Basketball great Charles Barkley once famously declared that he was no role model.  We believe he was being entirely too modest, that there’s much the sporting world can and should be doing to help our country get back on course

It's one thing to talk about change, another thing to do something about it.  And one thing to do the easy things, like jump onto a phone bank or join a one-day march, another thing to do something more personal, more exposed.  Welcome to the first playlist of artists getting out of their comfort zones--to beautiful effect, the way we'll all have to if we want to effect real change in our country...

"He had often imagined himself jumping into the air and gliding down asymptotically for miles and miles, just inches above the surface of sidewalks like these.  These sensations, and others like it, had come to be so vivid and real in his mind that as for the rest, so-called reality, he took literally in stride. He was not even entirely surprised when his feet left the ground and he began to rise in the air..."

What does it mean to own something? The author, our co-founder, spent his college years building a curriculum--economic, political, philosophical, literary, religious, scientific--around a search for answers to this question. In America, he found, the best place to look was where it hadn't been established, where communal traditions dating back eons came up against a self-selected segment of the world that wanted nothing more than to stake a claim, a claim of their own... (Part II of II)

What does it mean to own something? The author, our co-founder, spent his college years building a curriculum--economic, political, philosophical, literary, religious, scientific--around a search for answers to this question. In America, he found, the best place to look was where it hadn't been established, where communal traditions dating back eons came up against a self-selected segment of the world that wanted nothing more than to stake a claim, a claim of their own...

It's been more than 70 years since the first Kennedy-Nixon debate, and there has been an explosion of media types and formats better suited to test presidential mettle than what debates have devolved to. Here are a few we think are worth running up the flagpole to network execs, whose contact info we've helpfully provided...

Using the metrics that are supposed to matter most in politics, we show--decisively and scientifically--why every state should be making it easier for its citizens to exercise our founding freedom, and do so on the one person, one vote principle, which serves as prelude/first volley--take your pick, depending on how martial you're feeling--to introduce three increasingly radically originalist pathways to get us back where we belong...

Like most imbalances in our own bodies, violations of the “one person, one vote” bedrock of democracy are its silent killer, maladies that make the Founders and their invention look suddenly old and frail. We traipse back through history to see how and where we went astray, identify the first step back, Republican-style, and then a second step (or a bit of a drive) we can all take together--with more to come...

In the previous post, we uncovered the originalist origins of the most fundamental element of our democracy, the right to vote, and paths to its restoration the founders would unequivocally support. All too often, those paths, and the right to govern votes are supposed to convey to our elected officials, have been sabotaged in the name of the Constitution by our least democratic branch, the judiciary. The reality: nothing the Court has done is supported by the actual words of the Constitution nor the vision of its creators, the proof of which is well-illustrated by both reams of clear evidence (including the English language) and the simple originalist reforms that could be deployed to end the Court's reign of error without requiring Constitutional amendment to do so...

The enemies of American democracy have been gaslighting us for decades with a doctrine they call "originalism" that supposedly justifies every anti-democratic "feature" of our current system as "the wisdom of the founders." The truth, as we'll show in our next four posts, is that real originalism requires rejection of every one of these authoritarian accretions--and the adoption of radical democracy fundamentalist programs to rid us of authoritarianism once and for all.

Not everyone really has "a cross to bear;" a greater, more mindful understanding and appreciation of the origin, purpose, and meaning--here on earth--of the primary symbol of our predominant faith, as well as its successors in our history and modern life, could help catalyze a spiritual revival we're badly in need off...

It's often been said that government should run more like a business. Unfortunately, the ways in which this is true have never been the focus of reform. We've found a simple way to start, one that anyone who has been part of a business will recognize, especially the kind of innovative one we need our government to become...

Inspired by parallels between recent Ukrainian history and our own origins, we call on Dems, Independents, and Never-Trumpers to champion what we call and describe as "democracy fundamentalism," arguing that only in this way can the founders' vision--and Ukraine's reincarnation of it--be realized and preserved...

In 2018, our first essay was about "a small European country with no more experience with democracy than we had in 1776" that we thought America "could learn a lot from." Four years later, thanks to Ukraine, we're still learning; let us pray that we can help save her now that she's once again on the front line of democracy's fight against autocracy...

There are three stages of relationship in a human life, the life of a country, too, and we've been celebrating stage 2, independence, for 245 years. It's time to celebrate the third--and here's how...

When a nation seems to have lost its way as badly as ours has, even its most basic, most taken for granted elements should be open to question and re-examination, especially when, after the last four years in particular, we badly need to remake our collective image, both here and abroad...

In Part 3 of this four-parter, we take the fight--and our research chops--to the main alternative explanation offered by both parties for last election's polling disconnect, and in the process demolish the raison d'etre for Trumpism with new tools to fight it on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the streets, fields, and hills...

In part two of this series, we dive deep into the heart of democracy to document proof after proof after proof of the breadth and depth of the real conspiracy to throw our elections, one that has been deepening, hardening, and becoming increasingly entrenched for at least the past two decades...

Two storylines about untowardness have dominated the post-election landscape, the castigation of pollsters and the promulgation of voter fraud conspiracies. To us, the two are related, and there really was a vast conspiracy to throw the election, one that goes to the heart of what of what we want to be as a nation; it's just not the one Trump supporters are decrying...

Like all such conflicts, World Wars III & IV will be different than any before, but it’s the likely similarities that may be most illuminating--and inspirational, if we look hard enough...

It's a truism that every world war differs dramatically from the last, but the last existential conflict, World War II, is chock full of guidance, strategy, and tactics for the most existential challenge of them all...

Many have compared the battle against COVID as analogous to World War II, but we think the better comparison is to the first worldwide conflict of the last century, World War I, with attendant lessons to be learned...

Nationalism has gotten a bad name over the last century, and rightfully so, but a nationalism that’s actually based on our values could help usher in a new American century, to the benefit of the world. Parts 1 & 2, complete...

How immigration represents a microcosm of the larger values that must drive what we're calling Americanism, and why Americanism in America is not only good for the nation, but for the world.  Part 2 of a two part series...

Nationalism has gotten a bad name over the last century, and rightfully so, but a nationalism that’s actually based on our values could help usher in a new American century...  

One of the seminal features of mystical thought is the way it wafts through the so-called real world, untouched, on its own plane, showing itself in the most unlikely of places--like the modern political economy...

How a giant of 20th century philosophy, taken too soon from us, would view the proliferation of consumer genetic testing, not to mention its impact on our sense of self, identity, and relationship to power...

What the world needs now are more conspiracy theories. Yes, that's right, you heard us, and you're going to help us create them...

More political correctness as it should be, correcting politics, not people, and increasingly a weapon against autocracy. You're explicitly invited to pile on...

It wasn't the day the earth stood still, but it was the day the most powerful man in the free world sat very still--and low--and it changed my view of the world...

It's traditional at this time of year to generate "in and out" lists to mark changes, both real and expected, in the human experience. As we're now faced with what many believe is a turning point in human history, a new epoch and era, we've decided it's time for something more evergreen, the ultimate "out and in" that spans all human history. Come join us!

For the darkest days of the year and beyond, a modest treatise on the science of hope, faith, and the meaning of our lives, especially for the young who have become so despairing...

The courts have been hermetically sealed for too long; it's time for them to become the ultimate big tent, equally open and receptive to all...

Put Friedrich Nietzsche, chronicler/bard of the Ubermensch, and Frantz Fanon, champion of the underdog, in the same foxhole, and the results are surprisingly simbustible...

Is it time to go back to the future and demand that the next generation of politicians be more representative of we, the people? Our Politicians 2.0 series kicks off with a case study of 'anti-celebrity' as a quality we'd like to see more of...

What happens when America's ideals collide with history and human nature? For our country's first chronicler, shatterings that haunt us to the present day...

When you’re weary, feeling small, a playlist to get you fired up to keep fighting for our country, every day…

Our first collaborative art project: help us help Mexico make a contribution to the wall they--and we--might actually enjoy, even if those who want to build the wall won't, expressing solidarity with our brothers and sisters south of the border. Plus previews of coming attractions...

Generation Z co-founder Baker makes the case that some of the ‘chaos’ and ‘lawlessness’ we see in our system today was very much part of the original design…

Through the dead in a long-long battle, a modern poet finds what's worth dying for...

One of our own early poets taught us how to deal with what we too often face now: the unfathomable

The one letter from the IRS that everyone ought to get, what it should say, and why.

A classic tale of leadership and rise to power goes on the couch...

Political correctness should be about what's right for *politics,* the language we need to change to restore a political process gone off the tracks...

We're creating the future they're going to have to deal with; it's time to give them a voice in it--and raise democracy to new heights in the process...

In the wake of the 2016 election, we can learn a lot from our forefathers and a small European country w/no more experience with democracy than we had in 1776...