An Announcement

Something helpful this way comes.

I’ve always admired the pamphleteers of the late 1700’s. People like Thomas Paine, John Dickinson, and James Otis, who brought the ideas of an American revolution and independence from Great Britain home to hearths and candlelit rooms of the American colonists and a little later, Edmund Burke and Mary Wollstonecraft—and Paine as well, who analyzed the French Revolution in terms and principles common people could understand.

Along with the pamphleteers, the men who were behind the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers—which were published as ongoing written debates in newspapers of the times—arguing the pros and cons—and the specific construction of a constitution for the newly independent United States of America, stand in history of some of the most significant arguments about how to maximize individual liberty while maintaining a civil society and a sustainable new nation.

In opposition to our information overload of today and our addictions to what amounts to sniper fire coming from social media, these writers produced deliberately thoughtful, insightful and principled reason to underpin some of the most significant decisions that have led to the survival of 250 years of our American experiment in freedom and self-government. I have often considered what made these efforts so critical to the actions the Founders undertook and why, even today, their words still resonate, because without them, events like the Lincoln-Douglas debate in 1858, the Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960 or the Baldwin-Buckley debate of 1965 would never have occurred.

Of course, pamphlets were produced at the rate necessary to support, oppose or explain issues of the times, sometimes several times a week to even one or two a year, but the common factor was that people had time to reason along with the writers and come to considered deliberate decisions about the issues of the times.

My conclusion as to why they were (and still are) so important—and why we really haven’t had any public debates of similar magnitude to the ones mentioned—is simply this: time.

Or perhaps more accurately, the distinct lack thereof.

The main factor that challenges us now is the false need for immediacy in thought, words, deeds and responses to any challenges we face—largely driven by the operant behavioral conditioning of social media and 24/7 cable news.

July 4th this year being America’s 250th birthday and knowing my love of America, its Founders and founding, our sometimes difficult history and growing pains, my conservative outlook, and my love of writing, my wife and daughter came up with the idea that I should use my alleged superpowers to try to affect a little history of my own.

They challenged me to do something to counter the Woke isolationists who refuse to reason beyond a point of emotional satisfaction and the progressives who refuse to visit family during Thanksgiving and Christmas due to that one conservative uncle because they reflexively dismiss his conservative viewpoints.

They convinced me that I might be able to help my fellow conservatives, and perhaps those across the debate stage from us, to find ways to discuss our differences without giving up our principles.

More to come tomorrow. Stay tuned.