Welcome to Renew the Republic
Renew the Republic is a place to discuss how we fix America.
Renew the Republic is a place to discuss how we fix America.
The twentieth-century frameworks supporting our government, politics, economy, and society are all unraveling amid a storm of change. I’m interested in building what comes next to replace what’s tumbling down.
Too many people are still invested in winning the politics of the collapse. They obsess over winning battles for past-their-prime ideas like mid-century conservatism and liberalism. They desperately try to hold together fraying political coalitions. They put patches on a disintegrating political world so it can get through one more year.
I’m not interested in salvaging an outdated past. I’m interested in reinventing America for the future.
What I know is we need fresh frameworks for everything: politics, government, institutions, business, and society. We’re at the dawn of a new era of history, one with shifting circumstances and uncertain rules. To thrive in this bewildering new world, America must change. It must reinvent itself with fresh ideas. That’s how we launch a vibrant era of progress, building, renewal, and reform.
We need a movement of ideas.
I know from my work on political history and realignments this is the only path to political change that has ever worked. When the American republic inevitably grows stagnant, inefficient, broken, and corrupt, it must reinvent itself. These reinventions never come top-down from parties, candidates, or powerbrokers scrambling to restore the broken system. They come bottom-up from daring movements of thinkers and doers willing to view the world with fresh eyes, abandon the orthodoxies of the past, find new allies, and build new things. These innovative intellectuals, thinkers, writers, and public entrepreneurs invent new ideas and unleash them into the public square, sparking national renewal and reform.
How can we build this kind of movement to reinvent America? How do we inject the bold and relevant new ideas we need into the bloodstream of America?
What is behind the great crisis now tearing us apart that we must now solve? Why is America so angry and chaotic? Why are our institutions broken? What has shattered everybody’s trust? Why do young people worry so much about their futures? What has caused this total collapse in faith in democracy, our republic, and America?
What would a reinvented America even look like and how do we get there from here?
As I ponder these questions, I’ll be sharing my thoughts here at Renew the Republic. This will be a place to explore concepts, test ideas, get feedback, and hopefully build a community interested in national renewal and reform.
I’ll be publishing twice a week, on Tuesday and Friday. For the moment, nothing is paywalled but I hope you’ll still subscribe. Your support and contributions are essential to grow the publication and advance our common cause. As Renew the Republic grows, I’ll be adding content for subscribers only.
One day, I hope Renew the Republic can grow from a Substack with one founding writer into something more. I envision it becoming a hub for innovative minds engaged in the project of reinventing America. I see it growing into a community with a stable of brilliant writers and contributors, and into an organization committed to bringing about reform. I imagine a network for bold thinkers, a think tank for new policies, a forum for innovation, and an engine to inject fresh ideas into the world.
I hope you’ll subscribe and contribute to the project.
For now, we humbly start here, thinking aloud and dreaming of new ideas. I hope you’ll engage, share ideas, and join our movement to rebuild America into its next iteration, one even better, stronger, fairer, more just, and more vibrant than the last.
Frank