It’s not 1980 anymore. Today our nation faces two existential threats different from anything we have encountered in our history. The first is the rise of a Chinese Communist Party who, unlike the USSR, supplies the shoes on our feet, the phones in our pockets, and the apps that addict our kids.
A Preview of a Conversation at Murphy’s Taproom in Manchester: Feb 22, 6-9 pm
The second is a new hybrid of state and corporate power that is far more dangerous than big government alone. Reciting slogans memorized in 1980 will not solve these problems and may well exacerbate them.
Politics is only part of the solution. Market actors can do their part. Just over a year ago, I founded a new financial firm called Strive that uses shareholder power to guide U.S. companies to focus on value maximization instead of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. My firm refused to do business in China because we could not be loyal fiduciaries to U.S. clients with the Chinese Communist Party’s boot on our necks. Behemoths like BlackRock and Vanguard have already changed behaviors in response, and we have engaged with U.S. energy companies to deliver our shareholder mandate.
But market solutions alone cannot spawn the national revival that we need. My generation is hungry for a cause; for meaning; for identity. We lurch from one secular religion to another as part of our hunt for deeper purpose. In place of God, we worship “climate.” In place of America, we pledge allegiance to “Diversity.” In place of family, we embrace an alphabet soup of gender identities. We wrongly embrace the idea that hardship is the same thing as victimhood. If you ask people my age or younger what it means to be an American in the year 2023, you will most likely get a blank stare in response.
The Republican Party’s top priority should be to fill that generational void with an inspiring national identity that dilutes woke ideology to irrelevance. Instead of obsessing over the question of “who,” we should start answering the question of what we stand for – and why. My two recent books – Woke, Inc. and Nation of Victims – articulate that vision, and I believe deep in my bones that we can create a new movement to turn this vision into reality by focusing on the most important objectives:
Defeat Communist China. The Chinese Communist Party represents the single greatest threat to our nation. The events of recent weeks remind us of this reality. We must defeat China economically to avoid having to do so militarily. Xi Jinping’s recent missteps create an opportunity to act decisively.
Dismantle the managerial class in government. Democratic self-governance only works if the people whom we elect to run the government are the people who actually run the government. The GOP needs to prioritize repealing civil service protections and replacing managerial protections with sunset clauses instead: if the President cannot serve our country for more than 8 years, neither should most federal bureaucrats. Elon Musk recently exposed managerial corruption at Twitter, and the next U.S. President should do the same for our own federal government. This includes exposing each instance in the last five years when a government employee attempted to influence private behavior. This practice is now rampant: Climate Czar John Kerry applied pressure on America’s largest banks to enter a so-called “U.S. net-zero banking alliance.” This is wrong and must be exposed before it is fixed. The solution will likely require shutting down countless government agencies that cannot be reformed.
Restore free speech. Free speech is a foundational cornerstone of the American experiment. It is a precondition for the pursuit of truth. It is a precondition for peace: if you tell people they cannot speak, they scream. If you tell people they cannot scream, they tear things down. Today the U.S. government regularly pressures the largest and most influential technology companies to censor disfavored political speech. This subverts the classical mantra that private companies are free to decide how they operate their websites. If it’s state action in disguise, the Constitution still applies: internet companies must abide by the First Amendment if they are acting at behest of government.
Political censorship goes beyond the internet. Employers have fired countless American workers for voicing the “wrong” political views. As I have argued on the pages of The Wall Street Journal, Congress should enshrine political expression as an American civil right: if you cannot fire or deplatform someone for their race, sex, sexual orientation, or religion, then you should not be able to fire someone for their political speech either. As I have argued in Newsweek, existing civil rights laws should already protect American workers from viewpoint discrimination. The federal prohibition on religious discrimination forbids employers from forcing employees to bow down to any religion, including secular ones as defined by the Supreme Court. The modern woke agenda in much of corporate America meets the Court’s test to a tee.
Embrace merit over identity politics. After the Supreme Court (hopefully) overturns affirmative action later this year, we must eliminate the national cancer of race-based preferences in every sphere of our lives. The U.S. federal government is directly responsible for the spread of affirmative action in America by requiring government contractors and other private parties to adopt race-based quota systems. This has unleashed hell on our national spirit by creating systematic racial discrimination, and we must eliminate it.
This is just the beginning of how we can revive our missing national identity. America’s future depends on whether we succeed, and I look forward to discussing this with citizens in the Granite State on February 22. We will start with an event in Rochester that morning and finish with an event in Manchester that evening. I look forward to hearing from all of you directly!
