The Platform – Part II: Ensuring Opportunity

A major premise of Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age has been about opportunity in our nation. In fact, it’s the first point of definition of the American Promise in the Principles of FAPITCA: “our people have freedom of access to an equal opportunity to succeed (or to fail).” Freedom is at the root of this definition, and both success and failure are possible outcomes. America’s brand of capitalism has never been promoted as a guarantee for “success.”

Source: Wikipedia

To make capitalism work at maximum efficiency, however, government and commerce need to interact with each other to ensure equal access to opportunity. The roots of this are acknowledged in the Declaration of Independence, as Thomas Jefferson channeled the likes of John Locke and George Mason proclaiming in our Declaration our unalienable rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

 

VA Declaration of Rights Virginiamemory.com

Locke and Mason both wrote about “life, liberty and property” [1] or “…life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property…” [2] During the era of the authorship of these documents, Locke, Mason and Jefferson considered the pursuit of happiness to mean both personal “ownership” (freedom) and the property one could acquire.

We posited in our outline for the FAPITCA Platform that in effect our Declaration provides a foundation for equal access to “a baseline income that provides a foundation to support the ‘pursuit of happiness’ and that this baseline income should offset practical living expenses while making it possible to pay reasonable taxes and to loosen ties to government support.” Whether this is manifested in a higher minimum wage or a renewal of support for businesses and governments to work together to create more and better opportunities for our nation’s unemployed is a topic to be discussed in more depth than within this blog.

In any event, the creation and sustainment of access to opportunity to obtain ownership of property (personal and tangible) certainly appears to have been the intent of the Founding Fathers! [3]

A major issue we face in the political quagmire of Congress and all too many statehouses today is how to visualize ways to create opportunity and get our economy back on track…ways that don’t smack of “socialism” or “welfare state” politics. It is a tough problem, but it’s not as intractable as it seems.

America has been at these very challenging “inflection points” before and we found ways to overcome them. In fact, in Dead Men Ruling, C. Eugene Steuerle argues that America has faced at least two of these kinds of crises we face today: in the post-Revolution when America faced the choice of amending the Articles of Confederation and writing a new American Constitution; and “at the start of the Progressive Era, when the nation’s leaders began to add the governmental structures that proved necessary for an emerging world power.” [4]

In both instances, our elected leadership (granting that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were in fact elected) found ways to compromise and push forward in the interests of the nation and the American people. They saw the future of America and worked together to address the challenges they knew they would face: they visualized and compromised. This ability to visualize and compromise has not been successfully applied in our politically-driven world lately, even though we have some of the best Connected Age technologies we could ever hope for! We have the tools that our forefathers could only dream of and yet our Congress won’t use them…very sad.

One of Steuerle’s key points is that our previous era’s leaders found ways to work together and considered the challenges we faced in the post-Revolution and the start of the Progressive era as opportunities for the nation rather than threats to their political careers. “Because elected officials who acted would often pay the ultimate political price at election time, they were often reluctant to act, and delays in achieving fundamental reform imposed additional burdens on the public. Not surprisingly, the current turning point requires much the same focus and presents the same political threats and theatre to the elected officials of our time,” Steuerle notes.

But our leaders in the past found the courage to compromise and act to set America up for success rather than the failure upon which our political leaders of today seem bound to engage. Disregarding Locke, Mason and Jefferson, our current crop of edge-driven representatives in both houses want to choke back opportunity for fear of looking too liberal, too progressive and too inclusive of the younger generations. They seem to be more concerned about reelection in spite of the opportunities this current situation offers – their courage and leadership are lacking. Their current approach fails to recognize the successes we found in opportunities like Steuerle cites.

All that said, there are a few straightforward proposals in which we could start using our Connected Age technologies to visualize and even predict how well we could move forward in this time of great opportunity. We could start using the technologies described in past FAPITCA blog posts to model and observe the interactions of people, tools and policies to project a future environment for success that matches the outcomes about which Steuerle writes. More importantly, if we are objective enough, we could use these technologies to create compelling, unemotional arguments for experimentation and possible adoption. Good ideas only go so far; we also need action and effective execution of ideas and plans. That’s another good use for visualization!

Below are several proposals that we might consider as part of our interaction experiment. Using the modeling technologies we’ve discussed elsewhere (here and here), we could build integrative models that visually demonstrate how one proposal interacts with another, or even all of them. By integrative models, we mean modeling in a fashion that highlights synergy between the elements of the models that shows dependencies in context, not attempts to cherry-pick pet projects – we have to see how all of these things work together to avoid the “unintended consequences” of one change here and another change there. We need to show holistic impacts.

We don’t claim that any of the following are original to us, and they certainly haven’t been “scored by the Congressional Budget Office,” but they are a viable starting point. We present these proposals as the basis for generating good hypotheses and experimentation; call them thought experiments at this point.

Some of the initial things to model include:

– A proposal that we lift the cap on Social Security contribution limits from its present limit of $117,000, while lowering the contribution rate from 7% to 5%. This will be a “tax increase” for people whose earnings are in excess of about $163,800, but a “tax cut” for all other workers. [5] Indirect compensation like corporate benefits and perks could also be subject to this 5% contribution on the personal income side. Self-employed would pay a flat 10% and all would continue to contribute 1.45% to Medicare. We call this first proposal sparing a nickel for Social Security.

– Increasing the minimum wage to a pay scale that rewards work more than not working. Whether $10 an hour or $15 an hour is appropriate, these rates of pay can be easily modeled in an integrated fashion as we’ve been discussing. The bottom line is that the level of income must be sufficient to empower living in a safe home that supports raising a family and pumps more money back into the economy. The scale of payback to the economy from many more folks who could then live fuller lives that achieve the American Promise will be much greater than the money a few wealthy Americans would “pump” into the economy. Scale is on our side here and we must use it.

The first two proposals could actually be combined in legislation as part of what we might call the 2014 “Rewarding Work in America Act.” Using the modeling techniques we referenced above and just applying basic economic principles, it should be straightforward to show that these first two proposals will put more money in the pockets of lower and middle income working people, boost the economy and address several of the income inequality issues that appear to be worsening. We must reward work, which means we must get people back to work so that they can earn a living wage and create their own positive impact for the economy!

– Eliminating tax breaks that ONLY benefit the wealthy, such as eliminating all mortgage interest and tax deductions for second homes. It no longer makes sense to provide these kinds of tax breaks to people wealthy enough to own second homes—or a boat because it happens to have plumbing aboard. The “return on investment” for these kinds of deductions is ineffective in an economy that’s changed as much as ours has in the Connected Age. If we must add deductions that stimulate the economy, let’s find deductions that benefit everyone.

– Making a meaningful contribution to our young people by:

   — Eliminating ALL interest on student loans if paid back in a finite period (say five-ten years)

   — Exerting downward pressure on tuition by providing a cap of no more than $50,000 as eligible for the “interest-free” provision

   — Encouraging state universities through a variety of means to embrace a “two-and-a half” rule which provides that no state university can charge more than two-and-a-half times the cost per student to that of the per-student costs of the state’s high schools. (The actual number would be subject to the modeling recommendations, but we hold that it should not cost states that much more to educate freshman and sophomores than seniors in high school.)

   — Offering more extensive and inclusive forms of public service such as AmeriCorps, Peace Corps and similar organizations that can both pay grant money for education and create invaluable work experience. We want to restore the value of public service to young people and our nation; these programs should be inspired by the contributions of the various forms of the GI-Bill that have positively impacted those who served in our nation’s military

   — Convening a national panel to explore what we can do to reengineer our colleges to stimulate lower tuition costs and deliver greater education value (it is inexcusable for the cost of a college education to exceed inflation costs so severely.)

– Reducing corporate taxes and at the same time encouraging and enforcing paying taxes on corporate income rather than “protecting” that income in foreign banks or holdings. American earnings belong in America as much as possible, to be invested into our own economy and infrastructure and most importantly, our people. Hiring Americans, paying taxes and supporting American research and development are some of the most patriotic things our businesses can support. America needs our businesses and companies to be part of the solution that saves and preserves our economy and environment—government cannot and should not do that alone.

Could these types of collaborative and interactive solutions serve to increase both opportunity and the tax base (without really increasing the rate of taxes paid)? That’s a sound and testable hypothesis anyway. These types of actions can provide win-win for both parties and it can be demonstrated through low-cost experimentation. In spite of this fact, neither party will talk seriously about these proposals, or if they do they talk about one, they exclude the others. All of these things, and probably others, are part of a system of success: the American Promise.

The refusal to compromise and do right for America is withholding equal access to opportunity. Far too many in America do not have access to Fulfilling the American Promise because too many of our leaders, and our electorate apparently, can’t see the opportunities and visualize how to achieve them. It seems they prefer to be frozen into stalemates and inactivity because of the challenges…that’s not the America most of us grew up to appreciate!

Increased access to opportunity presents us a remarkable path forward towards Fulfilling the American Promise – that’s why this is our first platform plank in FAPITCA. Unfortunately, how America (and most of the West) approaches production, consumption and marketing contribute to the cloudy visuals we suffer these days. We’ll talk about that next time.

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 5/29/2014.

NOTES:

[1] This was labeled as property in Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, although it also referred to the concept of “estate”. See also Beeman, R., Our Lives, Our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor, Basic Books, NY, 2013, pp. 394-398.

[2] As written by George Mason in the Virginia Declaration of Rights; this document was a significant source of inspiration to Jefferson and to many of the committee who drafted the Declaration of Independence.

[3] We do not address the national shame of slavery or dispossession of the American Indians from the lands on which they lived during this time, discussed very recently and in more detail in James Fallows’ blog post “The Civil War That Does Not End,” but the idea of “personal ownership” for all would surely have applied had America been founded in this day and age.

[4] Dead Men Ruling: How to Restore Fiscal Freedom and Rescue Our Future (Kindle Edition), The Century Foundation Press, Washington, DC, 2014.

[5] Employers would also save by paying a matching 5% instead of the current 7%, although their contribution could be phased out at some point, say $175,000 or $200,000, based on the findings of the models.

“…and our Posterity…”

Courtesy Ourdocuments.gov.

It’s encouraging to note that when we do a web search for those three little words “and our Posterity” most of the first page results point to the Preamble of the United States Constitution. That preamble, which many of us had to learn in elementary school, is just 52 words long but it shouts to the world so much about what America was and still is, for the most part. [1] The preamble told the world that America looked to the future and was concerned about the welfare of our coming generations.

Even though the framers of our Constitution were not soothsayers, nor perhaps even futurists the way we define that term today, they did have a great deal of concern about the prospects for our nation to succeed beyond the Revolution. Much of the friction the framers experienced in Philadelphia in 1787 had to do with balancing the great need to address contemporary shortcomings with the Articles of Confederation against how the nation would emerge as a collective of diverse state interests and governments. But even the original drafts of the Constitution that included a preamble overcame that friction and incorporated the term “…our Posterity.” [2] Our Constitution was not a short-sighted document. [3]

One thing the framers fully agreed on was how important their decisions and actions would be to future generations. This was not a stated interest of the Articles of Confederation as ratified in 1777, so we could surmise that overcoming Great Britain and prevailing in the Revolutionary War gave the framers deeper insight into the potential that transformed the “united states” of the Articles to the “United States” of our Constitution. In the intervening years, our framers had grown and become more aware of the Promise of America. That doesn’t seem so much the case today in our Congress.

Today, the “posterity” cohort is composed primarily of the Millennial generation about whom we’ve recently written. [4] In the blogosphere, there are signs that point to this new generation of Americans appreciating the foresight of the framers. In part this is based on the ways in which Millennials have exploited the technologies of the Connected Age. The blog posts that Millennials publish on the web seem increasingly open to a future with which we Boomers are uncomfortable. Millennials are showing early, positive signs of overcoming the Boomer passion for control and accumulation of “stuff” that haunts the production and consumption practices that drive America today.

In spite of our current political system’s preoccupation with endless election cycles and relentless pursuit and accumulation of massive campaign chests, Millennials seem to be getting on with the business of living in the real world of adaptation, flexibility and cooperation. They seem to relish finding and sustaining interdependent relationships that challenge biases and opinions held by the “ruling” generation of Boomers. These biases and opinions have unfortunately informed the growth of edge-driven politics and policies that jeopardize the world “our Posterity” must inhabit when we Boomers are “done” with it.

Last time, we wrote about how to tackle some of these important issues at the polls, but elections are subject to shortened perspectives and timeframes. We need long-term, strategic perspectives and solutions. Some of the best and most objective sets of solutions we’ve seen are embodied in a document about which we’ve also recently written: A National Strategic Narrative.

The authors of the National Strategic Narrative describe what they call a “Strategic Ecology” that could “represent opportunities to reestablish and leverage credible influence, converging interests, and interdependencies that can transform despair into hope.” Millennials are already establishing those interdependencies and from their writings on the web, are in fact transforming “despair into hope.” This is all despite the fact that the vast majority of the cohort of Boomer politicians decline to help Millennials in terms of affordable education and health care, better employment opportunities and seem ready to leave them a crumbling infrastructure.

Millennial objectivity almost seems more like the America in which we grew up as young Boomers in the 50s and 60s…perhaps it offers a better prospect about the future than we suspect. Perhaps the framers would have smiled about this new generation more than they would the Boomers!

Getting back to stuff, consumption and production, we’ll soon publish on the FAPITCA website an essay that has been four years in the making entitled “Renewing American Vigor: Transforming Consumption in Public and Private Life.” We started this work in 2010 when it became apparent that America was still struggling to recover from the “Great Recession” but we didn’t feel we had a proper forum in which to publish it. FAPITCA seems to be the right place now that we have had the website up and running for almost four months and have had a chance to think about this topic and its relationship to Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age, particularly concerning Millennials.

The website The Story of Stuff offers a compelling look at how America (and indeed most of the world) got into a vicious cycle of building for obsolescence rather than sustainability, and offers ways to think about completely “changing the game” of production and consumption. Introductory videos featuring The Story of Stuff Founder and President Annie Leonard are in the playlist below:

Given our careers of diverse domestic and overseas service, both Carl and Chuck appreciate what The Story of Stuff contributes to this important conversation: we both have a lot of stuff from a great many moves and have lived in countries where stuff wasn’t nearly as important! [5] Look for the essay in coming weeks.

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 5/15/2014.

NOTES:

[1] Our preamble reads “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Source: 100 Milestone Documents: The Constitution of the United States of America, www.ourdocuments.gov. NOTE: It was also a bit curious that “And Our Posterity” is the name of a blog about “Observations on energy, geopolitics, and the federal budget,” which seemed to focus mostly on the “energy” part of the title, but since it’s not readily apparent if there are political implications to this blog, we’ll just leave it in the category of “that’s another story.”

[2] Beeman, Richard, Plain Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution, Random House, NY, 2009.

[3] Consider the first of committee chair Edmund Randolph’s first two principles for the Committee of Detail in drafting the Constitution: “to insert essential principle only, lest the operations of government should be clogged by rendering those provisions permanent and unalterable, which ought to be accommodated by time and events…” (italics added by the editors for emphasis on the framers’ future perspectives. Quoted from Beeman, Plain Honest Men.

[4] We appreciate that the editors of The Generation Me reposted this piece on TGM Millennials, a prolific and attractive website “created to serve as a filter for all the political stories out there with a progressive point of view approach.” While FAPITCA avoids taking positions for or against specific political viewpoints, we do take a position on the future of America, “our Posterity,” and recognize The Generation Me as a web-based leader in this field.

[5] Our essay is also informed by an interesting book recently published by Betty and Mike Sproule called The Stuff Cure. Betty, the administrator and an advisor to the National Strategic Narrative website, provides a nice blend of philosophical and practical insights about living with less “stuff.”

The Promise of the Millennials

When we debated our definition of the American Promise, “freedom of access to an equal opportunity to succeed (or to fail),” we discussed at length how we could consistently apply this characterization of the American Promise to young Americans. We wanted to speak to all Americans about how Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age is so important in such a special way to our progeny, the group we call Millennials.

There are a lot of blogs by and for Millennials; there are too many to even begin listing here. Ease and freedom of expression of a wide variety of perspectives has been one of the hallmarks of the Connected Age for people of every generation, but particularly the Millennials. These Millennial perspectives can form a vast resource of insight and inspiration while setting the stage for what America becomes…if we start realizing it and nurturing this emerging body of work now.

In The Next America, Paul Taylor of The Pew Research Center reports that the Millennial Generation began in 1981 and that the cut-off year has not yet been determined. [i] Whatever the actual dates may be, the Millennials are graduating from school and taking their place in junior leadership positions (when they are available) or other employment opportunities (when they are available). By Taylor’s calculations, this means at least 34% of the American population can be considered part of the Millennial cohort, using 2012 US Census data.

This also means that 34% of the US population that will be responsible for the future of America and running for elected office across the country is now starting to take its place on the American scene.

Boomers and Generation X cohorts [ii] have been responsible to prepare America for this up and coming generation. In light of the American Promise theme, it’s worth doing an inventory of what we Boomers and Gen X’ers are accomplishing on behalf of the Millennials, and indeed on behalf of the future of America. What have our earlier generations done to set the tone for growth and development of our budding leaders?

In terms of leadership, we’ve shown the Millennials the “productivity” of a starkly, edge-driven Congress and other federal, state and locally elected officials. We’ve demonstrated to our young people how to use politics to rig election district boundaries, solicit enormous sums of politically-motivated monies, fight against protecting our environment and exploit an all-too-willing media to further divide our nation. Pretty impressive examples, the edges might claim.

The senior generations have also overseen the significant escalation of education and healthcare costs while enabling the rise of wealth for a select few who have little regard for the principles of the American Promise. We’ve shown how our young people can “benefit” more by being investment bankers and stock brokers than becoming scientists, civil servants and educators. Again, this is another impressive list of accomplishments that can serve as examples on which to build the America of the next generation and beyond…well, no, not really. What in the world are we thinking?

From time-to-time, we’ll visit a very fine piece of work accomplished by Captain Wayne Porter, USN and Colonel Mark (Puck) Mykleby, USMC (ret) called “A National Strategic Narrative.” We’ll look at this document in increasing detail as we unroll the relationship of the Millennials to the future of America. But for now we want to emphasize the Narrative’s points about the youth of America and what they can do for all of us if we empower them. In speaking about young Americans, Wayne and Puck wrote:

By investing energy, talent, and dollars now in the education and training of young Americans – the scientists, statesmen, industrialists, farmers, inventors, educators, clergy, artists, service members, and parents, of tomorrow – we are truly investing in our ability to successfully compete in, and influence, the strategic environment of the future. Our first investment priority, then, is intellectual capital and a sustainable infrastructure of education, health and social services to provide for the continuing development and growth of America’s youth. [iii]

This is more than parents doing the right thing and setting good examples for our children…this is about investing in the children of all Americans to build the future of our nation. As Wayne and Puck note, these investments build on the most important infrastructure component we could possibly construct: our young people and the intellectual capital they will need to keep America going.

By cooperating even as a politically-driven body, our senior generations now in power can set the tone and framework starting today. By recognizing and being accountable for what we’ve done to our future generations, the rest of us can start electing responsible people who care more about America and our young people than themselves…who care more about our future than measuring a campaign coffer. Through the electoral process and a responsible political system, we can “sand” the edges from divisive office-holders and start building a system that rewards “competitive cooperation” and collaboration rather than simply “win-at-all-costs” politics.

The Millennials we talk to and read about want to step up and take their place, just like we did when we were their age. They’re not lazy and they’re not unmotivated…they are Americans who love their country but have to overcome college debt, healthcare costs and meager job prospects. Worst of all, they have to overcome less access to opportunity than many of our older generations faced.

Let’s start fixing that now, Boomers and Gen Y’ers…let’s cooperate and try harder to create access to opportunity for our young people – they have great Promise. Let’s empower all Americans to Fulfill the American Promise in the Connected Age.

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 5/8/2014.

 

[i] A claim in dispute in some circles based on the beginning of the so-called “Generation Z” in the mid-2000s.

[ii] 1946-1964 and 1965-1980, respectively, according to Taylor in The Next America.

[iii] Quoted from the section “Our Three Investment Priorities” from A National Strategic Narrative.

A Narrative for our Nation and our Promise

In 2010, I had the privilege of participating in the first of two Highlands Forum meetings I attended that year. This first meeting was in Newport, RI, and hosted a small group of remarkable thinkers and professionals from diverse industry, academic and government organizations. You won’t find much about the Highlands Forum from the official website, but there is a publically accessible site that talks about its background and purpose when it was first established.[1]

One of the government folks I met in Newport was Captain Wayne Porter, United States Navy. At the time, Wayne was serving as a personal advisor to Admiral Mike Mullen, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I had several intimate chats with Wayne, including a marvelous breakfast in which we shared our thoughts about the effects of cyberspace and emergence on the nation and the rest of the world. During breakfast, Wayne shared with me some of the initial thoughts he and his office mate, Colonel Mark “Puck” Mykleby, United States Marine Corps, were working on in a paper they were crafting for the Chairman.

The title of the paper Wayne and Puck created was illuminating. Wayne called it “A National Strategic Narrative.” He explained that they decided to call it a narrative rather than a “strategy” because the nation had plenty of strategy documents (e.g., National Security Strategy, National Military Strategy, and a host of others). What America really needed, Wayne said, was a narrative (a coherent story) that served to remind us of who we were and how we should think about going forward in the future as a “whole of nation” (or government) to maintain the essence of what made America great.

Wayne’s ideas really resonated with me at the time and thanks to a new project to which I’ve been invited to participate, it’s more meaningful than ever. Add to that the work in which Chuck and I collaborate with Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age, and the narrative becomes greatly relevant and compelling.

The “final” version of A National Strategic Narrative is available on the web, along with other supporting information about the project, but I’m reserving the remainder of this post to describe the priorities of the effort and compare it to some of the objectives of FAPITCA as we’ve presented them in this blog.

Wayne and Puck, originally writing under the pseudonym of “Mr. Y” (in memory of George Kennan),[2] assert that their foundation is “built upon the premise that we must sustain our enduring national interests – prosperity and security – within a ‘strategic ecosystem,’ at home and abroad….” This notion of a strategic ecosystem is also compelling and forms the basis of the remaining narrative. An ecosystem, as we’ve mentioned in a previous blog post, is energized by coevolution and emergence, and is another appealing way of expressing FAPITCA.

The Narrative proposes three “Investment Priorities” that align with FAPITCA. The first priority is “intellectual capital and a sustainable infrastructure of education, health and social services to provide for the continuing development and growth of America’s youth.” This priority is perfectly matched to the basis for achieving the American Promise: “freedom of access to an equal opportunity to succeed (or to fail).”[3] Investing in the social “infrastructure” of America empowers greater access to opportunity.

The second priority of the Narrative is “ensuring the nation’s sustainable security – on our own soil and wherever Americans and their interests take them.” According to Wayne and Puck, this requires us to think about American “power” as more than just defense and security, although these are vitally important areas. We should also think about America as a source of inspiration to our nation and the world for “domestic and foreign trade, agriculture and energy, science and technology, immigration and education, public health and crisis response….” This enables us to also observe national security through the lenses of our economy, the environment, our willingness to help other people and nations, and indeed our social fabric. This perspective can also link the Center of America to the rest of our world through Connected Age technologies.[4]

Finally, the third priority of the Narrative is to “develop a plan for the sustainable access to, and cultivation and use of the natural resources we need for our continued wellbeing, prosperity and economic growth in the world marketplace.” This priority has a clear connection to the second priority and speaks to sustaining a global ecosystem of natural resources that supports not only America but the whole world. In this way, America reemphasizes its role as a truly exceptional nation both in terms of leadership and stewardship of human and natural resources. This is consistent with one of FAPITCA’s key principles: “We are borrowing this land, culture and governance system from our progeny; what we pay back to them reflects on our legacy and lays the foundation for their legacy.”[5]

There’s quite a bit more to A National Strategic Narrative that deserves mention in this blog, and we’ll revisit it from time-to-time. Having the privilege of chatting with Wayne and Puck in years past makes this Narrative more personally meaningful as Chuck and I undertake our work with FAPITCA. I’m glad I recently rediscovered it and have a chance to cite it as an additional source for our effort. If the FAPTICA project makes sense to you, please read the National Strategic Narrative and understand where it could take us in Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age.

Originally posted by Carl Hunt, 4/24/2014.

 

[1] The Highlands Forum is a remarkable effort that has informed the development of US strategy, research and development for over a decade, and is superbly managed by Dick O’Neill, Captain, US Navy (ret.). Some of the presentations at Highlands Forum meetings are also available on the public website.

[2] As a National War College alumnus, I appreciate the nod to George Kennan, who was a professor at NWC in the mid-1940s when he was forming thought about maintaining a balance of power with the Soviet Union, a paper called “The Sources of Soviet Power” which he authored in Foreign Affairs in July 1947, under the pseudonym of Mr. X.

[3] As quoted from the Principles of FAPITCA.

[4] As proposed in the FAPITCA Principles.

[5] As articulated in the FAPITCA Principles.

Harnessing the Tools of Collaboration, “Section B”

– Creating Collaborative Law, Part III, Section B

NOTE: Due to the length and technical nature of this post, there are two sections: This is Section B (a technical discussion of a proposed solution as a thought experiment).

In Section A of this post, we proposed to use Lewes, DE as small town representation for a thought experiment. Our experiment proposed to implement collaborative technologies to enhance the way America might begin to initiate a stronger focus on bringing us to Center-based solutions and avoid edge-driven approaches. This experiment provides the basis for a response to the question we posed: “How can technology impact our potential to collaborate?”

To keep the description of these tools simplified, we’ll revisit the Wattpad application we mentioned in Part I of this series, as an example of an approach we could use. After what might be called an open online “solicitation for legislation” provided by the City, we could turn to something like Wattpad. As we learned before, this application allows multiple authors to co-create novels, articles and almost anything suitable for publication in a very public way that proposes drafts, refinements and ultimately “finished” products.

Citizens affected by the proposed legislation, in groups or even as individuals could respond to the solicitation using Wattpad in an online environment. The results could offer a reasonable starting point to address the initial solicitation for the required legislation. This should sound a bit like the discussion on emergence from the last blog post.

Once we have a fairly robust starting document that encompasses a variety of insights (likely divergent in both the social and political senses), we could turn to the development of a model accompanied by a collaborative visualization tool that allows the public to interact, pose questions and do online “what-if analysis” that can be recorded and played-back. [1]

One of the main the kinds of modeling technologies we have in mind include the agent-based modeling simulation and analysis environment. This modeling environment allows for encoding a variety of factors, including:

• Rules of behavior (of both actual and virtual entities such as people, property, traffic flow or existing law)
• Assumptions about future growth and behavior
• Virtual operating and interaction environment (that allows users to constrain or loosen actions to real-world conditions)
• Rules for conducting “what-if” analysis of new evidence or possible outcomes
• Real-world sensors; new sensor-based simulation capabilities even allow modelers to capture and reflect human emotion and a broad range of behaviors (both rational and otherwise) that can increase the fidelity of these virtual interactions

Another requirement for community-based collaboration is a visualization tool that allows the community users to interact over the same presentation of assumptions, modeling results and geographic information systems (GIS) data that helps orient us to the “real-world.” One low-cost GIS tool that has found initial success is in use by Texas A&M University’s Sea Grant Texas, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Delaware-supported Cape Henlopen Regional Plan to conduct community-based collaborative planning for better understanding coastal watersheds and sea-level changes. The implementation details for an example of this sort of tool, weTable, are worth reading but beyond the scope of this blog post. The figure below depicts the weTable.

The “weTable” in use during a Texas Sea Grant project. Picture credit to NOAA and the Texas Sea Grant Project.

These are the kinds of technologies and tools that allow us to come together as a community rather than keep us apart in our separate, “idealized” political environments that seem to split communities. Users would thus collaborate to produce not only proposed legislation, but also empirical evidence of the proposal’s ability to address requirements (both originally projected requirements as well as those generated in the modeling environment).

Whether any of this scales from a community like Lewes to a state or national-level “community” requires experimentation, but this is worth doing to improve the likelihood of success in collaborative law and policy.

There are some distinct advantages to these kinds of experiments. Such a system could allow users to:

• Control for bias and undue influence (e.g. model edge-driven media attempts at “public persuasion” and politically-driven campaign contributions)
• Provide filters for information overloaded concepts and terms
• Reduce waste of precious financial resources through low-cost highly-collaborative experimentation
• Better cope with disparate backgrounds and emotions
• Generate better and increasingly novel questions about assumptions and outcomes

We’ll talk in more detail more about these new kinds of decision-support tools in future posts and how they can help generate better and more objective lines of inquiry. Maximum objectivity is a fundamental key to Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age.

We also think that asking the “right questions” and seeking objective results and outcomes are the basis for better collaboration and interaction to produce policy and law that help us understand the increasingly complex world in which we live. Objective inquiry can help us overcome human bias and prejudice, a factor we must explore in addressing the second question posed in Section A: “Why are we reluctant to embrace new opportunities to collaborate (politically)?”

In proposing an answer to that second question, we’ll talk about how much power, influence and access to money sway those who resist using these tools and how much they would have to give up in a political or organizational setting. That’s for next time…

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 4/18/2014.

[1] A recent, though early example of this sort of approach actually did take place in the Lewes, DE area, as described in the Cape Gazette article, “Technology, talk allow towns to tackle ‘wicked problem’,” of 3/18/2014. This article describes some of the planning objectives, collaboration processes and technologies involved.

Harnessing the Tools of Collaboration, “Section A”

– Creating Collaborative Law, Part III, Section A

NOTE: Due to the length and technical nature of this post, there are two sections: A (this post) and B (a more technical discussion that immediately follows this post in sequence).

We’ve recently written a lot about collaboration and cooperation in producing common good for America. We’d like to think it’s straightforward to see what collaboration has to do with creating effectively implemented law and policy. After all, people have to interact with each other, whether in full agreement or not. How else do we achieve some level of cooperation and willingness in order to find ways to produce a meaningful common good that extends beyond the individual self?

Americans have been collaborating for centuries to produce what has become today’s United States of America. We’ve found ways to cooperate and produce the freest and most participative forms of economics and government known to history. However, many of us sense something is different now – collaboration and agreement have become difficult to achieve. The current environment for equal access to opportunity in America is diminished from what it was even 20 years ago.

We’re going to explore the current environment by posing and attempting to answer two key questions that reflect on our ability as a nation to Fulfill the American Promise in the Connected Age:

• How can technology impact our potential to collaborate? (discussed in this 2-part post)
• Why are we reluctant to embrace new opportunities to collaborate (politically; discussed in next week’s post)?

Technology has created an almost limitless fabric in which to communicate. In the “days of old” a political leader [1] relied on newspapers, local surrogates and a whistle-stop or two to communicate a message. Today they can almost drench the electorate with information right from their offices. [2] In fact, the trick now is to figure out how to wisely engage the electorate to avoid confusing or irritating them.

But it’s really a two-way street. It’s now easier than ever for information to flow from the constituent to the political leader. Sometimes the data come from sources outside their jurisdiction and leaders must discern the relevance from that perspective as well: does it apply to the local constituency or the national…or both? Different income groups may attempt to fill cyberspace with specific positions. This can generate a bias that even the most objective implementations of technology are hard-pressed to overcome.

Applying technology to enhance a collaborative process is messy at best, much like freedom and democracy are described through the ages. Unfortunately, while the tools and technologies are in fact emerging, we’re a long way from having the will and experience necessary to harness the full potential of this two-way street (really super-highway) of information; there are currently too many barriers, social and technological.

Most in the Center feel we must overcome these barriers and build meaningful and accurate information environments to support enhanced collaboration between voters, political leaders and the rest of the nation. Carl heard an interesting insight about the reality of these barriers in a talk given by United States Senator Chris Coons (DE) this past weekend during a community meeting in Lewes, DE.

Senator Coons pointed out that the media, congressional staffers and lobbyists often work aggressively to keep our congressional legislators from talking to each other and sharing information that might lead to collaboration. This is a disappointing insight about the reality of the barriers, particularly coming from someone recognized as one of the most collaborative and objective members of Congress. This begins to address the second question we posed above, but it also informs the way we want to respond to the first question.

We’ll address the technical aspects of the initial question we posed above in a separate piece that immediately follows this one, what we are labeling Section B. As an introduction to Section B, however, we’ll note that the new tools to which most Americans now have access offer the potential for much greater participation and inclusiveness than ever before; these new Connected Age tools can bring us together in ways no human has ever experienced. But, as most technology solution consultants do these days, we propose to start small — a thought experiment that might suggest an eventual prototype.

Imagine a community, perhaps a town like Lewes, DE (2,841 population, 2012 statistics) which wants to go beyond the usual public hearings and city boards to rigorously test proposed legislation affecting an important city function: say zoning from commercial to residential. This can be a divisive issue at the best of times.

There are clearly multiple stakeholders and positions involved when it comes to zoning any community, particularly one which prides itself in striving to balance history, tradition and diversity (as reflected in the Lewes Core Values). How might we better use Connected Age collaboration tools to pose relevant questions, model processes and outcomes and project solutions that lead to balance and preservation of core values?

We’ll answer that question and further address our initial question about technology in Section B of this post. See you after the break!

 

[1] Many call these “leaders” simply politicians, but we’ve decided to emphasize (perhaps challenge?) the positive and present the function of leadership to persuade our elected officials to behave like leaders in a political and social sense, serving on behalf of the nation rather than themselves.

[2] All too often this is politically dogmatic information rather than objective insight about how new law and policy actually support perpetuating American freedom, security and opportunity.

Creating Collaborative Law, Part II

Part I of this latest series on creating opportunity through collaboration and cooperation referred to the process of coevolution among the Federalists, Anti-Federalists and a public interested in the governance of America in 1787 and beyond. Coevolution involves multiple interacting entities, typically organic when thought of in biological terms, and the behavior that results from these interactions is typically described in the concept of emergence.

In his 2002 deeply insightful review[1] of the principles of emergence, FAPITCA contributor Harold Morowitz pointed toward some of the arguments we are making in this blog. Perhaps the most important was in his chapter on “Science and Religion” where he noted, “We have to give up on the simplistic approaches. The world is far more complicated than was envisioned by earlier philosophers.” How true this is in the Connected Age!

While the entire first chapter of The Emergence of Everything is dedicated to defining emergence, we’ll sum it up here with the contrast provided by Harold: “Emergence is then the opposite of reduction. The latter tries to move from the whole to the parts… The former tries to generate the properties of the whole from an understanding of the parts.”[2]

We want to propose that almost all law and policy in our current times has been approached from the reductionist perspective. The two parties, more or less, each have their own starting assumptions as to what law and policy must be in order for our nation to succeed. This drives them to visualize the “finished” law or policy first and then reduce it through the political process to derive the components of the law. Unfortunately, in this era of our nation’s governing history, this visualization process seems to be consistent with a polarized political process that motivates party positions.

This assumption that there is only one approach, particularly when driven by the arrogance of political dogma, is akin to a scientist establishing a hypothesis and then in the experiments that follow only accepting evidence that supports the original hypothesis. This is not how our nation’s science and technology research has achieved so much…it’s also not how our nation’s best laws and policies were produced, including our Constitution. We had differences in 1787 to be sure, but a desire to collaborate and achieve on behalf the nation drove the process and the emergent result…the edges did not control our politics in that time.

Anyone suggesting today that edge-driven policies are somehow more in alignment with our historical political processes either seeks to deceive or is not fully informed of our nation’s history. In either event, such an approach hurts our nation and rejects the value of science and reasoning in leadership.

If there is a science of emergence (and there’s good evidence there is from reading Harold’s book) this science can also inform how politics in our nation can work more effectively. Emergence is a product of interactions of constituent parts that produce a higher level behavior that works…the fact that it works demonstrates emergence’s special relationship with coevolution. The two go hand-in-hand to produce a process or product that is competitive for survival and gets the job of life done. That’s what we want for good law and policy in this nation: get the job done.

We want law and policy that is collaboratively created through the interactions of competitive parties…loyal oppositions, if you will.[3] We want law and policy that starts with assumptions about what’s needed to make our nation work better and become even greater. Then we want to test assumptions in a fair, representative and collaborative way. We want to grow success through emergence, just like life has.

We do not want law and policy that starts from a dogmatic position, informed by the strict rules imposed by the edges of a political party that is incapable of or unwilling to collaborate to emerge law and policy that offers maximum access to opportunity for everyone. We do not want to reject the diversity that our new generations of Americans have to offer in this Connected Age and marginalize them from the process before they even get a chance to enjoy the quality of life we boomers inherited.

One final note on the value of thinking about law and policy as an emergent process and product: Harold Morowitz proposes that emergence is nature’s pruning function, “which extracts the actual from the possible.” If we can somehow harness the process of emergence in our nation’s development of law and policy, we are actually making the political process far more natural and adaptive (and even infused with a meaningful dose of humility). This may help us overcome the arrogance of political dogma. We may be able to prune the best from the rest and facilitate more Americans feeling included, empowered and part of our political process.

In Part III of this series, we’ll demonstrate the convergence of some of these scientifically-derived processes with the tools of the Connected Age to show how better law and policy may emerge. With the world around us becoming ever more complex and the behaviors of many interacting forces descending upon us (including both social and environmental forces), we need to be far more collaborative and yes, science-based, in developing a political culture that brings us together rather than tears us apart. That’s for next time…

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 4/11/2014.

 

[1] Morowitz, H. J., The Emergence of Everything, Oxford Press, NY, 2002.

[2] Ibid., p. 14., It’s also worth noting that the remainder of the book provides rich examples of many types of emergences that greatly inform a broad understanding of emergence as a scientific concept (even its own discipline, in some ways).

[3] At this point, most in the American Center would accept modest respect and civility if loyalty is a bridge too far for the edges.

Creating Collaborative Law, Part I

In her 1999 commentary on her very successful Outlander series, Diana Gabaldon wrote in The Outlandish Companion how she discovered and explored the world of collaborative authorship. She describes how in the mid-1980s she started using CompuServe bulletin board forums to bounce around ideas about her first book, test passages and eventually discover the agent that signed her to a contract with Delacorte Press that launched the series so successfully.

While Galbadon rightly takes credit for the ultimate success she’s enjoyed with Outlander, she also acknowledges how important it was for her to be able to leverage existing technologies to find the right environment for success with her writings.

As you may recall from last time, we introduced Wattpad. Wattpad offers an interesting way to collaborate in a very social way to write new stories and even books. The creators claim that “Wattpad is a place to discover and share stories: a social platform that connects people through words. It is a community that spans borders, interests, languages. With Wattpad, anyone can read or write on any device: phone, tablet, or computer.” This means that people who don’t even know each other can read, write and review in a social, collaborative manner.

In a top-level sense, the “final” version our nation’s constitution benefited from a similar approach. A group led by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison (the Federalists) sparred in a very open and public way with an opposing group (the Anti-Federalists) led by Patrick Henry, John Hancock and others. The two groups were using social media of the day in the form of newspaper essays, pamphlets and letters to debate in public their positions. In some cases (e.g., Massachusetts and Virginia), the public debates using published letters and essays informed state-level ratification of the original Constitution.[1]

While the Framers of our Constitution did not seek public comments on their initial “signed” creation in Philadelphia in 1787, they did in effect solicit input for what was truly a dynamic document in those early months of ratification. One could easily claim that the Bill of Rights, introduced for ratification in 1789, was an addition to the original Constitution that emerged as a result of public interactions, including a great deal of debate and disagreement!

Together, the Federalists, the Anti-Federalists and their publically-inclusive debate of both documents pointed toward a socially interactive collaboration that produced our amazingly resilient Constitution. In a non-biological way, the Federalists, Anti-Federalists and their public audiences interacted in the contemporary social networks to coevolve our Constitution and Bill of Rights, if you will.

The results were that we ended up with both the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, setting the stage for what became the framework for an adaptive form for governance that’s lasted over 225 years. While it’s not really correct to call our nation a democratic republic, that is in effect the process that guided the early evolution of the Constitution…anyone and everyone could impact its development until it was ratified by the necessary nine states in 1788 (per Article VII).[2] Through the amendment process, accommodated by the Constitution, we could continue to interact at all levels of government through existing social networks to produce more adaptations!

How might similar socially-based techniques like this work in the development of lesser law and policy today? Imagine that some of today’s most contentious laws such as health care had been developed in an inclusive, publically debated forum rather than one party essentially “ramming” it through based simply on a sufficient majority in both houses. We don’t suggest that health care reform was unnecessary but rather that it was not developed as collaboratively as it could have been. Possibly, politics could have been mitigated with a more knowledgeable public involvement and interaction.[3]

In our next piece, we’ll describe some of the mechanics involved in how such an approach could have been applied. For the time being, we wanted to draw some meaningful comparisons to the technologies of two periods (today and the late 18^th Century) and show how good things can happen when people want to get along for good reasons. Make no mistake: there was a significant distance between the two factions debating the development of the Constitution and its eventual ratification. We have to ask why we can’t apply similar philosophies of willingness to eventually agree on things that aren’t as critical as the ratification of our Constitution.

Bottom line: there is a great deal of debate ongoing in our nation about better collaboration between the two “ruling” parties to create law and policy that better reflect the Center of America. Such collaboration is at the heart of the American Promise of equal access to opportunity. In keeping with Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age, we intend to explore how new, socially-networked technologies can help get us back on the road to the same kind of collaboration that produced the marvelous Constitution that has served us since our foundations. Until next time…

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 4/4/2014.

NOTES:

[1] Beeman, R., Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution. Random House, NY, 2009.

[2] The authors acknowledge using a slight amount of literary license in titling the last post, dated 3/25/2014, “A More ‘Democratic’ Democratic Republic’”…we understand the United States is by most definitions a federal republic. Throughout our history, the function of democracy has played a limited but important role in our existence as a nation, but in the end the United States is republic form of government, with the states federated under our great Constitution.

[3] We don’t seek to dismiss blame from the “loyal opposition” – the health care law was rammed through partially because the other side wouldn’t engage, even though both parties clearly recognized that the status quo was unacceptable. Would the opposition have contributed to the process under “normal” non-polarized circumstances? Perhaps not. Should the majority have sought to put pressure on the minority until it came to the table given the sweeping universal impacts of the law? Perhaps so. History will tell us if the President’s party was right to ram healthcare legislation in any event.

A More “Democratic” Democratic Republic

Connecting to the Principles, Part 5

In the months of discussions leading up to starting Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age, we debated a lot about what to say and how to say it. As much as possible, we wanted to avoid specific political positions. We wanted to expose and discuss in detail the problems we faced as a nation when we allowed ourselves to be governed from the extreme edges, whether right or left. Also, we didn’t want to rely on one party’s interpretation of the “correct way” to govern and develop policy.

It would have been easy to criticize attempts to close the government over fringe-led positions against health-care, just as it would have been easy to criticize the very methods used to create the current health-care law. The various factions of media (red, blue, “neutral”) have all presented their versions of critiques of Congress and the Administration. Rather than piling on more criticism, we wondered about the effect these critiques had. We wanted to know how they resulted in productive change in our system of governance.

Admittedly, we haven’t introduced a lot of insights on issues like that, other than try to expose both sides of the extreme edges for what they often appear to be: power-loving men and women seeking to serve themselves before the nation. We have recalled a few instances where our nation’s leaders could actually get along and sufficiently agree to create and maintain America (e.g., the Continental Congress). We also highlighted what is possible when Americans emphasize unity, shared sacrifice and progress rather than division (e.g., the United States in World War II and NASA from the 1960’s through today’s time).

Regardless of a given party’s dogmatism and over-confidence about “being right” that pervades the fringes of at least two political parties, no one person can know everything. We can think and do the best we can, leveraging a proper dose of humility, and try to move our nation forward. And it appears we do that best when we connect with each other and keep the communication lines open. That’s why the Connected Age part of this website is integral to the blog.

With this post, we are going to start focusing on the Connected Age side of FAPITCA for a bit. In keeping with the title of this piece, we want to look at ways to create a more inclusive “democratic” way to do politics and policy development in America. We want to explore techniques and tools that bring us closer together as a nation rather than pull us further apart…ways that expand access to opportunity.

A recent article in the NY Times, Web Fiction, Serialized and Social, got us thinking about web-based governance. This is hardly new, as E-Government and Web-Based Government Services have been discussed and implemented to varying degrees in recent years. Anyone who has visited My Social Security knows how much access to information Americans can have concerning their own individual role in the economy, for example. This type of access relates to personal information and is typically subscriber-based at an individual level.

We all subscribe in different ways to the success of America, however, and most of us don’t have a lot of individual and collective input to the process…yet. Next time, we’ll tell you how we think we might enhance the opportunity we have of Fulfilling the American Promise using the Connected Age tools available to us today. We think this approach might actually minimize the extreme edges, incentivize better politics and policy development and make us all better citizens at the same time.

If you’re into homework, take a look at the kind of technology that a tool like Wattpad offers (from the NY Times article) and see what you think. Hint: look at the title of this post again! Until next time…

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 3/25/2014.

Editor’s Note: Also starting with this post, we intend to take Harold Morowitz’s advice from a couple of weeks ago and start writing shorter pieces. If the Message is the Medium as Marshal McLuhan noted, we want to help our readers get the message through a more accessible medium!

Reflections on Normandy

A few years ago, I had an epiphany of sorts that helped lead me to want to collaborate on a project like Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age. It was a beautiful spring morning in Normandy. It was brisk, but the rising sun cast a warm glow across the Normandy countryside and on Omaha Beach (yes, that Omaha Beach).

I was at the Memorial in the Normandy American Cemetery doing my morning routine before the cemetery opened. As usual, I was all alone. I walked the perimeter of the cemetery plots to make sure all was in order—grass perfect, headstones clean and no limbs or–heaven forbid, trash–and then tested the carillon to make sure it was functioning properly by playing the National Anthem of our country.

As the Star-Spangled Banner was playing, I stepped out from the basement of the Memorial, stood at attention, facing our nation’s flag and then looked down upon the beach and the seemingly endless crosses and Stars of David before me. It was just me and the remains of 9,387 Americans, many of whom died on the beach below in June, 1944.

As the sun began to illuminate the beautiful chapel which sits in the middle of the cemetery in its warm but soft yellow glow, something hit me pretty hard. It was an image of our nation, strong and incredibly magnetic, pulling my very being into its grasp even more than it ever has before. I deeply felt how my nation is so important to me. I intimately felt what it stands for and that no election or policy would ever break that bond, that allegiance, that love that I hold for America.

It was just as the Affordable Care Act was creating a stir and a few people had raised the notion of seceding from the United States based on opposition to the Act and the federal overreach they perceived it to be.  I realized then how far some Americans had gone astray.  As a native Texan, I was concerned that some people in my home state would dare to suggest secession for any reason, much less their belief that somehow America wasn’t worth holding onto and holding together. Worse, the Governor of Texas had used a bit of reckless language which was further inspiring others to feel that secession was worthy of consideration.

In the humbling presence of thousands of our war dead, I self-affirmed that there were very few things that could ever lead me to wish to seriously question my allegiance to the union that is America. These wonderful brave soldiers died on this beach in 1944 to ensure America could stand in the future, in the face of any threat, foreign or domestic. I pondered what would tip me over that very precarious edge to even hint that a state of this nation withdraw from America.

The only things that came to mind that morning were material damage to the sanctity of our elections, pervasive violations of our right to freedom of speech or religion, or perhaps significant censorship of the press or acts of violence on the part of the government to innocent citizens. Perhaps these or other concerns would raise to this level if I thought more about it…but disagreements about tax policy or healthcare?  How could anyone, particularly an elected official, make this suggestion, even in jest?  How could people even suggest that Texas be a party to ripping apart the greatest, most glorious experiment of self-governance over a difference in how to approach healthcare?

I wanted the people advocating this extremist approach to come and stand before these men and women buried in this cemetery and to explain why these soldiers’ sacrifice was great but not great enough to deal with disagreement over our nation’s healthcare system. It might seem to some that there was an expiration date on the value of the blood spilled here, but I knew that couldn’t be the case. That would mean these soldiers’ deaths would only be worthy of inspiring us for a few decades. That would mean that now that the expiration date had apparently passed; we were free to disassemble our nation over differing opinions over healthcare or other policy differences.

Perhaps the advocates of this extreme approach were just letting off steam, but as I stood overlooking that beach in Normandy, it was alarming.

Have some of our citizens lost faith in their fellow Americans to use the system our forefathers gave us? To his credit, unlike many leaders in our nation, this Governor honorably served our nation’s military as a pilot in the United States Air Force and has widely recognized the value of our “great union,” but it would be helpful if he and others could more carefully exercise their leadership role.

We need our leaders to help Americans come together and embrace the truth that our system is strong and resilient enough to temporarily indulge or tolerate inopportune policy. We must recognize, providing we maintain confidence and competiveness in our electoral system, that a policy will either succeed or fail and that free elections will either result in continuance, improvement or discontinuance of the policy.  We even survived prohibition!

To be sure, both political extremes can fall prey to this…recall the many Americans who threatened to leave America after President George W. Bush was elected?

But here’s the essence of the American approach: it’s still an experiment. Play by the rules, the “ruling party” makes its best and most considered policy on behalf of the American people, and we all see what happens. The side that is closest to right will ultimately succeed…we have elections to ensure that happens. Perhaps the Connected Age technologies we’ve been talking about in this blog will help us make more sense of the electoral process as we continue with the American experiment, but in the meantime we’re doing pretty well honoring the commitment and sacrifices so many Americans have made throughout our history.

As I looked out over our fallen American heroes, I realized that advocates of this “my way or the highway” approach must be either reckless, ignorant, or just plain “not thinking.” They fail to appreciate and respect the history of the founding of our nation. Many unfortunate policies have been adopted, but we corrected them without rendering asunder the nation (with one obvious, thankfully temporary exception).

The new American Center needs to always listen and respond to legitimate concerns, but guide extremist solutions to the margins so we can devote our energy and creativity to responsible solutions that have the potential to unite us rather than divide us. We owe this to the men and women I had the honor of safeguarding that beautiful morning in Normandy.

Originally posted by Chuck Hunt, 3/18/2014.

Editor’s Note: From time to time, we will post pieces that reflect deeply personal experiences that demonstrate why we feel it is so important to take on the effort embodied by Fulfilling the American Promise in the Connected Age. This post is one of those pieces. The comments in this post specifically discuss the author’s perspectives and are not intended to convey those of any organization with which he is affiliated.