediately went back down. But it didn't record the shot because it had to be standing all the way up and still before it would record the shot. And we found that was a flaw for as long as they had been using these things. That was a flaw in the, he's like, I go, what do I miss? He's probably the long and I go, look it up. He goes, oh my gosh, you missed the two closest targets. He goes, I know you didn't miss it. I was standing there watching you and this is the range safety officer. He's like, it popped up and went right back down. You were so quick. And I'm, let's go see if we can do all shoot it a couple of times and I'll let it come all the way up and shoot it. And then the next time I'll hit it before it gets all the way up. And yeah, we proved it. I got my 100% in shooting then. I guess I found a problem that they can solve. That's awesome. My mom argued about how much better could I do? I got 100%. She was taking it, I got 99%. But one of your questions was wrong and here's the proof. You come by it honestly, Eric. Here's the thing. It doesn't matter whether you like guns or not.

50:30There's gonna be guns in the world and I strongly urge you not to get one unless you are trained. If you're thinking about going out and that was the best thing we ever did with the concealed carry course, more than half the people that came are never gonna get a concealed carry license. They wanted a firearm safety course and that was fantastic. And that's really the only bad thing. I'm a big fan of constitutional carry. Obviously, we're allowed to carry these. And I wouldn't have a problem. I definitely don't want the anybody in the government to have to teach you a course before you can get a license. I wanted to be a private individual and they tried to do that with concealed carrying out high O. And then they made it miserable. That's why we had a 12 hour class because that's how long the, I think state highway patrol class, one of the police officer classes was. So they just said, well, you gotta go through this or I guess we'll take an NRA certified instructor. And we fought hard. My dad fought hard. I wasn't involved that early in the thing when they first started doing this to make sure you didn't have the government giving permission before you could buy a firearm.

51:32But once you go through some like an NRA certified instructor and range safety officer and everything, then you should be able to do that. And if you can do that at 16, just like I took, well, not you, but your brother to get his hunting license, he went through the basic safety course. And I made sure that I didn't teach it. Even though I was well qualified, I wanted him to learn from another instructor because I figured he'd throw in and stress a couple of things that I didn't stress. And I would hope if you were an instructor. Can somebody else do that? Yeah, obviously you're gonna do all the teaching for your kids. But go get that government piece of paper that says he went through this range safety course with literally anybody but you. So they have a different point of view and it seems to me that it's common sense. You should have two instructors, it's better. Just like we did the two flight instructors, how they let us go up with somebody else. I think Tom's one of the best instructors ever dealt with. He was perfect for me, but I also enjoyed going up with Rich because he taught in a totally different way. And it was good. I mean, I learned a couple of things from him.

52:33I probably wouldn't learn from Tom because he was all about the numbers and beating it in. I don't necessarily think he's a better instructor, but I can see why having a little bit of both is better for the overall. Did you see that Ethan? Yeah, stay, hold on, stay that again. You cut out part for me. Let's just move on, we're running out of time. Let's not talk about how soon is too early to drive. Lila, you, Megan, what was she like 25 when she got her driver's license? Yeah, she was in her mid 20s. And so I would rather have Devon teaching her not now because she got it years ago. But if Devon had two years and you had another 25 year old with no driving experience, wouldn't it be better for an 18 year old to ride shotgun and help out and teach just because they're 25? It means they're more mature probably, but they don't have any experience when they are just getting their license. I do love how you had to have so many documented hours of training. So all of these things, we can all, and that's what mature grown up adults should do. We should argue about should a soldier be able to buy a firearm

53:36even though they're only 18? Or should you be able to go through a class? Is 21 the right age for drinking? Maybe it's the right age for voting, maybe 16 is. When should we be allowed to draw all of these things are up for debate? But if it is commonly accepted, now this is where I think common sense is lacking and it's just so glaring that you need to check your premise because if one of your observations is incongruent, you got something wrong. And if you have to be 21 to buy a cigar or a bottle of beer, if you have to be 18 to vote and yet you can control the future of our government. If you have to be 16 with parental consent and all kinds of signatures from your parents and 40 hours of driving with your parents and then I have to take responsibility for you once you get a license until you turn 18. But you're telling me that a 12 or a 14 year old can walk in and have a sex change operation

54:38and you wanna do this without parental consent. That brings us that a young woman, Fox, who's 22 had her upper body parts cut off by doctors had a double mastectomy when she was 16 years old. She can't legally drive unless her parents give her permission but she decided she wanna live as a boy. She just won a $2 million lawsuit against them. This seems like common sense that the doctors should be held accountable. Anybody that's willing to give drugs and try and change your physiology? I don't know if it's okay if the parents say it but if you can't vote until you're 18 you definitely shouldn't be able to make a life altering change. You can't buy a pistol until you're 21 in most places if not all but you can pretend to change your gender and have a surgery to do that and get hormone therapy when you're like 14. Well what's the reason that they wanna last to get alcohol because it's something about stunting our growth

55:39or it's not good for us and we're growing. How many of the female and taking male injection hormones like testosterone is way worse than drinking coffee or alcohol. Seems like common sense to me and you're right. Common sense isn't so common but if you take a step back and separate out the two things we talked about, one, where did they grow up? What were their experiences? And if this is what you're training your kids this is the way you learn. That doesn't mean you're wrong or a bad parent. I didn't train my kids about placing the snakes because we didn't have pit vipers in Ohio but if I would have grown up I bet they would have got a wildly different lessons on nature if we grew up in Tennessee. So you have to think about what was logical for them to learn. Maybe that could be grouped into common sense and should we even have any ages for anything? Should the parents be the only ones to decide because there's no way the government can choose and say yes, Devon is mature enough

56:40but Ethan is not our vice versa. I don't know. I think some of these things are common sense and I'm so glad that we're finally getting lawsuits and I'm sure tomorrow we're gonna talk about the Trump tariffs, which I'm sure people are thrown about and others are furious about. Just go to X, you can see both. But we will talk about is this a good thing or not with the Supreme Court said about the Trump tariffs? Lila wrapping up common sense. I think one of the big keys to having common sense is being able to see the big picture. So if you wanna get better, see the big picture. Ethan. And to go off of that, figuring out whether it's not and question of age, I think it's question of discipline and knowledge and training. Yeah, what really is common sense? I think it is more common than many people let on and if we don't enforce that and require in the world, we are gonna lose it. If you try to look and do something so incongruent that you know absolutely is wrong. And I only pick, I could pick many government standards

57:41but this whole trying to figure out and trying to tell a five year old, you can choose to be a boy or a girl. Every one of us knows that's wrong. Every single one of us by the time we were seven, eight years old, we knew there were boys when we knew there were girls. We didn't know what the difference was necessarily but we knew we were different and somehow. And that's just, it seems like common sense. So let's talk about what else should be common sense and if you know that this is true and you follow it, your life is gonna get better. And if you try and lie to yourself and pretend like it's true and your life is getting worse, that might be why. Use that piece of what I consider to be common sense to make your world a better place. We'll talk to you tomorrow. We hope you enjoyed the Real Power Family Radio Show brought to you by Family Success Triangle. We want you and your family to be financially free so you can go where you want, when you want, with whomever you want. Learn how we can help you live the life you've always dreamed of at realpowerfamily.com.

58:41To hear more, subscribe to Real Power Family on YouTube. Until next time, go out and make the world a better place.