The lonely beach where the Wright Brothers from Ohio created the first airplane has been, for me, one of the chief sources of inspiration for Volume One and all of our work together so far. And having worked in politics, and seen the problems firsthand—and participated in them—I know that the mission to inspire American unity is a critical element of making our country more just and free.
Nine years ago, when I said goodbye to my grandfather for the last time in Ohio, I was working on Capitol Hill. The vision for Liberatus was already forming, and when I saw him in his final days I was embarrassed by what daily life in Congress was like.
My vision for Liberatus is not to create a personal brand. After a traumatic brain injury, I of course would like to go fast because I want quick wins, and the societal dignity that comes with them. But making our country more just and free is about going far together. Before she led free people away from the abusers who treated them like slaves, Harriet Tubman survived a brain injury too.
The participation by Liberatus stakeholders in the mission to inspire American unity over the last nine years made it possible to publish 19 writers, include 60 people in content creation, create and ship 215 copies of Volume One to people in 21 states so far, and contribute $666 in funding to three partner organizations to fuel their work to care for people who have been displaced or marginalized.
Craftsmanship in politics is about listening, asking questions and doing deeper research to search for wisdom, and it’s about creating new solutions for the next generation. We can also take David McCullough's advice to “learn to edit yourself” a step further, to its broader meaning: lead yourself.
To the ones who feel burned out and desperate, who want relief from a political culture that robs you of community and authenticity, and eats you alive with its chaos, its constant franticness, and its suspicious fear of everyone around you, come join us. To the ones who long to write beautifully and govern well, come join us.
To put it bluntly, I think the reason the Right, for example, has no coherent unifying plan for where to lead the country is that we’re largely still hung up on problems that aren’t the real problem, and guides who aren’t offering a clear, compelling call to action. We still think the problem is each other, and so the plan for how to govern well will never include each other.
Has there ever been a political speech given for the purpose of complete joy? For those who agree with us, sure—but what if complete joy for everyone was our motive? Or would we rather fall into the slavery and fear of creating artificial enemies so we can gain a bit of artificial safety from them? What does that say about our affections?
The stories we live and tell consist of heroes who can’t and never will solve our problems, of hopes and fears placed in desired outcomes that always let us down. The result of these weak stories is a total degeneration of our political culture; politicians freaking out to move people to vote, or donate, or worse join the fight against their own neighbors.
We have to know what our core values are now, so that when the plot thickens, and we’re faced with problems and guides and calls to action, we have a center, a core, a deep down. And ultimately we need to know what that deep down is rooted in, because it will influence how we see our problems and guides and plans, and which ones we choose to listen to.
Most of the time we don’t even recognize this internal culture of fear and how it affects our outward response, or if we do, we think it’s a good thing—and somehow our work gets twisted and we peddle solutions that are rooted in our deepest fears—and this is what makes the problems in our political culture so obvious and yet so hard to define.
