Stay Grounded in Wisdom: Preferences Are Not Principles

The following journal entry is part two of Issue 019: The Trailhead—Leadership for American Unity. Here’s where you can find the introduction to the series and part one.

I. All policy debates take place on the same playing field.

When President Thomas Jefferson delivered his First Inaugural Address in 1801, he gave us the intellectual and ideological playing field or spectrum on which all political debates take place in the United States. Because the Constitution created the container or structure of American political rights, including the amendments that have followed its ratification and those that may be still to come, he was able to place every political position in their real context. We all need both safety (or life) and liberty in order to pursue happiness. Here’s how Jefferson articulated it:

“Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter -- with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens -- a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”

All policy debates today take place on this spectrum, on this playing field of restraining us from injuring each other and leaving us otherwise free to take part in our chosen life pursuits. But we all land at different places on that spectrum or have very different views on how to find this balance. To state the obvious, this becomes a problem because government restrains us from injuring each other through coercion, and we disagree on whether that coercion is protection or government-sanctioned injury that stops the majority of us from freely choosing our own pursuits while benefiting our fellow humans. And that too should be clear from his remarks, considering that having “room enough for our descendants” did not stop us from injuring the descendants of Native Americans who were here long before 1801. And it does not stop us today from preventing many immigrants and refugees from joining us on this vast land.

A. Intellectual Honesty Matters: America is Not Capitalist

We can navigate those differing views on how to balance liberty and safety when we are committed to intellectual honesty. Economically, the divide that seems unbridgeable is the divide between a free market and socialism. While one side claims to advance capitalism and free market ideals, or at least accuses the other side of being socialist, Yaron Brook and Don Watkins argue that a correct way to categorize the American economy—based on true capitalism as articulated by Ayn Rand—is mixed:

“Americans haven’t chosen between complete capitalism and complete socialism. They’ve chosen particular policies that restrict some economic freedoms or redistribute some wealth.” (Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government, p. 26).

Ayn Rand’s perspective on those who claim to believe in capitalism but don’t in practice advocate for it is clear:

“By their silence — by their evasion of the clash between capitalism and altruism — it is capitalism’s alleged champions who are responsible for the fact that capitalism is being destroyed without a hearing, without a trial, without any public knowledge of its principles, its nature, its history, or its moral meaning. …”

In light of ideas articulated by Ayn Rand, Brook and Watkins advocate for crafting “a long-term program” (p. 217) to create a true capitalist society as the best way to balance safety and liberty in culture and government—something that “capitalism’s alleged champions,” or those who accuse the other side of socialism, are unwilling to do. (While the idea of a long-term plan to create a society that is more capitalist—or one that is more socialist—may sound alarming, keep in mind that the only way to do so would be through building significant political buy-in over the long-term, which would require listening to other viewpoints, and the end result would reflect the perspectives of our citizens). But claiming to believe in a free market requires the intellectual honesty to make plans to implement it, or the intellectual honesty to admit that one’s position is ultimately ideologically of the same brand as one’s so-called socialist enemies. Regardless, socialism is in modern European practice an ambiguous ideology at least in terms of what we as Americans fear—because it also means a mixed economy as opposed to total, or poorly managed, government control—and we have the means to balance liberty and safety and address those fears through nuanced debate and voting.  

If we should fear anything as Americans as we strive to stop people from injuring each other but leave them otherwise free to their own pursuits, it isn’t an ambiguously defined “other side,” whether we think that other side is capitalist or socialist. What we should fear is not living up to our own individual potential to advocate for and create the culture we believe in—and not living up to our potential to include our fellow Americans and our fellow humans.

In social or cultural issues, intellectual honesty matters too. Called “the father of modern conservatism,” 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater was an advocate for pro-choice abortion policies, a position that’s unthinkable in the conservative movement today. Being pro-life, in the sense of holding non-negotiable policy positions that restrict access to abortion, is therefore not about universally agreed-upon conservative ideological purity—and it’s critical that we have the intellectual honesty to admit that. Pro-life and pro-abortion arguments are in the end, both on the ideological playing field that Jefferson gave us. The real debate is about how to stop us from injuring each other but leave us otherwise free to our own pursuits. And the real question, as New Wave Feminists founder Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa articulates it, is how to make abortion both unnecessary and unthinkable, about how to be pro-life from womb to the tomb, and how to recognize the full humanity of both the unborn child and the mother. Going deeper still, the debate is also about men taking responsibility for what we do with our bodies. 

B. Preferences Are Not Principles

Because policy debates in the United States in the context of upholding the Constitution all seek to answer the same basic question of how to balance liberty and safety, it’s critical that we recognize that where we land on the spectrum is merely a representation of our preferences, not our principles.

Principles are universal. They exist regardless of whether we claim them as our own. They apply to all humans in any country, in any era. The decisions we make are not our principles; our decisions reflect our preferences for how we apply our principles in any given context.

For example, one might argue that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” is a life principle they live by, but they would be mistaken. Eating a daily apple is a preference based on a much larger and universal principle: eating natural food such as fruit and vegetables is important for health. The principle can be applied in any circumstance regardless of one’s situation. We might not always have access to apples, but we can always choose the healthiest options from what we do have available.

There is therefore no such thing as free market principles, market-based solutions, or progressive principles. Either a market is free from government control, or it isn’t. The universal principles include that a wise government protects human flourishing, and that power should be shared because when one human has too much power, it leads to corruption. Or using the same framework as Jefferson, that good governance means stopping us from injuring each other but otherwise leaving people free to their own pursuits. The economic theory one believes in as the best way to do that is ultimately a preference—and we are free to make the case for our preferences using historical examples.

Pro-life laws, vaccine mandates, and gun-control laws are not one’s principles, but rather preferences. The larger, universal principle is that human life should always be valued. Similarly, reparations for slavery paid for by modern-day US taxpayers is not a principle, it’s an articulation of a preference based on the principles that government-sanctioned wrongs should be made right, that generational oppression has generational consequences, and the principle that is America’s greatest declaration: all humans are created equal.

President Jefferson succinctly noted the difference between preferences and principles in his First Inaugural speech: “every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.” We may find along the way that we are not willing to negotiate some preferences, but let’s acknowledge that they are, in the end, preferences. At a deeper level, followers of Christ are called to give up our preferences for the sake of sharing the love of God with others, and in so doing find the life we were created to live.

View a list of Principles for American Unity

C. Helping Others Is Not About Need; It’s About Restoring Mutual Human Flourishing

While the playing field of political debates is how we balance safety and liberty, and within that playing field intellectual honesty matters and preferences are not principles, one construct that’s often used to frame arguments regarding how to balance safety and liberty is that we should help those in need, an idea that’s popular among most of us as humans in our private lives, regardless of our policy positions.

While articulating their view of the true meaning of capitalism, however, Brook and Watkins write that acting in one’s self-interest is a good and moral choice simply because one is human and has the right to do so. Still, they and Ayn Rand generally communicate selfishness as action that is mutually beneficial, and if the action is not mutually beneficial, they argue the action will not in the end be in one’s self-interest.

They make what they call the moral case for free markets to move beyond “the argument from greed and the argument from need” (p. 26). Again, they argue that acting in one’s self-interest is a moral choice because humans should be free to do so by nature of being human. Similarly, religious impulses to help those in need shouldn’t drive government controls over an economy, they argue, because we are all capable of and should be free to act in our self-interest, and leaving others to sink or swim based on their choices is a morally superior economic ideal. They ultimately argue that Christian values do not support capitalism as a moral ideal because of what they interpret as the Christian call to serve others. But there’s no Christian requirement for or against the government helping those in need. To what extent our government helps people is up to us, and that, the pursuit of happiness, is what we can debate at greater length in order to create a stronger culture of unity. As Christians, doing unto others as we would have them do unto us fundamentally means listening to each other and including each other in any new solutions; none of us wants to live in a country where our voices as citizens are irrelevant.

But without their hope placed in the kingdom of God, Brook and Watkins miss the real spiritual motive of helping others, as do those who argue that we should help those in need simply because they need help. In the kingdom of God, care for others is based not solely in what they lack but rather in abundance available to all of us. In Christ, when we seek the kingdom of God first, we have all we need, despite physical circumstances. The motive then isn’t to help others because of need as capitalists or socialists suggest, it’s to care for the body of Christ and all of humanity out of gratefulness for what we have already freely received. It’s about restoration of relationships and affirming the human dignity of every individual.

Christians who are also capitalists could argue that acting in one’s self interest is a moral choice, and Christians who are socialists can argue that the government has a moral obligation to help people, because they are starting from the same root idea: that humanity is created in the image of God, and government should protect human dignity. Whether we believe in helping others through government force, or not helping them through government force, we find the justification for our chosen stance in the idea that government should affirm and protect the dignity of all humans to choose their destiny as humans regardless of economic value. Atheists who affirm the dignity of humanity have a basis for doing so in the Christian view of humanity too, regardless of whether they accept Christianity as their basis. But because people of faith are operating from the same starting point of human dignity, it means we are free to take part in self-governance with freedom from the constraints of limited ideals, whether capitalist or socialist. (This does not mean we will win elections; the next journal entry will cover what it does mean to win as both advocates for American unity and Christians).

From a Christian perspective, need does not necessarily dictate our actions at all times, even privately, and even if we have chosen to side with those who do need help. In Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores, Diane Langberg offers a foundation for how Christian counselors might help others in need to work through and heal from trauma and horrific oppression (p. 116):

“I would have you remember three things if you are to minister to suffering people in the body of Christ. First, you are doing God’s work with him. Do not make the mistake of thinking of this as your work. It is his work, the people are his people, and you are not your own. You are not the Redeemer, merely his servant. If you remember that it is his work, you will continually run to him about what piece of that work he has for you to do. If it is his work, the results are in his hands and you will not need to demand certain outcomes by a certain time, thereby pressuring hurting people to get better so you feel successful. 

“It is not only his work to do with him, but it is his work done for him. You are not working for the ones suffering. You are not working for anyone else looking for their approval or certain status in the church or your community. You are his worker. If you work as if it is for the suffering, then you will be governed by them. ... The needs of others are not the call nor are they your governance. If their suffering rules you, then the outcome is simply double of the problem. The call is from God, the governance is God’s alone, and from that place in him you enter into the suffering of another. 

“Third, you can only do this work by God and through him. You cannot do the work of God in suffering lives, nor will you please God with your work, unless he himself works redemptively in and through you.”

Helping others then, for Christ-followers, is about moving closer to the heart of God, and from there it is about restoring mutual human flourishing.

But physical care is not only about giving others sustenance for their journey. As Yonathan Moya of Border Perspective shares beautifully in Liberatus Volume One, it’s about having a holistic approach to care for the emotional, mental, and spiritual state of those who are suffering too—and ultimately that is something that we all need. While running an ultramarathon on a trail, aid stations along the course are for sure there to meet physical needs: water, electrolytes, and fuel. But that is not their sole purpose. It’s also about coaching, human connection and solidarity, having a really good time, and pushing through mental limitations. It’s about learning from others—both runners and aid workers—how to live the human journey to the fullest.

Thinking about it economically as a country, to a true capitalist, government’s role is not to help those in need, ever. It’s to leave citizens free to create a society where helping oneself is a moral choice and where creating that society naturally helps others. As previously noted, socialism is in modern European practice an ambiguous goal because it still means a mixed economy with both public and private control over the economy. Additionally, we already have the means to debate and vote on policy to balance liberty and safety. And to a Christian, helping others in a tangible, relational way isn’t about personal asceticism based on what they need either. Rather it’s an expression of larger, holistic restoration.

So as we debate on the playing field of balancing liberty and safety, we can stay grounded in wisdom through intellectual honesty about what we believe and what we intend to do through self-governance; by recognizing that our preferences are not principles; and by remembering that helping those in need isn’t about what they lack, it’s about restoring mutual human flourishing.

This concludes the first main point on how we can stay grounded in wisdom: all policy debates take place on the same playing field. The remainder of this post will cover four additional main points to further clarify how to stay grounded in wisdom within the context of American unity in the twenty-first century.

II. The truth is more than facts.

Politicians and statesmen are storytellers, and policy debates are communicated through real-life stories. When crafting stories, including the words we use to tell real-life stories, what matters is that we “write the truth,” in the words of screenwriting and story teacher Robert McKee.

But how do we write the truth into the movies, novels, and political narratives we craft? As McKee articulates, the truth on one level is a set of facts: America declared independence from Great Britain, won the Revolutionary War, and then ratified the US Constitution. But he says how and why events in a story happen are also the truth, and one storyteller might answer how and why differently from another.

In the context of politics, what we believe about how and why events unfold is the truth we ultimately believe. If we choose to stay on the trail of leadership for American unity, we must listen and consider the how and why of storytellers who have experienced the same set of factual events in very different life circumstances. And as followers of Christ, we must connect the stories we tell to the larger story of the kingdom of God, because doing so will allow us to see and tell the whole truth of human existence the way our Creator does.

The most compelling story of all is that God became man, taught us about the kingdom of God through words and actions, died for us, was resurrected, and called us to love others in the same way that he loved us. But that is only the sequence of factual events as told by Christians for two thousand years. 

Exploring Scripture at a deeper level reveals more of the how and why of the story. Writing about the crucifixion, Henri Nouwen explains it this way in Reaching Out (pp 126-127):

“In that moment of complete emptiness all was fulfilled. In that hour of darkness new light was seen. While death was witnessed, life was affirmed. Where God’s absence was most loudly expressed, God’s presence was most profoundly revealed. When God himself in his humanity became part of our most painful experience of God’s absence, he became most present to us. It is in this mystery that we enter when we pray.”

Jesus died and rose again. Christians believe that as historical fact. But real transformation happens when we realize the greater truth: that God was showing his love for us, his solidarity with human pain, and his presence with us in a moment of what appeared to be total darkness.

The truth in any story is therefore both the set of facts and the relational human journey taking place within them.

III. Wisdom means finding the gaps. 

Just as we should include the how and why of our political stories as we articulate what we believe to be factually true, we should also look for the gaps in our political ideals. We should look for the ways our position won’t in fact deliver the perfect results we promise. Doing so keeps our rhetoric in check and gives us a reason to include other viewpoints, other hows and whys.

When we look for the gaps in our own ideals, it also means we can learn from history how to better implement them. If our only approach to history is to rage against America’s founders because they did not fully live up to the ideals they articulated, then we are really raging against ourselves for not having it all figured out in our time too. Because if we are using the ideals they articulated as our foundation to say that we should do a better job of implementing them, then wisdom means we self-govern in the tension of how to make the world better for the next generation, the same way many in previous generations have done. 

At a deeper level, as followers of Christ, we know that no political movement will bring about the kingdom of God. No ideology will bring about full restoration of the world. Since that is the case, every ideology, political movement, and secular worldview has built-in gaps. Wisdom in governance means looking for those gaps, acknowledging them, and creating opportunities to compensate for them. And that is how we can love unconditionally regardless of our political views. “Do unto others” means we don’t move completely towards socialism or capitalism without the collaborative buy-in of our fellow Americans, because collaborative buy-in is how we all want to be treated as we self-govern a country.

IV. Wisdom understands fear: The British are not still coming.

A. On a professional level, fear in politics is intentional.

Political movements today thrive not on finding the gaps in stated ideals in order to include more people and create better solutions but rather on leveraging what we most fear in order to motivate us to act, and therefore defeat the so-called evil of the other side.

We fear losing America, whatever that means to each of us individually. It’s as if we still fear that the British are coming, that this founding-era fear is still part of the American mind. But because we fear losing the country, fear drives us against each other instead of towards each other as it did when we became the United States.

But these fears of losing the country are carefully articulated and exploited by political professionals. Division doesn’t happen because we forget in the heat of political debates to be nice to each other; division is orchestrated on purpose by leveraging fear, anger, and envy to push people to the extremes, to take action, to drive so-called political wins.

B. We should name what we fear…

We turn against each other because we fear being taken advantage of; we fear that collaboration with our so-called enemies will limit or stop the implementation of our ideals. And if our chosen preferences are not fulfilled through policy, we fear either that the poor and marginalized will forever be oppressed by the system, or that the system will become so authoritarian in an effort to help the poor and marginalized that genuine opportunity and God-ordained rights will be extinguished. Either way, we fear the downfall of both America and American ideals—and the peaceful, free lives that we live or aspire to live.

Political division exists between the right and left because we don’t have a philosophically practical basis that allows us to love our neighbor regardless of political viewpoints, because we believe the advance of their views through policy would result in the downfall of the country, which in the end, would never be loving.

A contemplative view means understanding both the intellectual dishonesty of fear and why it is leveraged as an honest expression of conflict. Businesses highlight conflict or problems in marketing in order to move us to buy their solution, because they fear loss of business. As political professionals, we fear indifference—our version of loss of business. We fear becoming relationally and culturally irrelevant and therefore losing our livelihood. We don’t only fear losing power; we fear the loss of our security base, which is often financial, and loss of validation, which is relational. And so we motivate through fear, anger, and envy—on purpose—so that we can drive fundraising and votes. All of us as humans make choices to make sure we have the security and validation we want, but the effects are much more pronounced when this is done by people with positions of leadership. It creates a divisive culture in which Americans who listen to and believe political professionals live always on edge, always fearful that “the British” are coming to destroy our way of life.

C. …And operate on the other side of it.

But wisdom understands fear and allows us to operate on the other side of it. Wisdom is not naïve or ignorant of the real nature of the evil that we fear, as Richard Rohr articulates. So how do we relate to the evil that we fear both as American citizens who care about unity and followers of Christ who care about American unity as a reflection of a deeper unity available to us?

We can operate on the other side of it. We can assume what we fear has already happened. The country has already fallen. We have already destroyed it from within. As political professionals, we are already irrelevant due to the indifference of our fellow citizens. Now what? Everything we do then becomes about restoration, about mending what’s broken. A mindset of restoration takes us out of crisis mode and gives us the ability to think clearly about both the present moment and the next forty years. As political professionals, the path through the indifference that we fear includes redefining what it means to win and elevating our craft to serve humanity through creative restoration. The third post in this series explores several ways to do that.

Restoration gives us the ability to see the good we already have, regardless of what we fear. Politically, we have the Constitution and the ideological playing field, and nothing we do politically can happen outside of these constraints—the only way to get rid of the Constitution is to publicly, violently overthrow it. If there are Americans who do not believe in upholding the Constitution—as every federally elected official is required to do—and if they believe in quietly undermining it through unconstitutional policies over decades, then let their true nature and motives be brought to the light through inclusive, nuanced debate. Wisdom does not fear subversive motives, because wisdom already knows how limited subversive motives are, and can see and deal with them without letting them determine the debate.

The Constitution is our political basis for unity, and if anyone seriously believes in undermining or replacing the Constitution instead of amending it as we have already done, let’s debate them as it is prudent to do so. They will eventually reveal their subversive intentions, and their opposition to American unity will be as plain as day. 

At the same time, if anyone claims to be an advocate for American founding principles but refuses to advocate for telling the whole truth of American history, including the ways some believe we have not yet applied our founding principles, let their true motives be brought to the light through inclusive, nuanced debate too.

For those of us who are followers of Christ, advocating for policies within the scope of the Constitution is the surest way to create a culture of unity and peace, because it is the legal foundation that holds our society together. We have in the past implemented, and will at times in the future implement, laws that affect our lives in harmful ways. But we have endless opportunities to re-evaluate and course correct without destroying the structures of self-governance in our democratic-republic.

And at the deepest, spiritual level, we need not fear being taken advantage of, or of losing what we most love—what we most love has already been won for us.

D. Perfect love casts out fear.

As children of God, we know that perfect love casts out fear. If that is true of the kingdom of God, and if the kingdom of God is already advancing, then it stands to reason that this love extends to any activity in which we partake now, including politics. Therefore, we can be active in politics not out of fear but rather out of love, to create based on what we love.

Morton Blackwell has said that “in politics, nothing moves unless it’s pushed.” That is true, and followers of Jesus have a calling that does not necessarily require forcing change driven by fear through demonstrations, rallies and protests, but rather creating an entirely new culture of unity, where political ideals move forward by building consensus out of love for our shared humanity. “Pushing” can become leadership: acting on a vision to better humanity.

E. Our brains respond to belonging, too.

The shift from fear to love or belonging is also the subject of science and how our brains operate. As Mark Gerzon writes, politics today is about “targeting the part of the brain (the amygdala) that influences memory, decision-making, and, above all, emotion.”

Consistent belonging cues can therefore activate the amygdala in the same way that fear can, except the goal changes from fighting off a threat in order to survive to making “sure you stay tightly connected with your people,” as Daniel Coyle writes in The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups (p. 25).

The bottom line: our brains can respond to the basic human need for safety not by fear that makes us enemies of each other, but by continually reinforcing the idea that we are United States and belong together, and that we seek to make this union of states last over the long-term.

V. Wisdom is the role of the judicial branch.

While each of the branches of US government reflect and include the other, the primary function of the judicial branch is to ensure that we do stay grounded in wisdom, that we do legislate and govern in line with the structure we have already agreed upon. Of course, all our checks and balances between the federal branches of government, and between the federal government and the states, serve to keep us grounded in wisdom too. And should we find that decisions made by the Supreme Court are unworkable and unlivable, we have the means to amend the Constitution and change the agreed upon structure. And if we find a new amendment to be unworkable and unlivable, we can repeal it by amending the Constitution again.

Regardless of one’s view on Roe v. Wade, Justice Sonia Sotomayor articulated this process well. We don’t need to rage against our fellow Americans when decisions are made that we don’t like; we have the ability to make what we view as a course correction, and including others in that correction strengthens both our country and the objective we hope to accomplish for the sake of justice.

Staying grounded in wisdom means that we operate within the creative constraints we have already adopted, while pursuing intellectual honesty, telling the whole story with every competing view, and actively looking for the gaps or flaws in our ideals so that we can continue to promote human flourishing. It means we can see through the limitations of fear, and what we fear, and instead create a culture of belonging out of love.

Finally, inclusivity and wisdom mean little if we do not create anything new or create with the next generation in mind. The next journal entry in this series will explore ways we can both create and redefine winning when we run the trail of leadership for American unity.

Meditations for Further Reading

All Christian action—whether it is visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, or working for a more just and peaceful society—is a manifestation of the human solidarity revealed to us in the house of God. It is not an anxious human effort to create a better world. It is a confident expression of the truth that in Christ, death, evil, and destruction have been overcome. It is not a fearful attempt to restore a broken order. It is a joyful assertion that in Christ all order has already been restored. It is not a nervous effort to bring divided people together, but a celebration of an already established unity. This action is not activism. An activist wants to heal, restore, redeem, and re-create, but those acting within the house of God point through their action to the healing, restoring, redeeming, and re-creating presence of God.

-Henri Nouwen (July 14, 2022 Daily Meditation)

Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. . . . As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, “Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody.” . . . My dark side says, “I am no good. . . . I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned.”

Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the “Beloved.” Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.

-Henri Nouwen (January 10, 2022 Daily Meditation)

Issue 019: The Trailhead—Leadership for American Unity is a companion series to Liberatus Volume One, and both were made possible by the many contributors to and creators of Liberatus over the last seven years. To inspire American unity in your community, get a copy of Volume One, share it with your friends, family, and colleagues, give directly to the mission by donating or setting up a recurring contribution as a Liberatus Advocate, or help lead our country to unity by applying to join the Liberatus Leadership Council.

The Mission: To create a culture of American unity for the next generation by producing content, experiences, and leaders that inspire it today. Our goal is to publish a high-quality, biannual illustrated journal and to give 20% of the funds received for copies ordered on the Liberatus website to partner organizations* creating a culture of American unity across the United States.

HOW DO YOU CREATE A CULTURE OF UNITY?

If you have professional experience in American politics or government, you can add your ideas to the series. To get started writing to inspire unity and work with us to reach the goal of biannual publication of illustrated journals, apply to join the Liberatus Leadership Council.

Mission: Inspire American Unity

Create a culture of American unity for the next generation by producing content, experiences, and leaders that inspire it today.

Journal Entry #125

ISSUE 019: THE TRAILHEAD—LEADERSHIP FOR AMERICAN UNITY, PART 2

Continue reading part three