2025: A New Chance for Common Sense

Where Do We Go From Here?

Happy New Year! I hope 2025 is treating you well so far.

The Common Sense Papers offer a thesis about why the United States needs an independent political coalition with a national scope that innovates the political process to give citizens more voice. At the core of the argument is the idea that each generation must be able to effectively reboot the government for the needs of the day.

The 76 papers, as numbered, offer a plausible blueprint for political innovation through the creation of a superstructure, or social welfare organization, that can be built to overlay the political party system. A core feature for guiding such a reform movement is the adoption of the citizens’ assembly—a useful tool for deliberative democracy.

With the argument now fully delivered, the Common Sense Papers continue to advocate for positive political change. We need to reform, reboot, and renew various aspects of our Democratic Republic.

A new year brings a new chance for common sense to prevail in political discourse. As such, here is a partial rundown of what you can expect from the Common Sense Papers in 2025.

1. Tracking independent politics around the United States and highlighting developments that suggest a political party realignment is occurring.

2. As the biggest promised political reform agenda in a generation is just underway, we will track the progress of DOGE (the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency) in reshaping the structure of federal agencies in Washington, D.C.

3. As politics is more narrative and archetypes than science, we will continue to explain and articulate the mental models that shape our political worldviews—highlighting failed models that are trapping our system and elucidating improved models that can reshape the renewal of government of, by, and for the people with liberty and dignity for all.

4. We will talk about citizens’ assemblies and highlight their power and capacity to improve the civic structure of our representative democracy.

What we’re proposing now is just simply… a return to common sense.

—Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, January 3, 2025

I have a series of essays in mind that will be dropped over the next few months.

The first essay coming your way will attempt to recap a treacherous year in European politics. We will look at how a trifecta of political losses across Europe is manifesting realignments happening abroad. It’s not just a U.S. problem. Liberal democracies are struggling everywhere because the mental models underpinning all the similar systems are failing to deliver life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. People want economic stability, human flourishing, and abundance. We’re not there.

Next, I want to discuss the cascading narrative consensus that the 2024 election was the death knell of neoliberalism. The fall of this ideology is at the heart of the political realignment that is underway. What replaces neoliberalism? What ideology will governing political coalitions attempt to sell to the masses? Will it work? I may need several essays to develop where we are, why we are here, and where the road goes depending on which coalitions hold on to power.

Each month, I plan to drop a DOGE recap. The recap will attempt to highlight the strategy and goals of DOGE but also capture the structural roadblocks and learnings from the unfolding process.

Efforts to build an independent political movement will occur in the background. Paid subscribers to this publication will be helping to fund these efforts. Paid subscribers to the Just Citizens newsletter will be supporting the same cause, but get a different series of essays about people power, corporate power, and the modern pursuit of happiness. All free subscribers to the Common Sense Papers have been granted a 1-year free subscription to Just Citizens.

A handful of the numbered Common Sense Papers will be free to all readers. All new essays will be free to read for the first eight weeks, then paywalled for subscribers to read and comment at any time. Thanks for taking the time to think about the current political system and how we can make it better. Renewing self-government is a large-scale problem for the modern age. If we don’t govern well, we will lose the voice of democracy to other models of mass manipulation and control. Let’s not go there.

Here’s to Common Sense in 2025! Cheers!

Notes:

The Common Sense Papers are an offering by Common Sense 250, which proposes a method to realign the two-party system with the creation of a new political superstructure that circumvents the current dysfunctional duopoly. The goal is to heal political divisions and reboot the American political system for an effective federal government.