Part I focuses primarily on federalism, local control, markets, taxation, welfare, and the intended scope of federal authority within the American republic. Part II will focus more on culture, religion, language, family, social order, and the norms that help hold free societies together.
With that as preface, let’s dive in.
Part One: A Country Without an Owner
We have noticed over the years that many political arguments in America eventually collapse into the same basic disagreement. Not over policies, exactly, but over what the country fundamentally is supposed to be.
Is America primarily a giant national democracy managed from the center? Is it a collection of states with shared interests but distinct identities? Is government supposed to protect liberty above all else, or engineer fairness, equality, stability, morality, or security?
Most people answer those questions instinctively long before they ever debate taxes or elections.
In our view, one of the most remarkable things about the American experiment is that it attempted something historically unusual. America was among the first large nations founded without an official owner class.
Most societies throughout history belonged, formally or informally, to someone. A king. A dynasty. A church. A tribe. An ethnicity. A hereditary aristocracy. Power tended to flow downward from some permanent ruling structure that defined the nation itself.
America was different.
Not morally perfect, obviously. The country carried deep contradictions from the beginning, many of which took generations and enormous sacrifice to confront. But structurally, the United States represented a new kind of political idea. A nation founded not around bloodline or tribe, but around a constitutional framework and a shared set of principles.
That distinction still matters.
The Founders did not create a pure democracy, nor did they intend to. In fact, they were deeply skeptical of concentrated power in almost every form, including temporary majority passions. What they built instead was a constitutional republic with divided authority, competing institutions, and multiple layers of sovereignty designed to restrain one another.
That structure was deliberate.
James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 45 that the powers delegated to the federal government would be “few and defined,” while those remaining with the states would be “numerous and indefinite.”
Today, many Americans speak as though the federal government is naturally supposed to sit at the center of nearly every major issue in national life. But that was not the original constitutional vision.
The federal government was intended to handle genuinely national concerns. National defense. Interstate commerce. Currency. Patents. Weights and measures. Post offices. The sorts of systems that stop functioning if every state invents incompatible rules.
It would obviously be unworkable if Nevada drove on the left side of the road while Utah drove on the right. It would also be difficult to sustain a national economy if patents disappeared the moment an inventor crossed state lines or if states maintained incompatible commercial standards.
But beyond those shared functions, the constitutional system leaned heavily toward local control.
That instinct still makes sense to us.
California is not Alabama. Vermont is not Texas. Oregon is not Mississippi. A nation this large and culturally varied probably functions best when states retain broad authority to govern themselves according to the values, economies, and preferences of their own citizens.
The Electoral College reflects this same philosophy. Modern debates often treat it as some bizarre procedural relic, but it emerged from a deeper constitutional principle that states themselves possess political significance. The system intentionally balances population majorities against state sovereignty so that a handful of densely populated regions cannot entirely dominate national politics.
That arrangement frustrates nearly everyone at various moments, which is usually a sign that a constitutional compromise is functioning more or less as intended.
We also tend to believe that free societies work best when laws are relatively few, morally grounded, understandable to ordinary people, and enforced consistently without fear or favoritism. The rule of law matters far more than the quantity of laws. Once enforcement becomes selective or politically contingent, trust in institutions deteriorates surprisingly quickly.
America has historically leaned toward a culture of individualism, and we think that tendency is mostly healthy. Human beings generally become more capable when trusted with meaningful responsibility. Freedom includes the freedom to make mistakes, pursue bad ideas, waste opportunities, fail publicly, recover, and try again.
A society that attempts to eliminate all bad outcomes usually ends up eliminating much of human initiative as well.
That same instinct explains why we are generally skeptical of large federal entitlement systems.
Social Security is probably the clearest example. Whatever its original intentions, it normalized the idea that retirement security is primarily the responsibility of the federal government rather than families, communities, churches, savings, and voluntary institutions. At the very least, participation in such systems probably ought to be optional.
The same skepticism applies to welfare more broadly.
Some people genuinely cannot care for themselves, and civilized societies absolutely need mechanisms to help them. But assistance generally works best when it is local, temporary, accountable, and designed to restore independence rather than institutionalize dependence. States are usually far better positioned than Washington to understand local economic realities and community needs.
This idea is sometimes called subsidiarity, though the principle itself is fairly intuitive. Decisions should generally be made at the lowest competent level possible. Families decide dinner. Neighborhoods decide what belongs in neighborhood medians. Cities decide street widths. States decide most social policy. Centralization should be the exception, not the default.
The same logic shapes how we think about taxes and labor markets.
Taxes should probably remain relatively low and mostly collected at the state level, with a comparatively restrained federal government funded primarily to carry out its enumerated constitutional duties. The federal government was not originally intended to function as a giant redistribution engine perpetually moving money between states.
We also tend to think the tax system itself should treat citizens more like adults. Income tax withholding, for example, probably ought to be optional rather than automatic. If someone prefers to manage and pay their own tax obligations directly through monthly, quarterly, or annual payments, they should be free to do so. One benefit of such a system is that citizens would more directly experience the actual cost of government rather than having much of it invisibly deducted before they ever see their earnings. People tend to demand greater efficiency and accountability when they are consciously writing large checks rather than barely noticing money disappearing incrementally in the background. At the same time, freedom requires accountability. If someone repeatedly fails to pay what they owe, even under reasonable payment arrangements, mandatory withholding could reasonably be reimposed for a period of time.
Labor markets should also remain flexible. The true minimum wage is always zero because employers can choose not to hire at all. That does not mean labor abuses should be tolerated, but it does mean wage mandates are often far more complicated than they initially appear, particularly in a country where economic conditions vary dramatically across states and regions.
None of this means markets are flawless or that every shared system is bad.
In fact, some functions work best precisely because they are broadly shared. Police protection, firefighting, roads, courts, and certain public infrastructure systems exist partly because everyone benefits when they function well and because the externalities are unavoidable.
But history has not been especially kind to socialism or communism as organizing principles for entire societies.
The economic failures of the Soviet Union, Maoist China, Venezuela, and countless smaller experiments were not historical accidents. Incentives matter. Ownership matters. Human nature matters. Central planners consistently struggle to manage the complexity of millions of individual decisions and competing priorities.
Modern Republicans are often correct about incentives, local control, and the dangers of bureaucratic overreach. Democrats are often correct that societies require compassion and that markets alone cannot solve every human problem. Libertarians are often correct that centralized authority expands far beyond its original mandate if left unchecked.
Our own view fits imperfectly inside all three traditions.
What we keep returning to instead is scale. The larger and more distant institutions become, the less responsive they tend to be. The closer power stays to ordinary people, families, communities, and states, the healthier republics usually remain.