We all know the phrase, “The pursuit of happiness.” But what does it mean in America today?
To pursue our happiness, to achieve our liberty, and indeed to find fulfillment in our lives, we must start with a moral consensus, a fundamental truth around which we all revolve.
Think of an atom. The outer field of electrons is full of chaotic activity. Electrons are rapidly orbiting and moving in a constant buzz. What contains that chaos and gives it structure? The fact that the whole chaotic cloud orbits one central nucleus.
National debates over politics and policy need a shared center of gravity like the atom. The electrons are like specific policy arguments or particular ideas— constantly moving and hard to pin down. From a distance, the swirling debates can look like barely-contained chaos. But it is the nucleus, our shared moral consensus, that lends it all shape and purpose.
If our public discourse has a shared moral nucleus, then all the second-order arguments that revolve around it have shape and purpose. But if we lack a moral consensus, the entire enterprise becomes unstable and unproductive. Without it, the “competition of ideas” upon which America was founded is lost.
Three core principles can form that kind of consensus in modern American politics:
1) Americans are still rife with aspiration, and if we build on the cornerstones of family, community, work, and conviction, then we will have the greatest chance to help the most people achieve their best lives;
2) America has historically been, and must continue to be, a force for good in the world, and it must serve as a beacon of promise;
3) All people — including the most vulnerable and marginalized among us — are dignified human assets to empower and enliven. They are not mere liabilities to manage.
If politicians, policymakers, leaders, and intellectuals can stay focused on those three principles and remember that they supersede all their downstream disagreements, we can have a robust, good-faith competition of policy ideas without mistaking politics for a holy war of good versus evil.
But if they can’t? Well, that’s what’s largely going on today. The moral consensus is absent — and so the political battles have become ends in themselves.
Note that true moral consensus is very different from the kind of monotonous centrist compromise that some say would heal all our differences. The answer is not for left and right to compromise away their core principles in the name of implementing some least-common-denominator policy agenda. (Those tend to grow government without transforming people’s lives for the better.)
This page is populated with the theories, actions, and prescriptions that we believe support the core principles upon which our moral consensus is built. We ask you to look around this site and our Facebook page, and to consider, evaluate with an open mind, and share the ideas that you believe can help you and others pursue your happiness.
Our national unity and political progress depend upon it.
