Civic Passport

David French had a really good newsletter this week. I’m pretty sure it’s gated to subscribers, but it’s about Article II of the Constitution and the ambiguity of the opening sentence: “The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America.” The problem is in the vagueness of the phrase “executive power”. It’s so open ended that we end up with a chief executive officer who can in a sense do whatever they want as long as they are executing some action, at least in theory. What David French, and others, have proposed is an amendment that rephrases that sentence to drastically limit executive authority. Instead of how it currently reads it would say “A president of the United States of America shall execute laws passed by Congress.” This makes it clear that the President is executing laws passed by Congress and all executive power (however the Supreme Court decides to interpret that) does not reside in them. This still leaves open the president as commander in chief of the armed forces and all other enumerated powers laid out in Article II. However, it restrains the President from the potentiality of doing whatever they want with laws that congress passes.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been using micro.blog as my (in)consistent blogging platform. Whenever I’ve had flashes of inspiration—what Stephen King calls “the boys downstairs”—I’ve written them down here. For me, this blog has been an outlet to process ideas, current events, books, my faith, and more.

Now I’ve decided to open this space to a wider audience—putting it out there for anyone who might want to think alongside me. This is, at its core, a blog about understanding: understanding the subjects that capture my interest, and exploring how the world works and why it works the way it does.

In the past, I’ve tried to start blogs and never stuck with them. But with micro.blog, I’ve found a platform that gives me a relatively consistent outlet. It’s simple, affordable—unlike many other platforms that charge an arm and a leg—and easy to connect with other spaces online.

Like many, I find the state of the world troubling. I don’t claim to have the answers, but I do hope to better understand current events by tracing the undercurrents behind them—and maybe even generate some ideas for addressing the challenges we face. That said, this won’t be just a politics blog (though, as those who know me can probably guess, politics will be a central theme). I’ll also write about my faith and how it has evolved, as well as reviews or reflections on books I find especially thought-provoking. For instance, I’ve written about The Dead Zone by Stephen King here and The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef here. Occasionally, I’ll dive into history, technology, or even share thoughts on movies and shows I’ve watched.

There’s a line attributed to the twentieth-century political philosopher Hannah Arendt: “Writing is an integral part of the process of understanding.” I’ve found this to be true. Along with teaching, writing forces you to test whether you truly understand something. Sometimes, I even change my mind as I write and reason through a topic. With a little brainstorming help from ChatGPT, I came up with the subtitle for this blog: “Open Borders for Curious Minds.” I like it both for the irony and the reality that my interests are too wide-ranging to be confined to a single theme.

Since I already have a backlog of posts, I plan to re-post some older pieces and expand them, though you can always find originals in the site’s archives.

Thank you for reading. I hope you’ll join me in thinking through these ideas—and maybe find a bit of entertainment along the way.

You’re a Republican, having a casual conversation at the YMCA with someone you know only as Bob, who happens to be a Democrat. You’re discussing your latest work project when the topic shifts to a recent school shooting. Bob suddenly says, “Can you believe how these Republicans won’t do anything about gun violence? They don’t care one iota about our children.”

Immediately, you feel that tightness in your gut. You tense up, defensive. Your mind begins racing through all the usual counterarguments—your critiques of Democratic policies, your beliefs about the Second Amendment, your concerns about government overreach. But this isn’t the time or place, so you steer the conversation elsewhere.

That night, though, you’re still unsettled. You find yourself texting Bob, launching into a debate about guns. The two of you go back and forth, each digging in, defending your side, growing more frustrated—and getting nowhere.

This is what Julia Galef, in The Scout Mindset, calls the soldier mindset. It’s the impulse to protect your beliefs, to marshal arguments and fend off threats to your worldview. In this mindset, you’re not trying to find the truth—you’re trying to win.

The alternative is what Galef calls the scout mindset. A scout’s job is to survey the terrain and draw the most accurate map possible. The scout is curious, open, and motivated by understanding—not by defending. In the book, Galef explores how the soldier mindset manifests through various fallacies and biases, and how adopting a scout mindset can help us see the world more clearly.

Importantly, Galef doesn’t pretend that the scout mindset is easy—or natural. We’ve evolved to be soldiers. Tribal loyalty, identity, and survival instincts push us to defend what we already believe. Letting go of that identity can feel like letting go of part of ourselves. But Galef urges us to “hold our identities lightly,” to stay open to the idea that we might be wrong, and to continually update our mental maps as we gain new information.

Though I still feel the instinct to defend what’s closest to my identity, I’ve learned to hold my beliefs more loosely. Especially in politics and religion, I try to sit with uncertainty and remain open to new evidence. That doesn’t mean I don’t have convictions—I do—but I’m more comfortable now with the idea that I might be wrong, and more interested in discovering where that might be true.

I highly recommend this book if you want to learn how to better understand the world and your place in it. In a time when so many conversations turn into battles, The Scout Mindset is a call to curiosity, humility, and intellectual courage. I think that’s vital to a life well lived. Is there a belief you hold tightly that might benefit from a scout’s curiosity?

Finished reading: The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef 📚

One of the concepts that has stuck with me from reading Thomas Sowell is the idea of the Constrained Vision versus the Unconstrained Vision. The constrained vision holds that humans are fallible and imperfect, and that this is not a fault of society but inherent in individuals. It also recognizes that scarcity is a fundamental feature of the world, and because of the limits of both the world and human nature, there are no permanent solutions to society’s problems — only tradeoffs. This means society will never be perfected, but it can be improved through various institutional arrangements.

The constrained vision manifests on both the left and the right. For example, some progressives advocate for a more generous welfare state but recognize the risks of over-taxation or creating dependency — that’s a constrained view. Others push for climate action while openly grappling with the economic tradeoffs involved.

The unconstrained vision is more utopian. It sees people as perfectible and holds that society and institutions are primarily to blame for what ails us. With the right arrangement of policies, we could eventually achieve something like heaven on earth. On the left, people might argue that poverty can be eliminated through government programs, educational reform, and taxing the wealthy, or that climate change can be solved without real tradeoffs. On the right, some conservatives believe illegal immigration can be solved without confronting economic tradeoffs; Christian nationalists believe imposing biblical law would create a godly nation; and some libertarians hold an unconstrained vision that free markets can solve all of society’s problems if only government would get out of the way.

As these examples show, the unconstrained vision can be found on both the left and the right. Whether it’s woke progressives or MAGA populists, the unconstrained vision can be seductive because it allows for simple rhetoric and appealing beliefs. We’re told we don’t need to make tradeoffs between economic growth and addressing climate change, or balance incentives when managing income redistribution and taxes.

By contrast, the constrained vision is more tragic because it accepts that we can’t permanently solve these problems — or at least, we can’t solve one problem without creating others or sacrificing something else. For instance, we might imagine that redistributing the wealth of billionaires would end poverty. But doing so would create other problems — economic, political, and social — which would, in turn, generate new challenges and tradeoffs.

The two-visions model isn’t perfect. Sometimes, the two seem to blend. For example, in the civil rights movement, there was often a rhetorical unconstrained vision, but the chief accomplishments came from working within the system to achieve the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. This shows that the constrained vision can actually work to make improvements and expand rights for more people.

While the model has limits — as all models do, since it’s a simplification of reality — it provides a useful tool for analyzing political movements, rhetoric, and ideology. Through this framework, we can look under the hood to better understand those on the other side, perhaps seeing more common ground than we might have recognized, and also seeing how we might better negotiate political compromises.

Finally, as someone who sees politics through the lens of the constrained vision, it has kept me humble by reminding me that there are no permanent solutions, only tradeoffs — and almost anytime you hear someone claiming otherwise, they are probably trying to sell you a magic potion.

Update: I wanted to provide a link for this book. You can purchase it on Amazon here

NPR’s Steven Inskeep: “If I understand this correctly, the US president has launched a trade war against the world, believes he can force the EU and China to meet his terms, is determined to annex Canada and Greenland, but is powerless before the sovereign might of El Salvador. Is that it?”

The Constitution of the United States clearly lays out that due process applies to “all persons”, not just citizens. The Trump administration is clearly trying to challenge that with Abrego Garcia case as they sent him, a legal resident, to a prison in El Salvador alleging that he is a member of a Venezuelan gang without giving him due process. Aside from whether or not there is evdience to substantiate that, it doesn’t matter because he is owed his time in court. The Trump administration clearly does not care even when instructed by courts at multiple levels to return him. Just today the president of El Salvador stated that, after a meeting with Trump at the White House, that he would not send back Mr. Garcia.

This is clearly a test case to see what Mr. Trump can get away with, and if the Supreme Court does not stand up to this then we are in trouble as a country. Equal protection of the law applies to everyone within the borders of the United States, not just those who are citizens of the U.S. If that truly goes away, then who can spare us from the arbitrary whims of whatever man or woman happens to occupy the presidency? We already have a president who is essentially immune from facing prosecution. Congress and the courts need to step it up, or the consequences will be dire. Congress should pass an immigration reform law that will both secure the border, and give some protections to people who are here legally, and for those who are undocumented, send them to the back of the line so they wait their turn along with those trying to get in legally. We should also be making it easier to enter the country legally as we need more people, not less. Also, making it easier to enter the coutnry legally and more difficult to enter illegally will incentivize people outside to wait for legal entrance. The Courts must speak firmly to bind the President to adhering to the rule of law and follow due process. If the President refuses, then Congress has the duty to impeach Trump and remove him from office.

I wish I could nuance this and offer something to assuage the alarm, but in this instance, I don’t see much nuance here. Either due process and equal protection apply to all, or they apply to none.

This week Trump implemented his tariffs universally at 10% and much higher tariffs than that on some countries in particular. Although a few Republicans protested, the vast majority have been deathly silent. The party that claimed to stand for economic freedom has been completely silenced as they have been bound to their leader. I take no delight in this as I wasa a Republican because I believed (and still do) in the freedom of the individual to pursue their lot in life as much as possible as they see fit in both the economic and civic spheres of life. It became apparent several years ago that the GOP had abandoned these commitments, and has wholly embraced power to implement reactionary policies and just plain old authoritarianism.

Free trade is a critical part of economic freedom. Not only does it tie the world together in largely peaceful ways, it is the freedom of people to purchase goods and services from wherever they wish to. It also allows different countries to more efficiently allocate resources to industries that it has a higher degree of ability to specialize in. To be a service based economy is not a bad thing, and America makes a lot of things, but it is mostly high-end things like jets, and other expensive goods. We should not wish to go back to making textiles and paper. We aren’t getting screwed over by other countries because of trade, but we are richer overall for the trade environment we have lived in for 80 years. As Tyler Cowen has noted, we will be poorer and have a future with few and more expensive choices. We did this to ourselves.

Just finished reading this book today. I’m working through three books on the Sermon on the Mount, and found this to be very insightful in coming at it from a Jewish perspective. The next book is by Richard Rohr. Will update after!

Finished reading: Sermon on the Mount by Amy-Jill Levine 📚

I finally finished my first book of the year. It’s been a busy year so far and on top of that busyness, I’ve piled too many substack and RSS subscriptions that have kept me more occupied than I would ideally like. I’ve been trying to rethink my intake of those forms of reading to make more space for books and I’m aiming to achieve a better balance there.

The book I did finish is one I started before the election actually. It was placed on pause for a while and then I was able to take it up again to be able to mark it complete. That book is “The Dead Zone” by Stephen King. “The Dead Zone” asks the question, what if someone woke up from a coma and was able to see the future, but only when they touch another person or something someone had touched? In my opinion, the what if question is the best way to read a Stephen King story. He himself has said in his book On Writing that that is how he conceives of ideas for his stories. What if a young teenager who was picked on also had powers of telekinesis? What if there was a cemetery that could bring someone back to life? What if there was a new superflu that raged across the world leaving only a handful of survivors who were immune?

In “The Dead Zone” Johnny Smith is a teacher who drops off his date and her home and then proceeds to get into a car accident and spends five years in a coma. The story spans the decade of the 1970’s and in the book we see Johnny come to grips with a girlfriend that got married, a vietnam war that came to an end, a president that was disgraced and resigned due to watergate, and much more. He also has a mother who goes slightly crazy with fundamentalist religion, but could also have her own slight powers of prophecy.

Johnny goes on to become a sensation who can peer into peoples' futures and prevent tragedy from happening. On occasions he can also see into a person’s past or pressent. At the same time that this is happening, there is a serial killer in the town of Castle Rock, Maine and a ruthless and charismatic politician who is rising in a house district in New Hampshire. Johnny has to navigate these and other difficulties that no one else would need to deal with, and him paying a heavy cost for doing so.

It’s actually one of his deeper books in my opinion. We get to see Stephen King work out what exactly it would do to someone who has these powers. What kind of toll would tha take on their emotional health, their physical health, and their relationships? There are some minor holes that one can identify in the logic of the story and like many of his books, he has a little bit of trouble sticking the ending, but overall to me this is an enjoyable read and I recommend it to anyone who wants a good mysterious and thrilling yarn.