A week after U.S. forces seized Nicolás Maduro, Elliott Abrams observed:

In Caracas, the regime remains fully in charge. While there are concessions—some real, some merely rhetorical—for the Americans, none of them compromise the plenary power of the gang that has ruled under Chávez and Maduro. The ministers of defense and interior, both indicted drug traffickers, remain in place. Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as interim president by her brother Jorge, who heads the National Assembly. Chavista gangs are still used to prevent or punish demonstrations. As of Saturday, just 16 of the country’s 800 political prisoners had been released. In other words, the regime is functioning internally exactly as it would have had Maduro been removed by a heart attack, and it is making the smallest concessions to Washington that it can.

I will leave the questions about who really benefits, what changes for Venezuelans, and whether the United States will back democracy or settle for oil and “stability” to others. In the weeks, months and years ahead, this will be a source of continued division in our country. Consistent with my writings in this Substack, I am more concerned with the narratives and often the hypocrisy surrounding the political discourse than the foreign policy decisions themselves.

We are told that "international law" is a shield. But look at the wreckage of the last several decades, and a different picture emerges. The system has become largely performative. It is a global theater where the UN and it’s agencies and NGOs follow a scripted routine of "concern" and "monitoring" while the world is littered with bodies. We have built an architecture that is high on rhetoric and zero on enforcement. A system that has been rewired to protect the lawbreaker and paralyze the law-abiding.

The primary engine of this paralysis is the UN Security Council Veto. What was originally designed as a safeguard to prevent World War III, has evolved into a permanent suit of armor for the world’s most ruthless actors.

When the Security Council is paralyzed by repeated Russian and Chinese vetoes on crises like Syria and Ukraine, or by American vetoes on Israel‑related resolutions the rest of the UN system does not fall silent.1 Instead, it becomes politicized and performative. Because the Council cannot act, the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council talk. They pass non‑binding resolutions that feel like “law” but carry no weight. This creates a dangerous illusion of progress. We appoint fact‑finding missions to Venezuela and special rapporteurs to Iran, collecting mountains of evidence that everyone knows will almost certainly never lead to a courtroom.

This is the core of the performative trap:

• The bureaucrats get to feel they are “doing something” by writing 400‑page reports.

• The dictators get to ignore the reports because they know their patron on the Security Council will veto any real consequence.

• The victims are left with a “record of their suffering” and a tombstone.

In this vacuum of enforcement, the “identity trap” thrives. Since the law cannot be enforced equally, it is instead applied selectively. On much of the political left, where this trap is most visible, international law is no longer about the act (murder, torture, starvation); it is about the actor. If the actor is viewed as an “anti‑imperialist” or a “historical victim,” the system’s inherent paralysis is reframed as a moral virtue, a defense of “sovereignty” against the “bullying” of the West.

I. The Promise and the Contradiction

The capture of Nicolás Maduro brought this into sharp focus. Almost immediately, the story shifted from a starving nation under the control of an illegitimate leader to a legalistic mourning of violated “sovereignty”.

Consider this statement by Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner, speaking to journalists in Geneva. Rejecting the US justification for intervention based on Maduro’s “longstanding and appalling” human rights record, she insisted:2

Accountability for human rights violations cannot be achieved by unilateral military intervention in violation of international law. Far from being a victory for human rights, this military intervention, which is in contravention of Venezuelan sovereignty and the UN Charter, damages the architecture of international security…And this is a point that the Secretary-General has also made.

This raises an obvious question: if “accountability cannot be achieved by unilateral military intervention,” how exactly is it meant to be achieved when the international community refuses to act?

II. Venezuela and the Sovereign Alibi

What has the UN actually done since Chávez took control of Venezuela in 1999? This headline in an Amnesty International Report says it all “Decisive action by UN Human Rights Council supports victims and signals at perpetrators that the world is watching them”

The ‘decisive action’ in question was the Council’s decision to renew the mandate of its Independent International Fact‑Finding Mission and the OHCHR presence in Venezuela, allowing investigators to keep documenting abuses and reporting to Geneva.

And the world did watch. The UN monitored and reported as Chávez concentrated power. Under Maduro, the Human Rights Council eventually created a “fact‑finding” mission and OHCHR issued detailed reports describing extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detention and possible crimes against humanity, while UN agencies coordinated underfunded humanitarian and refugee responses as nearly eight million Venezuelans fled.

What it never did was impose enforcement measures or meaningful costs on the regime. Sovereignty, reinforced by great-power politics, insulated Caracas from consequence. The world watched while atrocities accumulated. Accountability existed only on paper.

This paralysis is the final, decayed stage of the Hobbesian bargain3. Thomas Hobbes described the “Sovereign” in his seminal 1651 work Leviathan as a “Mortal God” who holds absolute power to maintain peace and order within society created for one specific purpose: to rescue human beings from a state of nature where life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." For Hobbes, the Sovereign’s authority was absolute only because it was the sole guarantor of peace and security.

But the international system has performed a grotesque surgery on this logic. It has kept the Hobbesian shield of absolute sovereignty for the dictator while discarding the Hobbesian requirement that the dictator actually protect his people. We are now asked to respect the "Sovereignty" of regimes that have returned their citizens to the very state of nature the state was invented to abolish.

This is the sovereign alibi in action. But sovereignty alone does not explain the paralysis. The deeper reason is ideological sorting. The question is not whether the system has rules, but who the rules are for.

Critics will argue that this sorting is a necessary correction for centuries of Western dominance. They claim that "blind law” was never actually blind, but a tool of the powerful. However, the result of this correction is a total inversion of justice: by trying to protect the "marginalized" state, the system ends up protecting the dictator who is currently marginalizing his own people. Certain regimes are treated as historical victims whose sovereignty must not be breached, no matter the scale of their crimes. Others are treated as moral aggressors whose sovereignty is endlessly negotiable. That sorting determines whether violence is condemned as atrocity or contextualized as grievance.

III. Iran and the IRGC: Proof It’s Systemic

Iran shows that this is not a regional failure or a uniquely American dilemma.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has experienced several major waves of rebellion. While the specific “flashpoints” have evolved from student rights to economic despair and, most recently, women’s autonomy, the government’s response has followed a consistent pattern: total internet blackouts, mass arrests, and the use of lethal force by the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and Basij militia.

Sadly, the international response has also followed a predicable pattern. Monitoring. Reporting. Statements of concern. Special rapporteurs. And, in a grotesque inversion, the same regime responsible for repression was appointed to chair a major UN Human Rights Council forum and the Council’s Asia-Pacific Group.

What the UN did not include was enforcement. The evidence was overwhelming. The repression was open. Yet sovereignty and “anti-imperialist” framing once again converted brutality into complexity. The world watched. The IRGC learned: documentation is survivable. Accountability is optional. This is the "Identity Trap" at its most lethal. Because the IRGC positions itself as the vanguard of an anti-Western identity, its internal repression is treated as a "complex domestic matter." The law becomes a suicide pact because it refuses to see a perpetrator as a perpetrator if they use the correct ideological password.

As mass demonstrations spread across Iran in early 2026, the regime’s response followed a grimly familiar script. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps moved to crush them, demonstrators were shot, imprisoned, tortured, and executed. Women were beaten to death for defying dress codes. Thousands disappeared into detention. As of this writing, it is believed that over 12,000 have been murdered by the IRGC since the start of this open rebellion. President Trump has publicly warned that if the regime killed protesters, there would be consequences4. Once blood began to flow, the WSJ reported that his advisers floated a menu of options: offensive cyber operations to blind Iran’s internal command and control, disruption of state broadcasting, covert sharing of real‑time intelligence on Basij deployments to help demonstrators avoid ambush, financial support for striking oil workers, even flooding the country with satellite internet terminals to pierce the blackout.​

Those discussions underscore the core point here. Even a U.S. administration that is demonstrably less squeamish about using force is not calling in armored divisions or promising a Baghdad‑style occupation. It is trying to find ways to raise the cost of repression without owning the entire outcome of Iran’s internal uprising.

Meanwhile, in the multilateral arena, the regime that orders the shootings continues to enjoy the full protections of “sovereignty”. Its officials sit in UN forums. Its diplomats trade on the language of non‑intervention and “anti‑imperialism.” Its violence is endlessly contextualized by history, sanctions, and Western sins. The message to the IRGC is the same one Maduro received for years: documentation is survivable. Statements are survivable. What is not survivable is a serious shift in the balance of power.

That is the systemic failure. Revolutionary regimes that position themselves as victims of Western power are treated as untouchable subjects of law. Their “sovereignty” is absolute. Their violence is “complex.” Intervention is reflexively denounced as colonial aggression, even when the only people asking for help are the regime’s own citizens being shot in the streets.

Commentators like Andrew Yang have captured the moral urgency of this moment in Iran. He describes a regime that bankrupts its own economy, brutalizes women for dress‑code violations, sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah, and now guns down protesters in the streets after shutting off the internet and he asks what America is for if not to help bring such a tyranny down. That instinct is not wrong; the evil is real, and the courage of Iranians facing live fire is undeniable.

But this is exactly where the gap between moral impulse and international structure widens. The same system that has spent decades contextualizing the IRGC and shielding Tehran behind “sovereignty” will be first in line to declare almost any serious U.S. support for the uprising “illegal,” while offering Iranians little more than statements and rapporteurs. The question is not whether the regime deserves to fall. It is whether a legal and political order that treats its victims as abstractions and its oppressors as “stakeholders” is capable of helping them at all or only of condemning the democracies that try.

IV. Israel: Proof It’s Asymmetric

The inversion becomes unmistakable when the same legal framework is applied to Israel.

When Israel uses force to defend its citizens against terror groups like Hamas, legality suddenly becomes absolute and unforgiving. Every action is parsed as potential criminality. Intent is presumed malign. Sovereignty is treated as conditional. We have built a world in which the identity of the actor matters more than the substance of the act. A democratic state defending its citizens is presumed guilty. A terror group or anti-Western autocrat is presumed contextual.

A counter-perspective suggests that Israel is judged more harshly because it is a "Western-style democracy," and therefore should be held to higher standards.5 But this logic is itself a form of discrimination. It implies that people living under autocracies deserve less protection from the law, and that "ruthless" actors should be given a moral discount simply because they don't claim to be part of the liberal order.

The same system that treats the IRGC as a complicated regional stakeholder treats a democratic state under constant attack as a presumptive violator. At the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council, Israel is the target of more country‑specific resolutions than any other state, while far more brutal regimes often face little or no sustained censure. The law does not disappear. It changes direction.

The language that seals this asymmetry is always the same: “international consensus.” Ask almost any major institution about Israel and the answer comes back, as if it were an axiom, that there is a global consensus that the territories are “illegally occupied,” that settlements are per se unlawful, that Israel’s presence is governed by a law of occupation whose meaning is beyond serious dispute. The same bodies are far more cautious when asked to pronounce on Russia’s borders after Crimea or on China’s claims in the South China Sea. Consensus, it turns out, hardens around Israel and dissolves elsewhere.

Yet even on the narrow question of borders, the story is messier than the catechism allows. The 1949 armistice agreements explicitly stated that the so‑called Green Line merely marked where armies happened to stand when the guns fell silent, “without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines,” and Arab negotiators insisted that language be included. Jordan’s later annexation of the West Bank was recognized by almost no one, including most Arab states. When Israel captured the same territory in a defensive war in 1967, it was taking control of an area that had never been widely accepted as Jordanian sovereign soil. Even the principle of uti possidetis juris, which the international system has applied to freeze colonial borders in Africa and Latin America, has been invoked by jurists to argue that Israel inherited the Mandate borders at independence, a claim that is treated as serious everywhere except in this one case.

None of this proves that every Israeli policy is wise or just. It does show that the “international consensus” is not a neutral reading of law handed down from on high. It is a political choice about which doctrines to emphasize and which to ignore, and about where legal ambiguity is tolerated and where it is declared heresy. It requires acknowledging that it is judged by standards that are not applied elsewhere. When the victims of repression sit in judgment and the targets of terrorism are treated as moral aggressors, the problem is not law. It is asymmetry.

This asymmetry is not limited to how foreign regimes are judged. It appears just as clearly in how Western leaders themselves are treated.

Actions taken under President Barack Obama that raised serious questions of sovereignty and international law were widely contextualized, and absorbed into the language of responsibility. Drone campaigns across multiple countries and the intervention in Libya were defended as reluctant but necessary uses of force. Similar legal ambiguities under President Donald Trump are treated as uniquely dangerous violations of the international order, cited as evidence that norms themselves were collapsing.

The issue is not which president was right. The issue is that legality was framed differently depending on who acted. International law functioned as a flexible context for some and an absolute constraint for others. Identity preceded judgment.

This is the identity trap in full view. Once actors are sorted into oppressor and oppressed, the law ceases to bind everyone equally. It becomes a vocabulary for excusing chosen clients and prosecuting chosen enemies.

That inversion is not an aberration. It is the operating system.

A system that treats “sovereignty” as untouchable (even when led by an illegitimate actor) and identity as exculpatory cannot survive contact with ruthless actors.

V. Rebuttal: “But Look at the Progress We’ve Made”

At this point, defenders of the system raise what they consider the decisive objection.

When confronted with these failures, defenders of the system often change the subject. They point to charts showing dramatic improvements in living standards.

These gains are real.

But they are also frequently misattributed. Prosperity tracks industrialization and trade far more closely than it tracks any particular set of legal institutions in New York or Geneva. Growth is not moral legitimacy.

Citing material progress to excuse institutional paralysis is not compassion. It is deflection. If we accept that autocracies are "succeeding" because they provide growth, we are falling into the ultimate identity trap: the idea that certain populations living under autocratic rule neither need nor want the "universal" rights the West claims to cherish.

By country count, democracies may still slightly outnumber autocracies in international institutions. By population, the picture flips completely. According to the 2025 V-Dem report, the world now has fewer democracies (88) than autocracies (91) for the first time in over two decades. Roughly 72% of the global population about 5.8 billion people now lives under autocratic rule. The level of democracy experienced by the average person has fallen to levels not seen since 1985.

Particularly dangerous is the rise of “grey‑zone” regimes: electoral autocracies and backsliding democracies like Mexico and Indonesia. Elections exist, but accountability is hollowed out from within. When these regimes slide, they destabilize entire regions while retaining the formal protections of sovereignty and international legitimacy. The identity trap rewards this drift.6

The problem is not just moral inconsistency. It is that the global conditions that once masked these failures are disappearing.

VI. The World That’s Coming: Deglobalization and Power

Peter Zeihan’s 2022 best seller “The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization―The Collapse of Globalization and Its Aftermath” paints a picture of the world that makes this even starker. The era of effortless globalization he describes is ending. Supply chains are regionalizing. Demographic collapse is hollowing out workforces. Energy security is becoming a local, not global, question again. The “order” that made container ships, cheap credit, and open sea‑lanes feel like facts of nature depended on a very specific configuration of American power and political will. That configuration is fraying.

If Zeihan’s analysis is broadly correct, de‑globalization means that geography and hard power reassert themselves. Chokepoints, food systems, manufacturing bases, and demographics matter more than communiqués in New York. A world like that will not be governed by resolutions. It will be governed by who can keep trade routes open, who can guarantee energy flows, who can absorb shocks, and who can credibly deter predators in their region. If law is not anchored in that reality, it will simply be ignored. The risk of "stripping away the alibis" is that we might find nothing underneath. If the "Identity Trap" has corrupted the system's core, then removing it might reveal that the "International Community" was always just a collection of interests wrapped in a flag of convenience.

If international law is not anchored in the reality of power and deterrence, it becomes a cage for the principled and armor for the ruthless. The Monroe Doctrine is not just nostalgia; it is one way of describing what survival may require for the United States in such a world.

The answer to the charade of international law is not to abolish law. It is to strip away the alibis that have grown around it. To admit where it failed. To rebuild a framework where law binds everyone, not just those willing to abide by it, and more importantly enforced, by force if needed.

That will require hard choices. Where to stay. Where to leave. Where to act alone. Where to bind ourselves to rules even when they bite. The alternative to the current system is not chaos, but narrower coalitions, clearer mandates, and enforceable commitments.

VII. When America Walks Away

In a system that lacks enforcement, responsibility does not disappear. It concentrates.

The world is experiencing a surge in violence not seen since the post-World War II era. The year 2024 marked a grim new record: the highest number of state-based armed conflicts in over seven decades.

Against this backdrop, the United States has begun asking a hard question: should it continue underwriting an architecture that no longer delivers accountability.

According to Peace Research Institute Oslo (Prio):

A staggering 61 conflicts were recorded across 36 countries last year, according to PRIO’s Conflict Trends: A Global Overview report. “This is not just a spike – it’s a structural shift. The world today is far more violent, and far more fragmented, than it was a decade ago,” warned Siri Aas Rustad, Research Director at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and lead author of the report. “Now is not the time for the United States – or any global power – to retreat from international engagement. Isolationism in the face of rising global violence would be a profound mistake with long-term human life consequences.”

On January 7, 2026, a Presidential Memorandum directed the US to withdrawal from 66 international organizations, including 31 UN entities. This move is not simply about budgets. It is about legitimacy.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed it bluntly in “Ending the Charade of Wasteful International Organizations”:

The United States has played a central role in shaping the international order. From the Monroe Doctrine which allowed nations in our region to flourish free from interference outside of our hemisphere, to our pivotal role in the establishment of the United Nations, to serving as the primary security guarantor under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and as the world’s largest humanitarian donor, America’s leadership has been unquestionable. Leadership requires difficult choices, and the ability to recognize when the institutions created to promote peace, prosperity and liberty have become obstacles to those goals. What we term the “international system” is now overrun with hundreds of opaque international organizations, many with overlapping mandates, duplicative actions, ineffective outputs, and poor financial and ethical governance. Even those that once performed useful functions have increasingly become inefficient bureaucracies, platforms for politicized activism or instruments contrary to our nation’s best interests. Not only do these institutions not deliver results, they obstruct action by those who wish to address these problems. The era of writing blank checks to international bureaucracies is over.

While critics see a retreat from leadership, the charade is real. Participation confers legitimacy even when results are absent and victims are invisible. Critics of the 2026 withdrawal argue that the U.S. is merely creating its own "Identity Trap" one where "American Interest" is the only metric of truth. But the counter to that is clear: if the existing institutions already use identity to excuse tyranny, then "staying at the table" is not an act of diplomacy; it is an act of complicity.

For the United States, this is not an abstract debate. A de‑globalizing world means the American role moves back toward what the Monroe Doctrine (1823) originally implied: securing the Western Hemisphere, policing key sea‑lanes, and choosing carefully where commitments are sustainable rather than pretending to referee everywhere. It also means that walking away from every multilateral forum is self‑defeating. In a more fractured world, the coalitions that still work will be the ones built on real capabilities and shared interests, not slogans. They will still need rules, even if they are narrower and more honest than the universalist promises of the past.

None of this is clean. None of it is risk‑free. American power has its own ugly record when it forgets law and constraint. But a world of shrinking demographics, weaponized trade, and opportunistic autocracies will not be made safer by institutions that only constrain those already inclined to play fair. In Zeihan’s world, as in ours, order survives only where power, geography, and some credible notion of justice line up.

I would argue that walking away from 66 international organizations, is not a retreat from leadership. It is a refusal to continue underwriting a charade. Leadership sometimes means building, but it also means knowing when a structure has rotted beyond repair. When the “international system” protects those who forcibly interfere with the liberty of millions, it has ceased to serve its purpose.

VIII. Conclusion: A Suicide Pact

The patterns are now too consistent to dismiss as coincidence. When democracies act, every decision is litigated in the language of law. When tyrants or armed movements brutalize their own people, the same language stretches to accommodate “context,” “root causes,” “complexity,” and “anti-imperialism.” The result is not neutrality. It is a hierarchy of excuse.

In a de‑globalizing world, the cost of that paralysis rises. As supply chains fracture, demographics deteriorate, and regional blocs test alternatives to the dollar7, power is shifting back toward geography, hard capacity, and the willingness to enforce red lines. A legal order that cannot reckon with those facts will not constrain the ruthless; it will only bind the states still willing to take law seriously.​

The choice is not between law and lawlessness. It is between a legal architecture that treats sovereignty and identity as unchallengeable shields, and one that is honest about the conditions under which rules can actually be enforced. The former rewards the very actors most determined to exploit it. The latter would mean fewer promises, narrower institutions, harder decisions about where to stay and where to walk away, and a willingness to judge friends and adversaries by the same standards.

The ultimate rebuttal to this entire piece is the fear of the "Unknown." If we break the "Identity Trap," we must be prepared for a world where we, too, are judged by the acts we commit, rather than the values we claim to hold.

The identity trap promises moral purity. What it delivers is a world where procedure survives and people do not. The sovereign alibi claims to defend order. What it produces is impunity.

In the world that is coming, clinging to both is not virtue.

It is a suicide pact.

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As Co‑Founder and Managing Partner of Entourage Effect Capital, a venture firm that has deployed more than $200 million into over 70 cannabis companies across the legal U.S. market, I have had a front‑row seat to how federal policy actually operates on the ground. I have watched promising, well‑regulated businesses struggle under punitive tax treatment and banking constraints that make it easier for illicit operators to thrive than compliant ones. I have also seen the human side: investor capital evaporated, entrepreneurs bankrupted, employees laid off, and communities denied the economic and public‑health benefits that come from moving cannabis out of the shadows and into a transparent, regulated system.

Rescheduling Marijuana Isn’t Radical. Pretending Prohibition Works Is.

Cannabis prohibition has been an abject failure. It has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars with nothing to show outside of outdated policies rooted in discrimination and the destruction of individuals’ and their families’ lives. Advocates of continued prohibition paint cannabis legalization as a resounding negative that creates dangerous and harmful outcomes for American society. Current and former public officials have amplified their disdain for reform, relying upon cherry-picked data and biased analyses from disputed studies. Their conclusions lack sufficient exploration into whether cannabis’s perceived risks morally or practically justify the criminalization of the plant.

Commentary, including the December 20th Wall Street Journal editorial board opinion criticizing President Trump’s decision to reschedule cannabis, repeats the same pattern: highlight the real risks of cannabis, especially for youth, while ignoring the failures and harms of prohibition, the federal government’s own updated science, and any evidence that cuts the other way. Rescheduling is portrayed as a political play for “stoner” votes rather than what it actually is: a belated move to align federal policy with current evidence and to enable more rigorous regulation and research

Cannabis is currently listed under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, designated for drugs displaying no medical use and a high potential for abuse. It sits in the same category as heroin and is deemed more dangerous than Schedule II drugs such as cocaine, fentanyl, morphine and oxycodone. To continue to believe that cannabis should remain under Schedule I is absurd and undermines the credibility of those arguing to maintain federal prohibition. Back in 1988, Francis Young, the DEA’s chief administrative law judge, believed interdrug comparisons were relevant in assessing cannabis’ classification. He observed, “Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. There are simply no credible medical reports to suggest that consuming marijuana has caused a single death.”

UCSF integrative oncologist Donald Abrams, one of the few researchers to obtain government-approved supplies of cannabis for human trials, stated that “cannabis has medical uses” and it’s “clear from anthropological and archaeological evidence that cannabis has been used as a medicine for thousands of years.”

What rescheduling actually does (and doesn’t)

Moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III does not legalize state medical or adult‑use markets under federal law; manufacture and distribution outside DEA/FDA‑regulated channels remain federal crimes under the Controlled Substances Act. It does three main things:​

• Acknowledge that cannabis has accepted medical uses and a lower abuse risk than Schedule I/II drugs, consistent with the Department of Health and Human Services’ 2023 review.​1

• Remove the 280E tax penalty so that state‑licensed operators are taxed like other businesses, rather than at confiscatory effective rates.2​

• Lower research barriers so that more rigorous clinical trials and FDA‑style approvals become feasible.​

That is closer to treating cannabis like other controlled medicines with benefits and risks, not to declaring it harmless or fully legal.

The DEA’s failed policies have allowed an illicit cannabis market to exist and thrive, with sales estimated at $60 billion to $75 billion. Prohibition proponents advocate against legalization while continuing to allow illegal cannabis dispensaries to flourish and jeopardize the health and safety of the public.

We live in a time where our government is failing to do their job representing the will of the people at a time when 70% of Americans support legalization. The Wall Street Journal point to recent defeats of adult‑use ballot measures in Florida, North Dakota and South Dakota as evidence that legalization has “failed” at the ballot box. But that leaves out two crucial facts. First, these measures often received majority support—Florida’s Amendment 3, for example, won about 56% of the vote but fell short of the 60% supermajority the state requires for constitutional amendments. Second, since 2012, voters in dozens of states have approved medical and adult‑use reforms, so the national map shows a steady expansion of legal access with pockets of resistance, not a broad popular rejection.

It strains credulity to argue that cannabis should be classified as a Schedule I drug, and this incongruity should raise questions of credibility about the current regulatory environment. It is time for the federal government to legalize cannabis and put in place common sense policies that will ensure a safe and secure legal cannabis market. Legal operations ensure cannabis is lab tested and protect our children from the illicit market, where products are laced with fentanyl and other dangerous drugs, toxic pesticides, and heavy metals.

Economic and criminal justice failures

Consider the substantial cost-savings our government could incur if it were to tax and regulate cannabis, rather than needlessly spend billions of dollars enforcing its prohibition.

Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron predicts legalizing cannabis would save $7.7 billion per year in government expenditure. In Crimes of Indiscretion: Marijuana Arrests in the United States, Jon Gettman supports that conclusion estimating that $3.7 billion is spent by the police on enforcement, $853 million by the courts, and $3.1 billion in corrections. Such expenditures have resulted in mass incarceration and increased violence without substantially affecting drug availability​​. Moreover, despite evidence that usage rates are similar, African Americans and Latinos are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for cannabis than white Americans. From 2001 to 2010 alone, there were over 8 million cannabis arrests in the U.S. – 88% of which were for simple possession.

By contrast, on an annual basis, it’s estimated that federal legalization of cannabis could bring in nearly $8.5 billion in state tax revenue alone. Lawmakers have instead chosen to forgo this opportunity.

Federal prohibition fuels the illicit market

Upon halting the latest push to legalize adult-use cannabis in Virginia, Governor Glen Youngkin argued that legalization “does not eliminate the illegal black-market sale of cannabis.” Evidence suggests the opposite. In Canada, where they have federally legalized cannabis, data suggests that as the legal market grows it is taking market share away from the illicit market.

Eradicating the illicit market requires the development of a competitive legal market that adequately serves the adult population. But with legal state markets hindered by federal policy, prices are driven by high taxes and slow licensing rollouts (i.e. New York). This can be remedied by eliminating excessive taxation and providing more opportunities for businesses to break into the market, including those run by individuals with legacy experience. Those criminally punished for something that should never have been a crime must be granted amnesty.

Youth, potency, and public health deserve serious, not selective, concern

The WSJ is right about one thing: cannabis today is often more potent than in the 1990s, and heavy adolescent use is linked to real risks (cannabis use disorder), psychotic symptoms in vulnerable individuals, impaired driving, and emergency‑room visits. The question is what policy tools best reduce those harms.​

Prohibitionists cite correlational studies on IQ, psychosis, or cardiovascular events as if they prove that any cannabis use causes these outcomes, while often ignoring the authors’ own cautions that causality has not been established and that better, prospective data are needed. They also point to ED visits or poison‑control calls without distinguishing mild intoxication events from severe or lasting harm.​

It is my opinion that a regulated adult‑use framework with enforced age limits, product testing, potency labeling, and targeted education is better suited to protecting teens and young adults than an illicit market that sells untested, high‑dose products to anyone with cash. The choice is not “harmless” versus “dangerous”; it is whether we manage known risks transparently or continue to outsource them to unregulated dealers.

Cannabis & health: causation vs. correlation

In a March 2024 op-ed, William Barr and John Walters, the former U.S. Attorney General and former Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, asserted that legalizing cannabis was a mistake. In so doing, as Jacob Sullum opines, they “ignore the benefits of legalization and systematically exaggerate its costs.”

In that same month, the House Republican Policy Committee described cannabis as a “crime” and “gateway drug” that leads to “violence, depression and suicide.” Along similar lines, Barr and Walters state that we don’t have “a full understanding of [cannabis’] health risks.” The pair draw conclusions based on incomplete or intentionally misleading statistics, utilizing relative risk percentages while ignoring absolute risk in order to exaggerate outcomes, and failing to distinguish between correlation and causation. For example, they argue “studies have found that teens who regularly use marijuana experience an eight-point decrease in IQ.” The study in question is of 1,000 kids in New Zealand who “frequently” smoke cannabis before their 18th birthday. This impact is actually a direct result of a failure to regulate. Under any regulatory scheme adopted, teen use would be strictly prohibited in a legalized market that mandates ID checks.

Similarly, Barr and Walters reference “long lasting effects” on mental health, referencing an article published by the Heritage Foundation about users from a 2016 study. The study was based upon continued cannabis use in patients with psychosis, furthering their conflation of causation and correlation. As Charles Ksir and Carl Hart report in their analysis of that same study, “the interpretation extends beyond the available data” and “the meta-analysis was based on correlational studies.” They go on to say that “each study points out that causation has not been shown, and we should not allow the consistency of these correlational findings to substitute for actual evidence of causality.”

Flawed arguments from Barr and Walters go on: “States with liberal cannabis laws have seen a significant increase in marijuana-related ER visits,” but the article provides zero evidence of actual injury or harm. They write, “one in three people who use marijuana become addicted,” sourcing the CDC. In actuality, the agency does not state that they are addicted; instead, they reference “marijuana use disorder.” When compared to other Scheduled substances like heroin and cocaine, the risks and harm of cannabis addiction are minimal.

Barr and Walters continue to ignore interdrug comparisons, likely because data suggests that cannabis presents less risk than many legal substances. Compare it to alcohol (an unscheduled substance): Mortality risk from alcohol use is ~114 times greater than that of cannabis; the CDC attributes 1,600+ U.S. deaths per year to alcohol poisoning, while there has never been a fatal cannabis overdose; organ damage associated with alcohol abuse can be lethal at levels nowhere near that of the most frequent cannabis users; alcohol leads to more violence than cannabis; and driving ability is more impaired by alcohol than cannabis. Similarly, more than 400,000 deaths each year are attributed to tobacco smoking, while cannabis is nontoxic and cannot cause death by overdose.

On cardiovascular risk, they rely on a self-reported study which acknowledges that initial research needs “prospective cohort studies” to properly examine the association. Moreover, references to relative risks are misleading by amplifying the actual danger posed by a particular behavior.

How prohibitionist arguments including the WSJ editorial cherry‑pick risk

Like the Barr/Walters op‑ed, the WSJ editorial leans heavily on worst‑case anecdotes fatal crashes with THC in toxicology screens, psychotic reactions to mislabeled edibles, or ED visits while omitting any denominator. It does not distinguish relative risk (for example, elevated odds ratios in observational studies) from absolute risk, nor does it meaningfully compare cannabis harms with legal substances such as alcohol and tobacco, which cause far higher mortality and social damage.​

They also ignore the federal government’s own updated science. In recommending Schedule III, HHS concluded that cannabis has “currently accepted medical use” and that:

The vast majority of individuals who use marijuana are doing so in a manner that does not lead to dangerous outcomes to themselves or others.

That sentence never appears in prohibitionist commentary, despite being central to the current rescheduling decision.​

Banking, 280E, and “helping marijuana companies”

Critics complain that rescheduling “helps marijuana companies do more business” by allowing normal tax deductions. But 280E does not distinguish between responsible, state‑licensed operators and bad actors; it simply over‑taxes the entire legal industry while leaving untaxed, unregulated illicit operators untouched. If the goal is to move commerce out of basements and into accountable, inspected businesses that card customers and test products, aligning tax treatment with other regulated industries is not a giveaway. It is basic policy coherence.​

Looking to the future

Cannabis’ risks and benefits should be relentlessly explored, publicized, and impartially applied to policy while upholding the rights of adults to make their own decisions. To enhance freedoms, generate wealth, and promote the health and well-being of Americans, we must lean into science, appropriate government and industry with a commitment to truth and practicality.

Editorials that focus only on harms, ignore the failures and inequities of prohibition, and dismiss the federal government’s own scientific findings do not promote honest debate; they prolong a status quo that is costly, discriminatory, and less protective of youth than a well‑regulated legal market.

It is critical to acknowledge both the potential risks and benefits of cannabis use, while also recognizing the need for further research to fill the current gaps in our understanding. Therefore, discussions around cannabis legalization and its potential health impacts should be grounded in a balanced review of the available evidence, considering the limitations of current studies and the broader context of cannabis use within society. This approach ensures a more nuanced and informed public debate that can better guide policy and personal decisions.

As I discuss throughout Chapter 3 | Challenges Need Leaders, our elected officials are failing us. They refuse to muster the courage to take a stand and solve the problems that threaten the prosperity of our great nation. Instead, they are captured by two political parties obsessed with division.

This is not about left or right. It requires us to address systemic failures. We the people have allowed a political-industrial complex to entrench itself to our detriment. Loyalty to party and donors is rewarded above loyalty to constituents, a conclusion documented by multiple academic and journalistic analyses.

• Congress behaves as though its primary job is reelection rather than governing. New members are instructed by party leadership to spend as much as 20 to 30 hours a week fundraising from wealthy donors and interest groups. The people’s business takes a back seat to the business of staying in office. The incentive is reelection, not results. This is not conjecture. This is the reality of congress.

• Our political leaders no longer prioritize governing, they prioritize performance. The incentive today is not to solve a problem but to go viral arguing about it. Lawmakers deliver blistering speeches designed for cable news and social media, while refusing to sit at a table and negotiate like adults. The country gets theatrics while the crises worsen. This is how the duopoly keeps us divided.

• We elect our representatives to solve problems but instead they’ve adopted a permanent wartime posture against one another. For more than 10 years, the majorities in both parties view the “other side” as immoral and a threat to the country. In this environment compromise becomes betrayal, negotiation becomes weakness, and the American people pay the price for a political system that rewards conflict instead of solutions.

The truth is painfully clear. Our politics produce exactly the behavior it incentivizes. A system that rewards outrage will produce outrage. A system that rewards fundraising will produce fundraisers. A system that rewards party loyalty will produce partisans. What it will not produce is leadership. We have engineered incentives that actively punish compromise, discourage cooperation, and reward theatrics over governance. Until we realign those incentives, no reform, note even the ones I have championed in these pages, can fully take root1.

The core of my proposal here is simple: if we want different behavior from Congress, we must build a system that pays them for different behavior. If we want our political system to prioritize problem-solving, we must make problem-solving the behavior the system rewards.

So how do we change course when our representatives have become incapable of leading? Today, I want to explore a notion that may sound unhinged at first, but hear me out. What if we applied a framework of “conscious capitalism” to Congress? What if we paid for results that benefit the whole country? What if we created a lucrative incentive structure for elected officials that finally attracted the best and brightest to serve?

The Grift is the Problem

Congressional salaries have barely changed in decades. A member of Congress earns roughly $174,000 dollars a year to oversee a federal budget that exceeds 7 trillion dollars. Power of this scale managed by compensation of the current scale, creates a structural imbalance. It fails to attract the best talent. There was a time when citizens made sacrifices for the greater good. Great men and women grounded in principal who led by example and love of country. Where are those people today? I’m sure there are some leaders worthy of our respect, but the rank and file today have been captured by a political system that serves its own corrupt means and ends. Today, we attract individuals willing to accept a modest public salary, not because of self-sacrifice, but because they know the real revenue streams lie elsewhere. Human nature is such that behavior will always follow incentive. We see the results everywhere across the political spectrum.

The Stock Trading Problem

Congressional stock trading continues despite overwhelming public opposition. Although members of Congress are required to disclose their trades under STOCK Act of 2012, they are still legally permitted to buy and sell individual stocks even in sectors their committees regulate. This remains one of the most widely criticized conflicts of interest in the country. For example, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband have been reported to have turned an initial portfolio reportedly worth under $800,000 into roughly $130 million in gains while she served in Congress (an estimated return on the order of 16,000% over several decades), far above market benchmarks. Meanwhile, legislation intended to ban such practices —such as the Bipartisan Ban on Congressional Stock Ownership Act of 2023 (H.R. 1679) has stalled in committee despite bipartisan co-sponsors. Polling confirms the public’s position: a majority across party lines supports banning individual stock ownership by members of Congress. The concern is obvious: if a member of Congress sits on a committee that shapes technology regulation, defense procurement, health policy, or banking oversight, the public must trust that their votes are not influenced by the portfolio in their household. That trust does not exist today. The lack of trust extends beyond individual trades. Legislators who introduce or vote on major regimes for industries in which they or their spouses hold significant positions erode the foundational legitimacy of representative government. In this environment, the system of oversight and enforcement is weak; for instance, violations of the STOCK Act have resulted in minimal penalties and no high-profile prosecutions.

The Lobby’s Revolving Door

The revolving door between Congress and the lobbying industry never stops spinning. A significant share of former members of Congress become lobbyists (more than 45% of ex-Senators and 33% of ex-House members since 2000, per OpenSecrets.org, 2025). Federal lobbying reached nearly $3.9 billion in 2024, a historic high (CRP, 2024). This is legal, but contributes to public disillusionment and policy distrust (Gallup, July 2025, Congressional approval at 15%).​​ They leverage insider knowledge and personal networks to influence legislation. The public knows this. That is why confidence in Congress sits near historic lows2. The perception is simple. Lawmaking has become a springboard to higher earning opportunities. Federal lobbying spending remains enormous. Billions of dollars are spent every year to influence legislation, regulation, procurement, and policy. This is legal. It is protected speech. But it is also part of the structural imbalance. Lobbyists and industry groups can offer influence, access, and future employment. Ordinary citizens cannot. These are established patterns. The problem is not individual morality. The problem is architectural. The system rewards behaviors that undermine the national interest while punishing those who try to act independently. We cannot fix it by moralizing; we must reverse the incentives.

Executive Branch Conflicts

But these issues are not limited to the Legislative branch. The Executive Branch is not above the fray. The Biden family’s foreign business dealings have fueled years of investigation and public concern. Several committees in Congress have examined Hunter Biden’s work with foreign companies while his father served as Vice President. These investigations have not proven a criminal quid pro quo by President Biden. But the larger point is structural. The public believes that family members of powerful officials should not be building private wealth from foreign sources that intersect with American foreign policy. When this happens, even if it is technically legal, trust collapses.

Now consider our current President. He’s perfected the “art of the steal.” A Reuters special investigation last month reported that the Trump family earned more than $800 million dollars in realized profits from sales of crypto assets in the first half of 2025 alone, largely through a venture called World Liberty Financial and a Trump-branded meme coin. More than 90 percent of the Trump Organization’s reported income in that period came from these crypto ventures. Much of the money appears to have come from foreign investors who were explicitly seeking proximity to the President of the United States and regulatory favor. Ethics experts interviewed by Reuters described the arrangement as “legal but unethical”, and as an “unprecedented” conflict of interest in modern presidential history because it aligns presidential decisions on crypto regulation and enforcement with the private enrichment of his family. As Joe Nocera observed in his op ed Inside Trump’s Crypto Cash Machine in the Free Press this week:

While no one has uncovered proof of a quid pro quo, crypto and ethics experts I spoke to said that is almost beside the point. “Every president since the Civil War has avoided financial conflicts until Trump because they knew it was the right thing to do,” said Richard Painter, who served as George W. Bush’s ethics counsel. Bush, for instance, sold his ownership stake in Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers before he decided to run, and Jimmy Carter sold his peanut farm in Plains, Georgia. Painter told me that the president and vice president are exempt from a criminal statute that makes it illegal for anyone else in the executive branch to be involved in anything that may affect their personal finances. But, he added, that shouldn’t matter. “The president should follow the same rules as everyone else.”

Whether one supports Trump or Biden, is a Republican, Democrat or Independent, the situation revealed a clear truth. The United States has no effective system for preventing our elected officials from blending public power with private enrichment. And it does seem that meeting the legal burden of proof on “quid pro quo” is often tricky but all of us see that the outcomes are obviously tied to the enrichment.

A Framework for Conscious Governing

As I discussed in Chapter 3.10 | Capitalism and Monetary Policy, “Conscious Capitalism” is a philosophy developed by John Mackey and Raj Sisodia that acknowledges a simple truth: markets work best when leaders pursue a higher purpose, honor their stakeholders, and create cultures rooted in integrity and responsibility. It does not reject profit. It argues that profit is sustainable only when aligned with the long-term wellbeing of everyone affected by an institution. Conscious capitalism is about harnessing the power of incentives to produce better outcomes for all stakeholders. A conscious enterprise does not chase short-term rewards at the expense of long-term value. When incentives are aligned with the interests of stakeholders, systems produce prosperity. When they are misaligned, they produce dysfunction. Critics argue that stakeholder capitalism sounds noble but dilutes accountability by giving leaders too many, and often contradictory, goals. In their view, profit is the only reliable measure of whether a company uses resources efficiently. Everything else introduces subjectivity and politicization. ESG, they say, is proof of how easily “purpose” becomes a political instrument rather than a performance standard. In the corporate world, this debate will continue. But in the public realm, conscious capitalism fits like a glove.

Government has one stakeholder: the American people. Government has one mission: the public good. Government has one higher purpose as outlined in the Preamble to the Constitution:

to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity...

Unlike corporate organizations, Congress has a clearly defined purpose and a “conscious” bottom line. Fiscal and Social responsibilities are inextricably linked.

Over decades, Congress has drifted away from its constitutional mission because the incentive structure rewards entirely different behaviors. When elections, donors, and party discipline overshadow the national interest, even well-intentioned leaders are forced into patterns that undermine the country’s long-term health.

The problem is not that our leaders lack patriotism. The problem is that the system punishes them for acting like patriots.

Today, Congress no longer operates with discipline, with conscious leadership, or with a culture that rewards integrity. Incentives shape behavior—and today’s incentives reward the exact behaviors Americans claim to hate: fundraising, outrage, grandstanding, and loyalty to tribe over country.

Now here is the crucial point: Congress today receives none of the compensation of a high-performing enterprise, and all of the access, influence, and opportunity to monetize political power privately.

And so the question becomes straightforward: What would happen if we redesigned Congress’s incentive structure to reward solving problems rather than performing outrage?

What Would Corporate America Pay the “C-suite” of a $7 Trillion corporation?

To answer that question, we should start with a comparison that forces clarity.

C-suite pay at America’s largest corporations, when including base salary, bonuses, and especially stock options and restricted stock, can be immense. In 2024–2025, the median S&P 500 CEO’s total compensation was approximately $18–23 million, while the most highly paid CEOs earned packages exceeding $100 million—primarily due to massive stock awards and options. For other top c-suite executives, compensation typically ranges from 30% to 45% of CEO pay, so it’s common for COOs, CFOs, CTOs, and similar roles to earn $5–15 million including incentives.

At the highest end, CEO compensation for the world’s largest market cap companies regularly reaches tens of millions—and sometimes far beyond—when equity awards and stock options are included. For example, Apple’s Tim Cook earned about $74.6 million in 2024, almost $60 million of which was in stock awards and incentives. Microsoft’s Satya Nadella received $96.5 million for fiscal 2025, with over $84 million in stock awards alone. Google/Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai received a historic $280 million in compensation in 2019 (driven by a triennial stock award grant), though more typical years are around $10–13 million base, with periodic large equity boosts. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy earned $40.1 million in 2024, driven by stock vesting, with one-off grants in the hundreds of millions during prior years.​

Extreme outliers, such as Elon Musk’s historic pay proposal at Tesla, have involved multi-year performance stock awards aggregating to many billions if targets hit; one recent board proposal pegged Musk’s theoretical package at $1 trillion, though most years are much less. The highest one-year compensation observed in major public filings was over $189 million (Brad Jacobs, QXO, Inc.), followed by other executives in the $150–170 million range, usually fueled by market-timed equity grants.

Now, let’s be clear, to achieve those compensation levels, an organization must excel. They must perform at the highest level. These executives run the largest and most profitable, highest growth companies in the world. Their compensation is tied to creating “shareholder value.”

To attract the best and the brightest to serve our country, we need to re-examine how we pay our leaders.

For perspective, if you extrapolated this pay structure to a hypothetical $7 trillion “corporation” with a leadership team of 561 (the size of Congress plus the Cabinet), the total compensation package could easily exceed $6–12 billion per year and each would be compensated accordingly:

• Rank-and-file Members → $1.2M–$1.5M

• Committee members → $2M

• Congressional leadership → $3M–$7M

• Senators → $2M–$2.5M

• Senate leadership → $8M–$15M

• Cabinet secretaries → $5M–$12M

• The President → $100M++

These figures reflect not extravagance, but the market value of successful leadership at scale. So we must confront this reality.

Change Incentives And You Change Outcomes

Low salaries + high temptation = corruption as a structural inevitability.

This is the foundational insight: If we want Congress to behave like a conscious, high-performing enterprise, we must build a compensation and accountability model that mirrors one.

We must recognize that we have created the worst of both worlds:

• Public compensation too low to attract top talent

• A political culture offering infinite private enrichment opportunities

• No KPIs

• No performance standards

• No accountability

• And no connection whatsoever between national outcomes and congressional reward

Given the level of responsibility alone, I would argue that $500,000 should be the minimum “market rate” base salary that we should pay a member of Congress. Market rate compensation makes the position more attractive, especially to younger generations who would find that base salary plus benefits to be highly competitive with any other career path they might otherwise choose. We change the incentives, we change the behavior. By moving to a market rate salary, we not only expand the pool of talent, but we tie the upside to a codified set of moral and ethical standards that are no longer customs or guidelines but enforceable by penalty of law. Ethics rules would govern the contract. Full transparency of any dollars received from PACs and SuperPACs.

But higher salaries alone are not enough. If we raise compensation without transforming the rules that govern conduct, we risk merely creating better-paid grifters. The current ethics framework looks strict on paper, but in practice it is almost entirely toothless. Members of Congress are technically prohibited from using nonpublic information for personal gain, but enforcement depends on self-policing. The STOCK Act requires disclosure of stock trades, yet violations routinely result in nothing more than a $200 late fee. Gift rules, outside-employment restrictions, and conflict-of-interest prohibitions all rely on committees made up of the very Members they are supposed to oversee.

Any meaningful incentive reform must therefore be paired with an enforceable ethics regime. That means:

• A complete ban on individual stock trading by Members, spouses, and dependent children no options, no crypto, no sector-specific investments. Only diversified index funds or true blind trusts.

• Automatic penalties for violations forfeiture of profits, significant fines, loss of committee assignments with no internal votes or partisan negotiation. Severe violations will disqualify members from standing for re-election.

• Independent enforcement through an Ethics Authority structurally insulated from Congress itself, potentially housed within or overseen by the Judicial branch as a proper check of congressional power, with subpoena power, investigative capacity, and the ability to refer cases to the Department of Justice..

• Mandatory recusal whenever a Member’s household has a financial interest in a sector under consideration.

• A lifetime ban on lobbying or paid influence work after leaving office. No “strategic advising,” no foreign-agent consulting, no revolving-door monetization.

• Real-time financial transparency, including all outside income, PAC and SuperPAC activity, nonprofit affiliations, and any form of compensated advocacy.

These reforms are not punitive. They are protective for the nation and for the lawmakers themselves. If Congress is to be compensated like high-performing executives, then Members must also be bound by the same expectation of fiduciary responsibility. Under a true performance-based model, high pay is not a privilege. It is a contract. And that contract must include strict safeguards to ensure public service cannot be exploited for private gain.

No incentive model can eliminate every corrupting force in politics. The point is not to design a perfect Congress. The point is to build one where the easiest way to thrive is to serve the country well not to game the system. A performance-based framework grounded in the principles of conscious capitalism can realign expectations and behavior in a way that is both measurable and enforceable.

This is Not without precedent.

Around the world, countries have taken varied approaches to compensating their top public officials and designing safeguards to protect the public interest. For example, Singapore pays entry-level ministers around $900,000–$1.1 million (USD equivalent), with roughly one-third to 40% of compensation in variable ‘national bonus’ and performance components tied to GDP growth, median income, low-income income growth, and unemployment. Notably, Singapore’s system requires mandatory divestiture to prevent conflicts of interest, and the country maintains public trust levels well above 70 percent according to the Institute of Policy Studies.​ Many EU countries (UK, France, Germany) restrict their use of performance-related pay to mid-level officials rather than top politicians, owing to concerns about political gaming and the complexity of attribution. Nordic countries such as Denmark combine competitive political salaries with some of the toughest transparency standards in the world. Public trust in their institutions consistently ranks among the highest globally and far above U.S. levels in surveys by the OECD and others.

These international examples illustrate both the diversity of pay and ethics systems and the central importance of robust enforcement and independence in fostering public trust and accountability. Where compensation is higher and tied to clear public interest metrics backed with stringent, externally enforced safeguards public trust in government tends to be strongest. Where such rigor is lacking, skepticism and cynicism persist. The United States currently finds itself at the lower end of both compensation and trust, highlighting just how far-reaching real reform must be.​

Incentive Compensation: The Payoff is Performance

In a July 7, 2011 CNBC interview conducted by Becky Quick, Warren Buffett once proposed a simple rule that he posited would end the country’s deficit spending:

You just pass a law that says that any time there’s a deficit of more than 3 percent of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election. Now you’ve got the incentives in the right place, right? So it’s capable of being done.

He argued that if political survival depended on fiscal discipline, the deficit would disappear quickly. This idea is powerful because it is structural. It creates consequences that are automatic and ungameable.

Combined with a pay-for-performance model and it builds a system where success is rewarded and failure ends a political career immediately. This structural accountability must form the bedrock of our performance model. No theatrics. No excuses. No hiding behind a party. You balance the books or you do not serve again.

The obvious criticism is that this rule creates perverse incentives. Lawmakers might slash essential programs or underinvest in long term needs simply to hit a deficit target.

To address this, the Buffett rule must be paired with a true conscious capitalism framework whereby performance is measured not solely by profit, but by progress toward the organization’s higher purpose. Measurable outcomes define success. Lawmakers would only remain eligible for reelection if they meet deficit targets AND maintain or improve performance on core social KPIs such as child poverty and access to care. This dual test blocks cruelty disguised as fiscal discipline.

Applied to Congress, this means incentive compensation must be tied to well defined Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in two moral dimensions:

• Economic: because a nation drowning in debt, unable to control its spending, and incapable of meeting its future obligations cannot care for anyone.

• Social: because a nation that balances the books by abandoning the vulnerable is not a nation worth preserving.

These two pillars are not opposites. They are dependencies. A country cannot be compassionate if it is insolvent. And it cannot be solvent if it is unjust.

This is the philosophical foundation for a performance-based model of governance. A model in which Congress is rewarded not for partisanship, theatrics, or fundraising, but for measurable national outcomes that strengthen both the fiscal health and the social fabric of the country.

Pillar one. Economic KPIs that protect the future.

America’s solvency crisis is not one problem. It is a constellation of interconnected failures, each driven by incentives that reward avoidance over resolution. Congress sidesteps the hardest decisions because the political risks of solving them outweigh the political rewards. Nowhere is this clearer than in the core components of our long-term fiscal stability.

1. The National Debt and America’s inflationary Trap. The current national debt of the United States has surpassed $38 trillion as of late October 2025. This marks a significant milestone reflecting rapid growth in the debt, including a $1 trillion increase in just over two months from mid-August to late October 2025. The debt now exceeds the entire U.S. economy’s annual output, with the debt-to-GDP ratio at about 119% as of mid-2025.3 Servicing that debt consumes an ever-growing share of the federal budget. Congress finds it politically easier to borrow than to negotiate trade-offs. Every year of delay makes the eventual adjustment more painful—but the incentives reward delay. A KPI framework would reward lawmakers for reducing the primary deficit, stabilizing the debt-to-GDP ratio, lowering interest costs as a share of revenue, and increasing the portion of federal spending directed toward long-term investment rather than consumption.

2. Monetary Policy: Washington’s Hidden Incentive to Rely on Easy Money.

   Fiscal irresponsibility does not exist in isolation. Congress has learned to rely on monetary expansion to absorb the consequences of its inaction. When deficits soar or crises hit, the Federal Reserve becomes the stabilizer of last resort—lowering rates, expanding liquidity, or purchasing assets to prevent collapse. This creates a perverse incentive loop: Congress overspends → The Fed stabilizes → Inflation rises → Real debt shrinks → And Congress avoids accountability again. A KPI framework must incorporate multi-year price stability benchmarks, reducing Congress’s incentive to rely on monetary expansion as a political escape valve. It would reward lawmakers for building a fiscal foundation that does not depend on endless liquidity, low interest rates, or deferred consequences.

3. Entitlements: The Political “Third Rail” Congress Refuses to Touch. Social Security and Medicare are promises made across generations, but their trust funds face undeniable shortfalls. Trustees warn the country every year, yet Congress refuses to act. One party accuses the other of plotting “cuts.” The other insists any new revenue is unacceptable. The safest political choice is paralysis.

   A KPI system would reward lawmakers for extending the solvency of the trust funds, improving efficiency, reducing waste, and stabilizing the worker-to-beneficiary ratio without harming vulnerable retirees.

4. Productivity, growth and the AI Revolution. Productivity is the quiet engine of rising living standards, yet it has been declining for decades. Congress has allowed the pillars of growth workforce participation, affordable childcare, housing supply, infrastructure permitting to become snarled in political stalemate. Lawmakers are rarely rewarded for fixing slow, technical bottlenecks that lift productivity because the political payoff is low. This challenge is now magnified by the rise of artificial intelligence. AI promises explosive gains in productivity and new economic frontiers, but it also threatens large segments of middle-class and even white-collar work. Without guardrails, retraining pathways, or forward-looking investment, AI’s benefits will flow to a narrow slice of the economy. Congress has the power to shape whether AI becomes a rising tide or a destabilizing force, yet the incentives today reward sound bites about “protecting jobs” rather than meaningful policy. A KPI system would change that. It would reward lawmakers for real improvements in productivity, regulatory modernization, workforce expansion, and AI preparedness — the pillars of a healthy, adaptive economy. AI will either accelerate inequality or become the tool that rebuilds the middle class. The outcome depends on governance. A performance-based Congress would have the incentive to manage technological transition responsibly, support worker retraining, modernize education, ensure fair competition, and expand economic opportunity where it is most at risk.

5. Inequality, mobility decline, and the political vulnerability of a shrinking middle class. Stagnant wages, declining upward mobility, and widening inequality weaken the entire republic. When people feel their economic prospects disappearing, they become vulnerable to political manipulation. The shrinking middle class is not just an economic problem. It is a civic vulnerability. Inequality fuels resentment, resentment fuels polarization, and polarization fuels culture-war distractions that crowd out real problem-solving. Congress avoids these issues because addressing them requires contentious decisions on taxes, education, housing, and regional investment. The political risks are high. The incentives point toward blame, not solutions. A KPI-driven model flips that dynamic. It would reward reductions in child poverty, gains in median wealth for lower-income households, improvements in mobility across income quintiles, and expanded access to affordable housing in regions where jobs are growing. These are not abstract ideals — they are measurable outcomes of a society where the middle class is recovering rather than collapsing.

6. Health care: a massive driver of national insolvency. Health care spending accounts for nearly 18% of GDP. Every year, lawmakers hold hearings, release reports, and express outrage, but nothing changes because health care reform is politically radioactive. Any attempt to restrain costs is framed as rationing. Any attempt to expand access is framed as socialism. As a result, Congress allows the system to drift toward insolvency. A KPI-driven system would reverse these incentives, rewarding lawmakers for slowing cost growth, improving outcomes, and expanding primary care progress that benefits both citizens and the federal balance sheet.

These domains (debt, monetary policy, entitlements, productivity, inequality, and health care) are not separate crises. They reveal the same structural flaw: Congress is incentivized to avoid real solutions.

A KPI-based system reverses that logic. It rewards what strengthens the nation and penalizes what weakens it. It makes fiscal courage financially rational and negligence politically costly.

Economic KPIs tell us whether the nation’s systems are solvent and can endure. But solvency is not strength. A country can balance its books and still fail if its people are sick, unsafe, uneducated, or locked out of opportunity.

A healthy nation requires systems that work and people who thrive.

That is why a second pillar is essential.

Pillar two. Social KPIs that protect the vulnerable.

If solvency is the backbone of a functioning nation, humanity is its soul. A society cannot call itself strong if its people are suffering, fearful, or locked out of opportunity. We cannot measure national health by fiscal charts alone. We must measure the lived experience of the Americans who are most exposed to hardship, instability, and neglect.

For decades, Congress has treated these human issues as political weapons, not national responsibilities. Election Reform, Health care, education, poverty, safety, immigration, and even the environment have been absorbed into the culture wars, useful for rallying donors and inflaming base voters, but lethal to bipartisan problem-solving. The incentives make it safer to fight than to fix.

• “Unrig” the Political Industrial Complex. This topic is at the heart of everything I’ve written about in this Substack. I would be remiss if this wasn’t included as one of our most meaningful KPIs. We must break the duopoly. Taxation without representation is not a relic of 1776 it is the lived reality of millions of Americans today. In much of the country, closed party primaries decide who holds office. These primaries are funded by taxpayers, yet independent voters, who now constitute the largest single bloc of voters in many states (40-45%), are barred from participating. In many districts, the primary is the election; the general is merely a formality. In fact, 8% of eligible voters elected 83% of the U.S. House. This is the modern form of taxation without representation: Citizens pay for elections that effectively choose their representatives, but they are not allowed to participate in them. The bipartisan Let America Vote Act (LAVA) recognizes this democratic defect. Introduced in July 2024 by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Jared Golden, Andrew Garbarino, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, the bill would require that every eligible voter, including unaffiliated independents, be permitted to vote in taxpayer-funded primaries. States that refuse would lose federal funding; states that comply would receive transitional assistance. LAVA strikes directly at the mechanism by which political parties lock voters out of meaningful participation while relying on those same voters’ tax dollars. It is one of the clearest attempts to restore genuine representation in half a century. Unite America Executive Director Nick Troiano issued the following statement in support of the bill:

  By abolishing closed primaries nationwide, the Let America Vote Act represents the single greatest expansion of voting rights in a half-century, since the Twenty-sixth Amendment lowered the voting age in 1971. At a time when a majority of voters identify as independent –– including a majority of veterans who fought for our country and a majority of young people who are the future of our country — it’s unconscionable that closed primaries deny nearly 24 million unaffiliated Americans the right to vote in taxpayer-funded elections this year. This Act would end taxation without representation once and for all, and ensure every voter, regardless of party, can fully exercise their right to vote.

  Given that the most basic right of a citizen is the right to vote, it should concern you that LAVA is not a legislative priority and it has languished since it was introduced. This must become the law of the land. If we want to take our country back, we must end the closed primary system. But LAVA alone is not sufficient to achieve fair and proportionate representation. Our political system remains structurally rigged in favor of party insiders who control fundraising pipelines, candidate selection, and the machinery of reelection. To fully realign incentives and make any KPI system truly effective, additional reforms must be incorporated:

  • One Unified, Open Primary: Political parties can still hold private endorsement contests, but every taxpayer-funded primary should be open to all citizens.

  • Independent Redistricting: Standardized, non-partisan redistricting commissions must end gerrymandering and the creation of “safe seats,” making every seat genuinely contested.​

  • Public Financing of Campaigns: Expanding public campaign financing especially through small-donor matching is not just a proven strategy for boosting candidate autonomy and reducing dependency on party fundraising pipelines. In states like Maine and Alaska, “Clean Elections” programs have enabled more grassroots and community-based candidates to compete, regardless of access to major donor networks or PACs. Recent reforms in Maine, such as strict limits on outside spending and foreign money bans, demonstrate how public financing can directly improve trust and competition.​

    However, full realization of these benefits requires systemic change at the national level. The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision allows unlimited outside spending from corporations, unions, and wealthy individuals, fueling the rise of super PACs and “dark money” in federal campaigns. This avalanche of outside money often overwhelms public financing efforts, diluting the influence of ordinary voters and making it harder for publicly funded candidates to compete on equal terms.​ That’s why a comprehensive reform agenda like the one championed by American Promise and others includes not only expanded public financing but also a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and restore Congress’s authority to limit political spending and increase transparency. Only by ending unlimited outside spending and guaranteeing real campaign finance limits can public financing programs empower candidates to run competitive campaigns focused on voters, not donors. This action would help restore political equality and meaningful representation nationwide, ensuring that the voices of citizens are not drowned out by the unchecked influence of powerful interests.

  • Ranked-Choice Voting: Alongside open primaries discussed above, ranked-choice voting empowers voters to rank candidates, breaks the dominance of negative partisanship, plurality voting and encourages broader coalitions.

  • Automatic Voter Registration: Linking AVR with open primaries increases voter rolls and turnout, particularly among young and unaffiliated citizens.​

  • Enhanced Voter Education: Federal grants for comprehensive civic education ensure voters understand their expanded rights and options, strengthening informed turnout.

  • Transparency and Accountability: Strict reporting on all campaign and party funding and privacy protections for unaffiliated voters—reinforces trust and clarity.

  • Anti-Suppression Protections: National standards for equitable vote-by-mail access, consistent post-election audits, and bans on discriminatory voter purges secure the broadest possible participation.​

  • Modernize our Election Infrastructure: To make voting both easier and more secure, launch phased pilots of blockchain-based digital voting. Early pilots and experiments have been conducted in Estonia and limited U.S. jurisdictions, though many security experts remain skeptical that such systems can be deployed at scale without new risks. If, and only if, the technology matures with broad, independent security validation, it could eventually become one of several tools to make voting more accessible.

  These reforms are not theoretical. In states like Alaska, California, Maine, and Colorado, combinations of open primaries, independent redistricting, public financing, ranked-choice voting, and robust voter education programs have already increased competition, broadened participation, and weakened insider party dominance. Integrating blockchain voting pilots will future-proof these advances, making it easier than ever to vote securely from anywhere. Nationally scaled, this KPI would fulfill the most basic promise of a republic: those who pay for government have a real say in who governs them and confidence that their vote is secure, accessible, and counted exactly as cast.

• Health and Wellbeing: The Crisis We Debate but Rarely Solve. America struggles with preventable chronic diseases, maternal mortality disparities, mental health breakdowns, and an addiction crisis that has ravaged entire regions. Yet these issues have been politicized into ideological stand-offs: “government takeover” versus “heartless capitalism.” As a result, prevention remains underfunded, communities suffer, and political incentives reward outrage rather than outcomes. Social KPIs would measure whether lawmakers reduce preventable hospitalizations, improve maternal outcomes, expand primary and mental health care access, and reduce overdose deaths. These are measurable outcomes tracked by federal agencies today — yet Congress has no incentive to improve them. A KPI system would finally make compassion measurable, not rhetorical.

• Education: The Mobility Engine Congress Has Allowed to Stall. Education is ground zero for the American Dream, yet it has become one of the most toxic battlegrounds of the culture wars. Instead of focusing on literacy, math proficiency, early childhood development, vocational training, or high school graduation, Congress spends its energy fighting about library books, ideological content, and local culture-war skirmishes. Meanwhile students fall further behind. Social KPIs would reward genuine progress: rising reading and math scores, shrinking achievement gaps, higher completion rates, better early childhood access, and expansion of technical pathways. These metrics exist. Congress simply has no incentive to prioritize them. KPIs would reorient cultural conflict back toward educational outcomes.

• Economic Mobility & Inequality: The Slow Erosion of the American Dream. Childhood poverty remains stubbornly high. Household wealth for the bottom half of the country has barely moved in decades. Upward mobility is lower than in almost every other advanced economy. But Congress avoids these issues because every proposed solution risks triggering ideological backlash: one side frames it as “redistribution,” the other as “indifference.” Social KPIs would measure actual movement: reductions in child poverty, increases in median wealth for low-income families, higher rates of mobility between income quintiles, and expanded access to affordable housing in growing regions. These outcomes matter more than slogans, and they are trackable with existing federal data.

• Community Safety & Social Stability: Where Fear Replaces Freedom. Rising homicide rates in certain cities, stubborn property crime, and frayed relationships between communities and law enforcement create a national atmosphere of fear and distrust. Yet Congress prefers to weaponize these issues — “soft on crime,” “racist policing” — rather than fix them. Social KPIs would reward reduced violent crime, improved police-community trust, lower recidivism, better re-entry outcomes, and investment in prevention. These are measurable, apolitical indicators of community health. Instead of punishing cooperation, the system would reward it.

• Civic Health & Democratic Trust: A Nation Cannot Function When Its People Hate Each Other. Polarization is no longer just disagreement. It is dehumanization. Surveys show that majorities in both parties view the “other side” as immoral and a threat to the country. Trust in government is at historic lows. Voter engagement is uneven. Volunteerism is declining. Democracy rests on shared faith in institutions — and that faith is collapsing. Yet Washington benefits from division. Outrage raises money. Compromise does not. Social KPIs would measure improvements in trust, participation, depolarization, and civic engagement. The goal is not ideological harmony. It is democratic resilience. These KPIs would reward leaders for calming the temperature rather than raising it.

• Immigration: A Human Crisis Locked in a Political Cage Match. Immigration is a federal responsibility, yet border security and asylum reform have been held hostage to partisan warfare for decades. The humanitarian crises at the border and the legal backlogs in the asylum system are not inevitable — they are the direct result of a system where both parties benefit more from fighting than from fixing. Social KPIs would reward faster asylum adjudication, reduced illegal crossings through legal pathways and targeted enforcement, more efficient visa processing, and better migrant integration outcomes. Congress would finally have an incentive to solve immigration rather than weaponize it.

• Environmental Stability & Public Health: A Risk, Not a Culture War. Climate and environmental issues have been reduced to ideological identity markers rather than treated as public safety risks. Communities face polluted air and water, failing infrastructure, wildfires, droughts, and flooding that destroy homes and livelihoods. Yet federal action is hamstrung because the policy space has been turned into a culture-war battlefield. Social KPIs would measure reduced pollution exposure in vulnerable communities, stronger infrastructure resilience, lower disaster losses, and stable, reliable energy capacity. This is not about ideology. It is about risk management. Washington would finally be rewarded for mitigation, not for tribal posturing.

All of these domains suffer from the same structural problem: Congress has no incentive to solve them. It only has incentives to fight about them.

These Social KPIs would reverse that.

They would reward lawmakers for progress, not posturing. For outcomes, not outrage. For service, not culture-war theatrics.

A KPI system that rewards only financial discipline would be immoral. A KPI system that rewards only compassion without discipline would be irresponsible. A system that rewards both — fiscal solvency and human wellbeing — would be transformative.

Skeptics will warn that measuring concepts like “upward mobility,” “trust,” or “vulnerability” is subjective. They will argue that politicians will cherry-pick metrics or claim progress where none exists. Others will note that many levers affecting housing, education, and social outcomes sit with states and localities, not Washington.

These are fair critiques. The answer is not to abandon social KPIs. It is to anchor them in datasets that already exist:

• Upward mobility → Census Bureau longitudinal studies

• Child poverty → Supplemental Poverty Measure

• Educational outcomes → NAEP, NCES

• Civic trust → long-running survey series

• Health and mortality → CDC

• Crime → DOJ / BJS

• Environmental risk → EPA, FEMA

• Immigration system performance → DHS and DOJ

These indicators are widely accepted, consistently measured, and resistant to political manipulation. Washington may not directly control all inputs, but it shapes funding, rules, incentives, and national priorities. Those levers matter.

The federal government cannot control everything.

But it can reward what strengthens the nation and penalize what weakens it.

Incentives determine outcomes. For decades, Congress has been rewarded for conflict rather than competence, performance rather than progress. KPIs change that. They pay for patriotism, not partisanship. For results, not rhetoric. For the future, not the grift. If we want a government capable of solving the hardest problems in front of us, we must build a system that rewards those who solve them.

Implementation Challenges

Implementation of this approach (e.g. setting pay, KPIs, lobbying bans, and strict ethics oversight etc.) is exceptionally difficult.

The essence of the challenge is self-interest: lawmakers must be persuaded to cede private enrichment for structured, transparent, above-board compensation. Success elsewhere such as Singapore’s parliamentary reforms or Finland’s transparency standards was made possible in much smaller, more cohesive polities, often coupled with high public trust.

In the US, resistance is formidable, and recent reform attempts (e.g. open primaries, national RCV, lobbyist bans etc.) have failed at the ballot box even when polling high.

But because it’s hard, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

The Political Bargain

Within the U.S. constitutional framework, the salaries for members of Congress are determined by Congress itself through legislation it enacts, as specified in Article I, Section 6 of the Constitution, which states that Senators and Representatives “shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States.” This means Congress passes laws setting its own pay levels, which then require presidential approval (or override of a veto) to become effective, as with any federal law. However, the 27th Amendment adds a key restriction: No law varying congressional compensation can take effect until after an intervening election of Representatives, preventing immediate self-serving raises. In practice, this has led to periodic adjustments via specific bills or automatic mechanisms (like cost-of-living adjustments, though these have been frozen or limited in recent years).

Given this constitutional reality, the most direct path, is to lobby congress and try to introduce and pass legislation making “Conscious Governance” the law of the land. This path should be pursued as it represents the most expeditious way to effectuate this plan and change direction. The risk with this approach is that Congress could attempt to pass a law that increases its own salaries with none of the accountability mechanisms thereby taking the reward without the responsibility. That risk cannot be ignored. Any statutory approach would require extraordinary public pressure and explicit safeguards to prevent Congress from enacting raises without the accompanying accountability framework. The political class could embrace the upside of more money and quietly discard the guardrails that make the proposal worth pursuing. I think that risk is low.

But, if it’s determined that the risk is too great, the alternative path is far more challenging: the way to make this system legitimate, enforceable, and corruption-proof is to constitutionalize it. Here we must confront feasibility honestly. Amending the Constitution requires two-thirds of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states. Under ordinary circumstances, that would be impossible. But this reform is somewhat unique because it contains something no other reform has ever offered: the political class stands to benefit financially if they agree to restrain themselves.

This creates a rare political bargain.

Lawmakers receive substantial, performance-based compensation guaranteed, legal, and far more predictable than the current web of donor dependence in exchange for permanently surrendering the private enrichment pipelines that have defined Washington culture for decades. The system protects the public by eliminating stock trading, banning lobbying, enforcing transparency, and invoking automatic removal for corruption. And it protects the lawmakers by replacing all of that with a clean, legal, above-board form of compensation tied to national performance.

Why would sitting Representatives and Senators vote to eliminate their own private revenue streams? Because the new revenue stream would be designed to be financially superior to the current system of grift and it’s all above board! It is the only reform where self-interest and public interest intersect.

Critics will object that money alone cannot uncapture Congress that donors, activists, ideological pressure, and social identity will still influence behavior. And they are right. A performance-compensation model cannot rewrite human nature. But it can change the cost structure of corruption and the reward structure of courage. It gives lawmakers a financial incentive to defy their party when the country needs them to. It creates a counterweight to donor pressure that does not exist today.

This proposal does not rely on selflessness. It does not rely on courage. It relies on something far more dependable: a system in which self-interest finally aligns with national interest.

The Call for a New System of National Leadership

This is not an academic exercise. It is about survival. The United States is facing a convergence of economic, social, and political pressures that cannot be solved with the current incentive structure. The system is too captured. The parties are too entrenched. The grift is too easy.

We need a model that pays elected officials well, but only when they serve the nation well. We need a model that rewards outcomes that expand opportunity, reduce suffering, and protect future generations. We need a model that gives lawmakers the courage to defy their parties and the freedom to act on conscience.

This is what conscious capitalism would look like in Congress. It is not ideological. It is structural. It is moral. It is economically rational. And it is the only way to realign the incentives of public office with the interests of the American people.

Pay for patriotism, not party.

Pay for results, not rhetoric.

Pay for the future, not the grift.

The stakes could not be higher. The alternative is the slow collapse of a nation that once believed it was exceptional. The time for half measures is over. The time for structural reform is now.

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As Matthew Continetti stated in the Free Press this week:

Kirk’s death feels like a watershed. It is the most stunning evidence we have to date that America is becoming two nations, divided not only by politics but by culture, lifestyle, psychology, and epistemology.

I did not always agree with Charlie Kirk. I often winced at his rhetoric. Other times I found him not merely provocative, but insensitive, and even offensive. But no one deserves such an end.

To call him “vile,” as one of my friends did, and therefore his ideas not even worthy of consideration, or to dismiss everything he said as “hate speech,” as many do, is to miss the point.

Love him or hate him, Charlie embodied something uniquely American: the unfiltered right to speak freely, to challenge power, to provoke debate. That right must be defended, especially when it makes us uncomfortable. It’s important to remind ourselves that U.S. law protects offensive, demeaning, and even “hateful” speech.1

In an opinion piece published this week entitled Bury the ‘Words Are Violence’ Cliché, Greg Lukianoff states correctly that:

Free speech is not merely a favor for our friends. It is the best nonviolent technology humans have for solving our conflicts.

The remedy in a free society is counter-speech and better arguments, not bullets or bans.

"He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him," wrote Ezra Klein, the liberal New York Times columnist, in a piece mourning Kirk's death. Klein described Kirk as a practitioner of persuasion, a fierce ideological opponent but one who still played by the rules. He said:

You can dislike much of what Kirk believed and the following statement is still true: Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion. When the left thought its hold on the hearts and minds of college students was nearly absolute, Kirk showed up again and again to break it. Slowly, then all at once, he did.

From the Shock Jock Legacy to the Outrage Economy

In the 1997 film Private Parts, based on Howard Stern's life, there's a memorable scene where researchers reveal a surprising truth about his radio audience.

This anecdote captures a time when even divisive voices sparked curiosity rather than immediate cancellation.

While Stern's provocative style drew FCC fines, boycotts, and accusations of misogyny and racism, it also fostered engagement amid the cultural wars of the late '80s and early '90s. Stern was often offensive, but even critics tuned in because they “want to see what he’ll say next.” Hatred and curiosity lived side by side in the same audience.

Fast-forward to today, and that dynamic has evolved into the "outrage economy," where social media algorithms and partisan outlets like Fox/Newsmax/The NY Post and their ilk on the right and CNN/MSNBC/NY Times/Washington Post and their cohort on the left, reward inflammatory content for clicks, shares, and ad revenue. In this landscape, outrage isn't just a byproduct. It's the fuel, amplifying division over dialogue and turning public discourse into a battlefield.

As Sam Harris stated in the Free Press in his op-ed entitled “Log Off”:

Social media amplifies extreme views as though they were representative of most Americans, and many of us are losing our sense of what other people are really like.

In the outrage economy, Kirk's style was deliberate. The Washington Post discusses how Charlie Kirk “harnessed the ‘attention economy’ to build a political empire credited with shattering the left's grip on young voters.”2 The article states that he "mastered algorithms that reward posts that elicit passionate reactions and conflict." Unlike traditional conservatives who valued moderation, Kirk's provocative style was designed to go viral and attract followers.

He employed inflammatory phrasing that grabs eyeballs and forces conversations that he believed "woke" institutions suppress3.

Kirk's defenders echoed this, arguing his style was calibrated for virality in an era where algorithms reward outrage. In The New Yorker, a Turning Point insider described Kirk's method as “old-school tactics for a TikTok world.”

It is also important to recognize the role of the platforms themselves. Social media design choices (e.g., engagement-driven algorithms, echo chambers, and metrics that reward outrage) tilt the playing field toward the loudest, most polarizing voices. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that virality is not the same as persuasion. This is not simply about Kirk choosing to be provocative. It is about a system that rewards provocation and punishes nuance. That reality makes defending free speech even more critical, because moderate or thoughtful voices are often drowned out entirely.

Here’s Sam Harris again:

If the medium is the message, the message is mass psychosis, and it will send us careening from one political emergency to the next.

Kirk seems to have viewed all media attention, including criticism, as beneficial. For instance, when he was parodied on the TV show South Park, he embraced it, and even used the cartoon image as his social media profile picture.

That said, Kirk's emphasis was strategic, not a universal truth. His phrasing crossed into stereotyping, which complicates the narrative of "forcing conversations" versus inflaming division. Evidence suggests his tactic worked for attention (e.g., millions of views), but whether it truly "forces" suppressed dialogue or just polarizes depends on your world view (Reuters: Charlie Kirk’s rhetoric inspired supporters, enraged foes).

Charlie’s death has exposed our fractures. On the right, voices like Stephen Miller vowed vengeance, framing the killing as proof of left-wing violence, and President Trump blamed the “radical left” on Fox News, demanding investigations of his opponents. Social media lit up with posts declaring: “Your hate killed Charlie Kirk.”

On the left, some reveled. One student was caught on video saying, “Someone had to do it.” Another wrote simply: “Happy.” Online, he was compared to Hitler: “People gonna remember him just like we remember Hitler.”

This is the duopoly at work: two sides weaponizing grief to stoke their bases, turning tragedy into fuel for outrage. House Republicans’ moment of silence devolved into shouting. Activists on the left cheered. Neither side paused long enough to ask how this moment could lower the temperature. That failure is bipartisan.

As Tyler Cowen states in Stop Blaming ‘Them’:

Judge individual people, not groups. Stop saying ‘they did this,’ when it is individuals who act and choose. Blaming a group of people for a murder they did not commit is hardly going to persuade those individuals to adopt more sensible political positions.

If you hated Charlie Kirk’s rhetoric, I understand why you might feel no sympathy for his politics. But celebrating his murder is something different. It undermines the very norms that protect your own speech. Once political violence is legitimized, no one’s voice is safe. I have warned before in Chapter 3.3 and in Chapter 5.9 that our political system thrives on outrage. Charlie’s death is the latest casualty in this fraught time.

Sam Harris again:

There is no party of murder in this country. Insisting that there is only adds energy to yet another moral panic.

America's Perpetual Strife and Echoes of History

America has never been free of division; our 250-year history is a tapestry of strife, from the Revolutionary War’s debates on liberty to the Civil War’s brother-against-brother bloodshed over slavery, and the 1960s’ unrest with assassinations, the Weather Underground, riots, and Vietnam protests. These were not anomalies. These have been a part of the American experiment’s inherent tensions since inception. A “Republic if we can keep it.”4 Progress amid conflict.

Historian Jon Meacham, in The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, captured the danger plainly:

Political violence erupts in America when there is an existential question—who is an American? Who deserves to be included in ‘We the people,’ or ‘All men being created equal’?

When disagreement about belonging hardens into a belief that opponents are existential threats, the drift toward sanctioning coercion accelerates. These are not rhetorical flourishes. They are the recurring fault lines of a democracy under siege.

By objective measures looking back through the long arc of history, we are living in the best of times: lower poverty rates, civil rights advances, and technological gains bend history’s arc toward justice. Yet crises recur, as outlined in The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny. This theory posits history cycles through four phases: Highs of unity, Awakenings of cultural shifts, Unravelings of individualism, and Crises (Fourth Turnings) where institutions falter, and society rebuilds or collapses. We're in a Fourth Turning now post-2008 crash, COVID, and political violence, mirroring the 1860s or 1930s, where outrage amplifies fractures.

Howard Stern's era of the late 80s, during an “Unraveling”, showed openness amid backlash: haters tuned in longer, blending disdain with curiosity. Today, in the “Crisis” era, media ecosystems amplified by social media algorithms and intellectually void memes exploit this for profit, turning figures like Kirk into lightning rods. Kirk's death exposes this cycle. The pattern is clear: our media system monetizes outrage, while our political duopoly weaponizes it.

The Fourth Turning is one lens among many. I cite it not as prophecy, but as a reminder that America has been through cycles of fracture and rebuilding before. The point is not inevitability, but that division is recurring, and how we respond determines whether we collapse or emerge stronger.

Learning from history means recognizing these patterns, not idealizing the past, but using them to foster tolerance. As I've argued throughout these pages, forgetting leads to repetition; engaging differing views, even provocative ones, is how we emerge stronger.

Words That Wound, Debates We Need

Charlie Kirk rose to prominence as a teenager when he co-founded Turning Point USA in 2012 to counter what he saw as liberal indoctrination on college campuses. Without a college degree himself, he became a relentless debater, traveling from school to school, often drawing both cheers and protests. He built a movement of young conservatives around “America First” principles.

Kirk’s words often sparked fire. Through it all, Kirk championed free speech. He sued universities that tried to block his events. He insisted that even unpopular views deserved a place in the public square. And that insistence, more than any single position, is what made him a lightning rod.

Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

Part of Kirk’s rise was that he said the quiet part out loud. Millions of Americans felt that their views about race, gender, fairness, or national identity had been pushed to the margins of public discourse. They believed universities, media, and workplaces drew red lines around questions they still wanted to ask.

This sense of being pushed to the margins was not simply paranoia. Across campuses and workplaces, people watched how dissenters were shouted down, doxxed, or punished. That fear of consequence is what made Kirk’s bluntness feel liberating to some and infuriating to others.

The numbers show what many already feel — that the space for speech is shrinking. As Greg Lukianoff the President of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression(FIRE) explains in Bury the ‘Words Are Violence’ Cliché:

The numbers show how far the rot has spread. FIRE’s new College Free Speech Rankings, which surveyed nearly 70,000 students across 257 campuses, find a record share now rationalizing coercion. Roughly 34 percent of students say that using violence to stop a campus speech can be acceptable in some circumstances; roughly 70–72 percent say the same about shouting down speakers. In 2021, the violence number was in the low 20s; by last year it was 32 percent. It should be zero. A university that can’t persuade students to reject violence categorically is failing at the first task of liberal education.

We’ve seen the escalation step by step. Middlebury, 2017: Political scientist Charles Murray was shouted down; professor Allison Stanger left with a concussion and neck injury. University of California, Davis, 2023: Masked protesters smashed windows at a Charlie Kirk event; to the university’s credit, the talk continued. San Francisco State University, 2023: Former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines’ event was so aggressively disrupted she was held hostage in a room for hours; campus police ultimately suspended the case without charges. And of course, there were the violent riots at University of California, Berkeley, in 2017—the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement in response to a planned speech by commentator Milo Yiannopoulos. It’s a miracle no one was killed. These episodes move norms from argument, to heckling, to property destruction, to “rare” violence—and now, in Orem, Utah, to a bullet.

Against that backdrop, many of Kirk’s supporters felt he was the only one willing to challenge the culture of silencing, even if his methods were crude. To his critics, when Kirk broke those taboos, it was confirmation of prejudice. To his followers, it was honesty. They did not always defend his phrasing, but they admired his willingness to voice what they were told to keep silent. That paradox helps explain why his words could feel like representation to some and cruelty to others.

Still, critics argue these views were never silenced at all — they were simply unpopular. Conservatives had Fox News, talk radio, churches, publishing houses, and even a President voicing similar arguments. What felt like “censorship” to Kirk’s supporters often looked like accountability to his opponents. And there is a belief that the “quiet part” was quiet for a reason. Calling Black women unqualified or trans kids delusional is not merely saying what others won’t, it can reinforce stereotypes and stigmatize entire groups. In that light, his rhetoric looked less like bravery and more like recklessness, cruelty amplified for virality.

This paradox is not just about Kirk. It is about the condition of our democracy itself. If millions feel censored and millions more feel attacked, then every debate becomes a zero-sum struggle where listening dies and only outrage survives.

For millions, Kirk embodied the courage to break through what they saw as elite censorship. For millions more, he embodied the danger of turning taboo into license for prejudice.

Both things can be true at once.

What matters for democracy is not canonizing him or canceling him, but confronting why his words resonated with so many, and how to keep that confrontation inside the boundaries of debate rather than violence.

Pain, Speech, and the Public Square

Charlie Kirk’s career illustrates the way our culture consumes and weaponizes rhetoric. On nearly every issue he touched from D.E.I and affirmative action to guns, from women’s rights, abortion and gender identity to antisemitism, his words became viral flashpoints. Clips stripped of nuance were shared millions of times, provoking fury and fear.

For those directly touched by these debates, the pain is real. A Black woman dismissed as an “affirmative-action pick” hears her achievements erased. A parent who buried a child after a school shooting hears gun deaths described as “a cost.”5 A rape survivor hears abortion bans defended as if her trauma does not matter. A trans teenager hears their very identity mocked as delusion. A Jew hears echoes of antisemitic tropes in talk of “elites.” These wounds cannot be waved away as mere snowflake fragility. They are felt. We must retire the trope that speech is literally violence and rebuild the norm that ugly speech is answered with more speech, not force.

But here lies the tension: the media environment does not stop at naming pain. It amplifies it, until every debate is framed as existential, every word as violence.

In Bury the ‘Words Are Violence’ Cliché, Greg Lukianoff points out:

Teach students that objectionable speech is violence and you invite them to see their own aggression as self-defense. Accept the premise that rhetoric is a physical attack and you hand extremists a moral permission slip to answer speech with force.

We now live in a culture where offensive ideas are recast as “harm,” and, in a flourish that should now embarrass its users, where speech itself can be described as “literally violence.” In such an atmosphere, outrage clips become proof of evil, while fuller arguments go unheard.

Lukianoff continues:

Maximal tolerance for speech; zero tolerance for force. Draw the line where the law draws it, at true threats, targeted harassment, and incitement. Keep everything else inbounds, for everyone.

What gets lost is that Kirk’s most viral moments were often the least thoughtful expressions of arguments that do exist in policy and scholarship. His critiques of affirmative action echo Thomas Sowell’s data-driven skepticism6. Kirk’s warnings about gun control and government power and the Second Amendment7 reflect a long American distrust of the “tyranny” of the State. Kirk’s pro-life convictions mirror centuries of moral and religious teaching.8 His questions about fairness in sports and gender echo ongoing disputes across medicine, ethics, and law. His pro-Israel stance is consistent with decades of bipartisan consensus9.

Yes, words can traumatize, sometimes for a lifetime. And Kirk often sabotaged his own case by speaking crudely or cruelly. But if we collapse speech into violence, we erase the only nonviolent tool democracy has to resolve conflict. Once we treat ideas as blows, we justify answering them with fists or bullets.

Charlie Kirk’s legacy should not be read as a blueprint but as a warning: if we allow provocation to replace persuasion, we will lose both the dignity of debate and the protections of free speech. But neither should outrage media be allowed to declare whole debates illegitimate. The real danger is not that Charlie Kirk was sometimes wrong or insensitive, but that our culture no longer believes painful arguments can be confronted in public.

When fear is amplified and words are weaponized, debate shrinks. Our task is to widen the space for argument while narrowing the space for coercion. We are left with shadows of danger, racism, violence and hate, abstracted and inflated by repetition. And yet, the very purpose of free speech in a democracy is to keep hard arguments in the open, where evidence, counter-speech, and better policy can prevail.

Whether you agree or disagree with his positions, he became a central voice for many young conservatives and a constant presence in campus debate.

I do not know Charlie Kirk’s heart. We do not have to agree with Charlie Kirk. We may recoil from his language. But if we dismiss him entirely, we also dismiss the millions who heard in him a voice for their fears and frustrations. The only way forward is to bring those arguments back into the open — not to sanctify them, but to defeat them in debate. That is how democracy survives.

A Call to Unity Through Free Speech

I keep coming back to a scene in The American President. Michael Douglas, playing President Andrew Shepherd, defends the essence of free speech.

Aaron Sorkin captures this moment with clarity:

Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can’t just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest.

The point is not to sanctify what offends us. The point is to keep the arena open so better ideas can beat worse ones in public.

That is what Charlie Kirk embodied, even when his words made our blood boil. Defending his right to speak does not mean endorsing his views. It means defending the principle that ideas must be met with better ideas, not with bullets.

For those who despised what he said, defending his right to say it may feel like a bitter pill. But free speech is not about absolution. It is about preserving the framework of democracy itself. If Kirk’s speech can be erased by violence, so can yours and mine. This is the first time I’ve had real trepidation in publishing an article on my Substack.

Imagine classrooms where students debate Kirk’s positions rather than doxing his supporters. Imagine town halls where advocates of gun reform face Second Amendment defenders without fear of violence. Imagine a public square where DEI skeptics and equity champions can find common ground in fairness for all. And imagine returning to a time when our leaders, led.

This is not martyrdom. It is maturity. It is what democracy demands.

Listen, Even When It Hurts

I keep thinking about that Howard Stern scene. People who disliked him not only tuned in but listened longer. Hatred and curiosity lived in the same audience. We did not confuse listening with agreement. We listened because we wanted to understand what we were up against and because a confident country believes it can out-argue bad ideas.

Here’s Sam Harris:

When we see another person gleefully dance on a slain man’s grave, it is easy to conclude they represent some significant faction of American society, and to be outraged.

Viral cruelty is not a census. It is an algorithmic mirage.

We can choose that again. We can bring back the discipline of hearing a viewpoint we dislike, restating it fairly, and then answering it with better facts and better principles. We can teach our kids that “prove me wrong” is not a taunt, it is an invitation to think. We can remind ourselves that listening is not surrender. It is the price of a free people governing themselves without violence.

If the outrage economy rewards spectacle, let us reward patience. If algorithms amplify the loudest voices, let citizens amplify the fairest ones. If we cannot quite bring ourselves to like the speaker, let us still do the harder thing and listen long enough to win the argument honestly.

That is the America I want back. Not an America without offense, but an America with thicker skin. We used to listen to people we could not stand and then answer them. We can do it again.

We are living through a time of spiraling violence. From attempts on Trump’s life to the murder of Charlie Kirk, the line between rhetoric and bloodshed grows thinner. If we do not reclaim the principle of free speech as a bridge rather than a battleground, we will lose the republic itself.

Charlie Kirk was not a saint. He was not without fault. But he was an American who believed in the right to speak, to provoke, to argue. His death should not become another weapon in the duopoly’s arsenal. It should be a call to all of us to heal, to listen, and to unite.

We once listened to people we could not stand and then answered them. We can do that again, and we can do it without violence. That is the whole case I am making.

Violence won the day against Charlie. But ideas endure.

In Repairing America After the Murder of Charlie Kirk, the Free Press editors ask:

Is there a way back?

There is, but it demands two bright lines. First, the widest possible protection for speech. Second, a categorical rejection of force in civic life.

For Charlie. For our children. For America.

Fairness Matters: Because unity demands honesty.

What are your thoughts?

Share and comment, and let’s continue the conversation.

Footnotes:

In our ongoing exploration of America’s fractured political landscape, we’ve dissected the structural flaws that perpetuate dysfunction, from the distorting effects of closed partisan primaries that fuel polarization (as detailed in Chapter 1.11) to the media’s role in eroding shared truths and trust (Chapter 2.6), and the broader rigging of the system by entrenched interests to maintain the status quo (Chapter 4.7).

These mechanisms don’t operate in a vacuum; they’re amplified by deep-seated psychological tendencies that make us all susceptible to viewing our political tribe as the embodiment of virtue and the opposition as a force of moral decay.

I was inspired to write this chapter after listening to Simon Sinek’s reflections on how even the most villainous figures in history believe they are moral and just.

In that commentary, he uses Colonel Hans Landa, the Nazi officer portrayed by Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds as his proxy. He points out how even the most hated of villains see themselves as dedicated heroes fighting for a just cause. This chapter delves into the psychology of morality in U.S. domestic politics and how the Democratic-Republican duopoly exploits this human wiring to divide us, entrench power, and stifle real progress, all while building on our blog’s core ethos: breaking out of echo chambers by scrutinizing our own assumptions first.

The Psychology of Our Engineered Divide

Behind the profit motives of modern politics lies a sophisticated exploitation of human psychology. Political strategists and media producers, whether they consciously consult academic theories or simply learn what "works," have become masters at triggering our innate biases. By crafting messages that hit deep moral chords, parties mobilize their base with an emotional intensity that transcends mere policy preference.

At the heart of this phenomenon is a cluster of cognitive biases and mechanisms that psychologists have studied for decades. Albert Bandura’s theory of moral disengagement explains how individuals and groups rationalize harmful actions by reframing them as morally justified, through tactics like dehumanizing opponents (labeling them “extremists” or “radicals”), diffusing responsibility (“It’s the system’s fault”), or sanctifying violence as a necessary defense of higher values. In politics, this manifests as both sides convincing themselves that their policies aren’t just practical but ethically imperative. For instance, liberals might disengage from the economic burdens of certain regulations by viewing corporate resistance as greedy obstructionism, while conservatives justify deregulation by portraying government overreach as an assault on freedom.

Complementing this is cognitive dissonance theory, first developed by Leon Festinger (1957) and later popularized by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson in Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me). When our actions or beliefs clash with reality, say, supporting a party leader embroiled in scandal, we reduce the discomfort by doubling down on justifications, escalating our commitment to the “good fight.” This self-justification loop turns political loyalty into a moral crusade, where admitting flaws in one’s side feels like betrayal.

Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind takes it further with moral foundations theory, arguing that humans intuitively prioritize different values. These foundations “bind” us to our groups but “blind” us to others’ perspectives, creating an illusion of moral superiority. This moral framework is actively exploited by political actors. The purity/sanctity foundation is weaponized in cultural debates, where issues like public health mandates are framed as an assault on personal autonomy, or environmental regulations are seen as a moral duty. The authority/respect foundation is central to arguments about supporting law enforcement or questioning the authority of public institutions.

Beyond these individual moral frameworks, we’re also influenced by Social Identity Theory, pioneered by Henri Tajfel and John Turner. This theory explains that our sense of self-worth is deeply tied to the groups we belong to. When a political party becomes a core part of our identity, any criticism of that party can feel like a personal attack. This explains why many people are so quick to defend their political tribe, even in the face of contradictory evidence; it’s not just a defense of a policy, but a defense of their own self-concept.

By limiting viable choices to two extremes, the system incentivizes moral posturing over nuanced solutions, trapping voters in a cycle of righteous indignation.

The Political Economy of Outrage

The most potent fuel for our engineered divide isn't ideology; it's outrage. And in today's media and political fundraising ecosystems, outrage is the ultimate currency.

The Fragmented Media Machine:

Media ecosystems, as explored in Chapter 2.6, amplify this: Fox News and MSNBC create echo chambers where viewers’ self-righteousness is constantly validated, with algorithms prioritizing outrage to boost engagement. Think back to the era of three major network news channels. While imperfect, they often operated within a framework of shared journalistic standards and a common baseline of facts. Today? That's gone. We inhabit a fragmented media landscape—from hyper-partisan cable news to algorithmic social media feeds and niche podcasts, all competing for our attention.

The business model of these outlets, particularly online, is built on engagement. What drives engagement most effectively? Strong emotions: fear, anger, and moral indignation. This creates an undeniable financial incentive to:

• Moralize every issue: Transform nuanced policy debates into clear-cut battles between good and evil.

• Demonize the opposition: Frame political opponents not as misguided, but as malicious or fundamentally un-American.

• Prioritize sensationalism: Facts take a back seat to stories that provoke the strongest emotional response.

When an algorithm learns that an article or video attacking the "other side" with moralistic fervor keeps you scrolling, it will feed you more of it. Your outrage, perfectly measurable in clicks and watch time, translates directly into ad revenue.

Consider this recent “hit” piece published in the Nation entitled “Vile Grifters Are Taking Over Establishment Media” about a report that Paramount was in the process of purchasing Bari Weiss’ The Free Press which states:

Twenty years ago, as a student at Columbia, she led a racist smear campaign against Arab professors who had the audacity to criticize Israel. As a New York Times columnist, she constantly hawked right-wing bile while posing as a liberal who was just tired of all the extremism and censorship on the left—a tedious bait-and-switch that nevertheless sent her media profile soaring. And, as founder and editor of The Free Press, she has pushed genocide denial, transphobia, and the freedom to make Nazi salutes.

If we lived in a less terrible time and place, Weiss would be dismissed as a crank and a bigot, and never heard from again. But we live in the waking nightmare that is the United States in 2025. So instead Weiss is being rewarded with a prize that even she must think is kind of wild.

This isn’t just critique—it’s a moral condemnation meant to inflame, casting Weiss as evil to rally the left. Conservative outlets do the same, branding liberal figures as “commies” or “groomers.” These aren’t arguments; they’re algorithmic outrage traps, profiting off clicks while deepening our divide.

The Fear-Driven Fundraising Machine:

Consider fundraising: both sides thrive on fear-mongering emails that paint the opposition as an existential threat—Democrats warning of “fascist” rollbacks on rights, Republicans decrying “socialist” assaults on American values. This taps into our innate “binding and blinding,” turning donations into moral imperatives. Political parties, have perfected the art of profiting from this engineered divide. Open your email inbox during election season, and you'll find a torrent of messages designed to trigger your deepest moral fears:

• "DEMOCRACY IS AT STAKE! The fascists are coming for your rights! Donate NOW!"

• "SOCIALISTS ARE DESTROYING AMERICA! They will take your freedom and ruin your family! Contribute IMMEDIATELY!"

These appeals turn political contributions into an urgent act of moral defense. It's no longer about supporting a candidate's policy platform; it's about joining a righteous crusade to save the nation from an existential threat. This constant drumbeat of moral alarm further entrenches the "moral mirage," where one's own side is inherently virtuous and the opposition is irredeemably evil.

Campaign consultants, armed with data from focus groups and social media analytics, craft messages that exploit Haidt’s moral foundations or Tajfel’s group identity triggers. They know fear and outrage keep voters loyal and donations flowing, so they paint every election as a moral apocalypse.

The Electoral System: A Duopoly-Designed Trap

These psychological vulnerabilities are magnified by an electoral system designed to perpetuate division rather than foster consensus. Consider some of the ways that the Duopoly has “rigged” the system towards this end.

• Closed, partisan primaries are arguably one of the most damaging structural problems. They force candidates to appeal only to the most ideologically extreme and morally motivated segments of their own party's base, rather than the broader, more moderate general electorate. This system actively rewards moral grandstanding and uncompromising stances, punishing any hint of moderation or willingness to cooperate across the aisle. Why compromise when your political survival depends on appeasing the most extreme voices in your own narrow primary?

• Partisan gerrymandering doesn’t just create “safe” districts; it constructs ideological bubbles where voters are surrounded by people who think and vote like them, insulating communities from competing perspectives and removing any incentive for elected representatives to compromise. This moral and geographic segregation has long been evident in places like North Carolina, where the Brennan Center for Justice has documented extreme partisan maps that make districts virtually immune to challenge. More recently, the battle lines have sharpened. In Texas, Republicans pushed through a mid-decade redistricting plan, an unusual move outside the normal census cycle, that could deliver them several additional congressional seats by diluting Democratic strongholds in cities like Austin, Houston, and Dallas. Democrats decried it as a naked power grab, even staging walkouts to delay the vote, while civil rights groups launched lawsuits alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act. On the other side of the country, California Governor Gavin Newsom and legislative Democrats responded with their own controversial maneuver: backing Proposition 50, a ballot measure that would sidestep the state’s independent redistricting commission and authorize a legislature-drawn map tilted in their favor through 2030. Supporters frame it as a necessary counterpunch to Texas, while critics warn it abandons California’s commitment to nonpartisan reform and risks normalizing partisan gerrymandering nationwide. Taken together, these dueling efforts reveal how both parties now justify map manipulation as a moral necessity, defending democracy by bending its rules, and in doing so, deepen the very divisions they claim to correct.

• The winner-takes-all structure of single-member districts and first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting is a cornerstone of the duopoly’s grip, forcing voters into a binary choice that amplifies moral polarization and stifles diverse voices. In this system, only one candidate per district wins, regardless of vote share, and the candidate with the most votes (even if only a plurality) takes all, sidelining third parties and independents who might dilute the Democratic-Republican stranglehold. Data from FairVote shows that FPTP distorts outcomes, with 83% of U.S. House seats in 2022 decided by margins that ignored minority voices, entrenching the duopoly’s ability to exploit moral foundations like loyalty (GOP) or care (Democrats), as Jonathan Haidt’s research highlights. Both parties benefit by suppressing alternatives, ensuring campaigns focus on demonizing opponents rather than offering nuanced solutions. This system, as Shanto Iyengar’s work on affective polarization suggests, turns elections into moral crusades, where voting for a third party feels like “wasting” a vote on principle, further entrenching the duopoly’s power and the divisions it thrives on.

• The campaign finance system, built on unlimited donations and lax oversight, fuels the duopoly’s exploitation of moral outrage, turning elections into high-stakes moral crusades that deepen division. Both parties rely on fear-mongering appeals, emails warning of “fascist” takeovers or “socialist” destruction, to extract billions from donors, leveraging psychological triggers like Jonathan Haidt’s moral foundations (e.g., loyalty for Republicans, care for Democrats) to frame giving as a righteous act. This system disincentivizes compromise—why seek common ground when outrage pays? By rewarding moral grandstanding, campaign finance entrenches the duopoly’s grip, marginalizing third parties (who raised just 2% of 2024 funds) and ensuring elections prioritize emotional division over evidence-based solutions, as William Galston’s Brookings analysis (2012) underscores.

The result is that the political industrial complex has created affective polarization, a term coined by political scientists like Shanto Iyengar. Affective polarization, as Shanto Iyengar describes, is like rooting for rival sports teams, but instead of cheering for your side, you hate the other team’s fans so much you’d rather burn the stadium down than share it.

This isn't just about disagreeing on policy; it's about actively disliking, distrusting, and even dehumanizing people in the "other" political party. While ideological differences have always existed, what's truly tearing us apart today is this escalating animosity.

The result? Polarization that benefits the duopoly by discouraging third-party challenges and keeping turnout skewed toward energized bases. A 2021 Pew Research Center study, for example, found large shares of both Democrats and Republicans hold very negative views of the opposing party, highlighting this growing animosity.

On key flashpoints like abortion1, gun control2, and immigration3, both parties use this divide to mobilize voters without seeking middle-ground solutions. Both sides feel profoundly righteous, yet the duopoly uses this moral framing to gerrymander districts, rig primaries, and block bipartisan bills, ensuring the conflict persists for electoral gain. The duopoly’s grip means that solutions languish, as stalemates serve their interests: rallying the base around moral purity rather than pragmatic fixes.

Even economic issues, like capitalism vs. socialism (touched on in our post “Can You Define Socialism?” and in the context of Trump’s Intel deal), fall prey: one side sees market freedoms as moral engines of opportunity, the other as exploitative systems demanding ethical intervention. As William Galston’s Brookings analysis on polarization and democratic dysfunction suggests, this stems from a process that rewards moral grandstanding over evidence-based policy. Taxes become moral battlegrounds. Progressives frame tax hikes on the wealthy as fairness, righting systemic wrongs. Conservatives see them as theft, punishing success and violating liberty. Both sides wield Bandura’s moral disengagement, casting opponents as greedy elites or lazy freeloaders, ensuring no room for pragmatic compromise.

Religion’s role, as discussed in Chapter 2.5, adds fuel: the duopoly co-opts faith-based moral narratives, with evangelicals predominantly aligning with Republicans on sanctity issues, and many progressive religious traditions aligning with Democrats on social justice, further entrenching self-righteousness. The Constitution’s framers, per Chapter 2.3, designed checks to mitigate such factions, but today’s system has warped them into tools for division.

The Democratic and Republican parties aren’t passive observers; they actively leverage these psychological levers to maintain dominance.

Breaking the Cycle: From Moral Certainty to Pragmatic Humility

To dismantle this moral warfare, we must starve the duopoly’s outrage machine.

As we’ve emphasized throughout these pages, from the foundational problems in Chapter 1.9, to unrigging strategies in Chapter 4.7, the path forward demands we apply the same scrutiny to our own moral intuitions that we do to others’. It’s easy to nod along with Sinek’s insight in abstract conflicts, but in domestic politics, it requires uncomfortable reflection: What if my side’s “fairness” is just a veil for bias? We must demand transparency in how morality is weaponized.

So, what's the path forward? It requires a multi-faceted approach, demanding both individual self-awareness and systemic reform.

1. Change the Incentives: We must push for electoral reforms that dilute the power of extreme partisans and reward broader appeal. Support reforms such as:

   1. Open Primaries. Allowing all voters to participate, regardless of party affiliation.

   2. Ranked-choice voting. Encouraging candidates to appeal to a wider base to earn second and third-place votes, fostering more moderate politics) that dilute the duopoly’s hold.

   3. Independent Redistricting Commissions. Taking the power to draw electoral maps out of the hands of partisan politicians. According to a 2021 analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice, extreme gerrymandering in states like North Carolina has led to districts that are largely immune to challenge from the opposing party. This, combined with low-turnout primaries, ensures that candidates have no incentive to appeal to the political middle.This includes.

   4. Campaign Finance Reform.

2. Curate Your Information Ecosystem: As individuals, we must actively resist the algorithms. Diversify your media diet. Seek out sources from different perspectives beyond echo chambers, not to agree, but to understand. Engage with nuance, not just outrage by engaging in perspective-taking exercises (imagining the “other side’s” moral rationale).

3. Reclaim Pragmatic Humility: The ultimate goal is to shift from a politics of moral certainty to one of pragmatic humility. This doesn't mean abandoning our values. Instead, it means acknowledging that reasonable people can, and do, arrive at different conclusions about how those values should be applied. It means recognizing the "moral mirage" in ourselves first.

The true strength of a democracy isn't the absence of conflict, but its ability to engage in that conflict without devolving into mutual contempt and an inability to solve problems. Our current system is designed to profit from moral warfare. It's time to disarm it.

In reclaiming fairness, we don’t abandon our values, we strengthen them by acknowledging their subjectivity. Only then can we build a politics where morality unites rather than divides.

As my post on the Trump assassination attempt reminded us in Ch 4.9 | It's never too late to act, unchecked self-righteousness can escalate to violence. It’s never too late to act with humility.

What are your thoughts—have you caught yourself in this moral mirage?

Share and comment, and let’s continue the conversation.

When we move beyond economic theory and into our economic reality, we live in a hybrid economy. An economy where corporations receive subsidies, grants, tax breaks, and industry bailouts.

So when I read “Tyler Cowen: Trump Seizes the Means of Production at Intel,” I can’t help but laugh at the biting irony when he exclaims:

Milton Friedman’s longstanding insistence that government funding will, sooner or later, mean government control has now come to pass. The Democrats are not so much shocked as catatonic and lacking much of an effective response. But it is they who are responsible for making so much of the economy dependent on federal government funding. And now, they are learning lessons to their distaste when it comes to science funding, DEI in universities, and now, tech companies.

I laugh not because I disagree, in fact, I couldn’t agree more with Tyler who points out the hypocrisy of the political duopoly.

If you agree with the Republicans, then you likely believe that if/when the top quartile (e.g., the investor or shareholder class) gets a government subsidy then it’s distinctly not socialism, instead you rationalize that it’s incentivizing economic growth. But if those same dollars subsidize the working class through social safety nets, then it is socialism. These are the types of dogmatic rationalizations that lead to unfairness and inequality and speak to the heart of why we have a class war in our country.

Thomas Sowell tops the list of my favorite economists, economic historians, and social and political commentators. It’s hard to argue with the wisdom that:

You cannot subsidize irresponsibility and expect people to become more responsible.

And oh how irresponsible we’ve become.

If you've been following my writings here on fairnessmatters.vote, you know I'm no fan of the duopoly and the media fear-mongering they use to divide us to profit and/or retain power.

Back in Ch 2.7 | 👊Can you define socialism?, I dove deep into how the politics industry has weaponized the word “socialism” to shut down debate and vilify the other side. In that chapter, I argued that corporate welfare is already a form of socialism for the rich—think PPP loans, massive bailouts, or tax cuts that trickle up, not down. These subsidies and other forms of government intervention in markets are always fraught with moral hazard.

The Intel Deal: What Happened and Why It Matters

This leads us to the deal the President has “cut” with Intel. It fits right into that conversation. No surprise it’s drawn fire from traditional conservatives and labeled as "socialist." Nor is it a surprise that progressives like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are nodding in approval. Trump, the ultimate anti-establishment wildcard, has somehow bridged a divide and has the support of his political rivals. The irony is delicious.

Let's unpack this balanced-like, without the partisan spin, and see if it really signals a slide toward socialism—or if it's just a pragmatic policy that attempts to bring fiscal responsibility to our government subsidies already fraught with moral hazard.

For those catching up, the Trump administration is claiming that they’ve converted about $9-11 billion in federal funding—originally grants and loans from the bipartisan 2022 CHIPS Act—into a non-voting 10% stake in Intel1.

The goal? Bolster U.S. chip manufacturing, reduce dependence on foreign suppliers (hello, Taiwan and China tensions), and ensure taxpayers get a slice of the pie if (and it’s a big if) Intel turns things around. For what it’s worth, Intel's been hemorrhaging cash, with massive losses and layoffs, so this isn't exactly betting on a sure thing. But Trump calls it a "free" win because he is repurposing Biden-era subsidies transforming the funds from bailout to investment.

On the surface, it's industrial policy with teeth: Government invests, gets equity, and ties it to national security.

But let’s be clear, this Intel deal smacks of a bailout in disguise, let's zoom in on the company's dire straits—struggles that make the government's intervention feel less like a shrewd investment and more like propping up a flailing giant at taxpayer expense. As of mid-2025, Intel is hemorrhaging cash, posting a staggering $19 billion in recent losses amid botched foundry expansions and fierce competition from nimbler rivals like TSMC and Nvidia, who dominate advanced chip production. The stock has plummeted over 60% year-to-date, prompting massive layoffs of 15,000 employees—over 15% of its workforce—in a desperate bid to slash costs, while former CEO Pat Gelsinger warned of further pain ahead and was replaced as CEO in March 2025 by Lip-Bu Tan. Delays in U.S. fab projects, underwhelming AI chip performance, and a shift away from its once-dominant PC market have left Intel gasping for relevance in a tech landscape that's evolved beyond its grasp. Critics have called it a "waste" on a failing firm, echoing my Chapter 2.7 point on corporate welfare: Why bail out the investor class with repurposed subsidies when the working class gets labeled "socialist" for far less? If this is "America First," it better deliver, or it's just another handout widening the class divide.

But this isn’t just about Intel.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick just pointed out that Lockheed Martin makes 97% of its revenue from the federal government.

If we are adding fundamental value to your business, I think it’s fair for Donald Trump to think about the American people.

It’s great political theater. And it rings true. As he points out, when 97% of your revenue comes from one customer — the taxpayer — you are already a quasi-public entity. The only difference is that all the upside goes to executives and shareholders while all the risk sits with citizens. Calling Lockheed “private” is a charade. Exactly why I’ve always argued we are a hybrid economy!

So what’s fairer? To pretend Lockheed is a free-market firm while it lives off taxpayer contracts? Or to finally give taxpayers a stake in exchange for footing the bill?

The same can be said of companies like SpaceX and Tesla—both helmed by Elon Musk. These companies perfectly illustrate the partisan double standards on government intervention that I've called out before. These firms have raked in billions in federal contracts, loans, and incentives: Tesla with over $2 billion in subsidies and tax credits to jumpstart EV production, and SpaceX landing more than $15 billion in NASA and Defense Department deals that Musk himself admits were crucial to survival.

Some on the political left once applauded these as strategic investment in green tech and space innovation for the greater good, much like their support for working-class programs. Of course the irony is that the political right defend it as smart business boosting American competitiveness—yet they'd cry "socialism" if similar funds went to universal healthcare or debt relief.

But flip the script to the Intel deal, and suddenly the lines blur: Trump's equity stake echoes the same "corporate welfare with a return" logic, demanding accountability from subsidies that too often enrich the investor class without strings. It's not pure socialism, as I defined in Chapter 2.7, but it exposes the class war hypocrisy—handouts are fine when they prop up billionaires and corporations, but taboo when they level the playing field for the working class. If we're serious about conscious capitalism, why not extend equity demands to SpaceX or Tesla, ensuring workers and taxpayers share in the upside from public dollars? Imagine if the government had invested those billions instead, and the government owned 10% for those companies. The ROI would have been enormous.

Now, tying this back to my earlier chapters: In Chapter 2.7, I highlighted how we already have "socialism for the investor class"—entitlements like bailouts and subsidies that flow upward. Remember the PPP program or the 2008 auto bailouts, where the government took stakes in GM and Chrysler? This Intel move echoes that, but with a twist: It's proactive, not reactive, and framed as transforming a bailout into a “deal”

The Political Irony: Trump, the Progressive Darling?

Here's where it gets deliciously ironic—and a bit mind-bending for anyone stuck in the duopoly's left-right binary. Trump, who built his brand railing against "socialism" and big government, is now earning praise from the very progressives he's spent years demonizing.

• Bernie Sanders: The self-described democratic socialist said, "If chip companies profit from generous federal grants, the taxpayers of America have a right to a reasonable return on that investment." Spot on, Bernie—this aligns perfectly with my point in Chapter 2.7 about ensuring subsidies come with strings for accountability.

• Elizabeth Warren: She quipped that Trump "appeared to have stumbled onto an idea she had pushed for years" on corporate accountability. Warren's long advocated for equity stakes in exchange for bailouts, seeing it as a check on corporate greed.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party is fracturing. Free-market purists like Rand Paul call it "a step toward socialism," Erick Erickson dubs it a "paradigm shift towards socialism," and Steve Moore blasts it as "terrible corporate welfare." Even Sen. Todd Young, a CHIPS Act co-author, says this wasn't the law's intent. But others, like Rep. Mike Haridopolos, back it for strengthening supply chains and taxpayer returns.

Trump's an anomaly here—a populist who defies neat labels. He's not ideological; he's transactional. This isn't about redistributing wealth for equality's sake (a hallmark of socialism). It's "America First" economics: Protect jobs, secure tech dominance, and make sure the government isn't a chump. In a way, it mirrors the "conscious capitalism" I discuss in Ch 3.10 | Capitalism and Monetary Policy, where aligning incentives between investors, workers, and society creates shared prosperity. Think Silicon Valley's employee stock programs or Ownership Works initiatives from private equity firms like KKR.

The irony? The right's "socialism" boogeyman is being wielded by their own guy, while the left cheers. It exposes how hollow the label has become—used to bash anything that challenges the status quo of upward wealth transfer. As I wrote before, the duopoly thrives on creating enemies; this deal scrambles that script.

But Is This Socialism? Let's Apply the Definitions

Alright, lightning rod time—let's get definitional, just like in Chapter 2.7. I laid out the spectrum there: Capitalism (unfettered markets, but prone to inequality and exploitation), socialism (government ownership of major industries for collective benefit), democratic socialism (worker-focused, anti-authoritarian twists on that), and social democracy (capitalism with strong safety nets, like the Nordic model of Social Democracy).

So, does Trump's Intel stake qualify as socialism?

• No, It's Not Traditional Socialism: Socialism involves broad government control or ownership of the "means of production" to ensure equitable distribution. This is a minority 10% stake in one company, without voting rights or day-to-day meddling. No nationalization of tech, no forced wealth redistribution. It's more like a sovereign wealth fund investment (e.g., Norway's oil profits funding stakes in global firms) than Venezuela-style takeovers.

• It's Not Even Democratic Socialism: Bernie-style policies emphasize worker ownership and safety nets, not government equity for national security. Sanders supports this deal, but as a step toward accountability, not a full ideological shift. As I noted in Chapter 2.7, Sanders himself rejects government owning grocery stores or means of production—he wants fair wages and standards, which this deal indirectly supports via job protections.

• Closer to Social Democracy or State Capitalism?: If anything, it's a mixed-economy tweak, blending free markets with targeted intervention. Nordic countries do this all the time: Capitalist at core, but with government stakes in strategic sectors for public good. Or look at China's state capitalism, where the government invests in firms for global edge—though Trump's version is far less controlling. In my view, this is "corporate welfare with a return," flipping the script on subsidies that usually enrich shareholders without reciprocity.

That said, I’m not advocating for this deal. It has a high likelihood of opening the door to more intervention, distorting markets and picking winners and losers (Intel over AMD?). If expanded unchecked, it risks cronyism or inefficiency.

But calling it socialism? That's hyperbole, akin to Fox News slamming Warren Buffett for supporting higher taxes on the wealthy.

Such vilification prevents nuanced discussion.

If anything, it looks less like socialism and more like a sovereign wealth fund maneuver — Norway’s oil fund, Singapore’s Temasek — except in America, where we usually pretend subsidies are “free-market” even as they tilt the playing field.

For balance, here's a counterpoint: If we're okay with socialism for corporations (bailouts, tax breaks), why cry foul when it demands a return? But if this becomes a pattern—equity in defense firms next?—we must watch for authoritarian creep, where government influence stifles innovation.

Tying It Back: Lessons for Fairness and the American Dream

This deal reinforces what I've been hammering: Our system's rigged toward class warfare, pitting investors against workers. In Chapter 3.10 | Capitalism & Monetary Policy, I argued for "conscious capitalism"—ensuring businesses provide paths to prosperity, like employee ownership spreading from Silicon Valley to Wall Street. Trump's move could fit that if it ties Intel's success to U.S. jobs and security, not just executive bonuses.

But let's not romanticize: Without fairness, as I consistently warn, we'll face civil unrest or extreme overhauls. Trump's anomaly on Intel (with more to come) shows bipartisanship is possible on economic nationalism, but it won't fix deeper issues like education costs or wealth gaps.

What can you do? Dig beyond labels. Don’t reject policies that demand accountability from subsidies out of fear of your parties boggieman - in this case “socialism”.

Before you judge, read up on Nordic social democracies. According to many (not everyone), they are successful because their politics and economy are based on a political ideology that does not reject capitalism while at the same time offers a form of socialism. It sounds contradictory, but social democracy is an ideology that does just that. They balance capitalism with fairness, ranking high on anti-corruption indices.

And the USA? We rank a pathetic 24th. Read that again. The United States of America ranks 24th on the anti-corruption index… Is that the America that we aspire to?

Bottom line: While Trump's Intel deal isn't socialism (perhaps it’s a pivot in a flawed system or perhaps it’s an unnecessary step away from the free markets), but it exposes ironies, challenges dogmas, and reminds us that real solutions lie in rejecting political dogma and finding common sense solutions to the problems we face. Let's evolve capitalism to include everyone—or risk the extremes taking over.

We must find a way to give the vast majority of Americans true representation and common-sense solutions stripped of its partisan agendas!

And remember Bari Weiss's definition of true liberalism from Chapter 2.7: Equality under law, individual over tribe, reason over mob. That's the center we need.

Share this post if it resonates, and let's discuss in the comments. What's your take—is this smart policy or slippery slope?

Let me start with something that we must all acknowledge when considering the subject of Immigration: unless you're a descendant of indigenous people, you're an immigrant or a descendant of one. From that vantage point, I believe we need a common sense approach to immigration with strong border security as part of a comprehensive immigration strategy including legal pathways to citizenship that serve America's interests.

In 2023, I criticized the duopoly for moving to extremes—the GOP for inflaming its base with stunts like migrant busing and obstructing bipartisan deals, and Democrats for sometimes lying about the surge while failing to lead effectively under Biden. I also pointed to global push factors beyond any single administration's control.

Biden’s Legacy Revisited

Reflecting now in August 2025, much of what I wrote here still holds true: The politicization tied to culture wars persists, and the sabotage of the 2024 bipartisan Border Act by Trump allies exemplifies how party interests often trump national needs. However, time has revealed nuances—and outright errors—in my analysis that merit deeper scrutiny. For starters, my warnings of an escalating constitutional crisis, like the Texas standoff potentially leading to "civil war" tensions, proved overstated; those flashpoints dissipated as Trump 2.0 aligned federal and “red state” enforcement, resolving conflicts without the dramatic showdown I feared. Predictably, however, the clashes have now shifted to “blue states” as they resist Trump in his second term.

More critically, I underweighted the influence of U.S. policy signals on migration flows. Deterrence via enforcement and diplomatic pressure had a far stronger causal role than I emphasized or understood in the summer of 2023. This became evident in early 2024 when the Biden’s DHS announced broader expedited removals and expanded deportation flights, especially to Venezuela and Central America, and Mexico agreed to accept more returns under diplomatic pressure. The effect was immediate: daily averages fell from 10,000+ in late 2023 to around 5,000 by spring 2024. By June 2024, encounters dropped to ~84,000—down from the ~302,000 peak of December 2023—marking the lowest level of Biden’s presidency. These measures, combined with the restrictive asylum rules and CBP One app processing, finally began bringing crossings under control, but the timing was too late to change the narrative of failure.

My defense of Biden's approach, while aiming for balance, now reads as overly supportive of what I believe history will view as a failed policy. In my prior chapter, I pushed back against the "open border" narrative, noting record apprehensions—over 10 million encounters from FY2021-2024—as signs of an overwhelmed, not porous, system. Policies like prolonging Title 42 and parole expansions for hundreds of thousands showed efforts at balance. However, the administration's reluctance to exercise fuller executive authority or forge lasting reforms allowed surges to crest at ~302,000 in December 2023, burdening cities and fueling division. Progressives within the party, including asylum officers, voiced dismay over echoes of Trump-era harshness, while the GOP hammered "catch and release." I perceived record apprehensions under his watch as evidence of effort, but they masked leadership shortfalls that overwhelmed resources and strained public trust.

To be fair, as I emphasized then, Biden was largely following the laws (regardless of the fact that the laws were outdated and unpopular), including the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 1952 (as amended), the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA, 1986), the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), 1996, as well as the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and the U.S. Refugee Act of 1980 (for a brief overview of the history of immigration laws in the US click here). These laws mandate processing asylum claims for those who present themselves at the border—often leading to releases pending hearings due to massive backlogs. These laws, designed for a different era with far lower volumes, haven't been updated in decades, turning legal obligations into political liabilities and highlighting the urgent need for congressional reform that never materialized.

And of course there is public sentiment which is ever evolving. In a Gallup poll conducted in June 2023 (and published July 13, 2023), 68% of Americans considered immigration a good thing for the country today, while 27% considered it a bad thing. A June 2025 Gallup poll ironically shows that 79% of Americans now see immigration as beneficial to the country, up substantially, amid recognition of economic contributions, even as dissatisfaction with handling lingers. These shifts invite fresh reflections: Have Trump’s aggressive tactics moved sentiment against his policies?

This era exemplifies partisan flips. Take Bernie Sanders: In 2007, he opposed comprehensive reform, labeling guest worker programs a "Koch brothers proposal" to flood the market with cheap labor, depressing wages for American workers. By the Biden years, Sanders had evolved, criticizing the administration's restrictions as akin to "indentured servitude" and pushing for broader protections and pathways— a shift from economic protectionism to humanitarian emphasis, mirroring the Democratic Party's broader pivot. Republicans, too, have oscillated: Trump decried family separations in 2024 campaigns yet reinstated similar deterrence. Biden's June 2024 curbs began reductions, but his overall approval on immigration sank to 30-35%, a testament to leadership shortfalls amid the duopoly's blame game.

While enforcement can deliver quick wins, the duopoly's hypocrisy—flipping scripts for political gain—perpetuates a vacuum where real reform remains elusive, and my initial optimism about consensus overlooked how entrenched the extremes have become.

Bondi vs. Ferguson: A Case Study in Political Theater

The latest episode in this ongoing drama pits U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi against Washington Governor Bob Ferguson, highlighting how immigration enforcement becomes fodder for partisan posturing. In mid-August 2025, Bondi dispatched letters to sanctuary jurisdictions, including Washington, California, and cities like New York and Boston, demanding they repeal policies that limit local cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Citing statutes like 8 U.S.C. § 1324 on harboring undocumented immigrants, 18 U.S.C. § 1071 - Concealing Person from Arrest, 18 U.S.C. § 371 - Conspiracy to Commit Offense or to Defraud United States, 18 U.S.C. § 1505 - Obstruction of Proceedings Before Departments, Agencies, and Committees, 8 U.S.C. § 1373 - Communication Between Government Agencies and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 8 U.S.C. § 1644 - Communication Between State and Local Government Agencies and Immigration and Naturalization Service, 8 U.S.C. § 1372 - Program to Collect Information Relating to Nonimmigrant Foreign Students and Other Exchange Program Participants. The letters threatened prosecutions of officials and cuts to federal grants if compliance wasn't met swiftly. This echoes tactics from Trump 1.0, where similar threats aimed to pressure blue states but often faltered in court.

Ferguson responded in a press conference on August 19, surrounded by state leaders and advocates, rejecting the demands as "shameful" and without legal merit. He stressed that Washington's laws—barring local police from immigration status inquiries or ICE detainers absent criminal warrants—foster community trust, enabling immigrants to engage with law enforcement without deportation fears, ultimately enhancing public safety. "We will not be intimidated," he asserted, pledging a court fight. Similar pushback came from California's Gavin Newsom and others, reminding us of the anti-commandeering doctrine from Supreme Court cases like Printz v. United States (1997), which shields states from being drafted into federal enforcement.

Yet, this confrontation underscores the duopoly's hypocrisy. Republicans, who once decried federal overreach in other arenas, now wield the DOJ aggressively, potentially politicizing it in ways that erode the rule of law they championed (as Trump himself put it, "The rule of law matters!"). Democrats, meanwhile, defend sanctuary policies that promote integration but were slower to address border strains under Biden, flipping from past positions where figures like I described in Chapter 5.6, Barack Obama oversaw record deportations. It's theater that distracts from shared goals, much like the migrant busing stunts I critiqued before.

Trump 2.0: Policy Crushed the Numbers

Expanding upon Biden’s 2024 shift in policy, Trump has followed through on his campaign promises implementing aggressive policies, enforcement and rhetoric which have yielded stark results, yet not without ironies. His immediate steps included demanding a national emergency, revived "Remain in Mexico," broader removals, and detentions—have plummeted encounters dramatically even considering Biden’s tightening of policies in early 2024.

The numbers tell the story:

• June 2024: 87,606 encounters.

• June 2025: 6,070 encounters — a 93% decline, with none released into the interior.

• July 2024: ~56,000 encounters.

• July 2025: 4,600 encounters — a 91.8% decline, the lowest in CBP’s recorded history.

This contrasts sharply with Biden’s overwhelmed system, proving policy levers like deterrence matter immensely. Yet successes come with caveats: mass deportations are ramping up (~150,000 arrests since inauguration), economic disruptions loom in labor-dependent sectors, and humanitarian concerns persist. Migrant deaths, particularly among Mexicans and Central Americans, have reportedly doubled for some groups in early 2025.

But here's the duopoly's mirror: Republicans, who lambasted Biden's "failure to lead," now risk overreach, threatening economic sectors reliant on immigrant labor and inviting humanitarian critiques. Democrats, once critical of Trump's walls and bans, now decry his deportations while having overseen releases during surges. The calmer border is a policy win, but without addressing labor mismatches, it echoes Trump's first term's "paper wall"—low legal immigration without sustainable fixes.

The Policy Vacuum Continues

Once more, we're in a policy void, as both parties prioritize party dogma over equilibrium. Trump 2.0's focus on enforcement, while “effective” short-term, sidesteps legal pathways and integration, much like Biden's reactive stance neglected proactive security. Sanctuary threats like Bondi's letters will spark lawsuits, distracting from reforms, while Democratic resistance highlights states' rights—ironic given past federal expansions under Obama. The bipartisan opportunities I mourned, like the 2024 bipartisan border bill, remain lost to the pendulum's swing, leaving a the system unreformed and ripe for partisan exploitation.

When I penned my initial immigration chapter, I cautioned that immigration was a tragedy born of Washington's dysfunction, a flashpoint risking deeper rifts. Today, it's evolved into a perpetual stage prop, where gestures eclipse governance. Bondi's threats to Ferguson aren't purely about law; they're performative, much like Abbott's busing or Biden's assurances of a "secure" border amid records. And consider the hypocrisy: Bernie Sanders once decried immigration surges as a Koch ploy to undercut workers, yet under Biden, he pivoted to decry restrictions as exploitative—emblematic of how positions bend to party winds.

The crisis endures: Asylum backlogs top 3.4 million, stranding lives. Humanitarian tolls rise, with migrant deaths doubling for some groups in early 2025, per reports from Mexico and border sectors. Cities grapple with costs—New York City's $5 billion spent on migrant aid, projected to hit $10 billion by year's end—while federal expenses exceed $150 billion. Trust erodes, with polls showing high immigration support (79%) but low confidence in leaders—only 30% back reduced levels, down from 55%. "Solutions" like threats or denials are crafted for applause, not outcomes. For more, explore Gallup's poll, TRAC's backlog stats, The Guardian on deaths, and NYC's updates.

Until Congress acts, we’ll keep oscillating between the Democratic Party’s overwhelmed openness and the GOP’s harsh deterrence. Both are political calculations. Neither is a durable solution.

What a Modern System Should Look Like

To transcend this, we must envision a reformed system grounded in fairness and pragmatism, drawing from insights across the aisle. We need solutions over soundbites and patriotism over partisanship. This framework aligns with expert recommendations from think tanks like the Migration Policy Institute, the Cato Institute, and the Bipartisan Policy Center, striking a balance between security, humanitarian concerns, and economic needs while avoiding extremes. While no policy is universally "best" due to evolving global events and political realities, this blueprint addresses core flaws like outdated laws and labor mismatches, echoing successes from the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act but updating them for challenges like climate migration and tech advancements. It could be even stronger with additions like root-cause investments abroad ($10-20 billion in aid to stabilize sending countries), climate provisions, interior enforcement reforms (e.g., E-Verify with privacy safeguards), and bipartisan oversight.

1. Smart Border Security: Emphasize manpower, drones, sensors, and rigorous port-of-entry inspections to intercept drugs and crossings, beyond mere symbolic walls—efficiently safeguarding sovereignty without wasteful gestures. This is cost-effective and evidence-based: Drones and AI have shown 80-90% effectiveness in pilots for detecting crossings, per CBP reports, while ports catch 90%+ of fentanyl. However, it could integrate physical barriers in high-traffic urban zones for added deterrence and include AI predictive analytics plus U.S.-Mexico partnerships, areas where past aid ($4 billion since 2021) has yielded mixed results.

2. Asylum Reform: Accelerate adjudications with more judges, upholding protections for true refugees while curbing abuses through stricter credible fear thresholds, reducing backlogs humanely. Vital for the 3.4 million-case backlog as of July 2025, this upholds treaties but cuts delays (averaging 4-5 years) by potentially 50%, per Migration Policy Institute estimates—only 15-20% of claims succeed, but delays encourage frivolous ones. Risks include denying valid claims if thresholds are too high; add trauma-informed interviews and independent oversight to mitigate bias.

3. Legal Pathways: Broaden guest worker visas for essential sectors and merit-based options for skilled talent, alongside humanitarian avenues, balancing economic needs with compassion. This tackles shortages—e.g., expanding H-2A/H-2B could add $10-15 billion to GDP yearly—while requiring wage floors to protect U.S. workers and visa portability to curb exploitation. A con: Merit shifts might disadvantage lower-skilled migrants; cap them to maintain diversity.

4. Integration of the Undocumented: Provide earned legalization for long-term contributors, Dreamers, and families—tied to taxes, clean records, and civic engagement—to harness their value rather than expel it. For ~11 million (including 800,000 Dreamers), this boosts economies (they pay $80 billion+ in taxes) and reduces crime, per Center for American Progress studies showing 15-20% wage gains post-legalization. Politically risky as "amnesty," so phase in over 5-10 years with community service; prioritize mixed-status families (4.4 million U.S.-citizen kids).

5. Strategic Admissions: Favor high-skill entrants in fields like medicine, tech, and science, ensuring America retains its innovative edge amid demographic shifts. Immigrants founded 55% of U.S. unicorns; this addresses 100,000+ nurse shortages. Limit to 20-30% of visas to avoid brain drain abroad, and pair with U.S. worker retraining for equity.

This isn't "open borders" or "shut the gates"—it's a balanced framework that secures our nation, honors dignity, and bolsters our future, if only the duopoly could compromise. For context, consider the 2024 bipartisan Border Act (S.4361) referenced earlier by Sens. Sinema, Lankford, and Murphy. It overlapped on smart security ($20 billion+ for agents, tech, and ports, plus fentanyl detection) and asylum (raised credible fear standards, 90-day timelines, surge shutdowns at 4,000-5,000 daily encounters). But it lacked broader pathways, integration/legalization (no Dreamer paths), and strategic admissions. Missing: Root causes aid, climate measures, and labor reforms—making it enforcement-heavy, criticized by progressives as too harsh.

It failed twice in the Senate (43-50 in February, 49-43 in May) due solely to politics: Trump urged rejection to deny Biden an electoral "win," calling it a "death wish" and "horrible open borders betrayal." GOP claims: It institutionalized high flows (5,000/day threshold = 1.8 million/year), had loopholes (e.g., minors exempted), funded NGOs, and omitted walls/Remain in Mexico—per Heritage Foundation, entrenching "catch and release." Six Democrats opposed it for restrictiveness.

In reality, it was tougher than past reforms, but strategy overrode substance—your vision fills its gaps for sustainability.

Until Congress acts, we’ll keep oscillating between Biden’s overwhelmed openness and Trump’s harsh deterrence. Both are executive shortcuts. Neither is a durable solution.

In conclusion, the politics of immigration remain as infuriating as ever, a perpetual stage for partisan theater that prioritizes power over progress. Before we buy into the rhetoric of either party's platform, let's ground ourselves in a foundational truth: Throughout history, racist bans and quotas have attempted to close our borders, denying entry to those fleeing horrors—like my own ancestors in the 1930s and 1940s, many of whom perished in the gas chambers of the Holocaust because of such policies. The DNC and RNC have failed to enact comprehensive reform for decades, not due to insurmountable challenges, but because the incentives in our system reward party fealty and pandering to extreme bases in closed primaries. As Seth Stodder, a senior policy adviser on border security under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, noted, "For years, both parties have exchanged accusations about why the other was seemingly unwilling to resolve the problems at the border," with Republicans craving cheap migrant labor for business donors while Democrats face claims of banking on future voters—dogma that's hardened into orthodoxies, even as realities shift. But common sense solutions exist, from smart security and asylum reforms to expanded legal pathways and earned integration. They require us to reject kindergarten-simple answers, stop swallowing the duopoly's propaganda, and demand that extremists on both sides stop controlling the narrative. America is a nation of immigrants—let's honor that by building a system that secures our sovereignty, protects dignity, and strengthens our future through compromise, not conflict.

I leave you with this.

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OPINION GUEST ESSAY: by Promachus.

Beginning with sincere gratitude for Chapter 5.6 — both for its moral seriousness and for your continuing commitment to civic truth-telling in a moment of political decay. You’ve taken on the hard work of pulling apart the architecture of our broken political culture, and you’ve done it with clarity, courage, and a sincere desire to elevate the conversation.

I fully agree with your central premise: partisanship has become one of the greatest threats to constitutional self-governance. Both major parties have become a duopoly that has too often prioritized performance over policy, outrage over outcomes, and electoral advantage over principled leadership. The erosion of institutional trust, and the deepening dependence on executive power, are symptoms of a broader civic malaise. Your call to reinvigorate civic literacy, reject media tribalism, and restore constitutional boundaries is vital—and urgent.

But I also want to raise a respectful challenge: in aiming for balance, your framing occasionally veers into a false equivalency that, however unintentional, obscures the asymmetry in today’s political crisis.

Yes, both parties have abused executive authority. Yes, immigration policy under Obama included harsh realities and due process concerns. But in Trump’s second term, the situation is categorically different—not just in scale or tone, but in intent. Trump is not merely exploiting the system; he is openly vowing to dismantle core democratic principles, targeting institutions of accountability, and testing the guardrails of law in ways that no recent president has dared.

The Civil Service: Clarifying Who It Serves

One small but crucial clarification, on your section “The Civil Service and the Constitution We Pretend to Defend”:

You write, “The only honest constitutionally grounded answer is that they work for the executive branch.”

I’d offer this adjustment:

“The only honest constitutionally grounded answer is that they work for the people, through the executive branch.”

Congress created the civil service precisely to serve the public interest—not to become an extension of any one president’s will. The President’s job under Article II is to faithfully execute the laws—not to remake the civil service into a tool of personal loyalty.

That distinction is fundamental. It’s the line between constitutional governance and authoritarian consolidation. And it’s a line we are watching blur in real time.

The Pendulum Illusion

There is a comfort in the image of the pendulum—a belief that political overreach will inevitably correct itself with time. That image stirs hope: that what swings too far in one direction will swing back to balance.

But the pendulum metaphor no longer fits our moment.

This isn’t a pendulum swing. It’s a house on fire.

And not just burning—it’s being torched by those who now deny they struck the match, who pour fuel on the flames, and then blame the smoke on the builders and repairmen trying desperately to keep the structure standing. To describe our crisis as a “swing” is to imply inevitability and symmetry. But we are not watching the normal ebb and flow of governance. We are witnessing intentional sabotage disguised as grievance.

We cannot afford to flatten this moment into the familiar contours of both-sides analysis. The stakes are no longer simply about left vs. right, or even governance vs. dysfunction. They are about rule of law vs. rule of man; about the survival of constitutional democracy in the face of deliberate erosion.

Beyond the Fire: Rebuilding with Moral Clarity

If we are to emerge from this fire with anything left to rebuild, we must stop pretending that the greatest danger is disagreement. Disagreement is the lifeblood of democracy. The danger lies in moral equivocation when confronted with a leader who promises retribution, dehumanizes opponents, deploys state power for personal loyalty, and seeks obedience—not accountability.

I am not defending a “side.” I am defending a system that allows sides to exist. That is what makes this moment so combustible. The fire is not just ideological. It is institutional, and constitutional.

This doesn’t let Democrats off the hook for their political cowardice, narrative control, or legislative paralysis. But neither should those failures become cover for empowering a movement that explicitly rejects democratic pluralism in favor of strongman vengeance.

What Just 3.5% Must Do

We’ve invoked Erica Chenoweth’s research of history before: sustained, nonviolent action from just 3.5% of a population has the power to trigger profound change. That’s about 12 million Americans today. We must channel that energy not just into resistance, but into reconstruction.

The path forward doesn’t begin with a savior. It begins with citizens. And it doesn’t culminate in a presidency. It restores the constitutional order that was designed to prevent any one person from ruling unchecked.

Here’s what that means:

      •     Refuse the normalization of authoritarian drift. Speak clearly about the erosion of checks, balance, and accountability.

      •     Reject the false comfort of equivalence. It’s not “both sides.” It’s a government of laws vs. a movement demanding loyalty to one man.

      •     Reclaim Congress as the preeminent branch. Push for legislation that restores congressional authority, protects the independence of the civil service, and strengthens guardrails on executive overreach.

      •     Unite across party lines around constitutional principles. This isn’t about left vs. right—it’s about defending the structure that allows both to exist.

      •     Call for a People’s Civic Compact. One that renews our shared agreement to operate under law, to respect peaceful transfer of power, and to serve the people, not any personality or tribe.

We must demand and support legislative action that:

      •     Reins in executive overreach by reasserting the constitutional powers of Congress—ending decades of slow erosion that have turned presidents into de facto lawmakers.

      •     Ends “Schedule F”-style purges by protecting the integrity of the civil service from loyalty tests, politicized firings, and misuse of executive personnel authority.

      •     Restores regular order in Congress by requiring floor votes on major bipartisan legislation and limiting the power of party leaders to block deliberation.

      •     Codifies limits on emergency powers, surveillance authorities, and military actions not authorized by Congress—returning the use of force to its constitutional gatekeepers.

      •     Mandates civic education standards, so future generations understand the separation of powers, the purpose of checks and balances, and their role as citizens in a republic, not subjects in a cult of personality.

This is not about left or right.

It is about restoring the people’s branch—Congress—to its rightful, central role.

It is about breaking the cycle of government by executive fiat, and recommitting to the rule of laws, not men.

The 3.5% must stand not only against the fire—but for the framework.

Not just against tyranny—but for self-governance.

Let this be our shared mission:

To rebuild the republic, by renewing its first principle—that power in America does not belong to one person. It belongs to the people.

Andy, your chapter asked for a roadmap. This is the terrain we must now walk—deliberately, together, and with eyes wide open.

Thank you for opening the space. Let’s keep going.

With gratitude and resolve,

Promachus

(I write anonymously, not because I lack conviction—but because my position would be compromised. That in itself is a sign of the danger we face.)

But what if that’s the real trap?

For years, I have challenged the way partisan narratives distort reality. The goal here is neither to defend Trump nor indict him. My goal with this chapter is to expose how the “Political Industrial Complex” is tearing the country apart.

But here’s what I’ve heard from people I trust: That even if Trump isn’t the cause of our democratic decay, he’s still a dangerous accelerant. And my highlighting hypocrisy (as I will do again in this chapter) is not enough when the stakes are this high. That treating both sides as equally flawed can come off as moral equivalence when one side now openly threatens constitutional norms.

And you know what? They’re not wrong. But, that said, the only way forward that I can see is to point out the hypocrisy that I see in the hopes that it opens your eyes. The political left is once again catastrophizing Trump, while the political right excuses him. Both approaches are dangerous. What we need is to break out of our echo chambers and stop allowing the political duopoly to manipulate us to their political ends and start focusing on solutions and holding our elected officials to account for failing to legislate!

Let’s Start with Some Honest Reflections

• The system is broken. Institutions have failed. Power has corrupted both parties.

• Trump didn’t create the rot, but he is exploiting it in ways that are objectively dangerous.

• The media fuels outrage by selectively framing events to serve partisan agendas.

• Millions of Americans feel politically homeless deeply concerned, but unsure where to turn.

Donald Trump has made clear, in his own words, that he intends to rule, not govern. He’s promised “retribution,” called political opponents “vermin,” floated mass deportation camps, and declared he would act as a “dictator on day one.” These aren’t careless exaggerations; they’re deliberate signals. They echo the language of strongmen, not statesmen. And after four years of testing and, often breaking, norms, we’d be foolish to dismiss them as mere rhetoric. Millions of Americans, left, right, and independent; see the warning signs for what they are: a threat to constitutional order.

But here’s the trap: If our only response is outrage, especially outrage filtered through partisan media and double standards, we risk driving people toward the very danger we seek to avoid. That’s the paradox. The more one side screams “authoritarian,” the more the other digs in, convinced they’re being manipulated by a political elite that only applies standards selectively. And let’s be honest, there’s truth to that. The political establishment has been complicit for decades in eroding democratic norms.

This didn’t start with Trump. It started when both parties stopped putting patriotism above partisanship.

• Congress stopped legislating.

• Presidents stopped persuading and started ruling by executive order.

• Courts became political referees, not neutral interpreters.

Media (traditional and social) became outrage machines. They reward fear, tribalism, and clickbait over thoughtfulness, truth, and principle.

We can’t fix Trump without fixing the system. And we can’t fix the system if we’re blind to how both parties broke it or to how we’re being manipulated into fueling the dysfunction.

This isn’t about defending Trump or indicting him. It’s a call for objectivity, unity, and action. Without moral clarity and consistent standards, our democratic republic can’t survive. I published my first article in FairnessMatters over 2 years ago, with a simple premise:

Our challenge is to confront that exploitation without pretending the rest of the political system is healthy.

The goal of this chapter, and this project, is not to “sane wash” Trump. It’s to decontaminate our discourse. To make space for honesty and self reflection. To build the kind of intellectual and civic credibility that can persuade not just the choir, but the congregation.

We will not defeat authoritarianism by becoming authoritarians in language, thought, or assumption. We will not heal division by blaming only one side. And we will not revive democracy by demanding submission to a single narrative.

Let’s look at a few issues that we are confronting in real time. These need to be viewed as issues of national importance and national security.

IMMIGRATION: IDENTICAL POLICIES, DIFFERENT OUTRAGE

The core issue traces back to the 1965 shift that limited legal migration from Mexico just as labor demand surged. Successive administrations have failed to reconcile legal pathways with labor and humanitarian realities. While public support for reform is high, political polarization, intensified by strategic messaging continues to obstruct durable legislative solutions.

Remember when President Obama told ABC News:

We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked…

Or when Obama warned in 2014 of a “humanitarian crisis” at the border. He deported more than 3 million people (the most in modern history) and expanded ICE and family detention. Immigrant advocacy groups called him the “Deporter in Chief.” He used expedited removal and in many cases, migrants had no access to an immigration judge. Democrats didn’t accuse Obama of fascism. There were no protest signs comparing him to Hitler. There were no cries of “concentration camps” on CNN.

But when Trump enforces virtually the same policies, including family detention initiated under Obama, the narrative flips. Suddenly, it’s “kids in cages,” “xenophobia,” and “ethnic cleansing.” The virtue signaling that masquerades as activism is not about compassion. It’s about control of the narrative, the media, and the tribal loyalties of voters.

At some level, it’s not hard to understand why the rhetoric changes. The approach is markedly different. While it’s true that Obama’s deportations were the most prolific in history, and they often lacked due process (but most were near-border and “voluntary returns”), Trump’s approach strips protections even for long-time residents, using expedited removal deep inside U.S. communities without hearings. Obama was criticized primarily by immigrant rights groups and progressives. Trump is drawing global criticism, lawsuits from civil liberties groups, and backlash from within the federal judiciary. Obama built the deportation machine. Trump is turbocharging it expanding its scope, ignoring judicial precedent, and politicizing immigration as an existential threat to the nation. Obama’s sin was quiet efficiency in removals, often overlooked by his own party. Trump’s is loud escalation, unapologetically testing the limits of executive power.

Yes, tone matters. Rhetoric matters. But, if we’re going to be honest with ourselves: policy matters more. And the truth is, on core illegal immigration policy, Obama and Trump largely agreed:

• Secure the border

• Deport illegal entrants with criminal records

• Discourage unlawful migration

But here’s what matters most now: Biden’s failure to secure the southern border is one of a handful of reasons Trump was reelected.

• Record numbers of illegal crossings under Biden.

• A porous system that overwhelmed border states and sanctuary cities alike.

• White House messaging that sent mixed signals to migrants and then relied on governors and mayors to handle the fallout.

Now, in Trump’s second term, the pendulum has swung hard. The public has demanded action, and Trump is delivering on his campaign promise. Whether you agree with his tone or tactics, it’s undeniable that his mandate was born from Biden’s refusal to act.

Consistency matters. But in immigration, as in foreign policy, it’s the narrative that drives outrage, not the facts.

If you backed Obama’s border policies, don’t smear Trump supporters as racists for doing the same.

As Martin Gurri writes in “What Both Sides Get Wrong About Immigration”:

A system that toggles between total laxity and harsh repression isn’t really a system at all…. The Democrats have come to treat illegality as a test of anti-racist virtue. The MAGA crowd looks on it as an “invasion” to be repelled by the terrible swift sword of the state including, if need be, the military…. Here’s a common-sense proposition: Since we can’t invite the whole world inside our borders, let’s consider the matter as one of optimal limits. Once the need to restrain immigration is acknowledged, the next step should be to seek consensus on the practicalities the maximum number the country can absorb each year, the skills we most urgently need to import, and, of course, the most transparent and fair process for those arriving, as I once did, on the shores of this fortunate land.

I am deeply committed to legal immigration in America. In July 2023, I wrote in Chapter 3.4:

The immigration system in the U.S. is widely acknowledged to be broken, but there is little consensus on how to fix it. There appears to be no political will to address the issue, and our polarized positions have pushed us toward a dangerous flashpoint.

Let’s start with a foundational fact: Unless you are a descendent of indigenous people, you are an immigrant or a descendent of one. Throughout history, the debate about immigration has brought out some of the deepest anxieties and biggest disagreements in America. A decade or two ago, the immigration debate was mostly about economics; today it’s been politicized and subsumed by the culture wars and our polarized discourse.

I want to make one other thing clear: I believe it is beyond debate that we have a crisis at the border. I don't believe it's reasonable to conclude otherwise.

Trump once said,

A nation without borders is not a nation at all. We must have a wall. The rule of law matters!

I agree with Trump that we need a safe, secure border, and I also agree, albeit ironically, given the source, that the rule of law matters. I also believe that there is a need for strong border security, and that a wall should be a component of a comprehensive strategy. For the first time in a decade of polling on the subject, that seems to be the majority position.

Where we diverge is how to implement an immigration system that provides legal pathways to citizenship and is in the best interests of America.

It is imperative that we quickly develop a common sense consensus on how to secure our border in order to stem the tide of illegal immigration, while agreeing upon acceptable legal pathways to citizenship. It's clear that we are gaining alignment on the former, but we are far from a consensus on the latter.

Like many of the topics I have explored, the parties have moved so far to the extremes in their perspective on immigration that finding a common sense solution seems to have moved out of reach. The pendulum continues to swing farther and farther away from the middle.

What's going on at the border is a tragedy and a complete failure of policy in large part due to the dysfunction in Washington.

Current Gallop Polling (2025)

• 79% of Americans say immigration is good for the country.

• 85% support citizenship for immigrants brought as children.

• 78% support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who meet requirements.

• 38% favor deporting all undocumented immigrants.

• Americans have grown markedly more positive toward immigration over the past year, with the share wanting immigration reduced dropping from 55% in 2024 to 30% today.

So Trump’s tactics seem to be shifting public opinion.

So what do we do?

We stop falling for the outrage. We stop letting media narratives weaponize empathy to shut down debate or vilify those who want law and order. We stop pretending this is just about Trump or Biden. Because the truth is, both parties have failed us.

Congress has had opportunity after opportunity to pass comprehensive immigration reform. In 2024, a bipartisan bill, crafted with input from centrists in both parties almost made it to a vote. It included:

• Substantial funding for border security

• Streamlined asylum processes to reduce abuse

• Work visa modernization

• Legal pathways to citizenship for long-standing undocumented residents

But it died because each party saw more value in campaigning on immigration than solving it.

Here’s what we need now: A modernized, enforceable immigration system that secures the border, protects American workers, and offers a fair and legal pathway to citizenship. One that includes provisions like biometric entry-exit systems, criminal background checks, and deportation of repeat violators. It includes a points-based or tiered pathway for undocumented immigrants and visa holders to earn permanent residency or citizenship. But also one that respects the dignity of migrants who have followed the law, paid taxes, and contributed to our communities.

This shouldn’t be controversial. It should be the starting point.

So here’s your call to action: Pick up the phone. Send the email. Post the op-ed. Push your representative to get back to legislating.

Tell them to revive the bipartisan framework and improve it. Tell them you’re tired of performative politics and want results, not rhetoric.

Because the real threat isn’t who’s in the White House it’s that the rest of Washington refuses to do its job.

And until we demand better, we’ll keep swinging from crisis to crisis, while families suffer, cities strain, and the rule of law erodes.

The War Powers Farce

War powers are located in two Articles in the Constitution.

Article I, section 8, clause 1 states:

“The Congress shall have Power To . . . provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.”

Article I, section 8, clauses 11-16 state:

“The Congress shall have Power . . . To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
“To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
“To provide and maintain a Navy;
“To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
“To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
“To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress”

Article II entrusts the president with command:

“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.”

As Lindsay Chervinsky writes in “The President's Awesome War Powers”

In theory, the division of responsibility is clear. Congress declares war and the president manages it. But as history quickly demonstrated, there is a lot of grey area between war and peace. Technological advancement and the increasing messiness of warfare have added additional complications. Additionally, very few of the conflicts in American history have been called traditional wars as the framers envisioned.

As this relates to Trump’s June 21, 2025 strike on Iran’s underground Nuclear facilities, this was not the first time a president bypassed Congress to launch military action. It followed a long pattern of presidents from both parties exploiting executive authority:

• Clinton bombed Kosovo beyond the 60-day War Powers limit.

• Bush launched the War in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq under sweeping Authorizations for Use of Military Force (AUMFs), then stretched those authorizations across decades and multiple countries, with drone strikes, black sites, and indefinite detentions, all without new congressional declarations.

• Obama justified Libya by claiming it wasn’t “hostilities” (despite obvious evidence to the contrary). Obama dropped over 26,000 bombs on seven countries, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen in 2016 alone

• Biden continued many of those operations, withdrew from Afghanistan without congressional approval, and has used force in Yemen, Somalia, Syria, and Iraq sometimes invoking Article II powers, sometimes citing the same post-9/11 AUMFs that Congress has refused to repeal.

The truth is, Congress hasn’t declared war since 1942. Presidents of both parties have been using their Article II Commander-in-Chief powers for over 80 years and each party defends the practice when it suits them.

The War Powers Resolution was enacted to serve as a congressional restraint on the President’s power to engage in Military Action. Since then, Congress and the President have disagreed over the enforcement and constitutionality of the statute. Nonetheless, to date, the Judiciary has refused to enforce the War Powers Resolution, calling it a “political question.” So the legal gray zone persists but the selective outrage does not.

In the weeks since President Trump ordered the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, many Democratic leaders have lined up to condemn the act as reckless, unconstitutional, even grounds for impeachment.

When Obama bombed Libya in 2011 without Congressional approval, where was Chuck Schumer’s outrage? When Bill Clinton defied the War Powers Resolution in Kosovo, where were the cries of impeachment? They were silent or worse, supportive.

The uncomfortable truth is this: the legal and constitutional justifications Trump used are virtually identical to those used by Presidents Obama and Clinton and virtually every single US President since Franklin D. Roosevelt in prior unilateral military actions.

And now, as the political pendulum swings, the very same actions are rebranded from “necessary leadership” to “unilateral warmongering” depending on who holds the pen in the Oval Office.

This isn’t a defense of Trump (although on Iran I am unequivocal in my support), it is a condemnation of everyone who twists legal standards into partisan cudgels. If we’re serious about constitutional governance, it must apply regardless of who’s in power. Otherwise, we’re not defending democracy we’re defending our own team.

Trump’s bombing of Iran was not a partisan action. It was a necessary one. And yet, the reactions have predictably split along tribal lines:

• Democrats who stayed silent when Obama bombed Libya are suddenly constitutional scholars.

• Republicans who sued Obama over war powers are now justifying Trump’s strike.

The hypocrisy is not just obvious; it’s exhausting and it’s making us less safe.

We should be united in defense of American sovereignty. Instead, we’re watching the same sick pattern unfold.

If you supported Obama’s strikes, you must at least grapple with Trump’s use of the same authority. If you backed Clinton in Serbia but accuse Trump of war crimes, that’s not consistency. That’s convenience.

This kind of moral relativism isn’t just ugly. It’s dangerous. It makes it impossible to hold anyone accountable because no one has clean hands, and everyone has a justification.

We are not a perfect country. But we are a good country. And when a terrorist regime like Iran plays with nuclear fire, we must act with strength, unity, and moral clarity.

That’s what Trump did. And now, it’s on us.

This is not a moment for petty politics. It’s a test of whether we can stand together as a people. If we fail, we don’t just hand a win to Iran. We prove the cynics right that America is too divided to defend itself.

We must align and prove them wrong.

The Unitary Executive

We’re bombarded with headlines: “Trump is undermining democracy,” “Authoritarian overreach,” “Fascism in the executive branch.” But peel back the media hysteria and partisan framing, and a more complex, and frankly more honest, picture emerges. [See Chapter 2.3 for a discussion of the Unitary Executive Theory]

The truth is, like it or not, executive power has always been central to American governance. From George Washington’s first directive in 1789 to Abraham Lincoln’s wartime orders, to FDR’s sweeping New Deal programs, presidents have used executive authority to steer the country sometimes boldly, sometimes controversially. The modern presidency is built on precedent, not improvisation.

So no, Trump didn’t invent executive overreach. What’s changed is the erosion of a functioning congress. The legislative branch has surrendered responsibility. The courts have become political battlegrounds. And in that vacuum, any president who exercises power especially one as confrontational as Trump is branded a tyrant.

But if we’re serious about restoring balance, we must stop treating executive authority as illegitimate only when we oppose the person wielding it. This isn’t just about Trump. It’s about the system and how we lost the boundaries that once kept it in check.

Let’s take a step back from the headlines and ask: What does the Constitution actually say about the bureaucratic state? What norms have developed around it? And who is really guilty of breaking them? The Supreme Court has begun to weigh in on this issue and as the NY Times stated on July 14, 2025:

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday that the Trump administration can proceed with dismantling the Education Department by firing more than a thousand workers.

This is the first of many rulings that will begin to coalesce on this issue. So let’s look at some of the ways in which Trump is reshaping the executive branch.

The Civil Service and the Constitution we Pretend to Defend.

Critics of Trump point to his efforts to reclassify civil servants under Schedule F as a “purge” of career professionals. But let’s ask a simple question: Who do civil servants work for?

The only honest constitutionally grounded answer is that they work for the executive branch. Article II of the Constitution vests the power of that branch in a single President. That’s not a partisan interpretation it’s a structural reality. Civil servants are not free agents. They do not answer to Congress. They are not their own branch of government. They exist to execute the law as directed by the person elected to do so.

Yet over the decades, through laws like the Pendleton Act of 1883, the federal workforce has been insulated from political accountability in the name of “neutral competence.” That idea was noble at the time it ended the spoils system but it has evolved into something quite different: a self-replicating, ideologically captured class of government insiders who answer to norms, not voters.

The phrase “serve the office, not the man” sounds good, until you realize that the policies of “the office” are defined by the man or woman who won the election. Otherwise, democracy is replaced by bureaucracy.

If civil servants are allowed to ignore or undermine the administration’s policies because they dislike the man/woman elected or disagree with his/her ideology; that’s not “public service.” That’s insubordination disguised as virtue.

When a president like Trump tries to reassert control over a resistant bureaucracy, it’s called authoritarian. But what do we call it when bureaucrats actively undermine an elected administrations agenda against the will of the people? That’s not service. That’s sabotage.

And yet, the outrage only seems to exist when a Republican tries to restore control.

Politicizing the DOJ: One Party’s Weapon Is Another’s Justice

We’ve now had back-to-back presidents accused of using the Justice Department to punish enemies and protect friends.

Trump critics say he’s turned the DOJ into a political weapon.

Trump supporters point to Biden’s DOJ prosecuting the leading Republican candidate during an election year, with open partisans staffing the investigation. They also point to the weaponization of intelligence agencies during the Russia probe, the use of FISA courts to surveil campaign associates, and the two-tiered standard in how leaks, riots, and civil rights cases are handled.

The real tragedy? Both sides are right. And both are wrong to think the problem started with the other.

Our system is broken not because one party is evil, but because every branch has drifted from its constitutional role:

• Congress no longer legislates meaningfully. It performs for the cameras and punts responsibility.

• The Courts have become the de facto policymakers especially when gridlock reigns.

• The Executive has grown too powerful but only because the other branches let it.

Presidents govern by executive order because Congress won’t do its job. Courts impose nationwide policy because legislators won’t make laws. And when a president pushes the bureaucracy to carry out his agenda, he’s accused of dictatorship for daring to act like the actual head of the executive branch.

Fairness means calling out hypocrisy on both sides.

• If you defended Obama’s executive orders, but condemn Trump’s: You’re not defending democracy. You’re defending your side.

• If you denounced Trump’s war-making, but said nothing when Clinton bombed Belgrade or Obama bombed Libya: That’s not about the Constitution. That’s about political convenience.

• If you claim Trump is a fascist for firing insubordinate officials, but cheered when Biden fired inspectors general who investigated COVID fraud or Afghanistan contracts you’re not concerned about norms. You’re protecting your narrative.

If you think only one party weaponizes justice, you’re not seeing the whole picture.

Civil Rights: Double Standards in Moral Leadership

When Trump acts to protect Jewish Americans from rising antisemitism by investigating universities, threatening federal funding, or calling antisemitism a national security threat he is branded as authoritarian. Media coverage frames it as overreach, political theater, or even a threat to free speech.

But compare that to how other presidents have defended minority communities:

• Dwight Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock in 1957 to enforce school desegregation.

• John F. Kennedy federalized the National Guard to protect Black students at the University of Alabama.

• Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act and deployed federal agents to enforce civil rights in the South.

At the time, many of these actions were controversial, denounced as federal overreach, and deeply unpopular in parts of the country. Eisenhower was called a tyrant in the South. JFK faced accusations of autocracy. Johnson lost the South for a generation. And yet, with the benefit of hindsight, we now recognize those moments not as authoritarian overreach but as acts of presidential courage and moral clarity. Necessary. Controversial. Ultimately, courageous.

Viewed through that same lens, Trump’s defense of Jews shouldn’t be controversial either.

Yet it is framed by many as a threat to liberty when the target is antisemitism, but they view other actions as a triumph of justice when the target is other forms of racism.

Why is defending Black and Latino Americans called progress but defending Jewish Americans is framed as censorship or control?

This isn’t just hypocrisy. It’s corrosive. And history will prove Trump right.

Civil rights are civil rights. They don’t belong to one party, one ethnicity, or one moment in history. The same moral standard must apply to all, or the standard becomes meaningless.

Trump isn’t storming campuses with tanks. He’s using the same tools other presidents have used to protect marginalized groups: federal funding leverage, civil rights investigations, public rhetoric. The only thing different is the group he’s protecting and the reaction that follows.

Until we apply the same principles to antisemitism that we do to racism or xenophobia, we will continue to divide the country along manufactured moral lines.

Political Violence: Hypocritical Reactions to Riots and Insurrections

Let’s conclude by examining one additional stark example of this partisan hypocrisy in action: the wildly inconsistent reactions to the 2020 George Floyd protests-turned-riots and the January 6th Capitol breach.

On one side, many Democrats and their media allies downplayed the summer of 2020 as “mostly peaceful” demonstrations for racial justice, even as violence erupted in over 200 cities, racking up $1-2 billion in property damage, claiming at least 19 lives (including police officers and bystanders), and forcing curfews nationwide often labeling it as understandable outrage against systemic injustice rather than outright domestic terror.

Flip the script to January 6th, a single-day event where a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to disrupt the electoral certification, resulting in five deaths (one from direct violence, others from medical emergencies or later suicides among traumatized officers), about $2.7 million in damage, and injuries to 140 law enforcement personnel and suddenly, it’s branded an “insurrection” or the “most violent moment in recent history,” with relentless congressional probes and over 1,500 prosecutions. Meanwhile, Republicans like Congressman Wesley Hunt counter by pointing out the racial double standards (e.g., the shooting of unarmed white protester Ashli Babbitt by a Black Capitol officer, imagining the uproar if roles were reversed) and argue that 2020’s chaos was the real threat, minimizing January 6 as a partisan witch hunt.

Both events were unacceptable outbreaks of violence fueled by deep grievances, yet the tribal lens warps them: what’s excused as righteous fury for one side becomes existential treason for the other. This selective outrage isn’t just intellectually dishonest it’s gasoline on the fire of polarization, breeding the very “authoritarian” backlash we see in figures like Trump, who millions view as a necessary disruptor against a rigged system. If we applied consistent principles condemning all political violence without caveats, holding leaders accountable regardless of party, and addressing root causes like echo chambers and institutional decay we could break this cycle. Instead, the Political Industrial Complex thrives on our divisions, ensuring the dysfunction continues unless we demand better from ourselves and our system.

And then there's the role of protests in the duopoly playbook events that appear grassroots are often seeded with paid operatives and funded by shadowy networks to manipulate public sentiment. Look at pro-Palestinian demonstrations: While many participants are genuine, investigations reveal organizers like the Plenty Collective in Canada distributing cash (up to $20,000 monthly) for "actions," prioritizing BIPOC applicants, or firms like Crowds on Demand hiring for crowds, as seen in U.S. lobbying efforts against menthol bans where protesters were paid $80 a head to rally in matching T-shirts. What makes it insidious is that many of the well intentioned protesters are blithely unaware that they are being manipulated and “whipped up” by these paid operatives.

Even "No Kings" protests against the Trump administration are political actions backed by political parties and their backers as well as political organizations like the ACLU, Indivisible, and SEIU progressive powerhouses that "organize" turnout, blurring the line between authentic dissent and manufactured outrage.

Fact-checkers may debunk mass "paid crowds" as conspiracy, but the reality is more insidious: These aren't fully organic; they're amplified by the duopoly's machine (DNC/RNC-linked firms stirring "support") to exploit emotions, from fear of "the other" to righteous fury, all while vilifying opponents and ignoring root causes like our fractured civic engagement.

As Brigitte Gabriel warns in her critiques of identity-driven extremism, we can't afford to give anyone immunity based on labels it's a path to further polarization.

The silent majority must wake up, demand consistent standards (no free passes, no manipulated mobs), and push for reforms like mandatory public service to rebuild our sense of shared duty. Otherwise, we're just pawns in a game where emotions trump facts, and the system wins while America loses.

So what do we do now?

We stop changing the rules depending on which party is in charge.

We stop confusing norms with laws, and partisanship with principle.

We start demanding that Congress reassert its legislative role, not just when the “other side” is in power, but always.

We start defending civil rights for all Americans with one moral standard, not selective outrage.

Here’s your call to action:

• Contact your representatives, both parties, and demand reforms that restore real checks and balances:

  • Rein in executive overreach through legislation, not tweets.

  • Protect whistleblowers and Inspectors General across administrations.

  • Enforce neutrality in the DOJ, not just when it benefits your party.

  • Codify civil service accountability ensuring neutrality without insubordination.

• Speak up on social media, in your workplace, in your community. Challenge the hypocrisy on your own side first.

Because if we only see tyranny when our opponents govern and virtue when our side does the same thing then we are not defending democracy. We are defending a team.

And that’s not sustainable. Not morally. Not politically. Not culturally.

This is the moment to rebuild a shared understanding of how our system is supposed to work and to insist on it.

If we don’t fight for constitutional clarity now, we will have no ground left to stand on when the next crisis comes. And it will.

The Real Crisis is Partisan Politics

The Constitution is drifting and the rot is bipartisan:

• Congress no longer legislates it performs.

• The courts legislate from the bench.

• The executive governs by fiat.

This moment doesn’t have to break us. It can wake us up.

Not to take sides but to take responsibility.

We’ve seen what happens when outrage rules and trust erodes. When every disagreement becomes a moral war. But beneath the noise, most Americans still believe in fairness, truth, and a system that works for everyone.

That’s the promise of our democratic republic and it’s still within reach.

If we’re willing to look past the party labels.

If we’re willing to apply the same standards to our side as we do to the other.

If we’re willing to fight not against each other, but for each other and for the principles that make us a nation worth defending.

Not because we’re naïve but because we still believe that truth cuts through noise. That courage is contagious. And that unity, when rooted in principle, is still possible.

Let’s prove it. Here’s how I see the path forward:

1. Reject Partisan Media Narratives

   Stop watching cable news. Take a break from social media. Curate a few trusted sources from both sides. Detox your brain from the algorithms of outrage.

2. Apply Consistent Standards

   If executive overreach is wrong, it’s wrong no matter who does it. If speech matters, it matters for everyone. If civil rights are worth defending, they’re worth defending for Jews as well as for Blacks, Latinos, Muslims, and LGBTQ Americans.

3. Hold Institutions Accountable

   Don’t romanticize the past. Push Congress to do its job. Demand that the courts stay in their lane. And insist that presidents whether it’s Biden, Trump, or anyone else respect the limits of their power.

4. Build Civic Literacy

   Most Americans couldn’t pass the citizenship test. That’s not an accident it’s a strategy. A civically illiterate public is easier to manipulate. Let’s change that. Let’s educate, not agitate. We need to incentivize National Public Service in meaningful ways as I suggested in Chapter 5.1). One of my friends suggested that we should move the age when an adult can vote from 18 to 21 unless you serve in the Military. An interesting idea on many levels, unfortunately the 26th Amendment makes the idea impossible to implement. It’s ironic because the U.S. lowered the voting age from 21 to 18 in 1971 via the 26th Amendment, largely in response to the draft during the Vietnam War. The rationale was: if you could be conscripted to die for your country, you should have a say in its leadership. The Vietnam-era rallying cry was: “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote.” Feels like a missed opportunity to have only lowered the age for those that serve.

5. Call Out the Duopoly

   The two-party system is not a constitutional requirement: it’s a business model. And it’s failing us. Real change will require ballot access reform, open primaries, and new civic coalitions. FairnessMatters will keep pushing in that direction.

Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were not on a battlefield in Gaza. They were murdered in the U.S. capital. Not by accident. Not by random violence. This didn’t happen in a vacuum. It is the inevitable result of a global propaganda campaign.

And now, two more names are added to a long list of jewish victims whose deaths will be rationalized or worse - celebrated.

This is the world we live in now. A world where the chants “Free Palestine”, “From the River to the Sea” and “Globalize the Intifada” echo through college campuses, social justice marches, and city streets—most often shouted by antisemites and radical “cultural marxists” but also by people who believe they are standing for peace, when in fact they are unwittingly, naively, stupidly, aligning themselves with radical islamic terrorists.

By now, everyone should know what those chants actually mean. Iran and its proxies, including Hamas, make it clear. So does Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Within our Lifetime, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) and dozens of DEI and so called “Ethnic Studies” programs that have been ideologically captured. Their slogans are not about justice or human rights. They are about erasing Jews—from history, from land, from life.

The truth is that if you want to protest suffering, protest the regimes that slaughter their own civilians and hide behind civilian populations operating their military operations out of schools and hospitals. Protest the ideology that teaches children from birth to hate jews and to glorify martyrs. Protest the propaganda that is indoctrinating Western youth to believe that hating (and killing) Jews is somehow justice.

If you want peace, stand with those who want peace. Not with those whose idea of “liberation” requires Jewish annihilation.

This moment demands moral clarity. It demands courage. Because the true cost has always been counted in Jewish lives. It seems too many have forgotten that mobs of Nazi students terrorized campuses in Germany years before the ghettos and gas chambers of WWII. They have forgotten the role that their so-called “activism” had in spreading an ideology across an entire generation of Germans.

Moral consistency requires recognizing and acknowledging that white supremacist ideology led to the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, just as extreme social justice and Islamist ideologies led to the Capital Jewish Museum murders.

We need to be real about antisemitism. We need to be real about the undertones of the screams from college students, or the vile hatred on social media – it’s the oldest hatred in the world and it possesses a desire to exterminate, to rid the world of Jews.

In Yaron and Sarah’s honor, I felt compelled to publish this article in a cry for unity in the face of an ever more dangerous existential threat to the ability for Jews to live in peace and security.

What Israel has endured, no other nation would be expected to tolerate: the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, over 15,000 rockets launched at civilians, 253 hostages taken into tunnels in Gaza without global outrage or Red Cross access. Instead of unified support, Israel faces global condemnation, campus mobs praising terror, and media outlets that amplify Hamas propaganda while minimizing Jewish suffering. Any other democracy would be applauded for defending itself—Israel alone is demonized for choosing survival.

Once again, the nations of the world have aligning against the Jewish people. They malign us. They propagate blood libels that accuse us of war crimes, of genocide, of apartheid without context, while ignoring, excusing or worse, celebrating, terrorist organizations that hide underground in tunnels and behind human shields. They hold us to double standards. They tell ancient blood libels. They blame us for the atrocities committed against us. They reward terror with offers of statehood. Today's war dresses itself in "progressive" language, legal briefs, and diplomatic forums — but which remains, at its core, a war against the Jews.

The double standards they adhere to are not diplomacy - they are moral inversion.

So we have to ask the hardest questions—questions we’ve been avoiding for too long.

How do we unite when we are so divided politically?

How do we make peace with an enemy that doesn’t want peace?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are existential ones. And our survival depends on how we answer them.

The first step is honesty.

The truth is: we are divided. Deeply. Politically, culturally, generationally. Jews have always argued. The Talmud is an argument. What we cannot afford is to keep confusing ideological purity with moral clarity. We must learn to walk together even when we don’t vote the same.

There is no civil rights movement for the Jewish people. As such, we need to start practicing real solidarity so we can stop attacking allies who broadly share our values even if their politics don’t agree with our own. Step in to de-escalate when others escalate. Promote independents who judge ideas by merit, not partisanship. Support imperfect coalitions that prioritize Jewish safety even if that means supporting an administration that you despise.

We don’t need a single political strategy. We need a shared reality and a common purpose.

We must stop allowing ourselves to be fractured by fear. Fear of looking un-woke. Fear of aiding the left. Fear of saying the wrong thing on both sides of the aisle. Fear of defending ourselves too loudly. Too many of us are hiding their jewish identity because they feel unsafe. This must stop.

The Great Betrayal: How America’s Political Duopoly Is Dividing the Jewish People

I recently came across an article in Future of Jewish titled “The Dirty Politics of Antisemitism”, and it left me unsettled—not because it was wrong, but because it was too right.

The piece lays bare a reality many of us have felt but struggled to name: antisemitism in America isn’t just rising—it’s being weaponized. Not only by neo-Nazis on the right, but by progressives on the left. The Left points to Charlottesville. The Right points to Columbia, Penn and Harvard. Meanwhile, Jews are left shouting across a widening chasm, blaming each other and Israel for the world’s jew hatred - and we play into our enemies hands.

When antisemitism becomes a partisan football, something terrible happens: Jews stop defending each other. We become Democrats first, Republicans first, progressives first, conservatives first—and only maybe Jews second. We trade our peoplehood for party. But in doing so, we reinforce the lie that Jewish safety is negotiable. That our survival can be split along party lines. We’re being played. And we’re letting it happen.

Our communal organizations can’t agree on how to define antisemitism, let alone how to fight it. Some are more comfortable condemning a MAGA rally than a terrorist chant. Others will scream about progressive antisemitism while embracing Christian Zionists. Each side demands outrage from the other—while offering none of their own.

Consider this open letter from several dozen former leaders of major Jewish establishment groups, including a former national chair of the Anti-Defamation League, who recently warned that:

a range of actors are using a purported concern about Jewish safety as a cudgel to weaken higher education, due process, checks and balances, freedom of speech and the press.

They called on Jewish leaders and institutions

to resist the exploitation of Jewish fears and publicly join with other organizations that are battling to preserve the guardrails of democracy.

I don’t doubt the sincerity of many who signed. As you know, I am an avid defender of our democracy and the rule of law. This entire body of work is dedicated to those principles.

But their framing is revealing. By a “range of actors” they mean the Trump Administration. While Jews are facing an epidemic of antisemitism on a scale we haven’t seen since the 1930s, many Jews on the political left feel that we are being “exploited” instead of defended! This is self loathing and dangerous. And our enemies are thrilled. And it’s tearing us apart.

Consider a Jewish friend who recently posted on facebook:

It surprises me to see smart, well-educated Jews buy into this idea that Trump and his supporters are trying to silence free thinking and free speech in the name of preventing antisemitism. Isn’t this the same guy who rallied neo-Nazis to attack the Capitol? … I think their goal is simply to divide and silence the opposition. Today it’s trans teens and immigrants. Tomorrow it will be the Jews.

We have become so blinded by partisanship that many of us are unwilling to accept that Trump’s policies might actually be designed to protect Jews on campus because they are convinced they are smokescreens for fascism. In this moment, the actions (not the man) should be judged by their impact, not political identity.

How many of us have read comments like this from progressive jews:

Watching a genocide unfold seems very important. I am not a callous enough person to see toddlers with their heads blown off and dead children lying in the streets to think it’s not important to talk about. I’m truly shocked after the Holocaust that so many are willing to turn a blind eye. Many Jews do not support the slaughter of Palestinians, yet in Trump’s world this is antisemitism.

These aren’t fringe voices. These are our friends, colleagues, family members. And they truly believe that condemning Hamas is a distraction from a genocide that isn’t happening.

This is a war for existence. A war between light and darkness, freedom and barbarism. And yet, tragically, too many Jews—especially in the diaspora—are still blind to this reality. Even worse, many are directing their anger not at the enemy, but at fellow Jews. At Netanyahu. At the government. They rage at Jewish strength, while remaining silent about jihadist evil.

This is what happens when moral confusion becomes a badge of honor. When “nuance” becomes a license to excuse open genocidal threats against us. When being a “good Jew” means distrusting anyone on the political right who supports Israel—because they don’t do so through a progressive lens.

The propaganda has worked.

The most insidious expression of this phenomena is the political asymmetry in how antisemitism is addressed. When it comes from the far right, the left are quick to condemn it, but when it’s cloaked in the language of “decolonization,” “liberation,” or “anti-imperialism,” it’s excused, ignored—or even rewarded. As Bari Weiss observes in her 2019 book “How to Fight Antisemitism”:

Antisemitism has the uncanny ability to be politically convenient… It shifts shape to serve the ideological needs of the moment.

The result? Jewish students harassed on campus. Entire academic departments refuse to acknowledge antisemitic incidents cloaked in anti-Zionist rhetoric. Major media outlets portray Jewish self-defense as oppression, and terrorism as resistance.

This is not a coincidence. It’s the logical outcome of a political system that thrives on tribalism. The American duopoly doesn’t want Jews unified. It wants us fractured—screaming at each other instead of standing together.

So what do we do?

We stop playing defense. We stop apologizing. We stop performing ideological gymnastics to preserve our virtue signaling. And we remember: we are one people.

Jewish unity doesn’t mean agreeing on everything. It means agreeing on something fundamental: that antisemitism in all its forms, from the right, the left, the pulpit, or the quad—is a threat to us all. That we will not excuse it, ignore it, or hide from it because it’s politically inconvenient. It means being brave enough to call out those within our own community who have confused their politics for their identity. And yes - Antizionism today is antisemitism. Full stop.

The path to Jewish unity starts when we say: enough! Enough moral relativism. Enough silence when the mobs chant “globalize the intifada.” Enough pretending that campus antisemitism is protected “Free Speech.” Enough excusing genocidal rhetoric because it’s wrapped in intersectional language. Enough downplaying the threat of white nationalism. Enough blaming other Jews for the hatred aimed at all of us. And most crucially in this moment—enough blaming other jews who support the Trump administration’s actions to confront antisemitism forcefully and justly because it purports to align with your fear that it will lead to fascism. Our self interest, our survival must come before partisanship!

Consider the New York Times "hit piece on the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther entitled “The Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement.” Rather than investigate the pro-Hamas activism erupting on campuses, the article framed the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther—a coordinated strategy to push back against this wave—as a dystopian overreach. This isn’t journalism. It’s ideological gaslighting. And it’s exactly how fear turns moral clarity into moral confusion.

We don’t have to agree with every political view of the Heritage Foundation. But if they chose to stand with Jewish students while others cower—we should be grateful, not ashamed.

And it’s not only the progressive Jews in the left that need to speak up. Imagine for a moment had Kamala Harris won the Presidency and she had:

• Signed a truce with the Houthis 48 hours after they struck Ben Gurion Airport

• Prioritized arms deals with Saudi Arabia while Israeli hostages were still underground

• Criticized Israel’s humanitarian policy while hinting at conditional military aid

• Cut an economic deal with Qatar, Hamas’s main backer, just months after October 7

Conservative Jews would be calling it betrayal! But because it’s Trump, too many remain silent—or worse, offer tortured rationalizations in the name of “strategy” or conclude Harris would have been worse. Their fear is not of antisemitism, but of empowering the progressive left. And so they tolerate what they never would from the other side.

This is what fear does: it makes principles conditional on who holds power. It replaces moral clarity with tribal loyalty. It makes defending Jews secondary to scoring political points—or avoiding them.

We’re Losing the Propaganda War.

For eight decades, Islamists and their backers have waged an ideological campaign—not just against Israel, but against the Jewish people as a whole. They’ve infiltrated the soft tissue of Western society: the schools, the universities, the human rights organizations, the social justice movements. They have framed the conflict not as a tragic clash of peoples, but as a simple moral binary: Palestinians as the oppressed, Jews as the oppressors. And the West—especially its younger generation—has believed the lie.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its enablers in Iran and Qatar have been playing the long game. Over the past 80 years, under both democratic and republican administrations, they have infiltrated America and strategically, methodically poisoned millions of impressionable minds who have now been indoctrinated.

• Education: In K–12 classrooms and elite universities, curricula steeped in critical theory have recast the Jewish story as one of privilege and power. Zionism is no longer a liberation movement of the indigenous Jews but a white colonial project.

• Social Media: Algorithms reward outrage, not context. The image of a grieving child spreads faster than the nuance of asymmetric warfare. TikTok and Instagram have become the new battlefield, where fact is no match for feeling.

• NGOs and Human Rights Orgs: Institutions once dedicated to universal justice now act as ideological actors. Groups like Amnesty International use the language of apartheid and settler-colonialism to delegitimize the only Jewish state—while saying little of actual apartheid regimes.

• Intersectional Movements: Intersectionality and identity politics tell Jews that they must choose between their identity and their solidarity. Unless they renounce Israel, they are excluded from coalitions they helped build.

And here is the bitter truth: it has worked. Our story is being erased. Our trauma is being dismissed. Our indigeneity is being denied.

Recent polling indicates a notable shift in attitudes among Americans under 35 regarding Israel and antisemitism.

Antisemitic Attitudes Among Young Adults

A global survey by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in early 2025 found that 46% of adults worldwide hold antisemitic beliefs. Notably, individuals under 35 exhibited higher levels of antisemitic sentiments compared to older age groups. The ADL attributes this trend partly to the influence of social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, which can amplify antisemitic content.

Views on Israel and the Israel-Hamas Conflict

A Pew Research Center survey from April 2024 revealed that only 24% of Americans under 30 have a favorable view of the Israeli government, a significant decline from previous years. In contrast, 60% of this age group view the Palestinian people positively. Additionally, 46% of adults under 30 consider Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 7 attack as unacceptable, with 32% deeming it completely unacceptable.

Further, a Gallup poll from February 2025 indicated that 56% of Americans aged 18–34 hold an unfavorable view of Israel, compared to 41% of the general population. This marks a significant increase in unfavorable opinions among younger adults.

Support for Hamas Among Young Americans

A Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll conducted in March 2025 found that among Americans aged 18–24 who expressed an opinion on the Israel-Hamas conflict, 48% supported Hamas, while 52% supported Israel. This represents a substantial shift from the previous year, where 72% of the same age group supported Israel.

We thought merit would protect us. That our decency, our moral record, our historical trauma would shield us from defamation. But we misjudged the power of narrative. We were complacent and allowed ourselves to be divided—by politics, by ideology, by fear and by ignorance.

If we are to survive this century not just physically but spiritually and intellectually, we must reclaim the moral clarity of our story—together. This isn’t about right or left, religious or secular, hawk or dove. It’s about truth. And it’s about survival.

We must build—not just institutions, but a movement: unapologetically Jewish, proudly Zionist, morally grounded, and strategically smart. One that speaks in the language of this generation while carrying the wisdom of the past.

The way out is not submission to either political extreme. It is building a durable, principled Jewish center—one that rejects fear-based politics and reclaims moral clarity.

That means:

• Condemning antisemitism—whether it comes from MAGA rallies or DEI offices;

• Defending Israel’s existence unequivocally;

• Refusing coalitions that demand Jews compromise their identity for inclusion And embracing coalition that defend our right to Jewish Sovereignty regardless of political affiliation;

• And speaking out when others want us to stay quiet.

We must recognize that we do not stand alone in this fight—and we cannot afford to. Across the political and religious spectrum, there are courageous voices willing to speak out against antisemitism and defend the Jewish people, often at great personal cost. Regardless of which side of the political aisle you lean, we need to stand shoulder to shoulder in moral clarity with anyone willing to act with vigor against our enemies. From Muslim reformers who challenge antisemitism within their own communities, to secular human rights advocates who refuse to erase Jewish history, to political leaders willing to risk backlash for telling the truth—we must welcome all who are willing to stand with us. If we are to win the battle for truth, we must build alliances grounded in shared values, not identical identities.

Unity does not require uniformity—it requires courage, gratitude, and a clear understanding of who our real enemies are.

The Reality We Can No Longer Rationalize: The Truth about Radical Islam

Through millennia, the Jewish people have survived exile, pogroms and genocide. Sadly, we are at that moment again. Never again must mean never again!

If you’ve read this far, you likely feel it too: the weight of this moment. The heartbreak. The urgency. The fear that we may be too fractured to respond. The fear that our enemies know it.

How do you make peace with an enemy that doesn’t want peace?

You start by acknowledging an irrefutable historical reality. This has never been about a two-state solution. It’s always been about the existence of a Jewish state.

Haviv Rettig Gur has offered a profound analysis of Iran’s animosity toward Israel. He is a credible source of truth in understanding the complexities of the Middle East. He does a credible job of explaining the theological underpinnings of Iran’s hostility. He argues that Iran’s regime perceives the existence of a sovereign Jewish state as a direct affront to the Islamic concept of divine supremacy. In this view, the Jewish people’s return to their ancestral homeland and the Arab defeat at the hands of the jews in ‘48 and their subsequent establishment of a thriving nation, challenges the narrative that Jews are meant to live in subjugation under Islamic rule. This theological perspective fuels Iran’s ideological commitment to opposing Israel’s existence. This underpins the genocidal doctrines underlying our enemies and why it’s self-evident that Hamas doesn’t want peace. That the Palestinian Authority doesn’t want peace. That Hezbollah doesn’t want peace. That the Houthis don’t want peace. Radical Islam is not seeking peace with Israel. They are not seeking a Palestinian state. They are seeking the destruction of Israel and the genocide of the jewish people in their quest for Islam to rule the world. We cannot educate that out of them. We cannot bribe it out of them with economic incentives.

That’s not bigotry or “islamaphobia”, it’s history and it’s an acknowledgement of the nature of radical Islam. I want to be clear in distinguishing “Islamism” from mainstream peaceful people of Muslim faith. I stand in solidarity with Muslims who are themselves targets of jihadist ideology. Brigitte Gabriel is a staunch ally in this fight. Here she is on a panel discussing Benghazi.

Yes, it’s an ugly truth. Yes, it’s hard. But the history of the Arab/Israeli conflict has demonstrated rather unequivocally that our enemies do not want peace.

We must speak with a unified voice that Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and their allies aren’t fighting over land. It’s a religious, Islamist, Jihadist war to annihilate the Jews, destroy Israel and establish an Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East and eventually across the world. Consider the history of the State of Israel and the “peace process” that we’ve endured:

• In 1947, the UN proposed a two-state solution—Jews accepted it, the Arab world rejected it and launched a full-scale invasion the moment Israel declared independence in an effort to annihilate the Jewish people.

• Golda Meir famously captured the futility of appeasing Arab rejectionism with this quote about Israel’s pre-1967 borders:

  Why do people, good people, some Israeli’s was well, tell us if you had only gone back to the 1967 borders after the war. Then I always ask a foolish question, but I haven’t heard one single wise answer. If the ‘67 borders were so holy, why was there a war in ‘67? All these territories were in the hands of Arab countries. If Hussein hadn’t gone to war in '67, when he shouldn’t have, when Eshkol asked him not to go to war, the West Bank would have been in his hands. If Assad hadn’t gone to war, the Golan Heights would have been Syrian. If Nasser (Egypt) hadn’t gone to war in ‘67, the Sinai Desert and the Gaza Strip were in his hands.

  This statement exposed the core hypocrisy of Arab rhetoric after the Six-Day War. The call to return to the 1967 borders was framed as a demand for justice—but Meir pointed out that Arab states tried to destroy Israel even when it had no “occupied territories.” In other words, their grievance wasn’t about borders—it was about Israel’s existence. This quote underscores the enduring truth: when your enemy attacks you before you have any so-called provocation, the issue isn’t what you’re doing—it’s who you are.

• After the 1967 war, Israel offered land for peace; the Arab League responded with the infamous “Three No’s”: no peace, no recognition, no negotiations—followed by years of border raids and terrorism.

• In 1993, the Oslo Accords created mutual recognition, but were followed not by peace but by the First Intifada, a wave of suicide bombings, bus attacks, and open incitement from Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Arafat publicly shook hands with Rabin but privately described the deal as a temporary tactical maneuver—and terrorism increased.

• In 2000, Israel offered a Palestinian state with 95% of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and a capital in East Jerusalem—Arafat walked away without a counteroffer, and within weeks, the Second Intifada erupted, claiming thousands of lives in a brutal campaign of suicide bombings and shootings.

• In 2005, under the vision of Shimon Peres, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza—dismantling every settlement, synagogue, and military post and left Gazan’s with civilian infrastructure and businesses to give Palestinians a chance at self-governance. Instead, the Gazan’s elected Hamas who then violently seized control, murdered Fatah rivals, and transformed Gaza into a terror camp. The lie of disengagement has been utterly destroyed. It did not bring peace. It brought death, terror tunnels, missiles, and massacre. We paid for it with blood.

• In 2008, Prime Minister Olmert offered a state with land swaps and shared control of Jerusalem—Abbas walked away.

• In 2020, the Trump peace plan was rejected without discussion, with Palestinian leaders declaring it “dead on arrival” and refusing even to negotiate.

Each time, Israel said yes or tried to negotiate by offering land for peace and (another) Palestinian State; Palestinian leaders said no—and followed with violence. This isn’t conjecture. You can’t make peace with those who reject coexistence and respond to compromise with terror.

Shimon Peres, Israel’s former Prime Minister, once said:

You don’t make peace with your friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.

This is a lesson that rings true in theory—and one we hoped would hold in practice. But what we miscalculated, where we were naive and what became clear 18 years after Israel withdrew from Gaza, is that we must accept an uncomfortable truth: we can’t make peace with an enemy that doesn’t want peace.

Some have argued that the Western left—particularly in the U.S. and Europe—has long embraced a strategy of “peace at all costs” when it comes to Israel, often prioritizing moral signaling over strategic clarity. As Susie Linfield documents in The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hanna Arendt to Noam Chomsky, this shift has led many intellectuals and activists to abandon support for Israel’s right to defend itself, in favor of ideological purity that often aligns with anti-Zionist rhetoric.

The “peace at all costs” approach has repeatedly failed—not because peace is unworthy, but because it has been pursued without regard to whether both sides truly want it.

I recently read an article entitled: “The Real Nakba Was Jewish Naiveté. The fantasy of an Israeli-Palestinian peace process is a comforting lie we told ourselves. We believed in a future they never wanted.”

While it’s its intellectually stimulating to challenge the idea that the failure of historical peace efforts somehow vindicates the approach of the political right, it raises a question: If peace is possible with Arab Israelis— why not with Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank?

It’s a powerful point that points us toward the real issue: the problem isn’t ethnicity or even religion- but like in Nazi Germany - it’s ideology and governance.

Arab citizens of Israel live within a civic structure that allows for participation, opportunity, and coexistence. But their story starts long before modern integration efforts—it begins in 1948, when many Arabs chose to stay in the land that became Israel, even as Arab leaders urged them to flee, promising they would return once the invading armies had “cleansed” the land. Those who stayed made a different choice—one rooted not in ideology, but in a willingness to live alongside Jews. Their children and grandchildren have not been taught for 80 years to glorify martyrdom. They are not told from birth that Jews are demons and that stabbing a grandmother is the path to eternal honor. Tragically, Palestinians in Gaza and Judea & Samaria (“the West Bank”) are raised on the exact opposite. Not because of who they are, but because of who leads them, educates them, and funds their curriculum. That’s not a people being prepared for peace—it’s a people being weaponized.

What we’ve seen from Israel over the last eight decades (including under Netanyahu) hasn’t been true resolve — it’s been hesitation, calibration, and endless short-term management of a long-term problem. And it has a cost—both in Israeli blood and in our moral clarity.

We must look to history when executing a strategy to defeat extreme ideology. Examine how the West defeated Nazism and imperial Japan during WWII. It wasn’t with deterrence or temporary ceasefires. It was with total military defeat, followed by ideological dismantling, civic reconstruction, and cultural reform. Those societies weren’t just stopped—they were transformed but only after a brutal world war that cost more than 80 million lives including more than 50 million civilians. To be clear, I am not equating the current moment with the Holocaust, but I am pointing to parallels in propaganda, appeasement, and moral blindness that history teaches us to heed.

We haven’t done that in Gaza or Judea & Samaria (the “West Bank”). We haven’t even come close. We keep fighting the fire without draining the fuel. Had Europe acted faster Hitler could have been defeated long before the tipping point that allowed Hitler to cause the deaths of nearly 80 million people. We are at the precipice of another world war. We must find the resolve to act before this regional war consumes the world.

The Path Forward.

Which brings us to the heart of the issue: what do we do now? What’s the path forward? I think this is where we as a people need to stop yelling past each other and ask a more basic question: what does it mean to win? If “winning” just means surviving the next war, then maybe our current strategy is fine. But if winning means building a future where our children aren’t living on the edge of annihilation, then we need a very different playbook.

Here are my thoughts:

1. Military clarity. Hamas, Hezbollah, the IRGC—they must be dismantled completely. Not contained. Not deterred. Defeated. Victory means never allowing a Jihadi genocidal regime to rise again in Gaza. As Jews we must offer a vision for after the war, but we must also ensure we survive to reach it.

2. Moral clarity. One of the most pernicious effects of the mythology that zionism is colonialism is to dehumanize Israelis and Jews, who are reduced to “colonialists” against whom Hamas’ slaughter is legitimized as “resistance”. It has created an intellectual and social context in which it has become shockingly widespread for left intellectuals, activists and movements to not only express their belief that Israel should not exist but to express unrestrained admiration for the actions of Hamas. This must end. We must stop apologizing for surviving. We must confront the lie that we are occupiers and explain—without hesitation—why Zionism is liberation, not colonialism but the most successful de-colonialization in history. And we must stop conflating causation with correlation. Yes, it’s true, the “Palestinian” people are suffering but it is a self inflicted wound not caused by Israel but by their leaders who have consistently rejected peace.

3. Institutional clarity. We must support any efforts, including by the Trump Administration, to (a) Defund UNRWA and dismantle their schools that teach hate; (b) Sanction the funders of terror; (c) Discredit and defund the NGOs that support terrorists in the name of social justice; (d) we must dismantle the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States and add them to the terror watch list; and (e) we must dismantle and defund university departments that serve as ideological incubators for Islamism.

4. Educational clarity. Reform Jewish education to tell the truth about Jewish indigeneity, Zionism, and our moral cause. Prepare our children not to plead for belonging, but to lead with vision.

5. Strategic clarity. Just as Churchill saw what Chamberlain wouldn’t, we must act before the next October 7. Because waiting only empowers the enemy—and weakens us.

The "western world" must wake up to the fact that we've allowed islamism to grow to a dangerous tipping point. They are a far larger group of people than the combined German/Nazis and Japanese Imperialists and they have already infiltrated western society and fight with unconventional methods.

We need to find the strength to fight—unrestrained, unapologetic, untied. For too long, our warriors have fought with one arm behind their back—chained by global opinion, moral confusion, and internal betrayal. That must end. There is no room left for restraint when the cost is Israeli lives.

And we need to find our imagination—not to fantasize about peace with terrorists, but to prepare for the day after victory. To build a civic structure where our children no longer inherit this war. To reconstruct where we have had to destroy. And to teach the world again that Jewish power is not just about might—but about meaning.

The left and the right must stop fighting each other and start fighting the real enemy—together.

We’re stuck in an American-style culture war while people are literally fighting for their lives. We need to reject the false binary that strength belongs to the Right and compassion to the Left. Zionism demands both. It demands that we protect ourselves and know what we’re protecting. That we fight Radical Islam with everything we’ve got—not just with weapons, but with a clear, unapologetic moral voice. That we stop playing defense in the court of global opinion. That we stop apologizing for our survival.

And yes, we need to rebuild. Not just Gaza, if and when that’s even possible—but ourselves. Our education systems. Our sense of purpose. Our connection to each other across oceans and ideologies.

Too many Jews today are confused, ashamed, or disengaged. We need to speak to them—not with guilt, but with clarity, courage, and invitation.

So no, I don’t think this is just about venting frustration or blaming others. I think it’s about naming what hasn’t worked and daring to imagine something stronger, deeper, and more unified.

Let us be clear-eyed about what we face—and unwavering in what we fight for.

Let us be Jews before we are partisans.

Let us be builders as well as defenders.

Let us tell our children that we rose to meet this moment—not because we agreed on everything, but because we refused to let anything come between us.

That is how we win.

Together.

Over the past few weeks, Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting prominent law firms—allegedly for their partisan affiliations and past involvement in legal action against him—have rightly triggered a constitutional firestorm.

Are you really surprised? You shouldn’t be.

Trump told us what he was going to do if re-elected. He didn’t hide it. The playbook was printed, promoted, and mailed to donors. If anything, the more honest question to ask is: why did we let the system get so corrupted that this kind of retaliation feels inevitable?

This isn’t just about Trump. It’s about the long arc of a system that abandoned common sense and fairness in favor of ideological purity and winner-takes-all partisanship.

The same system that once celebrated lawfare as a legitimate tool to discredit its political opponent, now recoils as that strategy comes home—only this time, wielded as a more blunt and dangerous instrument. This isn’t just tit for tat. It’s escalation. One side provokes, the other responds with more force. Legal challenges become executive orders. Influence becomes coercion. What began as asymmetric skirmishes in courtrooms is turning into a full-scale institutional arms race, where each side justifies its excesses as payback for the other’s. The result isn’t justice—it’s a system tearing itself apart under the illusion of accountability.

We are not just witnessing the erosion of guardrails—we are watching the logical outcome of a system that mistook extremism for moral clarity, and weaponization for justice. If Trump is crossing red lines now, it’s worth asking who blurred the lines—and who erased them when it served their side.

The Executive Order and Its Fallout

In early 2025, President Trump signed executive orders effectively blacklisting several high-profile law firms. One of them—Perkins Coie—was barred from federal buildings, lost government contracts, and had its attorneys stripped of security clearances. Others were told to abandon DEI programs or provide pro bono legal services aligned with Trump administration priorities.

The backlash was swift. Lawsuits were filed. One federal judge struck the order down as unconstitutional retaliation. Critics called it mob-style retribution. Supporters called it accountability for a legal establishment they believe has long played kingmaker behind the scenes.

But in this moment, the outrage—real as it may be—feels hollow. For years, both parties have danced dangerously close to this line, undermining institutions while claiming to defend them. If this feels like escalation, that’s because it is. But escalation is always a response—and often, a predictable one.

The Lawfare Precedent

What Trump has done with executive orders may be new in form, but not in spirit. For the last several years, the political and legal apparatus aligned with the Democratic Party has engaged in what many call “lawfare”—using investigations, lawsuits, and criminal charges to corner political adversaries in courtrooms they can’t win at the ballot box.

Was all of it unjustified? No. I recall a conversation with a Trump supporter who was complaining that the Biden Administration was using lawfare against Trump. I confronted him and said “if you’ll admit Trump committed the crimes, I’ll happily admit that the Biden Administration has crossed the line on lawfare”. Of course, he refused.

Prosecutors, AGs, and well-funded legal groups affiliated with the left aggressively pursued Trump and his allies. Multiple indictments. Coordinated press leaks. Civil suits with campaign-season timing. It was intentional and the result is clear: to many Americans, the legal system no longer was impartial.

So the pendulum swings and everyone is shocked when it crashes through the clock. Trump’s retaliation isn’t the start of something. It’s the response to something. And that’s what makes this moment so dangerous: both sides now believe they are justified in breaking norms—because the other side broke them first.

When Resistance Becomes Fuel

This moment reminds me of a line from Stephen Mitchell’s 1988 interpretation of the Tao Te Ching:

Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by itself.

The Tao suggests that resisting what you hate with too much force can give it power. And here in America, that dynamic is on full display. In trying to destroy Trump, the left has unwittingly helped define him—as a folk hero to millions who saw not a tyrant, but a target. Not a villain, but their messenger.

Aristotle, in Poetics, offers a similar insight. Tragedy isn’t driven by good versus evil. It’s driven by choices—flawed, often well-intentioned—that spiral toward consequences no one wanted. That’s where we are. Not in a morality play, but in a political tragedy.

The villains in this story are less people and more patterns. Hubris. Retribution. Institutional decay. And the refusal, on all sides, to break the cycle before it breaks us.

A Tale of Two Playbooks

Critics say Trump’s executive orders are part of the Project 2025 agenda—a blueprint for transforming the federal government into an instrument of partisan loyalty. They’re not wrong to worry. The plan consolidates power, purges civil servants, and bends institutions toward the will of the executive.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: the left has long used its own version of this playbook—just more quietly.

Biden’s White House pressured social platforms to suppress dissenting COVID or election-related speech. The Disinformation Governance Board was a real thing. And Missouri v. Biden revealed just how deeply entangled federal agencies had become in moderating what Americans are allowed to say.

So yes, Trump’s methods are aggressive. But the logic isn’t new. He’s just playing the same institutional game with different objectives—and fewer filters.

The left institutionalized control through soft power. The right is now trying to reclaim it through hard power. Both are eroding the middle ground. And neither seems willing to stop.

Constitutional Crossroads: Executive Power and the Rule of Law

Judge Beryl Howell called Trump’s actions:

retaliation and viewpoint discrimination - a direct affront to the First and Fifth Amendments.

And she’s right. We should never allow any president to punish lawyers for who they represent. That’s how democracies lose their brakes.

But we must also confront the uncomfortable fact that the presidency does carry sweeping powers. The Constitution grants the executive wide authority over national security, federal contracts, and access to classified spaces. And as DOJ official Richard Lawson argued in court:

We are not retaliating for political speech—we are protecting the integrity of federal operations from coordinated legal sabotage.

This isn’t a defense of the orders. It’s a recognition that the Constitution doesn’t enforce itself. It must be interpreted and upheld by people with wisdom, restraint, and a commitment to fairness. And those qualities, tragically, are in short supply on both sides of the aisle.

We Must Change How We React to Trump

When a friend compared Trump’s second-term agenda to authoritarian regimes, I didn’t disagree. The warning signs are real. The rhetoric is dangerous. The consolidation of power should alarm us.

But Trump hasn’t eliminated elections. He hasn’t jailed journalists. In 2020, the system worked. The courts held. Congress certified. Power transferred. That matters.

The question now isn’t whether Trump might cross red lines. It’s whether the rest of us are capable of seeing how our own reactions have brought us to the line in the first place.

At the heart of this essay is a plea: that we change how we react—not just to Trump, but to the system itself. The instinct to fight fire with fire has only made the blaze worse. It’s time for vigilance, not vengeance. Wisdom, not warfare.

In the end, who we elect matters. We’ve allowed the political duopoly to rig the system and that has brought us to the brink.

Let’s not feed fire with fire. Let’s protect the Constitution by staying rooted in it—even when we’re most tempted to weaponize it.

Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?

Harvard cloaks its resistance to federal oversight in the language of constitutional independence — but that independence is only selectively exercised. When marginalized groups aligned with fashionable progressive causes raise concerns, Harvard’s bureaucracy mobilizes. Entire DEI departments spring into action. Condemnations are issued. Task forces are formed.

Christopher Rufo penned an op-ed for the Free Press entitled “The Right Is Winning the Battle over Higher Education” in which he acutely observes:

Ivy League presidents see themselves as heirs to the civil-rights movement. In fact, they are among the most active practitioners of racial discrimination, stereotyping, and segregation in America today. Shielded by a virtuous public image, elite universities have institutionalized discrimination against disfavored racial groups, implemented DEI policies based on racial rewards and penalties, hired and promoted faculty according to skin color rather than merit, and overseen racially segregated student programs, dormitories, and graduation ceremonies.

As Charles Lane writes in the Free Press:

The expression “they’re framing a guilty man” comes to mind. This is the university that once penalized a law professor, Ronald Sullivan, for serving as legal counsel for Harvey Weinstein, widely reviled as an accused rapist, but constitutionally entitled to a defense. Harvard subsequently promoted another dean to president, Claudine Gay, who gave key verbal support to student protests against Sullivan.

This is a school that once tried to strong-arm a quarter of its students into abolishing their single-sex clubs, fraternities, and sororities, because “their fundamental principles are antithetical to our institutional values.”

Yet when Jewish students report harassment, vandalism, or even physical threats, the response is slower, quieter, more equivocal. The university drags its feet, dodging with vague statements about “complexity” and “dialogue.” It’s a pattern that reveals the truth: Harvard’s stand for ‘independence’ is not a principled defense of freedom — it’s a defense of bureaucratic discretion, even when that discretion enables bigotry.

Here is Audrey Moorehead a Harvard student writing for Tangle News confirms the toxicity of the environment at Harvard when she wrote in an editorial that:

For the past four years, the political environment at Harvard has been roiling. Harvard’s student body and faculty have produced such a toxic speech landscape that a survey found two-thirds of last year’s graduates felt uncomfortable sharing controversial opinions in class — even though 72.4 percent of this same class self-identified as “somewhat or very liberal” in a survey conducted their freshman year. And the Class of 2024 isn’t out of the ordinary: In this year’s freshman survey, 60% of the class of 2028 reported favorable opinions about Kamala Harris, compared to just 4% having favorable opinions about Donald Trump.

This striking lack of political diversity on campus generates emphatic internaldebate about how (if at all) to be more ideologically inclusive, which the university has ostensibly taken steps to do. Since 2021, campus administrators — aided by undergraduate input — have pursued an Intellectual Vitality Initiative with the goal of “improv[ing] the free exchange of ideas on campus.” The effectiveness of this initiative has been debated by students on both the left and the right.

She continues:

Meanwhile, left-wing activism has arguably been at its most prominent since 2016, and that activism has been controversial at best or outright antisemitic at worst. When I first came to campus, most left-wing activism seemed exclusively online (probably because of lingering pandemic restrictions). Today, in addition to rising pro-Palestine activism in the wake of Israel’s response to October 7, the left seems almost energized by the conservative revival — emboldened by the presence of real political opposition on campus that refuses to be silenced.

This is not a new phenomena at Harvard. Here is a paper by Frank Dobbin, from Harvard’s Department of Sociology writing in 2007 writing about Jerome Karabel’s book “The Chosen”:

The Chosen is a dispiriting book for a college professor to read, not only because it recounts a history of anti-Semitism that was blatant, deliberate, and well known, not only because so many intellectual leaders of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were not merely complicit in discrimination, but architects of it, but perhaps most of all, because so much of the system originally designed to keep Jews out of Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale is still in place, at those Ivy League schools and across the country.

Suffice it to say that it is well documented that Jewish students at Harvard, and across the Ivy League, have been systematically excluded from DEI programming. They are treated not as a protected class, but as an extension of Israeli policy — and therefore as targets. And when they protest this treatment, they are ignored or told to “engage in conversation.” This is not academic freedom. This is abdication.

The Trump Administration’s Just Cause — and Its Strategic Flaw

To its credit, the Trump administration recognized this double standard and acted. By reviewing Harvard’s federal funding and its compliance with civil rights laws, it sent a clear message: No institution — no matter how prestigious — is above the law when it comes to protecting students from discrimination.

Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, any institution receiving federal funds must ensure that students are not subject to discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin. That includes antisemitism when it targets Jewish identity as an ethnonational group — as it too often does. Lest we forget, Jewish people make up 2.4% of the U.S. population but are the targets of about 60% of hate crimes linked to religion according to the FBI.

Returning to Christopher Rufo’s op-ed, he references Christopher Caldwell’s book “The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties” and he observes:

Though launched with the noble intention of stopping racial discrimination, Caldwell argued, the Civil Rights Act—and the bureaucracy it spawned—gradually consumed core American freedoms and became a vehicle for entrenching left-wing racialist ideology throughout American institutions.

In the decades that followed, the right’s response was marked by ambivalence. Some libertarians called for repealing the Civil Rights Act, but—like many libertarian proposals—this was never a political possibility, given the Act’s broad public support. The establishment right, meanwhile, largely suppressed its private misgivings. Republicans repeatedly voted to expand the civil-rights regime, further embedding dubious concepts like disparate impact theory (the idea that discrimination can occur even inadvertently) into law.

Now, all of this has changed. After mounting a successful fight against DEI, the political right has come to accept that if there must be a civil-rights regime, it should be one of its own making. Rather than continue to defer to left-wing interpretations of civil-rights law, the right can now advance a framework grounded in color-blind equality, not racialist ideology.

The first field of battle is higher education.

But here’s the risk: Intentions do not excuse process. And federal law does not allow for blanket punishment without due process. If the administration revokes funding or tax-exempt status without completing proper investigations and issuing formal findings, courts will likely block those actions — not because they disagree with the cause, but because the process violates the law.

This is where strategy matters. History provides a roadmap. For example, consider when the Eisenhower administration faced civil rights resistance in the 1950s. It didn’t follow Trump’s play book and issue funding ultimatums or posture for the cameras. It acted decisively — and lawfully. If you’re unaware, it was 1957, when nine Black students — known as the “Little Rock Nine” — attempted to enroll at Central High School in Arkansas following the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education. When Governor Orval Faubus deployed the National Guard to block their entry, President Dwight D. Eisenhower took the extraordinary step of federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and sending in the 101st Airborne Division to protect the students and enforce desegregation.

He did not issue threats. He did not play politics. He acted with solemn constitutional authority to uphold the law.

That’s the model the Trump administration must follow if it wants its actions to stand. Investigate, document, build the legal case — then enforce.

Don’t hand elite institutions an opportunity to cry victim.

Win the legal war by honoring the very rule of law you seek to defend.

A Better Path Forward: Enforce the Law with Precision, Not Political Theater

The Trump administration has a powerful moral case. But moral clarity must be matched with legal precision. That means:

• Conducting full and fair Title VI investigations into antisemitism on campus;

• Conditioning funding based on clear findings of noncompliance with federal civil rights laws;

• Empowering students to file complaints and demand accountability through legal mechanisms;

• Working with Congress to clarify that DEI policies must include — not exclude — Jewish students;

• Using existing IRS authority to investigate abuse of tax-exempt status, if that abuse is provable under the law.

What it must not do is hand universities a court victory by skipping steps or appearing to punish political dissent. That approach, while emotionally satisfying, undermines the very justice it seeks to deliver.

The Trump Administration Must Protect the Civil Rights of Jews, Without Losing the Constitution

This moment is a test. Not just for Harvard, and not just for the Trump administration — but for the country.

Will we protect Jewish students with the same vigor we’ve used to protect other minorities? Will we defend civil rights without weaponizing executive power?

Harvard has failed this test. It chose bureaucratic self-preservation over student safety. But if the Trump administration wants to correct that failure, it must act like Eisenhower — not like an angry political surrogate. Use the law. Use the courts. Use the truth.

Because if we care about fairness — real fairness — it cannot depend on who is in power. It must depend on the rule of law, and the courage to enforce it.

The far bigger, far more important thing to keep in mind is that we are seeing a classic breakdown of the major monetary, political, and geopolitical orders. This sort of breakdown occurs only about once in a lifetime, but they have happened many times in history when similar unsustainable conditions were in place.

In 1998, Neil Howe & William Strauss published “The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny.” This insightful book identified a recurring pattern in Anglo-American history—an 80- to 100-year cycle divided into four “turnings”: the High, the Awakening, the Unraveling, and finally, the Crisis. Each “Fourth Turning” marks a period of upheaval—a reckoning that tests the resilience of a society and forces a choice: renewal or collapse. The last fourth turning began with the Great Depression and culminated in World War II. According to Strauss and Howe, we are now deep in another that began in 2008.

Perhaps G. Michael Hopf was familiar with their work when he wrote in his post-apocalyptic novel "Those Who Remain":

Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times.

Similar ideas appear throughout history in various forms. Arnold J. Toynbee, Will Durant, Ibn Khaldun, and Oswald Spengler have discussed cycles of rise, decline, and renewal in civilizations. The concept that prosperity breeds complacency, and adversity builds strength, has existed long before Hopf’s concise expression.

Regardless, we are now once again facing hard times brought on by decades of institutional complacency, political decay, and a loss of civic seriousness.

This is not a partisan observation. It’s a call to leadership. To rise to the occasion as others did before us. Because the through-line of every crisis era is this: ordinary citizens must step up when traditional institutions fail.

I believe we must come together and take action to capitalize upon this moment in history. Change happens when enough people get loud enough to make inaction politically costly. Congress will only act when it feels the weight of public demand. The system won’t change itself—we have to force it to.

How did we get here?

Before we can begin align on solutions, we must start by aligning on the root cause. I have argued throughout these pages that the cause is rooted in the fact that the “political-industrial complex” has rigged the rules to keep power concentrated in the hands of party elites and special interests. Less than 10% of voters decide most congressional elections due to closed primaries. The top 100 donors gave 15% of the $20 billion spent in the 2024 election thanks to Citizens United. And Congress hasn’t passed a budget on time in nearly 30 years.

This dysfunction is not theoretical. It’s real. It’s structural. And it’s the reason why so many Americans have lost faith in the very institutions meant to serve them.

In 1989, George H.W. Bush in his inaugural address said that he was guided by certain traditions and his favorite was:

to speak for patriotism over partisanship

It wasn’t that long ago. Yet we couldn’t be further from that place.

Over these past several decades, we’ve been on a downward slide into a partisan divide. Congress—the most powerful branch of government—has become paralyzed by fear of primary challenges from ideological extremes.

The problem is not one man or woman, nor one party. Yet, since January 20th, too many have been consumed by Trump. I don’t doubt that Trump is a serious threat to the status quo. He has been since 2015. Trump’s rhetoric, his willingness to test legal and constitutional boundaries, and his disregard for democratic norms all fuel significant concerns. The question remains how will our institutions hold up under this stress test. Only time will tell.

But we must start trying to understanding why so many Americans have now chosen Trump a second time. A candidate that half the country sees as an existential threat. If we agree that institutions matter, then we have to recognize that Trump is not the cause of our dysfunction—he is a symptom of it. The political system that produced him—one that rewards outrage, thrives on division, and prioritizes power over governance—is still very much intact. Even if Trump were to disappear tomorrow, nothing about that system would fundamentally change. I say that because those that focus on Trump do so at their own peril because they ignore the ways in which the Democratic Party, the media, and elite institutions have contributed to the erosion of public trust in our democracy. We shouldn’t excuse a party that rigged its own primary to prevent competition, misled the public about Biden’s health, and used its influence over tech platforms to suppress dissenting viewpoints—all in the name of “saving democracy.” These aren’t small things. These are real abuses of power, and if we allow ourselves to justify them just because Trump is worse, we are moving the goalposts on democratic accountability.

This is why I believe our discussion should go deeper. What concerns me is that too many people see this as a fight to stop one man rather than a fight to fix a broken system. If we only focus on Trump without fixing the root cause of the problem, we’re going to be right back here again in four years with a different name and a different crisis. If the system worked the way it was supposed to, Trump would never have been elected in the first place.

Worse yet, if we focus solely on Trump, we will miss an incredible opportunity to capitalize upon the fact that our government has reached peak dysfunction and is finally susceptible to transformation. A once in a century opportunity!

As discussed in Chapter 1.7 | How the ‘system’ really works today, the problem is a political-industrial complex that has become self-sustaining—a feedback loop of outrage and dysfunction, built atop closed primaries, gerrymandered districts, and unrestricted money. This is not a partisan observation. It’s a structural one. To regain our footing and build hope for the future, we need to rebuild trust in our political system.

And like our founding fathers in 1787, we now face a choice: tinker at the margins or come together to fix the machine. As Thomas Jefferson famously said:

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

This isn’t about left or right anymore. It’s about function or collapse. We must come together grounded in a common understanding that we’ve enjoyed one of the most dynamic economies the world has ever known. But that success didn’t happen in a vacuum. It was made possible by something larger than any one of us: the American system of governance. Our prosperity is rooted in the stability of our democracy, in the predictability of the rule of law, and in the global trust placed in the U.S. dollar. That trust exists because we have historically been a nation governed by institutions, not individuals. When investors around the world choose the dollar as a safe haven, they are placing a bet on our system’s resilience—on courts that function, contracts that are enforced, and a government that, even when flawed, is constrained by law and accountable to the people. Undermine that foundation, and we don’t just risk our politics—we risk the very conditions that make our businesses, our investments, and our economy possible.

When George Washington stepped aside as president in 1796, he memorably warned in his farewell address of the divisive influence of factions on the workings of democracy:

The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

But restraining it is not easy. There are many incredible organizations working to reform our government today. Unfortunately, every one of them is undercapitalized. Without significant resources, how can they fight a political duopoly that spent a record $20 billion dollars in the last election cycle?

If they can’t match that scale with serious, coordinated action, they are all just howling at the wind.

So what do we do?

A 2nd Constitutional Convention

In 1787, the Constitutional Convention was convened in Philadelphia to rewrite the Articles of Confederation then the blueprint of American governance. As history played out, the result of the Constitutional Convention was the United States Constitution, but it wasn't an easy path. The drafting process was grueling. They wanted the supreme law of the United States to be perfect. The first two months of the Convention saw fierce debate over the 15 points of the "Virginia Plan" which had been proposed by Madison as an upgrade to the Articles of Confederation. Yet, the "Committee of the Whole" couldn't agree on anything. So, on July 24 of that year, the Committee of Detail was enacted to handle the drafting process. At each juncture, something greater than politics drove those leaders forward: a belief that the moment demanded action. That delay was no longer tolerable. That posterity demanded courage. As the Constitutional Convention concluded on September 17, 1787, Elizabeth Willing Powel, a prominent Philadelphia socialite, approached Benjamin Franklin and asked: "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy. Franklin’s reply has become a cornerstone of American political thought, emphasizing the responsibility of citizens to maintain and protect their republic.

"A republic, madam, if you can keep it".

Today, we are facing another such moment. The question must once again be asked: Can we keep it?

There is no King George III. No British army at our doorstep. But we are no less imperiled. Instead of a foreign monarch, our threat comes from within: a deeply dysfunctional government, corroded by decades of institutional decay, rigged incentives, and partisan gamesmanship. We’ve seen a 40-year decline in civic trust. Meanwhile, wealth has consolidated. Our economy has shifted from a manufacturing powerhouse to one dominated by financial and real estate speculation. That shift hollowed out the middle class and left us saddled with $65 Trillion in debt.

To me it’s clear that our politics no longer serve “we the people”. It only serves itself! Here’s a hard truth: our government no longer functions as originally designed by our founding fathers, instead it’s been hijacked by the party duopoly. As a result, it rewards polarization, incentivizes obstruction, and punishes compromise. Until we acknowledge that, we’re just fighting over which side gets to wield a broken system to its advantage.

America has demonstrated throughout its history that when its people come together and align with a common vision and purpose, it is a force for good in the world. So, I refuse to accept the current reality of politics in our great nation. To regain our footing and build hope for the future, we need to rebuild trust in our political system.

I believe that leadership means taking responsibility and not just shouting about what’s broken and certainly not blaming one side or the other for how we got here. Call me crazy, but I believe it’s time to convene a Second Constitutional Convention—not to replace or even amend the Constitution, but to empower Congress to restore its promise! Not to wage war against one side or the other, but to declare a ceasefire in the name of something higher: a functioning Republic. Congress—the most powerful branch of government—has become paralyzed by fear of primary challenges from ideological extremes.

This moment demands action – not just talk. If we believe in preserving the Republic, then we must fix the machine that governs it. That means forming a cross-partisan, non-ideological coalition that we can all get behind.

Let’s start by convening hundreds of civic-minded leaders across industries and ideologies. Not politicians. Citizens. Not activists. Architects. Not slogans. Solutions.

Together we will align on the root cause of the dysfunction. Let’s put a slate of issues on the table for debate from closed primaries to ranked-choice voting and gerrymandering to campaign finance reform, and even congressional expansion. Let’s talk about fairness. Proportional representation. Accountability. The Rule of Law. These are not radical ideas. Nor are they partisan ideas. They are foundational non-partisan reforms aimed at restoring a functional government that once again puts patriotism above partisanship. Then let’s put a plan in action to fund these initiatives to break the stranglehold that the duopoly has on America. In this context, it is important to know that if Congress were empowered to put patriotism over partisanship, there are concrete actions Congress can take to restore balance and realign incentives so that our government serves the people rather than the parties. It can start by passing reforms that break the stranglehold of the political duopoly. Right now, a tiny percentage of voters in partisan primaries decide who gets to be on our ballots, which means candidates are incentivized to cater to the most extreme elements of their base rather than the broader “common sense” majority. By acting together, with purpose and capital, we could force politicians to compete for a wider range of voters, which in turn would push them toward consensus-driven solutions instead of ideological purity tests.

If we are successful, Congress will be empowered to reassert its constitutional role in checking executive overreach. Presidents from both parties have increasingly relied on executive orders to bypass the legislative process, but that’s not how laws are supposed to be made. If Congress doesn’t like what the president is doing, it shouldn’t just complain on cable news—it should PASS LAWS! We need to empower our elected officials in Congress to reclaim its authority over things like tariffs, emergency declarations, and military actions, so that major policy decisions can’t be made unilaterally by an unchecked Executive Branch. It also means ensuring that agencies like the DOJ and IRS operate independently rather than as political weapons for whoever is in the White House.

It’s time to stop playing left vs. right and start asking: who broke the system, and why? And more importantly: what will we do to fix it?

What’s the alternative? I believe the alternatives is a future of an accelerating spiral of retaliation and decay. Every new administration breaking more norms than the last. A pendulum swinging so violently it breaks the clock. We’re not just sliding down a slippery slope – we’re headed for a collapse if we don’t act.

The past 60 years have been the most prosperous, peaceful, and opportunity-rich period in human history—a remarkable run that we have all been fortunate to live through. But this golden era was not guaranteed, and if we want to preserve what we’ve inherited, we need to confront a system that gives disproportionate power to the ideological extremes and fight to return voice and choice to the rational majority.

Let’s be the generation of leaders who didn’t just diagnose the problem, but built the solution. We have the opportunity to break the cycle, to move beyond the status quo, and to champion the voices of those who've been left out of the partisan conversation in the name of fairness and proportional representation. We’ve had a remarkable run—four decades of prosperity, peace, and opportunity—but with that good fortune comes responsibility. If we want to preserve what we’ve inherited, we need to stop accepting a system where the extremes have disproportionate power and start fighting to give the rational majority their rightful voice and choice.

If we, the silent majority, take action, we can put partisan politics aside and focus on nonpartisan system reforms that will give a voice to common sense and find solutions to the problems we face as a nation. If we listen. If we lead. If we agree that the far left and far right deserve a voice but not a veto—then we can reclaim our system for the sane center.

We can break the cycle. We can move beyond left vs. right. We can start asking not just who broke the system—but more importantly who in Congress has the courage to fix it.

The Founders did it once. Who says we can’t do it again?

To quote Bluto from Animal House:

Who’s with me? Let’s go!

Nite my beloved family.  Looks to me like we will soon have Trump back in the White House.  It looks like he may win both the electoral college and the popular vote.  It’s a truly sad day if he wins.  A sad day for women’s rights.  A sad day for the moral conscience of the country.  But if the current projections come true and does win, we need to pray that he follows through on his promise to support Jews in the US and support israel.  That he finds a way to address the antisemitism on campus.  And I will go to sleep tonight praying that he does not fulfill everyone’s greatest fears about him.   I love you all.

When I awoke, the reality of a Trump victory had set in.

I knew some of you reading this were (and are) jubilant, and others remain wallowing in the depths of despair. For those of you in pain, I empathize and I pray that President Trump doesn’t fulfill our worst fears for our Country.

How did this happen?

To the Democratic Party, all I can say is you reaped what you sowed! You should have listened to Dean Phillips! I did everything I could to make anyone and everyone listen to him and heed his warnings. He was prescient! He read the politics perfectly. He called out the DNC for backing Biden and he called them out again for anointing Harris. Sadly, Harris was a weak candidate from the start.

As an independent, I’ve never subscribed to the belief that either political party deserved my fealty. I’ve been writing about democracy reform for 2 years now and in the aftermath of the election the one quote that rang true is this quote by Will Rogers that I referenced in Chapter 4.3 | Today’s Democratic Party:

I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.

The democrats made mistake after mistake after mistake for the past 4 years. Biden failed to fulfill his promise to be a uniter. He and his administration failed to address the biggest concerns that led to the rise of Trump. The Democrats failed miserably on so many fronts.

In an article entitled How Trump Won, the Free Press articulates some of the factors that led to Trump’s decisive victory.

For starters, their president, Joe Biden, had misinterpreted a narrow victory in 2020 as a mandate to make sweeping policy changes to everything from the border—some 10 million people crossed over illegally during Biden’s administration—to the national debt, which is more than $35 trillion. All the while, his Democratic Party advanced outlandish and radical social policies, such as support for biological men to compete in women’s sports, taxing unrealized capital gains, and colluding with social media companies to ban alleged health misinformation. He also insisted for most of his presidency that the very real inflation consumers experienced was fleeting and not serious. 

They were mad, too, because a corporate media that carried water for the Democrats became the party’s press secretaries in the home stretch of the election. CBS edited the vice president’s word salad when it aired an interview with her on 60 Minutes. The major networks also accused Trump of calling for the execution by firing squad of Liz Cheney in the last days of the campaign, which was a gross distortion of what he said. 

And while the Democrats hammered away at Trump’s penchant for lying, voters could see that the Democrats lied too. Not least about Biden’s health. 

The only silver lining that I can find is that democracy prevailed! I say that in full recognition of a point that Sam Harris stressed in “The Reckoning":

Half of our society just elected a man to the presidency who they know would not have accepted the results of the election, had he lost. Vice President Harris conceded the next day, as everyone knew she would. There is probably no one who supported Trump, who thinks that he would have done what they fully expected Harris to do—which is to protect the most important norm of our democracy, the very thing that makes it possible, the peaceful transfer of power. And the astonishing thing is that Trump supporters are totally okay with this asymmetry. They expected Harris to concede and would have demanded that she do it. And they know Trump wouldn't have conceded if he lost—understanding all the risk this would have posed to our social fabric—and they are fine with that.

If you’re unfamiliar with Harris, he is an American philosopher and neuroscientist who has debated with many prominent figures on the topics of God or religion. His moral compass points true north and he’s a voice of reason in a world that sometimes seems to have lost it’s desire for critical thought. The full podcast is worth listening to. He provides important insights in the aftermath of the 2024 election.

While many are still struggling with the results of the election, I have been continuing to reflect on how we got here.

In search of insights, I found this op ed in The NY Times by the ever brilliant Bret Stephens entitled “A Party of Prigs and Pontificators Suffers a Humiliating Defeat”. In it, Bret observes:

How, indeed, did Democrats lose so badly, considering how they saw Donald Trump — a twice-impeached former president, a felon, a fascist, a bigot, a buffoon, a demented old man, an object of nonstop late-night mockery and incessant moral condemnation? The theory that many Democrats will be tempted to adopt is that a nation prone to racism, sexism, xenophobia and rank stupidity fell prey to the type of demagoguery that once beguiled Germany into electing Adolf Hitler.

It’s a theory that has a lot of explanatory power — though only of an unwitting sort. The broad inability of liberals to understand Trump’s political appeal except in terms flattering to their beliefs is itself part of the explanation for his historic, and entirely avoidable, comeback.

Bret concludes:

Today, the Democrats have become the party of priggishness, pontification and pomposity. It may make them feel righteous, but how’s that ever going to be a winning electoral look?

In my humble opinion, the Politics Industry’s greatest failure is its inability to produce quality candidates! True leaders that can unite us around common causes who are capable of legislating and solving problems. Instead of solutions, we get 24x7 fear mongering and grievance propaganda. The system is rigged so that an unresolved issue is far more valuable than a resolved issue.

Since the day Obama was elected, I have been howling at the wind trying to get people to wake up to the risks of political polarization! To the need to give a voice to the common sense majority. I know that the country feels divided and when we continue to see the population split so evenly across partisan lines it’s easy to draw that conclusion! But that’s not what I see! Those partisan lines are foisted upon us. Instead, I see a country longing for a change!

When I published Chapter 1.3 | The Majority of Americans are in the Middle, back in April 2023, I point out that than 43% of Americans were independent voters or what’s known as “non-party affiliated”. Today, that number has risen to nearly 50%. The majority of Americans are opting out of the Duopoly. Yet, what choice do we have but to vote for one of the two major party candidates? As a result, we have the illusion of choice because that’s what the system has wrought!

It’s clear to me that the reason we continue to get these results, is that the politics industry is rigged by the duopoly to retain power. To continue to allow the pendulum to swing back and forth. From red to blue and back again. The incentives are misaligned.

On November 6th, I read Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American wherein she stated:

These results were a surprise to everyone.

That is conspicuously false. 72 million Americans certainly weren’t surprised! If you were paying attention, you should have seen this coming.

In spite of that fact, I am struggling to draw the conclusion that 72 million Americans affirmatively wanted to vote for Trump. I believe the vast majority would have preferred to vote for Nikki Haley or any other moderate candidate. But sadly, the way the system works, it’s the 15 million party loyalists that voted in the GOP Primaries that determined who would represent their party in the general election on November 5th.

On the other side, I draw the same conclusion from even more obvious and conclusive data. The reason that I am so confident in my believe that 64 million Americans didn’t want to vote for Harris, is because they absolutely had no choice! While 14 million primary voters selected Biden, not a single American voted for Harris in a primary! So what choice did an “anti-trump” voter have? Jill Stein?

Zooming out, what choice did any of us have when less than 10% of Americans decide who we get to vote for and independents are generally excluded from voting in Partisan Primaries.

My seemingly immutable logic draws me to one conclusion: I do not believe that the division is as binary as the results of this election suggest. Instead, the conclusion that I draw from the data… there are 100+ million Americans that were forced to choose between Trump and Harris because they didn’t have a “choice”.

The Future of the Democratic Party

I hope you’ll indulge me while I pontificate for a few minutes about my hopes for the Democratic Party. The Free Press published a podcast on Honestly entitled “Resistance or Opposition: Which Route Should the Democrats Take.” In it, Eli Lake tells the story of how a few centrist renegades saved the Democrats from oblivion 40 years ago. In 1984, after Ronald Reagan’s 525–13 Electoral College landslide over Walter Mondale, the Democrats were not just in disarray—they were on life support. And yet, eight years later, they found their savior: a young governor from Arkansas named Bill Clinton. And they remade their party.

I’ve often observed that the RNC was “murdered” by Trump. The level of complete annihilation is that of myth and legend and will be recorded in the annuls of history. I’m not suggesting we need another Demagogue on the other side to achieve the same end. I’m suggesting that the Democratic Party needs to wake up and reinvent itself and quickly!

If you study the history of elections in this country, you will quickly observe that the popular vote margins of victory are razor thin throughout history with few exceptions (FDR in ’36; LBJ in ’64). The electoral college tells a different story where there have been very decisive victories although they are few and far between (e.g., Reagan ’80 ’84; Nixon ’72).

It’s time to end this once and for all and embrace the common sense majority! I’m convinced if the Democratic Party embraced this approach, they would own the middle and they would secure 100 million votes and we could begin to solve the problems facing our country. To that end, here is my suggested party platform for the Democratic Party:

Don’ts:

1. Don’t rationalize this loss and make marginal/tactical changes to adjust around the margins while continuing on the same macro strategy. It’s a long-term losing strategy.

2. Don’t continue to push on “culture war” issues of the progressive left… it’s a losing strategy. I wrote extensively about it in Chapter 3.3 | The Culture Wars. The American Left has ridiculously decided that the so-called meritocracy is a bad thing. Even California just got serious on Crime after their failed experiment. If you want to hold kryptonite against the GOP… abandon all this “cultural Marxism” and return to true “liberalism”. See Dos below. If you haven’t read the Identity Trap do so immediately.

3. Don’t continue to embrace anti-democratic policies. Dean Phillips highlighted the hypocrisy of the Dems when he ran. I wrote about them on January 6, 2023 in a Facebook post after Biden’s hypocrisy filled speech at Valley Forge and in Chapter 4.8 | The Democrats and Biden are Exploiting our Rigged System.

4. THIS ONE IS PERSONAL: Don’t continue to embrace Obama’s failed middle east policies of appeasement. Stop basing policies on the fact that Israel is the source of regional instability by insisting that it’s mere existence is a problem for the Muslim world and therefore the only way to forge peace is to apply pressure on Israel to appease its enemies — all of whom seek its annihilation. All of whom have rejected peace 11 times since UN Resolution 181 in ‘47. It’s a failed policy that has fueled a level of antisemitism that rivals the 30s. We know where that ended.

Dos:

1. Do immediately abandon the progressive wing of the party. You may lose 10 million extreme voters but gain 30+ million from the right.

2. Do embrace the “commonsense middle” with policies that resonate like the ones Governor Andy Beshear wrote about in his New York Times Op Ed “I’m the governor of Kentucky. Here’s How the Democrats Can Win Again”. We the people are NOT as divided as the media and the parties portray us… check out this poll on the 100 policies supported by the majority of Americans! Embrace them all and you win! This is a critical point which I highlighted in Chapter 1.3 | The Majority of Americans are in the Middle.

3. Do become the innovators of democratic values. It’s “on brand”.. .it’s in their name after-all! Be the Party that advances democratic values by advancing reforms… it was Teddy Roosevelt that first publicly supported primaries… Ironically, it’s the #1 issue with voters… yet Trump won.. never underestimate the ability of the American people to vote against their best interests. Throughout this treatise, I’ve written extensively about this subject. Many chapters highlight the need to innovate and change the incentives in our Politics Industry. Chapter 4.7 highlights how we can “Unrig” the system.

4. Do correct one of the biggest mistakes of the Reagan Era by bringing the Fairness Doctrine back and apply it to all forms of media, including social media (and especially to the algorithms that are feeding ignorance and polarization). I wrote about this extensively in Chapter 2.6 | The Media.

5. Do incentivize Conscious Capitalism! Empower businesses with incentives so they lead in closing the wealth gap! See Chapter 3.10 | Capitalism and Monetary Policy.

6. Do center your policies on liberal “originalism”. Bari Weiss once defined what it means to be a liberal perfectly. Embrace it! Here’s how she defined “liberal”:

   Not liberal in the narrow, partisan sense, but liberal in the most capacious and distinctly American sense of that word: the belief that everyone is equal because everyone is created in the image of God. The belief in the sacredness of the individual over the group or the tribe. The belief that the rule of law — and equality under that law — is the foundation of a free society. The belief that due process and the presumption of innocence are good and that mob violence is bad. The belief that pluralism is a source of our strength; that tolerance is a reason for pride; and that liberty of thought, faith, and speech are the bedrocks of democracy. The liberal worldview was one that recognized that there were things — indeed, the most important things — in life that were located outside of the realm of politics: friendships, art, music, family, love. This was a world in which Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg could be close friends. Because, as Scalia once said, some things are more important than votes. Crucially, this liberalism relied on the view that the Enlightenment tools of reason and the scientific method might have been designed by dead white guys, but they belonged to everyone, and they were the best tools for human progress that have ever been devised. Racism was evil because it contradicted the foundations of this worldview, since it judged people not based on the content of their character, but on the color of their skin. And while America’s founders were guilty of undeniable hypocrisy, their own moral failings did not invalidate their transformational project. The founding documents were not evil to the core but “magnificent,” as Martin Luther King Jr. put it, because they were “a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.” In other words: The founders themselves planted the seeds of slavery’s destruction. And our second founding fathers — abolitionists like Frederick Douglass — made it so. America would never be perfect, but we could always strive toward building a more perfect union.

I believe if the Democrats embraced these common sense strategies, they would be able to gain an enduring majority that would help us to regain our footing as a nation.

National Public Service

Beyond the foregoing, I believe all of us would benefit from mandatory civil service should be introduced in our country.

Between 2003 and 2013, former U.S. Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY) made five unsuccessful attempts to pass the Universal National Service Act, which would have required all people in the United States between ages 18 and 42 to either serve in the military or perform civilian service specifically related to national defense. Many countries require national military service of some or all citizens, including Brazil, Greece, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Requirements for each country vary; in Israel, for example, military service is mandatory for women, too

Foreign Policy magazine published an op ed entitled: To Save Democracy, America Needs a Mandatory Public Service Program where they make a compelling case that:

It’s become increasingly apparent that something visionary and ambitious will be required for Americans to heal their democracy and transcend their divides. A program of mandatory national service, if designed effectively, would bring together young Americans from across the country and all socioeconomic groups to work on public interest projects and accomplish common goals for the good of the country. The public services a program along these lines could provide are virtually limitless: They could include tutoring and mentoring; participating in after-school enrichment programs; improving environmental conservation; building public housing; organizing youth networks; providing real-time information during natural disasters; assisting small businesses through outreach to young consumers; and helping in the construction, rehabilitation, and maintenance of public parks and facilities.

U.S. public opinion on mandatory national service is split: 49% favored one year of required service for young Americans in a 2017 poll, while 45% were opposed. Among adults ages 18 to 29, who would be required to complete the service, 39% were for the proposal and 57% were against.

Here is an article that lists the Pros & Cons. In Chapter 2.2 | Founded on a Creed, I wrote that if we no longer share a common vision of the “idea” of America, then America ceases to exist! What else binds us? Now more than ever, we need to cross the tribal divide. We need citizens from all races, creeds, colors, religions to come together to cross social and demographic boundaries that divide us and unite in a common cause!

For each of us, we're going to have to decide what we want our country to be and each of us has a responsibility to try to contribute to shaping that future.

In that vein, I intend to be like the hummingbird in this parable....

"According to an old Native American legend, one day there was a big fire in the forest. All the animals fled in terror in all directions, because it was a very violent fire. Suddenly, the jaguar saw a hummingbird pass over his head, but in the opposite direction. The hummingbird flew towards the fire!

Whatever happened, he wouldn't stop. Moments later, the jaguar saw him pass again, this time in the same direction as the jaguar was walking. He could observe this coming and going, until he decided to ask the bird about it, because it seemed very bizarre behavior.

"What are you doing, hummingbird?" he asked.

"I am going to the lake," he answered, "I drink water with my beak and throw it on the fire to extinguish it." The jaguar laughed. 'Are you crazy? Do you really think that you can put out that big fire on your own with your very small beak?'

'No,' said the hummingbird, 'I know I can't. But the forest is my home. It feeds me, it shelters me and my family. I am very grateful for that. And I help the forest grow by pollinating its flowers. I am part of her and the forest is part of me. I know I can't put out the fire, but I must do my part.'

At that moment, the forest spirits, who listened to the hummingbird, were moved by the bird and its devotion to the forest, miraculously they sent a torrential downpour, which put an end to the great fire.

The Native American grandmothers would occasionally tell this story to their grandchildren, then conclude with, "Do you want to attract miracles into your life? Do your part."

“You have no responsibility to save the world or find the solutions to all problems—but to attend to your particular personal corner of the universe. As each person does that, the world saves itself.’"

- author unknown"

On a personal level, I will continue to focus my energies trying to convince you all to turn off the partisan media, get off social media, tone down the propaganda and the rhetoric and for us to all align on democracy reform so that we can find a way to once again moderate our politics and empower the common sense majority so we can unite as one nation to address the problems facing our country.

But that’s just the starting point for this discussion. If you’re like me, and you too vote with your wallet, then it’s important to understand how narratives used by the politics industry distort reality and influence public opinion.

Who’s to blame for inflation? 

If you buy into the GOP’s narrative, then you blame the Biden administration for the current inflationary environment. The GOP consistently cites the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 as the main culprit of our current economic climate. While that certainly has been a factor, the perception is increasingly tied to ideology rather than data.  So, is the American Rescue Plan truly the main culprit or is that political theater? To answer that question we need to understand that inflation has been a constant under almost every administration over the last 100 years. So, are there other factors in play? The simple answer is: Yes!

First and foremost, the printing of money is ground zero when analyzing what creates inflation. Once you acknowledge that inflation is caused by the monetary supply, you quickly realize that it’s how corporations and governments react to the increase that ultimately creates price increases. Make sense?

Beyond the money supply, if you zoom out you see that our current inflationary situation is a result of many factors including supply chain issues resulting from Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic as well as Joe Biden’s reaction to it upon taking office. More recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, surging demand, production costs and swaths of relief funds all have played a role, as does the central banks’ fractional reserve policies. And, while this “framing” upsets economists, we can not ignore corporate greed, which is a significant driver of inflation across many sectors, from oil and gas to groceries.  I say “framing” because economists rarely mention the impacts of massive consolidation of resources when assessing this issue. I’m very comfortable shining a light on this issue even if from a textbook economic perspective it’s a “political excuse” and not based in economic principals.

It's hard to overstate the implications of this. Interest rates soared — meaning things like mortgages got more expensive — while prices of consumer goods went up, too. And those price hikes hit middle- and lower-class Americans the hardest. One tool used to resolve inflation (raising interest rates) drives up costs and unemployment. So we're losing out in every direction, all while corporations cash in.

Debunking the economic narrative 

For much of the last four decades, the Republican Party has grounded its economic priorities in Reaganesque “trickle down” economics. While it is hard to argue that Ronald Reagan’s policies helped the economy recover in the aftermath of the Jimmy Carter years, does that mean that the GOP’s economic policies are preferable? And if so, to whom?

A 2016 bipartisan report of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress concluded: “The Republican Party claims to be ‘the party of maximum economic freedom and the prosperity that freedom makes possible.’ However, an analysis of economic performance since World War II under Democratic versus Republican presidents strongly suggests that claims that Republicans are better at managing the economy are simply not true.” The committee’s research asserts that if you look at every administration dating back to the 1970s, you’ll see that each Republican White House — except Reagan’s — has tanked the economy and every time it was the succeeding Democratic administration that helped pull us out. 

According to those findings, and others, the U.S. economy has performed better on average under the administration of Democratic presidents than Republicans since World War II. 

The reasons for this are debatable but the observation applies to economic variables including job creation, GDP growth, stock market returns, personal income growth and corporate profits. Ten of the 11 U.S. recessions between 1953 and 2020 began under Republican presidents. Red states are actually a drain on the American public, while blue states are economic engines that subsidize the federal government. The unemployment rate has fallen on average under Democratic presidents, while it has risen on average under Republican presidents. Budget deficits relative to the size of the economy were lower on average for Democratic presidents. And then there’s the stock market. 

Since 1945, the S&P 500 has averaged an annual gain of 11.2 percent during years when Democrats controlled the White House. That’s well ahead of the 6.9 percent average gain under Republicans. “The market does do better under Democratic presidential control,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research. 

Source: Motley Fool

Or maybe it’s just luck.

Either way, I believe that adherence to Reaganomics has not served our country. And, as I explored previously in Ch 3.10 Capitalism and Monetary Policy, the net effect of GOP tax cuts has been the gutting of the middle class and the hollowing out of the American dream.  And it’s important to note that economists caution that if Trump is re-elected, his proposed policies could cause a sharp rise in inflation.   I firmly believe we must reject the dogma that the GOP’s policies are objectively better for the economy, while opening our minds to the fact that voting for a Democrat will lead to socialism. Only then can we begin to have a common sense conversation about how to bring fiscal responsibility to the heart of our political discourse. Which we must prioritize before it’s too late.

Both parties ignore the most important foundational aspect of Friedman's neoliberalism: austerity. 

Consider data from the right-leaning National Review, which found that both Barack Obama and Trump, despite criticizing their predecessors’ spending habits, ran up the national debt. And the Biden administration hasn’t changed course. Our national debt now stands at an historic $34 trillion, threatening all of our futures. 

Scott Galloway, on his "The Prof G Pod" podcast, poignantly — and accurately, in my opinion — stated when giving his prediction for 2024:

“The American dream has become a hallucination. Medium home prices continue to vastly accelerate well beyond the pace of median household incomes. The only way you could bring housing back to affordable levels is if you saw a 35 percent correction, a 4 percent decline in interest rates, or 55 percent growth in income. Which basically means, we're in for a long road here in terms of affordability. It's unlikely any of those three things would happen.”

Sadly, I find it hard to imagine, given where our culture is today, that a politician will ever get elected by telling the American public that it’s time for austerity and to start making sacrifices for our children and grandchildren. Instead, we get rhetoric and finger-pointing and no common sense solutions. The only objective conclusion we can draw from the data is that neither party really cares about fiscal responsibility. 

This is why the duopoly isn't working for us. As such, we have to find a way to come together and stop blaming one party or the other for the economic reality that the duopoly has wrought. 

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

What troubles me deeply about the politics industry today is that it feels like we have lost our grasp on those immortal words.  

Back in June 2023, in my article entitled “The Constitution,” I wrote:

“We are getting dangerously close to ending the American experiment. The United States of America was founded — not to unify people around ethnicity, religion or culture — but as a bold experiment designed to create a society governed by ordinary citizens, one that gives full expression to the ideals of liberty, justice and opportunity for all. In its time it was a truly audacious idea… Sadly, they couldn’t have predicted the modern world we’re living in and never anticipated that their Constitution would still be governing our lives. 

Writing from Paris just after the French Revolution broke out, Thomas Jefferson argued to James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution, that the Constitution should expire after 19 years and must be renewed if it is not to become “an act of force and not of right.”  That sentiment was echoed at the Constitutional Convention by George Washington who said: "I do not expect the Constitution to last for more than 20 years."

The Constitution derives its power from the majority consent of the governed.  So, at the end of the day, if our representatives choose to ignore the Constitution or act in defiance of it, our only recourse is to hold them accountable!  But what happens when one branch of Government acts and there is no accountability?

Constitutional checks and balances

Back in 2015, Kevin Kosar, a conservative writer, published an interesting article entitled “Why does Congress diminish itself”.   In it he wrote: 

“The Founding Fathers set up Congress as the most powerful of the three branches. Per the U.S. Constitution, Congress possesses “all legislative power.” This includes the most fundamental tools of governance and state-building, such as laying and collecting taxes, coining money and regulating its value and deciding what persons may join the nation as citizens. …

The Founders erected a remarkable system of government. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition, in Madison’s famous dictum, and each branch would defend its powers from encroachment. Unfortunately, Congress has not worked that way for at least a half-century. In the pursuit of other goals, Congress has weakened itself as an institution and representative government as a whole.”

But it’s not just Congress that has weakened itself.  In writing about the Constitution in June 2023, I explained the brilliance of our Founding Fathers in how they structured our system of government:

To prevent any one part of the government from becoming too powerful, they created three co-equal branches of government (including a bicameral legislature) designed to work independently and in cooperation to prevent abuse of power.

But if two of those branches, say the executive and judicial, worked in concert with one another they can absolutely work around, and even reinterpret, the Constitution. Elected representatives in the legislative branch would be virtually powerless to stop it. 

This is one of the most interesting (and important) byproducts of the Trump presidency. It has exposed serious flaws in the checks and balances that many of us thought existed as “law” when in fact it was only accepted practice and not actually enforceable. 

When I wrote those words, I was concerned about the “Unitary Executive Theory,” an idea advanced by conservative constitutional law experts that holds that the president of the United States possesses the power to control the entire executive branch regardless of legislative action. I could never have fathomed that the Judicial Branch would conspire to confer on the president immunity.

Sadly, on July 1, 2024, when the Supreme Court decided Trump v. United States that’s exactly what they’ve done.  They ruled that Donald Trump cannot be prosecuted for actions that were within his constitutional powers as president in a landmark decision recognizing for the first time (and without any basis in the constitution) any form of presidential immunity from prosecution.   

If you’re asking yourself where’s the conspiracy, consider what Heather Cox Richardson wrote in her July 1, 2024 edition of “Letters from an American.”   In it, she exposes the fact that the very justices that conferred presidential immunity on the President, lied during their confirmation hearings:

At his confirmation hearing in 2005, now–Chief Justice John Roberts said:“I believe that no one is above the law under our system and that includes the president. The president is fully bound by the law, the Constitution, and statutes.” 

In his 2006 confirmation hearings, Samuel Alito said: “There is nothing that is more important for our republic than the rule of law. No person in this country, no matter how high or powerful, is above the law.” 

And in 2018, Brett Kavanaugh told the Senate: No one’s above the law in the United States, that’s a foundational principle…. We’re all equal before the law…. The foundation of our Constitution was that…the presidency would not be a monarchy…. [T]he president is not above the law, no one is above the law.”

Sadly, these Justices have set the stage to tear down one of the most important principles that has protected our democratic republic for the past 250 years - the idea that no one is above the law.

As I wrote in “It’s never too late to act,” especially after the assassination attempt on former president Trump’s life, we need to stop allowing political dogma to divide us.   We must come together and work, as our founding fathers did, to find a common vision for the future that allows us to work towards a more perfect union.   

“You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.”   

In a January 2024 interview with the Financial Times, the 55th speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, referenced the quote above when discussing modern day Republican legislators (who had just voted him out of the speakership). He concluded: “We're just exhausting our options.” 

The horrific assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump is a wake up call.   Even before the attack, I’ve consistently written that we needed to move past this current state of play and break out of the media narrative that is tearing our country apart.

In June 2023, I wrote about “Our culture of violence,” where I discussed everything from gun control and the Second Amendment to the rise of political, racial, cultural and religious violence and our neverending wars.  I started that article by quoting Shimon Peres’ final work, "No Room for Small Dreams: Courage, Imagination, and the Making of Modern Israel," which he finished writing only weeks before his passing in 2016. Here is a passage from the final chapter.

Countries can no longer afford to divide the world into friend and foe. Our foes are now universal poverty and famine, radicalization and terror, these know no borders and threaten all nations and so we must act swiftly to build the bonds of peace to tear down walls built with bitterness and animosity so that we can together confront the challenges and seize the opportunities of a new era. Optimism and naivete are not one and the same. That I am optimistic does not mean I expect a peace of love. I expect simply a peace of necessity. I do not envision a perfect peace, but I believe we can find a peace that allows us to live side-by-side without the threat of violence.

Ultimately, we must break ourselves out of our echo chambers, end our partisan allegiances and reject the rank tribalism and political dogma that has defined the last few decades.  Until we reject the propaganda and the narratives being pushed on both sides of the aisle, we will never elect common-sense centrist politicians willing and able to construct and implement common-sense centrist strategies in America.

If you’re like me, you were likely shocked by what you saw on social media in the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt.  This was a national tragedy that should unite us.  Instead, we were immediately confronted with divisive narratives on both sides raising the specter of further political violence.

Some on the right seemed to be drawing false equivalences between Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, and what happened Saturday. USA Today reported:

A number of Republicans are pointing fingers at President Joe Biden after the shooting of former President Donald Trump at a political rally on Saturday, with some citing Biden’s recent statement that ‘it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.’ … Republicans pounced on Biden's remarks after the shooting, even though there is no evidence tying those comments to the attack on Trump or the shooter's motivation. The man the FBI has identified as the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel, Pennsylvania, is a registered Republican, according to county voter records.  Still, Rep. Mike Collins, R-Ga., shared part of the Biden quote on X and claimed without evidence along that “Joe Biden sent the orders.”

And on the left, conspiracy theories are going viral, even asserting that the attempt was staged. As reported by the BBC:

As ever, the conspiracy theories sometimes started with legitimate questions and confusion. They centred on alleged security failings, with lots of users understandably asking how this could happen. How did the attacker make it to the roof? Why weren’t they stopped? Into that vacuum rushed a wave of disbelief, speculation and disinformation. “It looks very staged,” read one post on X which racked up a million views. “Nobody in the crowd is running or panicking. Nobody in the crowd heard an actual gun. I don’t trust it. I don’t trust him.”

Do you see how dangerous these narratives can be?   As I wrote last week in The Fulcrum:

To regain our footing and build hope for the future, we need to rebuild trust in our political system. …  Numerous factors have led us to where we are today, and one of the most damaging is the erosion of the journalism industry. If we intend to restore a sense of unity as a nation, we must transform the media industry in this country.

It’s critical we wake up and realize that this current "crisis" is not an anomaly. And it was predictable. Sadly, it's human nature.

So this is, in part, why I decided to write “Fairness Matters” last year.

Together, I believe we can develop a common understanding of the history that brought us to the precipice of a second Civil War and work to fix a broken political system that has become a major barrier to solving nearly every challenge our nation needs to address.  To cite Neal Howe, who I quoted in “it’s time to act,” we are in the “Fourth Turning” and how we exit this crisis depends upon all of our leadership.  We all have a role to play!  

To drive the point home, as I wrote in April of 2023:

Do you know that the average age of empires, according to the late Sir John Bagot Glubb, is 250 years?

Empires always die, often slowly but usually from overreaching in the search for power.

The America of 1776 will turn 250 in 2026. 

It’s time to act!

America made a vow. Never again would we bow down to a king. ... Today, we’re here to answer the most important of questions. Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?

I have the same question for the president!

I am adamantly opposed to a second term for Donald Trump, but Biden and the Democratic Party that he is supposed to lead are not much better when it comes to subverting our democracy. 

Trump's election denialism is disgusting. And it is galling that his foot soldiers are all paying the price for the fraud he perpetrated, while he continues to spread his lies while leading the GOP. But, let's not forget that prominent Democrats also denied the legitimacy of George W. Bush’s two elections — the second one no less than the first.

The Democrats in Florida and North Carolina are choosing their nominating delegates in 2024 without even holding a real primary — without a single vote from a single citizen of those states.

In addition, Delaware’s election commissioner, Anthony Albence, announced his intent to remove No Labels Delaware from 2024 election ballots. The right to obtain a ballot line is just as protected by the U.S. Constitution as the right to register to vote. One right is useless without the other. This is an example of another attack on the freedom of Americans to choose their elected representatives.

Is that what Biden calls supporting and preserving our democracy?

I agree with Bret Stephens when he says:

That’s why warnings from Biden and others about the risk Trump poses to democracy are likely to fall flat even with many moderate voters.

When liberal partisans try to suppress democracy in the name of saving democracy, they aren’t helping their cause politically or legally.

They are merely confirming the worst stereotypes about their own hypocrisy.

It's a joke! Biden is the leader of the Democratic Party and the leader of the "free world!" Is this what he stands for? If he believed a word he uttered in his speech he would be condemning these acts by his party to subvert our democracy.

But he won't!

He's a career politician and part of the political industrial complex. The parties are a busines that exist to win at all costs. They seem only to care about themselves and their sponsors. It's abundantly clear the duopoly will do anything it can to stay in power.

We are at a crossroads as a country. It sincerely does not matter whether you are an independent (like me), a Democrat or a Republican, we need to break out of our echo chambers and open our minds!

In “Dean Phillips Has a Warning for Democrats,” Tim Alberta makes the case that there is a "lack of competition within the Democratic Party."

Does this sound familiar?

The article continues:

If the data is correct, over 50 percent of Democrats want a different nominee—and yet there’s only one out of 260 Democrats in the Congress saying the same thing? Phillips no longer wonders whether there’s something wrong with him. He believes there’s something wrong with the Democratic Party—a “disease” that discourages competition and shuts down dialogue and crushes dissent.

Phillips said his campaign for president won’t simply be about the “generational schism” that pits clinging-to-power Baby Boomers against the rest of the country. If he’s running, the congressman said, he’s running on all the schisms that divide the Democrats: cultural and ideological, economic and geographic. He intends to tell some “hard truths” about a party that, in its attempt to turn the page on Trump, he argued, has done things to help move him back into the Oval Office. He sounded at times less like a man who wants to win the presidency, and more like someone who wants to draw attention to the decaying state of our body politic.

One survey showed 70 percent of Democrats under 35 wanting a different nominee; another showed swing-state voters siding with Trump over Biden on a majority of policy issues, and independents roundly rejecting “Bidenomics,” the White House branding for the president’s handling of the economy. “These are not numbers that you can massage,” Phillips said. “Look, just because he’s old, that’s not a disqualifier. But being old, in decline, and having numbers that are clearly moving in the wrong direction? It’s getting to red-alert kind of stuff.”

In 2022, Phillips was one of the first Democratic officials to call for Biden not to run for re-election. For more than a year, he urged someone — anyone — to mount a primary challenge to a vulnerable president.

In poll after poll, a majority of voters — including loyal Democrats — say they’re frustrated with a Biden-Trump rematch and want more options.

Competition in politics matters and we all need to become advocates for political reform.

Anselme Polycarpe Batbie (a 19th century academic jurist) said:

He who is not a républicain at twenty compels one to doubt the generosity of his heart; but he who, after thirty, persists, compels one to doubt the soundness of his mind.

I believed this for most of my business career. But I also believe that unbridled capitalism, unchecked by a sense of the larger role that capitalism plays in our society, is a flawed approach.

It is my strong belief that capitalism, at least in its current incarnation in America, does not advance the public interest. But let’s be clear: I strongly disagree with Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who said,

I believe our current system of capitalism is slavery by another name. 

Even with all its flaws, capitalism and pseudo free market economies have given more prosperity and more hope to more people than any other system invented to date. 

It's actually political dysfunction that is the greatest threat to our economic prosperity!

In this paper by Brookings Senior Fellow William Galston, he summarizes the two principal sources of dysfunction in the economic policy process and describes in more detail many of the bipartisan recommendations for improvement. On of the poignant things he states upfront is that:

Recognizing that the current level of political polarization will make it difficult for even the best new rules to succeed, proposals have been advanced to tackle a key underlying cause of excessive partisanship, the structure of the U.S. elections process. Election reform would undoubtedly be slow and difficult; however, the most promising reform options would encourage states to:

• Adopt non-partisan systems for congressional redistricting and institute more “open primaries,” in which independent voters as well as registered party members can participate.

• Adopt innovative voting systems, such as instant runoff voting, in order to give candidates incentives to reach beyond their current base.

• Expand the electorate through various means, in order to bring less committed swing voters into the process.

Consider if there should be limits/bounds on where the profit motive should be the driving force. For example, should we have for-profit prisons? For-profit schools? For-profit militias? For-profit insurance companies? For-profit health care? Is there any area where the profit motive has been demonstrated to create “moral hazard” and/or create a misalignment that does more harm than good to society as a whole? 

Don't want to believe me? Here's what hedge fund manager Ray Dalio had to say about it:

There is only one path that will succeed in preventing civil war and promote working well together to make real improvements and that is to have a very strong middle. This strong middle would consist of bipartisans who are bound together to beat the extremists and then go on to reform the system and deal with our structural problems — i.e., to reform the system to work well for most people by creating broad-based capabilities, productivity, and prosperity. While I have lots of ideas about how to do this, my ideas are not that important now (or, maybe ever) relative to the need for these bipartisan reforms to happen one way or another.

Income inequality

If we want to avoid government overreach into business, we need to start talking about income inequality. 

Throughout the annals of human history, a pronounced gap has consistently existed between the affluent elite and the toiling masses. This socio-economic schism has manifested in myriad forms across diverse cultures and epochs. Typically, perched atop this hierarchy were monarchs, pharaohs, emperors and feudal lords ensconced within their fortified citadels, in stark juxtaposition to the overwhelming majority of their subjects, often comprising slaves or serfs, who endured ceaseless labor for their survival and the sustenance of the aristocracy.

For instance, in the context of the Roman Empire, the institution of slavery assumed a central role in societal structure, with an estimated 40% of Italy's population enduring enslavement under arduous conditions, primarily serving the interests of the opulent elite.

Centuries later, during the medieval period in Europe, pervasive inequality persisted under the feudal system. Here, the nobility and lords laid claim to extensive swaths of land and reveled in opulent lifestyles within their formidable castles. In stark contrast, the serfs found themselves bound to the land, often subjected to relentless toil seven days a week. Research findings indicate that the serfs, constituting over 90% of the population, retained ownership of a mere 15% of the land — a testament to the glaring wealth disparity.

Even in the contemporary landscape, when we gauge wealth in terms of tangible assets and purchasing power, this disparity continues to loom large. The situation becomes even more stark when we consider income alone. As of 2023, the poorest half of the global populace commands a mere 2% of the total wealth, while the richest 10% of the global population lays claim to an astonishing 76% of all available wealth. These figures starkly illustrate the extent of the divide, which, on its face, appears both substantial and challenging to address.

Looking at the United States in particular, the wealth and income divide has fluctuated over time. There are a few key periods in U.S. history that are often highlighted as times when income inequality was relatively lower and the middle class experienced significant prosperity — most notably, the post-World War II era from the 1940s until the 1970s. 

• The period following the war, often referred to as the "Golden Age of Capitalism" or the "Postwar Boom," saw a significant reduction in income inequality in the United States. Government policies, including high marginal tax rates on the wealthy and strong labor unions, contributed to a more equitable distribution of wealth. The GI bill provided education and housing benefits to veterans, helping many working-class individuals access higher education and homeownership. Economic growth was robust, and a growing middle class enjoyed rising wages, job security and increased homeownership.

• During the 1950s and 1960s, income inequality was relatively low, and the middle class expanded. Economic policies, such as the minimum wage, played a role in lifting many Americans out of poverty. Union membership was high, giving workers bargaining power for better wages and benefits. The overall prosperity was also fueled by a booming manufacturing sector.

Income inequality has consistently increased since the late 1970s, and the middle class has faced challenges in recent decades. Various factors, including globalization, technological changes and shifts in labor markets, have contributed to these trends.

And don't kid yourself — income inequality is a serious threat to our country's unity and stability. 

The gap between the richest and poorest Americans has been growing for several decades. Unfortunately, because dysfunction plagues government, policymakers are unable to address income inequality and support middle-class prosperity in the modern era. 

Do you know that almost half of all Americans are in low-wage jobs paying median annual wages of $18,000 and most middle-class Americans can't support their cost of living? Our cities are too expensive and increasingly dangerous, while the suburbs are out of reach for many. If history has taught us anything, it is that when great wealth is concentrated in the hands of an “elite” few, revolution and civil war often follow.

In his 2017 commentary titled "Our Miserable 21st Century," Nicholas Eberstadt noted:

If 21st-century America’s GDP trends have been disappointing, labor-force trends have been utterly dismal. Work rates have fallen off a cliff since the year 2000 and are at their lowest levels in decades. We can see this by looking at the estimates by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for the civilian employment rate, the jobs-to-population ratio for adult civilian men and women. Between early 2000 and late 2016, America’s overall work rate for Americans age 20 and older underwent a drastic decline. It plunged by almost 5 percentage points (from 64.6 to 59.7). Unless you are a labor economist, you may not appreciate just how severe a falloff in employment such numbers attest to. Postwar America never experienced anything comparable.

Meanwhile, over the past 50 years, corporate profits have risen by 185% while wages rose by only 1%. If we want to know why the average person in America is angry, look no further than this: In 2021, it was estimated that the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 398.8 in the United States. This indicates that, on average, CEOs received nearly 400 times the average annual salary of production and nonsupervisory workers in the key industry of their firm. 

According to Boston University professor David Webber, writing in his book "The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder: Labor's Last Best Weapon," that rate is

more than double the next two highest countries, Switzerland and Germany, at 148 and 147 times respectively. CEOs in Australia, the United Kingdom, and Japan are paid, respectively, 93, 84, and 67 times what the average worker is paid.

He further notes:

U.S. CEOs weren’t always so exorbitantly paid relative to their employees. According to the Economic Policy Institute, in 1965, CEOs of the largest U.S. firms were paid 20 times their workers.

In his book, Webber uses cases such as Safeway's labor dispute in 2003 to shine a light on how corporate interests, represented by folks like the Koch brothers, Exxon Mobil, and the Olin and Scaife families, are working to defund pensions in order to prevent pension trustees' from using the power of their investments to hold corporations and their boards accountable and fighting for meaningful corporate elections that provide shareholders with proxy ballot access (the corporate equivalent of the closed primary in our election system) and outrageous CEO pay. The book is a must read. It is chock full of examples of corporate hubris that pits management and boards against their workers and the pension funds that represent them.

In 2023, Isaac Saul reflected on Labor Day in "A Pivotal Moment for U.S. Workers." As always, he examined the issue from all sides with transparency.

And to ground this in monetary policy, if we want to prevent the federal government from deciding how to "redistribute" wealth in the U.S., then corporate America needs to lead. In his book “The Great Game of Business”, Jack Stack, wrote about taking responsibility for our nation’s problems:

Too many businesses have forgotten that they are here to create jobs. That’s how they add value to an economy, a society, a nation. …

The motivation has to come from inside. That applies to bosses as well as workers. Whether you’re the president of General Motors, or the operator of a fast-food franchise, or a middle manager in a multinational company with a traditional approach to business, you gotta wanna change. The biggest obstacle does not lie in the boardroom or in the corner office, but in ourselves. … 

We’re at the end of innocence. There is no one who can solve these problems for us. We’ve run out of cheap sources of funds. We can’t pay for solutions by taxing the rich: they don’t have enough money. If we tax business, we’re just buying a new, worse set of problems and aggravating the ones we already have. We can’t borrow: the Japanese and the Europeans have tightened up on credit. Besides, even governments have to pay their debts sooner or later. To do that, you need cash, and there are only three ways to get it: (1) you can print money — and further undermine the economy through inflation; (2) you can sell off assets — and give up ownership of your national resources to foreigners; and (3) you can get the country focused on making money and generating cash. In fact, making money and generating cash offers the only real hope we have of solving the problems we face as a society. The alternatives are not solutions at all. They are just ways of managing the decline of our economy, our standard of living, and the opportunities for our children, our grandchildren, and generations beyond. What’s required is a new way of thinking and a vast program of education. By and large, that education has to be carried out in the businesses of America—on the shop floors, in the warehouses, behind the retail counters, over the water coolers and the copying machines, at the desks, in the meeting rooms and the cafeterias. We have to change the entire mentality of the country, a mentality we have created by the way we have run companies in the past. We have to get rid of the excuses. We have to uproot the idea that you can always blame somebody else for your problems and always look to somebody else to take care of you. All of us have to take responsibility for ourselves. We have to become self-reliant. We have to get into benchmarking, meeting the standards, watching costs, being held accountable, establishing goals, compensating with bonus programs, using the multiple, and teaching people to think and act like owners — we have to do it all, because it’s the only chance we have of getting our economy and our society back on track. But it won’t happen unless management leads the way. 

Like it or not, the responsibility for the future rests squarely on the shoulders of the people who run America’s businesses. We are the only ones left with the credibility and the clout to bring about real change. This is nothing to cheer about. We all need balance in our lives, and our society would benefit from more balance as well... As it is, the leadership has to come from business. If you want to see one of the people we’re counting on to turn things around, look in the mirror. As businesspeople, we need to get back to basics. We need to refocus on our primary social mission: creating jobs. When you create jobs, you are creating the means for absorbing overhead, including all that social overhead we have accumulated. The fewer jobs we create, the more people there are on unemployment or welfare, without health insurance, getting caught up in poverty and crime.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself! If we want to see a return to less government oversight of our economic engine, then corporate America needs to take ownership and be the change that is needed. 

The political narrative on inflation

If you buy into the GOP narrative, then you already blame the Biden administration for the current inflationary environment. But did Biden and his policies cause this inflation? Or is it the result of failed economic policies that have been implemented by the duopoly over the past 100 years? More on that later. 

Throughout 2022, the GOP has cited the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 as the main culprit of our current economic climate. But that ignores the impact of Covid and the Trump administration's actions/inactions during the pandemic. 

But is the American Rescue Plan truly the main culprit or is that political theater? Well… Let’s look around the world in 2022. Did the legislation cause Mexico’s inflation to reach 8.7%? Italy and Spain’s 8.9%; the Eurozone’s 9.9%? Germany’s 10%? The U.K.’s 10.1%? Russia at 13.7%? The Netherlands at 14.5%? What about Argentina and Turkey at 83+%? 

Certainly not.

So, what is the cause of inflation?

The printing of money plays a huge part but it’s actually the central banks’ fractional reserve policies that are the main contributing factor. Of course, it's not the sole answer to the question. The pandemic has been a major factor in near-term monetary policy. The federal government decided to inject trillions of dollars of pandemic aid into the economy. There is a very basic, traditional economic argument about that decision. Steve Hanke and Kevin Dowd put it like this:

Since February 2020, the Fed has flooded the “monetary bathtub” by increasing the M2 money supply by a cumulative 41 percent. Money has been flowing into the bathtub much faster than it is draining out of either the real GDP “drain” or the money-demand “drain.” When more money flows into the bathtub than drains out, money “overflows” as inflation.

When too many dollars begin chasing too few goods, prices go up. This is Economics 101 stuff.

And while the U.S. has outsized influence on the world’s economy, inflation is a global phenomenon and is impacted by the central banks around the globe. If you don’t understand the insidious causes of inflation, then of course the public is going to blame Biden because it’s what they’re told to do. 

But, as I discuss later, inflation has been a constant under almost every administration over the last 100 years. The challenge is that once you conclude that inflation is caused by the printing of money, which it is, it’s how corporations and governments react to the increase in monetary supply that ultimately creates price inflation.

If you zoom out you see that it’s a result of many factors including supply chain issues still resulting from Trump’s handling of the pandemic and Biden’s reaction to it upon taking office. More recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, surging demand, production costs, and swaths of relief funds all have played a role. 

And let’s not forget corporate greed in many sectors, including oil and gas. Here's a interesting excerpt a House Oversight Committee meeting in September 2022 where Rep. Katie Porter from Orange County, Calif., cites data from the Economic Policy Institute:

This is illustrative of several points I've been making. First, it demonstrates how unbridled corporate greed absent any concern for the impact it's having on society as a whole needs to be addressed. But it also demonstrates how the GOP's narrative around inflation continues to put the needs of corporations ahead of the needs of our country. Have you observed that corporate profits have risen well above what we would expect from inflation? In fact, corporate profits now account for 54% of companies’ growth. Profit margins are at highest level since 1950s. How can you explain that? As Axios's Emily Peck reported, the once fringe theory of “greedflation” — which was largely perpetuated by progressive economists and pundits — has started picking up mainstream traction. Lael Brainard, who was at that time the vice chair of the Federal Reserve, said in January 2023 that:

a "price-price spiral" was responsible for inflation.

Paul Donovan, the chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, said:

"profit margin-led inflation" was driving price increases, and that retailers and consumer goods makers were lying to consumers about the need to raise prices.

There are some notable distinctions here. Donovan, for instance, was not necessarily supporting the idea that corporate greed was driving inflation. Instead, he described a scenario where companies that usually don't have much pricing power saw an opportunity to increase prices and at a time when customers might accept those increases. In other words: Customers had the money, and corporations had the excuse. Donovan has rejected the term greedflation, instead arguing that companies simply took advantage of an opportunity to raise prices more than normal — an opportunity that was created only by a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.

It's hard to overstate the implications of this. If corporations are driving inflation, and not monetary policy, most Americans are getting the worst of all worlds. Interest rates are going up — meaning things like mortgages are getting more expensive — while prices of consumer goods go up, too. And those price hikes hit middle and lower class Americans the hardest. And the prescription to resolve them (raising interest rates) is also expected to drive up unemployment. So we're losing out in every direction, all while big greedy corporations cash in. Donovan and Brainard are far from alone in calling out this potential dynamic.

Another big scapegoat that I’ve heard my friends mention is the Keystone XL pipeline. They use this as an example of how Biden caused gas prices to spike and contributed to the inflation we are suffering through. Curious – did you do any research or did you rely upon the GOP sound bites? Please stop and read this article, which outlines the myths regarding high gas prices so you can find the facts and refute the lies. Moreover, oil companies are under enormous pressure from Wall Street to return cash to shareholders through dividends and buybacks, instead of investing in badly needed supply. According to a Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas survey released in March 2022, 59% of oil executives said investor pressure to maintain capital discipline is the primary reason publicly traded oil producers are restraining growth.

I would welcome any opposing views and the research to back it up! Just use the comments section to share your thoughts.

Inflation and money supply

A good place to start would be to watch Milton Freedman’s “Free to Choose.” The full program is over 10 hours and it’s fascinating but here’s a short excerpt regarding inflation and the printing of money. It’s a decent primer on the concepts underlying how inflation and the money supply correlate. 

The dollar had been tied to a finite standard dating back to 1792. The dollar has survived multiple wars, armed conflicts short of war, economic recessions, and the Great Depression. From 1929 to 1933, the purchasing power of the dollar actually increased due to deflation and a 31% contraction in money supply before eventually declining again. Fast forward to 1944 and the U.S. dollar, fixed to gold at a rate of $35 per ounce, became the world’s reserve currency under the Bretton Woods agreement. Other currencies were fixed to the dollar and the dollar was in turn fixed to the gold standard.

Meanwhile, the U.S. increased its money supply in order to finance the deficits of World War II followed by the Korean war and the Vietnam war. Hence, the buying power of the dollar reduced from 20 bottles of Coca-Cola in 1944 to a drive-in movie ticket in 1964.

By the late 1960s, the number of dollars in circulation was too high to be backed by U.S. gold reserves. President Richard Nixon ceased direct convertibility of U.S. dollars to gold in 1971 ending both the gold standard and the limit on the amount of currency that could be printed. Since that time, the United States money supply, national debt, and stock market indices have experienced exponential growth.

In his book, “The History of Money,” Jack Weatherford measured the dollar against the price of gold to illustrate the declining value of the dollar, pointing out that

the dollar has undergone a nearly constant decline in value when measured against gold …a home, a car, or any basket of goods.

By the end of the year 2020, the dollar had become nearly worthless when measured against gold.

In “The M2 Money Supply, the Economy, and the National Debt: A Mathematical Approach,” the authors’ data collection revealed that following the change in economic policy in 1971, the total national debt soared from approximately $398 billion in 1971 to roughly $27 trillion at the end of fiscal year 2020. During this period, the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased from 887.2 points to 27,781.7 points. The M2 (a measure of the total supply of money) also expanded from $692.5 billion to $18.6 trillion. During this era, at no time did the national debt or the M2 decrease from the end of one fiscal year to the end of the next. However, the Dow has fluctuated wildly at times. The largest relative annual increase in the Dow occurred between the end of fiscal year 1986 and the end of fiscal year 1987 when the Dow gained 46.9%. The largest relative annual decrease came between the end of the fiscal year 1972 and the end of the fiscal year 1973, when the Dow decreased by 35.8%. 

My question is twofold:

1. Can we continue to print money indefinitely without consequence?

2. How do we reverse course without collapsing not only the U.S. economy but the global economy?

Monetary and fiscal policy

Sixty years ago, President Dwight Eisenhower said in his farewell speech said:

We, you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

As Oren Cass, executive director of the conservative think tank American Compass, states:

American industry lost its technological edge, from semiconductors to commercial aerospace to robotics. Investment stalled, so much so that the entire corporate sector became a net lender, handing money back to financial markets faster than it tapped those markets for capital to invest.

As American Affairs editor Julius Krein has observed:

[I]f $1 trillion in annual stock buybacks are to be taken at face value and there are in fact no better investments to be made … it calls into question the viability of the free market capitalist system itself.

That said, America is still an incredibly powerful economic force! I don't want to lose sight of that. My intent here is not to be a pessimist or to be Chicken Little, claiming the sky is falling. 

In fact, in Merrill Lynch’s July 2023 Capital Market Outlook, "Market View — Still On Top: Debunking the Myth of America’s Decline," Managing Director Joseph Quinlan and Senior Investment Strategist Lauren state:

Distracted by divisive politics and a 24/7 negative news cycle, many investors have been blinded to the underlying strengths of the U.S. economy and bought into the narrative that America is in secular decline, and that global growth, consumption and earnings are shifting elsewhere, notably East, to China. However, evidence of this global shift isn’t as compelling and cogent as the consensus suggestions. We are well into the 21st century, and America remains one of the most competitive and resilient economies in the world. As we discuss, the U.S. is a hydra-headed superpower—or an extraordinary economy that does a number of extraordinary things very well.

With just 4.25% of the world’s total population, America accounted for roughly 25% of total world output in 2022, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Amazingly, that’s the same percentage as 1980, meaning the U.S. economy has held its own—and then some—in the face of major seismic events of the past forty years. Betting against the U.S. has been costly for investors. Indeed, U.S. Equities have handily outperformed other global indexes over the past decade, as we highlight in this report.

All that said, blind optimism can lead to complacency. I prefer to subscribe to the belief that if you're not moving forward and evolving you are moving backwards.

Also, I do believe we should always remember that the information we are consuming is biased. The information cited above after all was from Bank of America, which has a vested interest in continuing to foster trust in the capital markets.

My pessimism about the state of our economic affairs is due to our unsustainable levels of debt combined with our government’s inability to show any modicum of fiscal responsibility while devaluing the U.S. dollar at an unprecedented rate. For as long as I can remember, we have politicized how we manage our finances. It has to stop! 

This may sound like a contrarian point of view, but I believe our economy is being propped up by decades of unsustainable and short-sighted, irresponsible fiscal policies (on both sides of the aisle), which history has shown us always leads to the populace looking for someone to blame.

In August, 2023, Fitch downgraded the U.S. long-term credit rating to AA+ with a Stable outlook, from AAA with a Negative outlook. Fitch cited:

Expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years (6-7% deficits each year), a high government debt burden, and an erosion of governance seen in the repeated debt limit standoffs with last-minute resolutions.

Fitch had previously downgraded the U.S. credit outlook to Negative from Stable back in August 2020, citing a deterioration in public finances due to deficit spending. Moody’s currently has a AAA rating with Stable outlook. S&P currently has a AA+ rating with a Stable outlook.

Here's an interesting article published by Ray Dalio. In it he says:

The economy clearly isn’t reacting in the usual way to the Fed’s tightening; it is much stronger than normal and stronger than expected. Why is that?

It's a fascinating point of view that highlights the deteriorating balance sheet of the Federal Government.

National debt

This is the single greatest existential threat we face as a country.

The federal government reports that we have more than $30 trillion in federal debt and it has been on an upward trajectory for many years. This trend accelerated with the spending required to address the Covid-19 pandemic. It's increased $10 trillion since 2008.

According to a 2011 research paper from the Bank of International Settlements titled, “The Real Effects of Debt,” when government debt exceeds 85% of GDP, it becomes a drag on economic growth. For several years, the nation’s debt has been bigger than its gross domestic product,and now sits at 121% of GDP which was $26.13 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2022. Public concern about federal spending is on the rise. In a Feb 2023 Pew Research Center survey about the public’s policy priorities, 57% of Americans cited reducing the budget deficit as a top priority for the president and Congress to address that year, up from 45% the prior year. Concern has risen among members of both parties, although Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are still far more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners (71% vs. 44%) to view cutting the deficit as a leading priority. 

Unfortunately, there is significant disagreement among economists and politicians about the urgency of reducing the national debt relative to other priorities. Moreover, there is continued debate about Social Security which is facing long-term funding problems. As the population ages and the ratio of workers to retirees decreases, there are concerns about the sustainability of the current system. While adjustments could be made to extend the solvency of the program, these are politically sensitive decisions that often face opposition.

Consider these charts from Scientific Research:

It’s incredible how our “prosperity” appears to be directly correlated to the money supply and the amount of debt we’ve incurred as a nation. 

Just look at what has happened since Reagan. 

He rode to office on complaints of an “out-of-control debt” that was as big as “a stack of $1,000 bills 67 miles high.” And in eight years in office he added another 125 miles to that stack!

But one influential Republican leader saw it coming and said so loud and clear.

His name was George H. W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States. You might recall that he called Reagan’s plan “voodoo economics”, and when it came to the debt, that voodoo made a zombie out of Reagan and generations of Republicans. Unfortunately Bush lost the primary to Reagan and was tapped to be vice president. So not long after he called voodoo on Reagan, he had to deny he ever said it. So, Bush sold out.

What is certain is that Bush was right! 

“Reaganomics” was really just voodoo economics, with the inflationary impact of Reagan’s tax plan and the fact that it became the de facto standard of “conservative” politics. As you can see from the charts above, Bush was spot on and the impact of this fiscal irresponsibility has our country drowning in debt.

Unfortunately, I am not an economist, so I have no idea how to begin to propose solutions to this problem. My hope is that if we can fix the system and end the duopoly's control over the government, common sense solutions might emerge.

In fact, The Washington Post editorial board has a compelling, pragmatic and realistic plan that draws on ideas from the right and left to address the problem. It includes increasing the retirement age to keep up with rising life expectancy, broadening taxes to fund Social Security, and decreasing what high-income households get (while increasing what low-income households get). The board also lays out ideas on Medicare, farm subsidies, veterans care and the defense budget. Sensible ideas abound. Members of Congress formed the Bipartisan Fiscal Forum, aiming to take the partisanship out of some budget cutting. 

While encouraging — and it is — I continue to believe Congress lacks the courage and political will given the dysfunction in our political system. 

Before I leave this subject, I'm not sure that $34.6 trillion is in fact an accurate accounting of our national debt. We will discuss later that there are immense amounts of hidden foreign-exchange liabilities that may total to more than $65 trillion. 

According to the National Review in, "The Biggest Issue that Few Presidential Candidates Want to Talk About":

The primary driver of the country’s spending deficit is entitlement programs, a fact that a lot of elected officials — and a wide swath of the American public — prefer to ignore. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and other health-care programs consumed 46 percent of all federal spending. For perspective, all U.S. defense spending was 12 percent.

The U.S. spent roughly $877 billion on national defense in 2022. The U.S. federal budget deficit in fiscal year 2022 was $1.38 trillion. If the U.S. had a magic wand and hadn’t spent a single penny on defense that year, we still would have had a deficit of about $500 billion.

For a long, long time, fiscal conservatives — you know, those allegedly merciless tightwads who are always portrayed as pushing granny off a cliff — have warned the rest of the country that the finances for these programs are on an unsustainable path, and the rest of the country has hated them for it.

Every year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services review the numbers, and the most recent conclusion is, “The Medicare hospital insurance trust fund is scheduled to become insolvent in 2031. This means that in 2031 Medicare will be unable to pay for all promised benefits, and Medicare patients will face an initial 11 percent cut in their hospital benefits.”

These new numbers are actually a better outlook than the previous few years. (As I noted in February, “Go figure, it turns out that a terrible global pandemic that kills 1.1 million Americans, mostly the elderly and the sick, reduces the projected long-term expenditures for health-care and old-age benefits.”)

This doesn’t mean that Medicare would stop paying for senior citizens’ health care entirely in 2031, but the payments to hospitals would drop significantly, with the hospitals turning around and expecting patients to make up the difference. Medicare’s hospital insurance currently covers 100 percent of the hospital costs, after the $1,600 deductible, for 65 million elderly Americans. For the first 60 days in a hospital stay, Medicare patients pay nothing. For the next 30 days, they pay $400 per day.

By 2030, Medicare’s hospital insurance is projected to cover 76.8 million Americans.

Then there’s Social Security:

As the 2024 presidential campaign ramps up, candidates are facing pressure to pledge not to touch Social Security. While this pledge is framed as ‘protecting benefits,’ it is — in reality — an implicit endorsement of a 23 percent across-the-board benefit cut in 2033, when the Social Security retirement fund becomes insolvent. In that year, annual benefits would be cut by $17,400 for a typical newly retired dual-income couple.

If we do nothing, Medicare and Social Security hit a brick wall at high speed in 2031 and 2033, respectively.

The dollar is the reserve currency of the world

As referenced earlier with respect to the national debt, “It’s the $65 Trillion in Debt You Can’t Find That’ll Get You.”

I will say that there is another equally important issue to consider. It seems to me that if our enemies want to destroy us, the surest way to do that would be to end the use of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Watch this video from April 2022 for a primer. 

As discussed in the video, our share of the market has dropped to a 20 year low. 

Benn Steil, senior fellow and director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, said:

It's certainly not an imminent threat to the dominance of the dollar, but it's by far the biggest one.

Today the dollar accounts for around 60% of foreign exchange reserves, easily topping the euro's estimated 21% and dwarfing the Japanese yen (6%), the British pound sterling (4.7%) and other currencies in the single digits, according to the latest figures from the International Monetary Fund.

But the U.S. is not unmatched in all economic measures. China is on a fast track to becoming the world's largest economy, even as its currency comes in at only 2.25% of foreign exchange reserves. Coinciding with Beijing's rise is an onslaught of new sanctions from Washington targeting the People's Republic for a laundry list of alleged human rights abuses.

More from Newsweek:

We often choose to mistake other countries' pain for achieving our aim," Benn Steil said. "In other words, when we impose financial sanctions on other countries, it's usually to change their foreign policy. But in the vast majority of cases they don't actually do that." The pain is felt mostly by civilian populations, especially in blacklisted countries like Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela. Though sanctions have won political points at home for U.S. administrations, this is little evidence that the targeted countries shifted or abandoned undesirable policies of governments in response to the economic coercion. Instead, the U.S. has seen leading strategic competitors China and Russia, and even allies and partners like Turkey and India, increasingly swing their economic weight in the direction of trading in their respective national currencies when it suits their interests. The dollar remains on top, but countries are beginning to question the degree to which U.S. financial institutions serve as intermediaries—or gatekeepers—for international banking

And it’s not only foreign policy and sanctions such as the ones we are imposing upon Russia and China today. A debate raged in financial markets about whether the seizing of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves signaled the end of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The Financial Times reported:

[T]he Chinese central bank and finance ministry held an internal conference discussing how to protect against potential US seizures of foreign currency reserves.

Around the same time, leading Communist Party intellectuals were discussing the possibility of dumping dollar reserves to protect them from seizure.

In “Is this the beginning of the end for the US Dollar,” the author speculates that

the US appears to be losing the biggest point of leverage it has over world affairs. If the US dollar becomes just one currency among others, its status as a global superpower will be under threat.

To bring this back to politics here at home, the one thing most people seem to agree upon, according to the research that I’ve done, is that the key to remaining the world’s reserve currency is to ensure we remain a “safe haven.” So it leads me to the conclusion that the more unstable we are at home, the less we will be seen as a safe haven to the rest of the world. 

Debt crisis

Here’s an interesting read from Ray Dalio on navigating the debt crisis. In this short memo he states something very interesting:

When debt assets and liabilities become too large relative to incomes and debt burdens have to be reduced, there are four types of levers that policy makers can pull to reduce the debt burdens:

• austerity (i.e., spending less),

• debt defaults/restructurings,

• the central bank “printing money” and making purchases (or providing guarantees), and

• transfers of money and credit from those who have more than they need to those who have less.

Policy makers typically try austerity first because that’s the obvious thing to do and it’s natural to want to let those who got themselves and others into trouble bear the costs. This is a big mistake. Austerity doesn’t bring debt and income back into balance because one person’s debts are another person’s assets so cutting debts cuts investors’ assets and makes them “poorer” and one person’s spending is another person’s income so cutting spending cuts incomes. For that reason cuts in debts and spending cause a commensurate cut in net worths and incomes, which is very painful. Also, as the economy contracts, government revenues typically fall at the same time as demands on the government increase, which leads deficits to increase. Seeking to be fiscally responsible at this point, governments tend to raise taxes which is also a mistake because it further squeezes people and companies. More simply said, when there is spending that’s greater than revenues and liquid liabilities that are greater than liquid assets, that produces the need to borrow and sell debt assets, which, if there’s not enough demand for, will produce one kind of crisis (e.g., deflationary) or another (e.g., inflationary).

Through that lens, my only conclusion is that I am entirely ill equipped to proffer any rational solutions. It’s simply way above my level of comprehension. So I welcome any and all thoughts on this important subject because I find myself struggling to see how we can dig our way out of the financial hole short of — dare I say it — World War III.

I guess to state the obvious, we need to bring financial accountability to Washington. Given the irresponsible politicization of the debt ceiling, let’s harken back to July 2011. Opinions about what should be done were sought from various quarters as news organizations struggled to keep up with the battle waging in Congress and behind closed doors. 

Holding politicians fiscally accountable and responsible

Warren Buffett waded in with his opinion on the debt ceiling in a July 7, 2011, CNBC interview conducted by Becky Quick.

You just pass a law that says that any time there's a deficit of more than 3 percent of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election. Yeah. Yeah. Now you've got the incentives in the right place, right? So it's capable of being done.

That would certainly do it! Sadly, the only way to enact Buffett's idea without the cooperation of Congress would be a constitutional amendment. A proposed amendment would then need to be ratified by the legislatures of three-quarters of the states. If that happens, and it is a very, very big if, Buffett's deficit plan would become the law of the land. That process would, however, take more than five minutes.

Regardless, it’s become clear to me that there is no fiscal accountability on either side of the aisle so hanging onto the GOP because of a belief that Republicans are more fiscally responsible is an unreasonable conclusion. 

Let's hope that we can make an impact and change course before it's too late.

Evolving capitalism

My premise throughout this project is that fairness matters. That anything in the extreme has negative consequences, both intended and unintended. Along those lines, unbridled capitalism comes at a cost. Our country is an ecosystem and the entire idea of an investor class competing against a working class is a recipe for social unrest and institutionalized unfairness. 

I strongly believe that the health of our society should matter to the investor class and we must evolve capitalism beyond a single bottom line! We need to improve capitalism to be far more nuanced and able to have an objective beyond creating shareholder value. Innovation is critical to every business so why shouldn't that apply to the framework of business itself? 

But perhaps the tide is turning. Enter “conscious capitalism” and ESG.

Conscious capitalism

The conscious capitalism credo acknowledges that while free-market capitalism is the most powerful system for social cooperation and human progress, people can aspire to achieve more. It does not minimize profit-seeking but encourages the assimilation of all common interests into the company's business plan. The tenets of conscious capitalism can guide business owners toward an enhanced way of doing business that benefits all stakeholders in a socially responsible manner. The main purpose of building a business is to generate profits, which enable business owners to pay their employees. In turn, this allows the owners and employees to support themselves and their families.

Conscious capitalism does not dismiss the importance of generating profits for businesses. Rather, it enhances this purpose by complementing it. Conscious capitalism is a philosophy of doing business in a way that combines the generation of profits with socially responsible choices. The tenets of conscious capitalism recognize that a business has many stakeholders — individuals or entities involved in, affected by or holding an interest in the business’s activities. These stakeholders include the company’s employees, shareholders, surrounding community and even the environment. The founders of conscious capitalism were Whole Foods co-founder John Mackey and marketing professor Raj Sisodia. They established four main principles or tenets of conscious capitalism. These tenets are as follows:

• Higher purpose. Businesses run by conscious capitalists exist for a greater purpose than mere profitability. Profits are necessary for the success of a business, but only as a means to an end. They can assist in a company’s mission to achieve its greater social goals, but cannot serve as the ultimate goal of a business.

• Stakeholder orientation. Conscious capitalists are focused on creating win-win scenarios. Businesses are viewed as dynamic ecosystems made up of employees, customers, suppliers, investors, competitors, society and the environment. Just as in nature, for an ecosystem to thrive every element must be nurtured. Conscious businesses recognize the value of this ecosystem and foster positive outcomes for all stakeholders involved in their operations.

• Conscious leadership. Leaders are integral to the success of the conscious capitalist system. For the system to flourish, leaders must seek to benefit the collective rather than themselves. Conscious leaders inspire their cohorts, stay focused on the higher purpose, and support the diverse ecosystem in which they exist. Culture is at the core of a conscious capitalist system, and great leaders set the tone.

• Conscious culture. Culture is the heartbeat of any successful institution, embodying the values and principles that drive behavior. The conscious capitalist culture is grounded in love, care and trust. Employees demonstrate honesty, loyalty, fairness and are open to personal growth. To the conscious capitalist, how business is done is just as important as what business is done.

Conscious capitalism sounds great in theory, but does it actually deliver positive results? Brands like The Container Store, Trader Joe’s, and Starbucks seem to think so. 

Environment, social and governance

Another important transformation is happening in the realm of conscious capitalism: ESG investing. In fact, the financial performance of ESG stocks has recently drawn a lot of attention. During the market turbulence related to the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies with strong ESG track records showed lower volatility than their non-ESG counterparts. To many investors, that performance validated ESG investing and its premise — that good corporate behavior means better business results. ESG investing goes beyond a three-letter acronym to address how a company serves all its stakeholders: workers, communities, customers, shareholders and the environment.

If you’re unaware, ESG stand for:

• Environment. What kind of impact does a company have on the environment? This can include a company’s carbon footprint, toxic chemicals involved in its manufacturing processes and sustainability efforts that make up its supply chain.

• Social. How does the company improve its social impact, both within the company and in the broader community? Social factors include everything from LGBTQ+ equality, racial diversity in both the executive suite and staff overall, and inclusion programs and hiring practices. It even looks at how a company advocates for social good in the wider world, beyond its limited sphere of business.

• Governance. How does the company’s board and management drive positive change? Governance includes everything from open proxies, issues surrounding executive pay to diversity in leadership, separation of the CEO and chairman roles, as well as how well that leadership responds to and interacts with shareholders.

Whether you believe in conscious capitalism or ESG, I am trying to make the case that we need to move beyond a single bottom line. If we don’t evolve, we die. That concept applies equally to capitalism itself, And, it is beyond appropriate in a political context as well! 

Just musing, but perhaps my view is that the current incarnation of the Democratic Party is more “conscious” than the GOP’s preference for a shareholder-first mentality. 

Here is an interesting development. Could you have ever imagined a group of conservative policymakers would break from the GOP's economic agenda and embrace a more "liberal" approach to economic policy? Well ... There was a policy manifesto published by American Compass called “Rebuilding American Capitalism: A Handbook for Conservative Policymakers.” It notes that small group of Republican politicians have become more comfortable using government power to regulate the economy. Consider this:

• Sen. J.D. Vance, the Ohio Republican, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts progressive, have collaborated on a bill to claw back executive pay at failed banks. The two worked through the details through in-person conversations, weekend phone calls and late-night texts.

• Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, has signed a public letter calling for the reinvigoration of collective bargaining and praising the German approach, in which labor unions play a larger role in the economy. Rubio a book, “Decades of Decadence,” that criticizes the past 30 years of globalization.

• Sen. Todd Young, an Indiana Republican, has helped write a bipartisan bill to restrict noncompete agreements, which companies use to prevent their employees from leaving for jobs at a competitor.

• Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, was among a bipartisan group of lawmakers who began pushing a few years ago for federal subsidies to expand domestic semiconductor manufacturing. President Biden signed a version of the policy last year.

So what's the counter-argument?

In "How 'ESG' came to mean everything and nothing," the BBC posits the following question:

"ESG" was supposed to be a clear way for companies to explain their business decisions around environmental, social and governance considerations. How did the term go off the rails?

Let's look at how one-time GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” framed the issue of ESG during an interview with Samantha Aschieris of the Daily Signal:

ESG refers to the use of dollars—including your dollars—to advance environmental or social goals, in addition to what they’ll call governance goals, that are not implemented through public policymaking, through elections, or through democracy. Rather, they are implemented through the economy instead, largely by buying shares in companies and then forcing those companies to behave in a certain way. That’s what it is.

And what the ESG movement really represents is that old worldview rearing its head again in modern clothing, saying that citizens cannot be trusted to deal with questions like societal inequity or climate change or whatever the hot issue of the day may be, that those issues have to be settled by someone sitting in a different backroom. It’s a backroom corner office on Park Avenue instead of the backroom of a palace in the Old World, European way.

While his framing of the issue is certainly worth considering, I think the only real substantive — and very valid — point that he makes is that any company pursuing an ESG or conscious capitalism agenda should be required to be fully transparent and disclose their investment policies so that shareholders can make an informed decision and "vote with their wallets." Fair enough. 

But beyond that, I do not believe that every issue we face as a society should be addressed by politicians, whether in Washington or in our local town. In fact, as we've discussed throughout Fairness Matters, this is likely the worst time to advocate for, or rely upon, our political process to solve the problems we face given how poorly the system represents the majority's view on most issues. 

Perhaps if we were able to implement the political reform that I am advocating, then some of the need for conscious capitalism might dissipate. But, I do find it ironic that Ramaswamy campaigned as a Republican arguing against the free market economy and for larger government. 

It's also laughable that he is vilifying corporate America after Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accords and “supercharged this movement." While it's true it was a catalyst, it is Trump's actions that should have been vilified. If Ramaswamy sincerely believed his own platform, then he would acknowledge when a president takes an action that 52% of American's said will hurt the economy and 64% say they disapprove of his handling of climate change. That alone is enough to undermine the credibility of Ramaswamy’s arguments.

It's also unfortunate (and partisan) that he frames these issues as "one-sided political agendas." That framing should offend everyone who reads it. The issues that we face, from structural racism to climate change to equal opportunity, are not "one-sided political issues" — they are our responsibility as a society and we should be encouraged to solve them on our own, without government interference.

I would think that most conservatives would agree with me on this issue. Most true conservatives would not want to empower the government to solve our problems and would prefer to rely upon the free market, which, by definition, includes the freedom and ability for corporations and businesses to make decisions on how they invest their capital, unfettered by government interference — especially in today's environment when politicians can't be trusted to implement common sense policies. 

Let's view this issue through a different lens. Let's look at Ralph Nader and his infamous "Nader's Raiders," who, during the 1960s and 1970s, were the "driving force behind the passage of more than two dozen landmark consumer protection laws." There is little doubt that those laws, and the bureaucratic agencies that proliferated as a result, have contributed to the "deep state" that any good libertarian would loath. But viewed differently, any common sense person should conclude that, in reality, it was corporate America's blind pursuit of profits that caused the proliferation of the very agencies that the GOP is so anxious to eviscerate. 

I hope we can strive to do better. 

Throughout Fairness Matters, I’ve demonstrated that politicians and the media have fanned the flames of discord and weaponized fear and hate to divide us and ensure they remain in power at all costs. The Democratic Party, the GOP and the financial interests that fund them have rigged the system to maintain the status quo, ensure our duopolistic system retains power and marginalize the silent majority. 

We are facing enormous challenges as a result of a lack of fairness and inequality combined with failed monetary and education policies. We face an existential crisis as a country. Our news media has become a propaganda machine driven by pageviews, clicks, ratings and viewership. They have taken the old adage that “if it bleeds it ledes” to a new level. Social media has amplified the problem a hundredfold. 

We face complex issues, from immigration to the national debt, from Social Security, to education, from gun violence to climate change and the culture war, from foreign policy to restoring a vibrant middle class by ensuring economic outcomes are more balanced and equitable.

Do you still believe in the American dream? Do you believe every American should have an equal opportunity to participate in that dream? Do you believe that our greatest strengths as a nation — our moral center — are our "liberal" ideals and our diversity? 

In order to solve these herculean challenges, we need to reform the system to ensure that the silent majority have a voice. If we can, I am confident our system will become more fair and we will start to return to proportional representation that gives voice to common sense. If we can start to curtail the power that political parties wield to divide us, we can work together to solve the challenges we face.

It's time to set aside our partisan politics and focus on enacting nonpartisan systemic reforms designed to address some of the fundamental challenges.

👍The solution(s)

All of this seems daunting. And while there is no magic wand we can waive or any panaceas that will fix the problem overnight, there is a growing consensus that a combination of open primaries and ranked-choice voting (also called instant runoff elections) will ensure the system self-corrects over time. Here's how the thinking goes.

Adopt open, nonpartisan primaries 

Let's start with this data from Unite America:

States can adopt nonpartisan primaries — as already used for presidential elections in California, Louisiana, Nebraska, Washington and most recently Alaska — that allow all voters to participate in a single primary with all candidates on the same ballot. The top finishers advance to the general election, where whoever earns majority support wins. “Nonpartisan primaries give every voter an equal voice, have higher voter participation rates, produce more representative outcomes, and improve governing incentives by ensuring elected leaders are accountable to a broader swath of the electorate,” said Jeanelle Lust of South Dakota Open Primaries.

Recent research from the University of Southern California shows that lawmakers elected in states with top-two primaries are less likely to cast extreme ideological votes on legislation and that, among new members of Congress elected between 2003-2018, those elected in top-two nonpartisan primaries were more than 18 percentage points less extreme than those elected in closed partisan primaries. Quoting Christian Grose in the Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy in his report "Reducing Legislative Polarization: Top-Two and Open Primaries Are Associated with More Moderate Legislators":

Partisan polarization in Congress is at its highest levels in more than 100 years. Political reformers advocate for changes to electoral institutions in order to reduce legislative ideological extremity, yet political scientists have been surprisingly skeptical that changes to primary nomination systems affect legislator ideology. I theorize that electoral systems shape legislator ideology. The top-two primary — used in just under one-fifth of all U.S. House elections — incentivizes legislators to moderate. Empirically, I rely on exoge- nous changes in the introduction and withdrawal of the top-two primary due to ballot proposition or in response to court cases, and examine legislator ideological extremity from 2003 to 2018. The top-two primary has reduced ideological extremity among legislators, relative to those elected in closed primary systems. Legislators elected in open primaries also show some evidence of attenuated extremity. This ideological moderation in top-two and open primaries is found among both incumbents and newly elected legislators.

Voters in South Dakota will have the opportunity, via a ballot question, to switch to nonpartisan primaries when they vote this fall.

🛑 End plurality voting

There’s no question that we must end plurality voting. But which system to implement is an open question.

In 2022, Nevada voters approved Question 3, which proposed replacing party primaries with a single nonpartisan blanket primary where the top five candidates would advance to a general election that uses ranked-choice voting. Because the proposal modifies the Nevada Constitution, it will have to be reapproved by Nevada voters in 2024 before it can take effect. If it is reapproved, the system would take effect for the 2026 election cycle and be used for all state and federal except president and vice president.

Whether it's top-two (California & Washington), final four (Alaska) or final five (Nevada), it is a huge improvement over what the rest of us are forced to use.

Ranked-choice voting is gaining traction

Most experts seem to agree that RCV, which is used for state primaries and all federal elections in Maine; and for state, congressional, and presidential general elections in Alaska is the most viable and fair alternative. In addition to those two states, RCV is used for local elections in 47 cities including New York, Salt Lake City, Seattle and Cambridge, to name a few. It is also used by the Virginia, Utah, and Indiana Republican parties in state conventions and primaries. 

RCV is gaining traction in red and blue states.

In Oregon, the Legislature — acting in a bipartisan fashion — referred an initiative to the ballot in 2024 that would implement instant runoffs for both primary and general elections, which is a step towards the Alaska-style system. Advocates are working to secure a ballot position in Idaho for an initiative that would replace the state’s partisan primaries with a top-four nonpartisan primary system with an RCV general election. If passed, it would be used for congressional, state and county elections.

We're also looking at legislative campaigns, in states like New Mexico and Pennsylvania, where there are efforts to open their closed primaries to independent voters, which would enfranchise over a million voters ahead of the next election. Georgia and Virginia are working to implement instant runoffs. In Georgia, that would replace very costly runoff elections which cost a lot of money and depress voter turnout. 

A bipartisan bill recently introduced in the Wisconsin Legislature would enact final-five voting for state elections. Next year’s mayoral election in Burlington, Vt., will be conducted using ranked-choice voting. 

Of course, there are additional reforms being proposed such as proportional representation, and nonpartisan redistricting.

Alaska's model was based on Gehl and Porter's work however used a Final-Four methodology. In 2019, the nonprofit Alaskans for Better Elections ran a ballot initiative successfully in 2020 which implemented the country's first top-four primary and instant-runoff general election.

A case study: Alaska

Alaska’s final-four voting system combines a top-four nonpartisan primary with ranked-choice voting in general elections. It’s an improvement over top-two primaries because it increases competition and levels the playing field for candidates outside the major parties by eliminating the “spoiler” effect. While it’s early, the new system has already become a national model for election reform. 

As Scott Kendall, who authored, litigated and advised the successful ballot measure campaign to improve Alaska’s statewide election system said: 

So here’s the good news: You can do this too. You can make your elections competitive and more diverse. In states across the country, it’s starting to happen, with nascent reform movements forming that follow in Alaska’s footsteps.

Alaska's new system was used for the first time in 2022, and as a result Alaska had its highest primary turnout since 2014. It had more candidates running for each seat, and therefore more competitive elections than they ever before. And voters elected candidates who best represented the electorate. For the statewide offices, that included a moderate Democrat, Mary Peltola, who beat Sarah Palin for the state’s House seat. It included a moderate Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who fought off a primary challenge. And it included a conservative, Trump-backed Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who most Alaskans think is doing a good job. Clearly, RCV did not have a partisan impact, as some opponents claim. In fact, it was party-neutral. 

But, more importantly, candidates were able to build broader coalitions than they would have by just pandering to the base of their party. Moreover, Alaskans now have a state Legislature with bipartisan governing majorities chambers, meaning Democrats, Republicans and independents are working together rather than a single party controlling the agenda and the outcomes. 

These reforms are not only viable and have voters’ support — they improve democracy. 

Unite America has polled Alaskans to see what they thought of the new system and found:

62% said they supported the new top-four primary, and close to 90% said they found it was simple to vote in the instant-runoff general election using the ranked-choice ballot.

Some of the politicians who, in the past, only needed to win support from 10% of the electorate, not the majority, did not like it when they lost their elections. A couple of those politicians, including Sarah Palin and Kelly Shubaka, have gone on to now try to repeal the reform. They were unsuccessful in doing so in the legislature. A majority of state legislators stood behind the reform that a majority of voters adopted.

Here is a great discussion on the Alaskan model, particularly Peltola’s comments around minute 17:

Turning to rank choice, people have talked a lot about how it makes for more civil and respectful elections, as every candidate is encouraged to, is incentivized to pursue more voters from across the political spectrum. I certainly saw this first hand. The candidates who won were the candidates who stayed above the fray and didn't engage in personal attacks. These victories also rebut the claim that RCV is a liberal scheme. Alaska elected a moderate Democrat to the house, a moderate Republican to the U.S. Senate and one of the most conservative governors in the nation all using the same system. Today, we're all working together on a variety of issues that affect our state, each bringing our own perspective and together representing a much broader range of Alaskans than ever before. 

So how does RCV work? Watch this video.

In states with modernized electoral systems, lawmakers have been willing to defy their party leaders and to run campaigns designed to attract independents and moderate voters from both parties.

We need systemic reform

Absent reform it will become harder and harder to elect representatives who demonstrate common sense and break from the extreme partisanship that is tearing our country apart. This is a topic well covered by Katherine Gehl:

The "broken" US political system is actually working exactly as designed. Examining the system through a nonpartisan lens, she makes the case for voting innovations, already implemented in parts of the country, that give citizens more choice and incentivize politicians to work towards progress and solutions instead of just reelection.

The research report "Five Strategies to Support U.S. Democracy" references some of my strategies, and even though it argues that this approach is “insufficient” I’m still happy to get my thoughts on paper and share them with you.

American democracy is at a dangerous inflection point. The moment requires a step-change in strategy and support. Without such momentum, the country faces a democratic setback potentially as serious as the ones already occurring in India and Hungary (both now ranked only “partially free” by Freedom House) and the nearly one-hundred-year reversal that occurred following America’s Reconstruction era.

Any goal to upend the system, buck precedent, and break down the extraordinary power of the Republican and Democratic establishments is not something that could possibly happen without courage and risk.

It's also important to note that these reforms do not favor one party over another. For example, consider Cambridge University’s article “Why Donald Trump Should Be a Fervent Advocate of Using Ranked-Choice Voting in 2024." 

The motivation for this article is to provide contrary evidence for two main misconceptions. First, that third-party candidates are “spoiling” elections for the Democrats. Our evidence clearly shows that third parties have the potential to hurt either of the two main parties; however, in 2020, it was Donald Trump who was hurt the most, although not consequentially. Second, some reformers believe that ranked-choice voting benefits the Democrats; again, we show that—all else being equal—in the 2020 presidential election, it was the Republicans who would have benefited by the change in rules because the majority of third-party votes went to the Libertarian candidate, whose voters prefer Republicans over Democrats 60% to 32%.

And here is Kevin R. Kosar of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, writing under the headline "Conservatives Should Look More Closely at Systematic Election Reforms."

So do not concern yourself with partisan politics in considering this agenda. That is what the parties will assert to convince you to vote against your own personal interests! At almost every level of government, progress and civility has been thwarted by partisan actors who work for political parties instead of the people. It’s time to end the divisiveness. Combining open primaries with ranked-choice voting does not favor either party but it does give a voice back to the silent majority in the middle.

There are some incredible organizations working on rebalancing the scales. I’d encourage each and every one of you to learn more about them and get involved. If you don’t want to actively engage, then please donate to these amazing organizations! 

• RepresentUs. As described on its website: “RepresentUs is America’s leading nonpartisan anti-corruption organization fighting to fix our broken and ineffective government. We unite people across the political spectrum to pass laws that hold corrupt politicians accountable, defeat special interests, and force the government to meet the needs of the American people.” Its primary goals are to create independent committees to end gerrymandering, spread the use of ranked-choice voting and nonpartisan primaries; and pass ethics and campaign finance laws.

• Unite America. According to its website: “Unite America is a movement of Democrats, Republicans, and independents working to bridge the growing partisan divide and foster a more representative and functional government. We’re focused on scaling and accelerating the movement to put voters first, and ensure that the right leaders have the right incentives to solve our country’s greatest problems. Through the Unite America Fund, we leverage our nonpartisan donor community to invest in the reform movement like never before. Unite America has an actionable strategy, principled vision, and passionate team. Together, they power our movement to transform American politics. Through the Unite America Fund, we invest in nonpartisan electoral reform campaigns so that the right leaders have the right incentives to solve our country's greatest problems.” As Executive Director Nick Troiano explained, UA is using a private equity model to the not-for-profit.

• American Promise. This organization believes America has a big problem with dark money in politics. This is the one issue 86% of Americans, regardless of party, agree on. Yes, you read that correctly — 86%! According to its website: “American Promise unites Americans to win the For Our Freedom Amendment to secure elections and government for we the people—not big money, not corporations, not unions, not shadowy super PACs and special interests.” Here’s what it says the amendment would do.

• Protect Democracy. As described on its website: “Protect Democracy is a cross-ideological nonprofit group dedicated to defeating the authoritarian threat, building more resilient democratic institutions, and protecting our freedom and liberal democracy. Our experts and advocates use litigation, legislative and communications strategies, technology, research, and analysis to stand up for free and fair elections, the rule of law, fact-based debate, and a better democracy for future generations.”

• There are other great groups like Veterans for Political Innovation, Represent Women, Open Primaries, FairVote and Rank the Vote.

All of these groups are building grassroots infrastructure to support these efforts around the country as we work to build a democracy where voters come first.

I have been fortunate to have met the incredibly selfless and dedicated individuals who lead these organizations. I’d be thrilled to connect you with the leadership of any of these groups if you are interested in joining me in trying to change the course we’re on and make the structural changes necessary to ensure we return fairness and proportionate representation to our great country. Drop a comment below if you want to connect.

We have the opportunity to break the cycle, to move beyond the status quo and to champion the voices of those who've been left out of the partisan conversation.

All of this has given me renewed hope for America! More importantly, it’s motivated me to get involved to try to make a difference by working together to make change possible.

To me, it’s become simple math. If we are unwilling to get involved and band together to put our partisan politics aside in order to retake our country, we will have no choice but to vote with our feet, abandon the ideals that set America apart from the despots who run much of the world and let them finish what they started. 

Personally, I’d prefer the former because, as I was recently reminded, cartoonist DR Fitzpatrick was right in 1953:

As goes America, so goes the world.

Let me end with some social commentary from Bill Maher. He ends where I began Fairness Matters:

The battle for the soul of this country is not right or left. It's normal vs. crazy.

Amen, Bill!