My son and I were standing in front of one of the most inspiring Buddha statues I’ve ever seen. We were at the Bongseunsa Buddhist Temple, a serene enclave amidst the decidedly modern urban landscape that is Seoul. There was hardly a soul there as the city wasn’t quite awake and something about the environment that morning paved the way for one of my most profound interactions with my son.

Looking up at the giant Buddha, “Dad?”

“Yeah Ben.”

“What’s our culture?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I don’t really understand what makes America America.”

Kids ask the most profound questions sometimes, right?

I started giving him a standard answer—“Well, what makes America special is that we are a combination of all the cultures of the world, a place where everyone is welcome, a place that brings out the best of everyone…”—but then something truer came to me:

“Actually Ben, the culture of America is freedom.”

This is what makes us special, what provides the glue holding together our pluralistic society. 

I continued, “Ben, it is our collective belief in freedom that makes us who we are. Freedom is what we value most, what we represent to the world and to history, and what we are responsible and destined to defend in the world. To be an American is to take part in a sacred bond of freedom, where you can be what you want so long as you are prepared to do your part to protect and preserve liberty for others as well.”

Our conversation got interrupted somehow and before I knew it, we were across the street and engaged fully in the sensory overload that is the COEX mall. But I haven’t stopped thinking about this little chat and its implications for interpreting what’s been going on in my country these past months and years. 

Look, I’ve been writing and podcasting for 5 years now and, thus far, have resisted the temptation to resort to hyperbole, controversy, and outrage just to gain more subscribers and followers. As much as I’d like to spread my message further around the world, I just cannot follow the standard “going viral” playbook as it is totally against my spirit. At the same time though, I’m feeling more and more compelled to speak forth, for freedom is under attack both around the world and, alarmingly, here at home. While I still believe in rationality, civility, and reasonability, this is a time to say what you have to say. If any of what follows offends you, I’m sorry. 

The American democracy is already dying.

While many in the mainstream media are out writing stories about all the ways our democracy is being threatened, no one is standing up to tell the truth. Our democracy has been struggling for a long time already and is showing many signs of decay and impending death. It’s not just that we elected Trump to be our President…twice—although our Founders and presidents like Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and Eisenhower are absolutely rolling in their graves in utter shock at our lack of moral judgment—it’s that not enough Americans give a damn. 

Americans pay so little heed to their civic responsibilities that our democracy is suffering from a kind of mass apathy crisis. People literally don’t know what they are talking about. I’ll give you an example: I was at my tennis club the other day and overheard an hour-long conversation about whether and when Elon was going to run for President. Apparently, no one in this group of 1%ers realized that Elon can literally NEVER be the President of the United States under the current framework of our Constitution. 

If people don’t know the basics of our Constitution, how can we expect them to form an intelligent perspective on how to reform our immigration system or what kind of policies might actually help solve the housing crisis? We cannot and they don’t. I’ve found that many of the most politically engaged people I know are operating from an insufficient knowledge base. They may care, which is good, but they’ve outsourced the work of civic investigation to media outlets that are fully infected with anti-democratic business practices. 

If you think things are bad at the national level where politics have devolved into a kind of theater, take a look at what’s going on at the state and local level. Here, democracy is an absolute joke. Hardly a single person has any idea who represents them and what they care about. I’m not sure I would even characterize what’s happening in local elections as “democratic.” Yeah, there’s voting, but the way the ballots get put together and the way voters are actually making decisions on election day is highly suspect. As a result, corruption and dysfunction are rampant across the country in state and local government. 

While civic apathy is a problem across the entire socioeconomic spectrum, I’m most disappointed in the American elite. These are people who have the time, resources, and (most of the time) the intellectual horsepower to make a real contribution to the body politic, yet they are, by and large, sitting on the sidelines, engaging only sporadically, taking advantage of the situation, or, worse, feeding off the corruption. For all the CEOs and executives who got fantastically rich off the outsourcing trade over the last 30 years, I haven’t seen a single one step up and offer to help with the transition back to a more balanced economy. No, we’ll just pass along the costs of the transition back to struggling American consumers via tariffs. 

Americans are fast becoming unworthy of the freedom we possess. I think there’s a way to turn this all around but it won’t be easy. We need something akin to a revolution in sentiment—a dramatic rejection of the selfish ethos of modernity and a return to classical virtue and responsibility. How to orchestrate that without war or some extraterrestrial invasion is the question of the age. 

The ICE raids are decidedly unAmerican and must be vehemently resisted.

Whatever you think of border security and immigration policy, you have to hear me out on this.  There is a better way!  America is supposed to be the place that honors the sanctity of the individual no matter what.  This is the place of rights and laws, of doing things the right way.  Not the place of masks, unmarked cars, surprise raids, and arrests.  If we start sacrificing the principles of freedom for convenience or economics or whatever, we will become no better than all the other failed democracies of history.    

Americans who have been out cheering these raids haven’t studied enough 20^th Century history apparently.  To pick on a marginalized community, to bend the rules just this “one time” because these people are “different than us,” is the standard first move of all the would-be tyrants of modern history.

Yeah, we’ve made plenty of mistakes ourselves in the past—most notably slavery, our treatment of the Native peoples, the Japanese internment during WWII, systemic sexism and racism—but we cannot let our past moral mistakes justify a great mistake today.  I’m sympathetic to the idea of establishing more law and order to our immigration policy.  People shouldn’t just assume they can come here and live without following our rules.  But I’m convinced that if we let this go, if we accept this moral compromise, we will all come to regret. Freedom is not something that can be messed with under any circumstances.

I’m calling on all Americans to resist, not with violence or destruction of course, but in the spirit of civil disobedience as modeled by heroes like MLK and Gandhi.  We need to push our leaders to find a better way, a way that respects due process and the great ideals of our Constitutional system, a way that is actually American.

The time really has come for a new political party in America.

A few months ago, I recorded a test solo episode for the podcast all about how this is the first time in over 100 years where there is legitimate room for the emergence of a new political party. This was weeks before Elon had his big falling out with Trump and decided to form the American Party. Yes, I’ve been kicking myself for not releasing it!

What got me thinking this way was the realization that there wasn’t a politician in the country serious about policies that could actually help the American people—e.g. deficit reduction, deregulation in key industries like housing, improving fairness and access in financial products, preventing harmful business practices like gambling and certain forms of advertising, actually investing in our public schools…. I’ve long believed that there’s a silent majority of Americans interested not only in a return to civility but also to practicality and simple effectiveness. Americans basically want a government that cares, yes, but also one that works. I feel like there is this great potential to unify America around a platform of practical progress. 

Whether Elon’s new American Party is the answer remains to be seen. I know that Elon has become a polarizing figure but I have to admit that I was excited for a moment about the potential of the DOGE movement. Given our deficits, debts, and important promises (e.g. Medicare and Social Security), efficiency seems like the only possible path forward to a balanced budget. But it quickly became clear that DOGE was nothing more than theatre and was probably never intended to be anything more than a distraction. 

Elon discovered this the hard way! He also learned a lesson that, again, is pretty obvious if you study history. Getting too close to power-obsessed individuals is often a very bad idea. There’s only room for one at the top! The people who help would-be tyrants literally never survive. Just consider what happened to Hitler’s early cronies. Something like 200 of them, including close confidants like Ernst Rohm, the original architect and leader of the brownshirts (AKA the SS), were ruthlessly murdered in June and early July of 1934, in what history calls The Night of the Long Knives. And this has happened over and over again throughout history.

Anyway, Elon might be too compromised to be the face of a legitimate new party in America but I appreciate the effort. Whatever you think of the Big Beautiful Bill it’s the nail in the coffin for our fiscal situation. We’re looking at massive, massive deficits for years to come. This, by the way, is before the $50T in forecasted deficits from Social Security and Medicare in the coming decades.  Since neither Democrats nor Republicans seems to care about the deficit and the National Debt, we need a new party that does!

I encourage all Americans to take this idea seriously and question whether leaders in the establishment really have the best interests of the American people at heart.