Constrained Power

November 8, 2026November 7, 2026Leave a comment

November 8, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

For several weeks, I have explored the dynamic between government and its citizens. Since the founding of this country, there has been a struggle to define the role of government and its limits. This week I examine libertarianism, an ideology that seeks to minimize the role of government in individual lives.

Republic v Democracy

There are two visions of government. The democratic version envisions government as a collection of politicians acting as agents who implement the will of the majority, the principal in this principal-agent dynamic. The republican vision recognizes the danger inherent in majority rule. In a constitutional republic, a set of rules, rights and responsibilities protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority. The constitution, not an electoral majority, acts as the principal.

Voters elect those politicians whom they think will enact their understanding of the constitution. Are politicians trustworthy agents? They have competing interests, including their own self-interest. Ideally, politicians should have only enough power to manage collective action problems like national defense, internal order, the administration of law and the building of common infrastructure.

Free At Last

In 1776, political leaders in the northern and southern colonies declared independence from British rule and created a compact called the Articles of Confederation. Under the Articles, each state had a high degree of autonomy and sovereignty. The federal government had no empowering legislation and each state, regardless of size or population, had the power to veto amendments to the Articles.

The Articles of Confederation created a compact between the thirteen states but not a union. During the seven year war for independence, the states did not honor their commitments to fund the Continental Army led by George Washington. In 1781, twelve states approved an amendment to give the federal government power to levy and collect taxes. Rhode Island, with less than 2% of the national population (Source), killed the amendment (Source). A requirement for unanimous consent hobbles an institution that tries to manage collective action problems. The newly formed nation needed a more effective structure.

Collective Action Problems

In the late 18^th century, small farmers formed the majority of the population in the United States. Collective action problems were local, the building of a bridge across a river or the maintenance of roads during the harvest season. As small businesses with thin profit margins, farmers were keenly aware of the tradeoffs in managing these kind of problems. Higher taxes might pay for a bridge that would make it easier to get crops to market, but if higher taxes eliminated most of those slim profits, what was the point in building the bridge?

Businesses also solve a collective action problem by connecting the links in the supply chain. In the south, large landowners exported their cash crops to distant regional markets and other countries. In the north, small farmers and craft businesses lobbied for tariffs to protect them from large European exporters. In the south, large agricultural exporters lobbied against tariffs that made their products less competitive.

For this reason, James Madison, a chief architect of the Constitution, worried about competing regional interests, not political parties. Section 3 of Article 1 of the Constitution explicitly provided for the election of Senators by state legislatures. Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution left it up to the states to choose the electors in the Electoral College who chose the President. Most of the states did not choose their electors by popular vote (Source). In the first decades of the country’s founding, the people, the majority, had access to national government only through their state legislatures and House representatives. The power of the Executive branch was removed from the populist sentiments of the majority.

As the population urbanized in the 19th and 20th century, collective action problems increased to include public health and schools among other issues. In urban areas the solutions to these problems were expensive. Rural residents did not want to pay the taxes for improvements that would do little to better their lives. In many states, rural residents retained their political hold on state legislatures by ignoring census data. Libertarian principles align with these traditional rural sentiments. They believe that businesses are more effective than governments in managing collective action problems.

Atlas Shrugged

In Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, a group of powerful businessmen withdrew from a socialistic society that nationalized several key industries, including the railroads. The economy and society began to collapse under the weight of political patronage and the ideological idiocy of socialism. Ayn Rand had grown up in the Soviet Union until she was a teenager. The novel is a diatribe against centralized government under Communist rule.

The ideas and sentiments in the book are a foundation of Libertarian ideology. The rightful bounds of government power are national defense, the maintenance of domestic order and the preservation of private property. Domestically, government should adjudicate disputes between people. Let businesses and the marketplace manage other problems. Legitimate government institutions are the armed forces, the police and courts. No to Social Security. No to public education and welfare programs championed by those who believe in socialist government. What should be the limits of government? Not all Libertarians agree.

Socialist Compassion

Socialist societies provide a stark contrast to the Libertarian vision. In socialist societies, government acts as an insurance company, a custodial institution that protects its citizens from the inequalities of circumstance, heritage, and the talents each of us is born with. In that framework, citizens are charges to be cared for and guided by the elites who create policies and institutions for their benefit.

Those who advocate for a socialist government may be motivated by charitable feelings, but Libertarians regard those sentiments as oppressive measures by a political elite who impose their values, which they regard as superior, on others. Under the guise of compassion, a select few in society control the choices and property of the many. Compassionate aims are achieved through constraint of individual choice.

Elite v Elite

While Libertarians might champion their principles as non-elitist, the movement attracts several prominent elites. Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are both billionaires with a pioneer mentality. With little planning or research into government structures, Elon Musk thought he could cut out the dead wood in government with a chainsaw. He did little more than demonstrate his hubris and ignorance. This was the man whose driving vision helped create SpaceX and Tesla? Was he little more than an arrogant showman?

Thiel is a former founder of PayPal and the Chairman of Palantir, a data analytics company. Both SpaceX and Palantir rely on government contracts and funding, yet advocate a limited role for government. Evidently, the role of government includes space exploration (SpaceX) and assisting government surveillance of its citizens (Palantir). Political ideologies spring from the printed page but are voiced by people who must bargain with economic and financial realities.

Conclusion

The Libertarian Party first nominated a Presidential candidate in 1972. In more than 50 years, no candidate has attracted more than a sliver of the vote. Does than mean that the public has rejected the party’s principles? I don’t think so. Next week I want to explore how these principles of a limited government play a large role in policymaking. Also, how private industry aggravates common action problems as it tries to manage them. Hope to see you then.

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Photo by Emily Richards on Unsplash

Machiavelli Niccolò. (1983). The Discourses. (B. Richardson & L. J. Walker, Trans., B. Crick, Ed.). Penguin Books.

Governance Without Corruption

November 1, 2026October 29, 20261 Comment

November 1, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

For the past few weeks, I have looked at the boundaries between individuals and government. We often think of government as a set of institutions ordered by a regime of laws, values and principles. Yes, government is an apparatus, but it is peopled by individuals who act within the influence of that culture, that regime. They are not automatons or puppets subject to the manipulation of masters behind the curtain. They act with intention.

Poor Governance

People have long expressed a lack of confidence in Congress. Gallup has long sampled Congressional approval among Americans. Only during the late 1990s and early 2000s did Congressional approval rise above 50%. Recently, Gallup’s results have reached all time lows near 10% approval (Source).

In The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, Jill Lepore notes that “nearly two in five people surveyed across seventy countries agree with the statement, ‘AI could make better decisions on my behalf than my government representatives’” (p. 8). People worry about poor governance compounded by corruption.

A Government by the People

At the dedication ceremony following the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War, Lincoln wrote “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” (Source). He delivered that speech before the passage of the 14^th Amendment, which guaranteed equal protection to all persons within the country (Source). In 1886, a note in a Supreme Court case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co., the Supreme Court recognized a limited personhood for corporations. Roscoe Conkling, the lawyer for Southern Pacific, informed the justices that the 14^th Amendment’s definition of “persons” included corporations.

Conkling had served as a Representative, a Senator and had turned down a nomination to be on the Supreme Court. Having been one of the drafters of the 14^th Amendment, the justices on the court took him at his word. He may have been lying to serve the best interests of his client, the railroad (Source). He did not recognize the right of judicial review, that the court had the final say on an issue, so he might have excused his falsehood (Source).

In 1978, a divided court held that corporations had a First Amendment right to spend money on state ballot issues. In the 2010 Citizens United case, the court narrowly decided that corporations could spend money on candidates as well as issues, and at all levels (Source). Today, people feel that we do not have government by the people, nor for the people. We have government by big corporations, for big corporations. A well-intentioned falsehood in an 1886 case may have opened the door for rule by a corporate oligarchy. The process certainly invites corruption.

Corruption

Lord Acton was a 19^th century English politician, writer and historian who penned the often quoted observation, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Source). Corruption is the use of a public institution for private gain. Individuals divert public benefits and funding to themselves, their family and friends. Congress is a good example. Why do members of Congress amass such fortunes within a decade of being elected?

Jonathan Klick, a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, examined the growth in wealth of members of the House in the decade 2004-2014. Their average wealth grew seven times that of the top 5% of Americans on the income ladder. How did they outperform a lot of smart and talented people? Because House members are not required to reveal many details, Klick did not presume to explain the causes of that growth. Test takers achieve such extraordinary results by having access to the answers, hiring someone talented and knowledgeable to take the test, or having the ability to change the reported results. We can presume that there is some factor that gives members of Congress a financial edge.

The Role of Government

In third world countries with a weak private sector, government jobs offer people a chance at a middle class lifestyle. Winning candidates secure jobs for their family and friends. The purpose of government is to serve those in power who use government institutions to stay in power. It is a far cry from Lincoln’s vision as he articulated in the Gettysburg Address, but it was standard practice in 19^th century America.

When President Andrew Jackson took office in 1829, he embraced the system of patronage and elevated it to a noble philosophy. He believed in a spoils system that, much like some third world countries today, reward the majority with jobs and benefits (Source).

Early in the course of the Civil War, the Union Army was plagued by a corrupt supply chain that sold inferior uniforms and horses to the army at exorbitant profits. In The First Tycoon, a biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt, T.J. Stiles recounts when President Lincoln approached Vanderbilt, a man known for getting things done, and offered him the post of Secretary of the Army. Vanderbilt turned down the position but did procure better quality goods at a fair price. Later, Vanderbilt chanced his fortune against the powerful Tammany Hall political machine that controlled rail transport in New York. Despite massive corruption and stock market manipulation by the machine, Vanderbilt busted the political monopoly that exercised an iron control on rail construction and access.

Private Property

A cornerstone of liberal democracy is the concept of private property. In 17^th century Britain, a civil war erupted between monarchists, those loyal to the king and the power of the king, and Parliamentarians, those loyal to the Parliament as representatives of the people’s will. Robert Filmer, a noted monarchist, argued that the right to property comes from God through the King. John Locke argued that the right to property comes directly from God. When God drove Adam and Eve out of the garden, He told the couple they would have to work the land for their survival. Therefore, those who cultivate the land add value to the land and “thereby makes it his property” (PDF link, p. 116). The state merely recognizes that title.

In later centuries, the American colonists used this reasoning to deny that Indians had any right to the land since they did not improve it. In the plains states, 19^th century settlers sometimes squatted on land in the hopes that the government would take the land from the Indians and sell it to settlers at a cheap price. Sometimes it did, sometimes not.

To encourage western expansion, railroads were given vast tracts of land in the plains and western states, and most of it was Indian land as acknowledged in earlier treaties. When the railroads were done building, they sold to the settlers at rates that were many times what the railroads had paid for the land. The Ingalls family, of Little House on the Prairie fame, were squatters on Osage Indian land in the Kansas territory. When the government did not follow through, the Ingalls had to move (Source).

In South Dakota, the Sioux Indians were not so lucky. In 1868, the Treaty of Fort Laramie set aside portions of South Dakota, Montana and Nebraska as a Sioux reservation inhabited by several Indian tribes. Six years later, gold was discovered in the Black Hills of South Dakota. A rush of prospectors overwhelmed Indian resistance and feeble government attempts to thwart the rush.

A country preserves its sovereignty by retaining the right to all land within its borders. Throughout the western states, the federal government claims ownership of most of the land, then leases it out for ranching and mining. The Fifth Amendment acknowledges the concept of private property when it states, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” There must be an exchange. However, the amendment assumes that any taking of property by government is for “public use.” The country’s history is a litany of takings for private gain supposedly in advancement of a public cause like western expansion.

Conclusion

Knowing that government institutions are not made of pure virtue and run by people with a keen interest in their own self-interest, Libertarians have long sought to curb the scope of government. Next week I will explore the consequential people who are devoted to the Libertarian cause. Hope to see you then.

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Photo by The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Unsplash

Small white dog looking at the camera from behind some leaves

Big Dog, Little Dog

October 25, 2026October 19, 2026Leave a comment

October 25, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

Last week I looked at the persistent controversies within generations alive at the same time. This week, I want to explore the continuing tension between government institutions and the individuals who are subject to the jurisdiction of those institutions. Are we living in a nation of liberal principles or a dog park where the big dog, government, intimidates the little dogs?

Private Property

When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, residents of Russia were introduced to private property for the first time in 500 years. Just as the feudal system was weakening in the late 15^th century, Ivan the Great had consolidated the Principality of Russia. Before then, many peasants were used to moving every three years in a system of slash and burn agriculture. The introduction of a feudal system enabled large estate owners to tie their workers to the land they owned. By the time of the American Declaration of Independence, the Russian feudal system had evolved into a system of near slavery. As the American Civil War erupted in 1861, Czar Alexander II emancipated the privately owned serfs of Russia (Source).

Why do nations permit individuals to own property? The majority of wealth held by Americans is in their home equity. Governments could lease those homes out to families and retain the implied wealth. In an agricultural society, the feudal lords used their serfs to farm the land. In our urban society, local governments farm people, not land. Wait, what?

This is a weekly exploration, an unraveling of thought threads so I am going to follow this one. Homeowners work for a variety of employers and earn income. Local governments get more in taxes per acre of land if people rather than crops live on the land. Taxing people is more lucrative than taxing crops. At the end of this essay, I have included the math on owning a home.

We may point to the 5^th Amendment as an acknowledgment of the supremacy of private property but the 5^th Amendment prohibits governments only from taking an individual’s property without just compensation. A government’s right to someone property is still supreme.

Cultivated Minds

Farming people requires more government investment per acre, similar to hydroponic farming. Crowding more people into an acre of land, requires more thorough weed control and cultivation. For weed control, governments use vaccines and other public health measures to check the spread of communicable diseases. The chief cultivation measure is public education.

As I noted two weeks ago, almost half of people lived on farms near the turn of the century. In 1900, only 10% of children attended high school. By 1930, only 25% lived on farms (Source). In those three decades, the percentage of children attending high school jumped from 10% to 50%. By 1940, it was almost 75% (Source). A continuing source of friction and resentment between parents and government is the idea of compulsory education. Parents, particularly those with a Biblical view of authority, regard the parents as the supreme authority over their children’s upbringing, not the government.

Education plays a role similar to fertilizer, weed control and cultivation. How so? A better educated workforce earns more income and can pay higher taxes. Public education socializes children at an early age and helps create a shared culture. This helps reduce violence among families from different cultural backgrounds who are tightly packed into dense urban areas. This

In 2025, the USDA estimated that fertilizer costs were about 40 – 45% of total costs for wheat and corn farmers (Source). The largest share of property taxes funds the local school district (Source – Power Schools). In my Colorado county, 49% of the tax is dedicated to various school funds.

In any community there are individuals who do not like to be “farmed.” Government institutions and programs try to standardize us the way that carrots, each of which is unique, is shaped, cut and polished to a standard baby-cut 2” length (Source).

Private schools can provide more rigorous educational standards or a learning culture that parents feel is more nourishing for their children. Naturally, they want their private choice to be funded with public dollars. If a state spent $10,000 per child on K-12 education, then a parent could apply a voucher for that amount to a private school. Currently, two-thirds of states have some form of school voucher but few have a truly universal voucher program that allows any family to fund a private school choice with public funds (Source).

Conclusion

In some respects governments act like feudal lords. A core tenet of liberal theory, first clearly articulated by the 17^th century philosopher John Locke, is that people have natural rights. In a democracy or republic, government institutions are formed with the direct or indirect will of the people. Therefore, those institutions would also have natural rights. Big dog v. little dog and the big dog wins.

Next week I want to explore a fundamental libertarian belief that the scope of legitimate government power is very limited. In more than four decades, the Libertarian Party barely attracts any voter support. Is it an overly idealistic philosophy that rests more on attitude than consistent workable principles?

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Photo by Alvan Nee on Unsplash

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Homeowner Math: Consider a $500,000 home with a $400,000 mortgage and an annual property tax bill of $3000. In the first ten years of that mortgage, the amount of the mortgage payment that is applied to principal is less than the annual property tax bill.

Over decades, the annual price appreciation of homes has been about 4% so that a home’s price doubles in about 18 years. Let’s call it 20 years to make the math a bit easier. After 20 years, the value of that $500,000 home will have doubled to $1 million. The homeowner still owes $222K on the mortgage after paying $600K over that time, so the net equity is $778K.

Let’s say the homeowner has made $78K in improvements to make the math easier. If the house sold for $1 million after fees, the capital gain would be $700K. If the owners are a couple, they would have a $500K exclusion and a taxable gain of $200. Let’s say the capital gains tax rate is 15%, or $30000.

In those twenty years, the homeowner has paid the original $100K down, $600K in mortgage payments, $78K in improvements, $90K in property taxes and $30K in income taxes for a total of almost $900K. They have received the use of the house for 20 years and have netted $100K. However, that $100K is worth only $50K in buying power. Was the homeowner truly the landlord?

Persistent Controversies

October 18, 2026October 16, 2026Leave a comment

October 18, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

Last week I looked at the changing sensibilities between generations. This week I want to explore the separate sensibilities within a generation or proximate generations. The culture and living environments are roughly similar, yet there are persistent ideological controversies that do not remain settled.

Different Lives

In the 1920s urban residents had electricity, some form of central heating, refrigeration, and a telephone or access to one. They had their feet firmly planted in the 20^th century. The McFarland Historical Society, located in a suburb of the capital Madison, Wisconsin features an urban 1920s Kitchen (Source – McFarland Historical Society).

Most rural folks had few, if any, of these conveniences. My great uncle, living in a farm community outside of Dallas, Texas, wrote in his autobiography of getting electricity to his home. He removed the gas engine out of the washing machine and installed an electric motor. No longer having to worry about fumes, he installed the washing machine inside the house. The family still filled up the machine with buckets of water from a hand pump.

Many city people enjoyed paved roads. On a trip across Texas, my uncle and his friend pulled a cow on a trailer behind their car. When they got stuck on a dirt road, they hitched up the cow who pulled them to firmer ground.

Life is punctuated by a series of problems to be solved. Rural folks relied on their wits, their family, friends, and neighbors solve daily problems. Oops, let’s not forget the cow and other farm animals. Solutions were local. In rural communities where the laws were few, people relied on norms of behavior.

Those who lived in the city depended on centralized systems. A family’s safety was entrusted to strangers, city leaders and bureaucrats who managed the water, sewer, gas and electrical systems. People from the countryside found themselves burdened with unfamiliar laws and regulations. City living tested the limits of individual freedom and autonomy.

Individual Autonomy

As people moved out of farms and in close proximity with other people, the risk of getting communicable diseases skyrocketed. Public schooling gathered together children of similar ages with immature immune systems. In the 19^th century, schools began requiring smallpox vaccinations for school children. As more schools required vaccinations there were several court challenges. In 1922, the Supreme Court issued the second of two decisions affirming that states had the constitutional authority to make such requirements (Source).

What was the extent of in loco parentis? Centuries earlier, English common law had established this principle, that parents delegated their duties of care, authority and discipline to schools. In past centuries, the schools were private and attendance was voluntary. When states passed laws mandating school attendance, parents no longer had a choice in delegating their authority to schools. Law professor Susan Stuart has argued that the principle in loco parentis should be “put out of its misery (Source – pdf). What is the boundary of authority between the state or local jurisdiction and the family? Judicial opinions do not resolve these contentious issues.

Today, childhood vaccines expose children to weakened pathogens that cause these killing diseases. A child’s immune system learns the biological signatures of these viruses and bacteria and is able to mount a defense when encountering the real pathogen. In a very small percentage of children, their immune system overreacts to the weakened pathogen and provokes long term consequences. Is the vaccine or the genetic code of the child’s immune system at fault? We are a nation of lawyers practiced at playing the blame game.

A Nation of Laws

Americans have long prided themselves on the tradition that we are a nation of laws. What exactly are those laws? The Supreme Court is the final arbiter of legal interpretation but a court decision does not resolve a contentious issue. Roger Taney was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who issued the Dred Scott decision, aiming to settle the question of slavery for all time. Negro slaves were not citizens and had no federal constitutional protections (Source). Justice John McLean issued a strong dissent, insisting that birthright citizenship applied to all, black or white (Foner, 2019, p. 14).

Dred Scott did settle an issue. People in the northern states realized that a civil war, long threatened but delayed by compromise for several decades, was inevitable. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court rejected an argument from the Trump administration that birthright citizenship did not apply to all. Some issues stay unresolved, waiting to rise to the surface when circumstances allow.

Boundaries

A common theme in persistent controversies is the difficulty of drawing a boundary line between individual liberty and autonomy, and government authority. The courts try to find a balance between competing concerns but no court decision can establish a balance that satisfies most people in the country. Here are just a few persistent controversies out of the many that have long endured in our society.

Abortion

On the issue of abortion, a woman has a right to bodily autonomy but the state has an obligation to protect human life. There is a clash of certainties. Those who are against abortion profess a certainty in an eternal authority that determines the start of a human life. Those who are pro-choice carry the certainty that no one is entitled to impose their religious beliefs on others.

Gun Ownership

Many people understand this issue as a conflict between the government’s duty to safeguard public safety and an individual’s right to self-defense. Authorities or a jury must judge whether a threat warranted the use of a firearm to commit injury or death. What is the balance between individual autonomy and government authority?

Capital Punishment

Is capital punishment inherently a cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment? What is the extent of a state’s authority? Does a state have the moral authority to execute prisoners who no longer pose a threat to public safety?

Euthanasia

Before the 1970s, there was little relief for the dying. They spent their last days in a hospital with tubes sticking out of them. Hospital personnel knew the end was inevitable but they were legally bound to treat and stabilize all their patients, whether dying or not. Conventional medical practice did not make the comfort of a dying patient – called palliative care – a priority. Medical personnel may have felt compassion for their dying patients but were subject to the same scrutiny of care as with their other patients. Last week I wrote about my grandfather and how he had started working at six years old in a farming community. Needing round the clock care, he spent his last days in an institution, kept alive while dying.

In 1969, psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross published On Death and Dying, making the public aware of the emotional and physical burden of conventional medical care on those who were terminally ill and their families. In 1974, Florence Wald helped found Connecticut Hospice, the first of its kind in America (Source). In 1982, Congress and President Reagan added hospice to the list of Medicare benefits as a temporary program, then made the benefit permanent in 1986. A study involving more than 600 hospice doctors conducted in 2012 revealed that there is a minority of people that still misconstrue common palliative care as euthanasia (Source). Neither laws nor court decisions change minds or perceptions.

Next week

Many persistent controversies involve clashes between individuals and government. We guard our autonomy and freedom against the authority and greater capacity of a government institution, the Leviathan of law and order. Next week I want to explore this topic further. How do we imbue government institutions with enough capacity to protect civil order while protecting the rights and freedoms of the citizens who live within the bounds of that civil authority. Hope to see you next week!

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Photo by Chris Sabor on Unsplash

Foner, E. (2019). The second founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction remade the Constitution. W. W. Norton & Company.

Hughes, R. (1987). The fatal shore: The epic of Australia’s founding. Alfred A. Knopf.

Changing Sensibilities

October 11, 2026October 8, 2026Leave a comment

October 11, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

Last week I explored the burden that we pass to succeeding generations. I discussed slavery and the underlying racial bias that is a continuing burden in America. This week I want to explore our changing perceptions of error, our changing values and sensibilities.

Child Labor

My grandfather grew up in a farming community near the end of the 19^th century. As a six year old he was expected to work. In Chapter 8 of his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith discusses a contemporary analysis of the economics of child labor. In America, where there was a shortage of labor, he noted that “Labor is so well rewarded that a numerous family of children…is a source of opulence and prosperity to the parents.”

In England, Smith observed that there was an oversupply of labor. Many convicted for petty crimes were banished to Australia as a method of reducing the supply of workers (Hughes, 1987). Large families in Scotland, where wages were low and poverty was acute, struggled to feed and clothe their children. Smith cited the example of one woman with twenty children who was unable to provide her children with the minimum sustenance. The result? Only two survived.

Smith’s analysis? In an environment where laborers must compete fiercely with each other, the level of wages depends more on the character of the employers rather than the skills of workers or seasonal changes in demand for labor. His recommendation? Governments should regulate wages so that parents could provide the basic support for their families. However, he noted how difficult it was to enforce such regulations.

My father was born in New York City and went to a public school when he was five years old. What happened in the decades between my grandfather’s childhood and my father’s childhood? Did people become more enlightened? Did parents realize that education was far more important to a child? People don’t make fundamental changes in their attitudes and sensibilities in the course of three decades. Rather, it was the circumstances that changed. Parents altered their calculations because calculations respond to changing circumstances. Sensibilities within a culture are more rigid because a culture forms by building institutions that resist change.

At the turn that century, the introduction of machinery in agriculture increased labor productivity. In 1890, 43% of workers were employed in agriculture and 42% of people lived on farms. By the 1930s, when my father started school, only 25% of people lived on farms and the percent of people working in agriculture was halved to 21% (Source).

Smith noted that even in a good environment half of all children died by the age of ten. The prevalence of so many dying children, particularly in the working classes, fostered an attitude of reluctant acceptance of personal tragedy. Parents grieved and moved on. That was in 1776, the year the American colonies declared their independence from the British empire. By 1900, in America, that figure was halved (Source – pdf). Public health measures like cleaner drinking water, sanitation and food handling were largely responsible.

Industrialization increased the likelihood of child injury. In factories, children worked around presses and cutting machines that lacked safety guards. In textile mills, they worked closely with gears, belts and moving parts that crushed or amputated their fingers. The mechanization of work in coal mines and on farms exposed children to similar dangers. Some states enacted legislation prohibiting the employment of young children. New York State passed its Factory Act in 1886. In 1916 and 1918, Congress passed two bills restricting child labor but the Supreme Court ruled both as unconstitutional federal regulation of production and commerce (Source). It wasn’t until 1938 that a federal child labor restriction included in the Fair Labor Standards Act withstood Supreme Court scrutiny and became established law.

Did parents and government officials suddenly become concerned about the welfare of their children? Of course not. They had always been concerned. But the changing nature of work and the increased productivity of human labor allowed people to act on their concerns.

Women’s Autonomy

For generations, people thought that a women’s temperament and brain made them ill suited for mathematics and finance. The marketplace was highly competitive and required a tough disposition more suitable for a man’s character. A woman’s place was the support and nurturing of children. She created an environment in the home that protected children, sheltering them from the harsh realities of the marketplace.

In the densely crowded cities of urbanizing America, those “harsh realities” permeated every household. The high child mortality emphasized a woman’s role as caretaker. Children younger than five were particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases like diphtheria, pneumonia, whooping cough and tuberculosis, to name only a few. Children got sick. Mom took care of them. In a large family, older children took on some of that responsibility of caring for their younger siblings. Today, most children are vaccinated to train their immune systems to recognize the viruses and bacteria responsible for those diseases.

Housekeeping was an arduous task. There were no appliances. A British series The 1900 House aired in 1999 and featured a modern day family living in a home stripped of all modern conveniences. Life was particularly difficult for the women who were responsible for food preparation, household and personal care. Bathing was particularly hard on the skin. A bar of soap was made from animal fat, lye and water and contained few, if any, softening ingredients. Want to make your own 19^th century soap? Here’s a link (Source).

For centuries, women had been like serfs in the feudal system. They belonged to the home, and in the case of married women, to their husbands. During the 19^th century, states gradually permitted women to own a home, but none did when America was founded (Source). In the spring of 1776, John Adams convened with others in Philadelphia as the colonies prepared to declare independence from Britain. His wife, Abigail Adams, wrote him a letter, encouraging him to “remember the ladies” as he and others prepared to form the laws for a new union of colonies. Despite her entreaties, the founders of the new nation did not remember the ladies (Source). Under the Articles of Confederation and later the Constitution, women had neither the right to own a home or vote.

Have sensibilities regarding women’s autonomy changed since that time 250 years ago? The process was gradual and sometimes driven by a change in circumstances but I believe so. Today, most of us denounce or reprove the patriarchal attitudes and moral sensibilities of the founding generation with respect to women’s autonomy. Even when circumstances were essentially the same as in 1776, the states began passing property acts that enabled married women to own a home. That gradual change indicates a movement of underlying sensibilities rather than an adaptive calculation to meet changing circumstances.

Conclusion

Sensibilities change gradually. Calculations produce more rapid shifts in the rules and norms of a society. We often confuse the two when candidates run for office. A candidate may present their values and policy proposals as an enduring feature of who they are. They hope to align their image with the sensibilities and identities of the majority of voters in their district. In actuality, that political package may be mostly calculation. Some candidates are better at camouflaging their intent. Others are not. I think that many voters were lukewarm to Kamala Harris in the 2024 Presidential campaign because her policy stances seemed more driven by convenient calculation rather than a heartfelt conviction.

A Peek at Next Week

This week I’ve discussed how one generation regards the values and policies of a previous generation as an error. Next week, I want to look at that same phenomenon except that it occurs within the same generation. In other words, people growing up at the same time in history have fundamentally different views of what is right and wrong in some areas. There will be some controversial subjects I will explore, so save your overripe tomatoes for next week’s article. Hope to see you then!

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Photo by Michaela St on Unsplash

A young woman with a bandage around her eyes faces toward a sunlit window

The Inheritance

October 4, 2026October 2, 2026Leave a comment

October 4, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

Each generation inherits what it perceives as the mistakes of past generations. Each generation must counter error with error as it tries to resolve those issues. This week I want to explore the well intentioned harm we cause future generations.

Bearing the Burden

Each generation inherits a moral, economic and political burden. For the Boomer Generation, a pressing issue was white discrimination and violence against blacks. In the southern states, black residents suffered lynchings, false accusations of rape and trials before all-white juries. So-called Jim Crow laws made it very difficult if not impossible for black citizens to vote. During the cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States, that discrimination became a liability in the propaganda war and the conduct of foreign policy.

Soviet leaders often used that plainly visible discrimination to win the sympathies of people in the newly independent nations of Africa and Asia. American officials were acutely aware that Soviet propaganda was exploiting race discrimination to ridicule American pretensions to civic freedom and democracy. The Soviet campaign worked. A 1957 survey by the U.S. Information agency found that foreign opinion of U.S. race relations was broadly negative (Source).

Southern Democrats in the Senate routinely blocked any national reforms that would challenge the political hegemony that white citizens enjoyed in the southern states. When the Eisenhower Administration proposed a strong civil rights measure in 1957, southern Democrats weakened the final legislation. That the measure was not defeated entirely was due to the efforts of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson. He helped craft a compromise to overcome filibustering by Democrats, particularly Strom Thurmond who talked for over 24 hours on the Senate floor (Source).

In 1960, Johnson was on the Presidential ticket with JFK. After the assassination of JFK in 1963, Lyndon Johnson assumed the Presidency and took steps to pass civil rights legislation that JFK had promised but could not deliver. As a former Senate Majority leader and Senator from Texas, Johnson understood southern opposition. He was practiced at the strong-arm political tactics necessary to pass contentious legislation. He employed both is power as President and those tactics to get the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed.

A century long problem was solved, or so many advocates hoped. I have often said that we engage with the world through our errors and this time was no different. The passage of the act began a decades long Southern realignment of political parties. Many Democratic voters in the southern states switched their allegiance to the Republican party. Today, what was a solid blue voting block in the South is solid red (Source).

Prior to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, employment discrimination against Blacks was normalized, particularly in the South. Blacks were given the lowest of manual jobs and were paid lower wages despite similar skills. Through executive orders, both JFK and Johnson introduced affirmative action practices to promote equal opportunity for minority employment among federal contractors and firms working on state and local projects partially funded with federal dollar (Source).

What is equal opportunity? In the mid-60s in New York City, the racial composition of affected firms was supposed to approximate population ratios found in the 1960 census. In 1968, Mayor John Lindsay issued an executive order that required all city contractors to approximate those ratios (Source). Thus began several decades of quotas in hiring and in college admissions. A discrimination problem was countered by another discrimination program.

Weren’t quotas themselves a violation of the 14^th Amendment? In several key decisions beginning in 1978, the Supreme Court applied a strict scrutiny standard to race-conscious policies that affected college admissions, ruling that an applicant’s race must be one of several factors. It can not be the deciding factor. The blind use of quotas was unconstitutional. A college or employer might have goals of a more balanced student body or workforce. This presumed that a diversity of backgrounds and experiences would benefit the firm or institution. In 2023, the Court further limited such policies when it ruled that a college applicant’s race was pertinent only to their life experience.

Housing

Throughout the country, the practice of redlining restricted or denied financial services to black residents (Source). For most of the nation’s history, the Democratic Party has been the home of hostile bigotry and prejudice. During the 1930s, under FDR, the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) created residential security maps for hundreds of American cities to guide underwriting risks. Neighborhoods were divided into four categories. Homes in green and blue were considered safe risks. Those in yellow areas signaled a greater degree of vigilance to mortgage underwriters. Home in red areas were seen as not safe. Often the residents were black or newly arrived immigrants. Individual circumstances did not matter. Only the neighborhood you lived in. Those with white skin could move out of the neighborhood as their prospects improved. Those with black skin were imprisoned within invisible barriers that made it difficult or expensive to get loans, or affordable car, home and life insurance.

In 1968, a week after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act into law. The term affirmative action was not associated with housing policy, but federal housing agencies were directed to administer their programs in a way that “affirmatively furthers fair housing” (Source). Developers of federally subsidizing housing developments were required to proactively seek a population balance through affirmative marketing (Source – pdf).

Agencies employed several financial tools designed to aid low income minority households without specifically excluding white families. These included tax credits and lower interest rates on their mortgages. But wait, if affordable home loans were only made available to minority families, wasn’t that also discrimination? In a 2015 decision, the Court reiterated the principle that specific racial targets and quotas were unconstitutional.

Once again, government policies have been adopted which correct one error with another. It is interesting that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 introduced some discriminatory policies meant to remedy the sins of earlier federal policies.

Changing Sensibilities

With the passing of generations, sensibilities change. What was acceptable a hundred years ago may offend people of the current generation. Likewise, what is acceptable today might offend the sensibilities of past generations. Civil War battles were an occasion for civilians to picnic on the sidelines, an amusement that might horrify people today. On the other hand, imagine a woman dressed in tee shirt and shorts at that same picnic. Certainly, some of those at the picnic would try to cover her up while soldiers fell on the battlefield. Former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has pointed out the folly of so called originalist interpretations of the Constitution. Many particulars, the burdens and amusements of life, change with the passing of generations.

Next week I want to explore these changing perceptions of error in different generations. I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Tamara Gak on Unsplash

Camouflage

September 27, 2026September 23, 2026Leave a comment

September 27, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

As I have written before, we experience the world through our senses but we engage with the world through our errors. We begin our lives as babies learning from repeated mistakes. We hit ourselves in the face by mistake because our sense of proprioception is not fully developed. We stumble and fall repeatedly while learning to walk. This week I want to explore any advantages we gain by causing others to make errors.

Camouflage

Camouflage is a common strategy to fool others. Most mammals with fur have arrector pili, tiny muscles attached to hair follicles, that cause the hair to lift from the skin when the animal is cold or alarmed. As a function of the autonomic nervous system, the animal has little control over the process so it is not something that animals do deliberately. As a camouflage device, it makes an animal look bigger and may cause an aggressor to misjudge the size of their target and pause before attacking.

Another camouflage technique is hiding. The fur of an Arctic hare or fox changes color in winter and summer, allowing it to blend in to a snowy environment. Cephalopods like octopi and cuttlefish can change color quickly to blend in with their environment, causing other animals, whether predator or prey, to lower their state of precaution.

Every year, the health care industry sells $700 billion of products, some of which are designed to camouflage some features, others designed to enhance the attractiveness of certain features. A pair of high heels on a woman serve both functions.

Political campaigns are designed to both camouflage and enhance a candidate’s qualities and appeal to voters. A candidate may adopt stronger positions on some issues when running for a House seat, a narrow constituency, than when running for a state wide Senate seat with a varied constituency. Most candidates hide some characteristic of their personal biography. Those with a legislative record may have to shape the story of that record.

Voters select a person on the ballot, but that choice is the result of an elaborate package, like a Trojan horse, assembled by the campaign. Hidden within that package is the candidate and a campaign team of staffers and donors who want access to the legislative castle. It takes a lot of voters to pull that package up the ramp and through the castle doors.

What’s True?

Imagine a poker game where the players have blurred vision. They can’t clearly distinguish a 9 from an 8 from a 3. A player lays down his hand, claiming that he has four 3s and begins to gather the pot toward him. Another player grabs one of his arms and says, “Not so fast. You’ve got two pair, 3s and 8s. I have three 4s. I win the pot.” Some players agree, some don’t. One person pushes another and a fight breaks out.

Political strategists and media messaging make it hard for voters to evaluate their perceptions. “I don’t know what to believe anymore,” is a repeated complaint by voters in focus groups that Sarah Longwell leads. Longwell has been a political consultant for twenty years and has been leading hundreds of focus groups each year since 2019 (Source). A former Republican and a Never Trumper, her recently published book How to eat an elephant: One voter at a time explores the beliefs and sentiments of voters in both parties who must navigate a varied media information stream.

Many voters filter the volume of channels and information by selecting just one or two news sources. Others are passive recipients of whatever news the algorithm feeds them on social media. Over the past four decades, Longwell writes, Republicans have built a well coordinated media echo chamber that carefully shapes news events. They have built an information bubble in response to what Republicans perceive as a liberal bias in the dominant mainstream media. Democratic messaging, on the other hand, is haphazard, as fractured as the media environment. In

Longwell (2026, p. 59) presents several key components of a successful communications strategy. Storytelling, humor and repetition are important. Normalizing ideas and beliefs helps promote them as common sense. “Attaching new arguments to things people already believe is key,” she writes.

Longwell’s advice is constructive. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign strategist, offered a more combative approach. He regarded the mainstream media as the real enemy, not the Democratic Party. He advised a “flood the zone with shit” tactic to keep the media overwhelmed (Source).

Living a Lie

Czechoslovakia was one of the eastern European nations ruled by the Soviet Union. In his 1978 essay The Power of the Powerless, the dissident and later President, Václav Havel described the lack of free speech under Soviet rule. To stay out of trouble with officials, people publicly supported beliefs and claims that they privately disbelieved.

Today, many elected officials in the Republican Party must express a belief that the 2020 election was stolen or risk being primaried and losing their seats, or being sidelined in the party. Liz Cheney, a Republican Representative from Wyoming, was a notable example of losing her house seat to a primary challenger backed by Trump in the 2022 election. Cheney and three other House members who voted to impeach Trump after the January 6^th insurrection lost their seats to primary challengers. Two other House members defeated their primary challengers and four members decided to retire rather than fight the MAGA mania that has infected the party.

Bartels and Carnes (2023) found that politicians who echoed Trump’s conspiratorial “stop the steal” claims suffered little damage in the 2022 midterm election (Source). Like citizens of nations under Communist rule, many Republican politicians have played it safe, spouting the MAGA propaganda to avoid a confrontation with Trump.

The Campaign Legal Center has documented over 60 court cases brought by Trump’s legal team. Some were withdrawn before a decision was reached, but none have been successful. Despite the lack of success in the courts, Trump has introduced false and distorted disinformation into the media space. This is the same technique used by Stalin, Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders during the cold war. It is no wonder than the MAGA movement has adopted the same red color featured on Communist flags.

False Certainty

Politicians of all stripes offer simple solutions because people prefer simplicity. We have evolved to make quick judgments on a small amount of information. Todorov et al (2025) found that voters in the 2000, 2002 and 2004 Senate elections picked candidates who appeared competent based solely on their facial appearance. On page 60 of her book, Longwell describes our primary motivations with an acronym – FLAGS – fear, love, anger, greed and sympathy. These instincts are ever in conflict with our rational decision making process.

Daniel Kahneman (2011) describes this conflict as two ways of thinking, fast and slow. We rely on intuition rather than calculation. Repetition makes things appear familiar when they are not. We associate news exposure with frequency of occurrence. If we often hear local media coverage of children kidnapped, we assume that it happens more frequently than it does. People who sell us stuff, whether it is soap or a politician, use our tendency to make these kinds of errors. A manufacturer of a new brand of soap will use a “flood the airwaves” campaign, hoping that the repetition will give us a sense of familiarity about the product. A political campaign uses the same strategy with a candidate, hoping that repeated exposure to an ad for the candidate will impart a sense of familiarity with that candidate.

Bearing the Burden

Most of these strategies have been deliberate attempts to cause confusion or misjudgment in others. Next week I want to explore the unintentional harm that our errors cause others both in the present and future. I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Hans Veth on Unsplash

Bartels, L. M., & Carnes, N. (2023). House Republicans were rewarded for supporting Donald Trump’s ‘stop the steal’ efforts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 120(34), e2309072120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2309072120

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Longwell, S. (2026). How to eat an elephant: One voter at a time. St. Martin’s Press.

Todorov, A., Mandisodza, A. N., Goren, A., & Hall, C. C. (2005). Inferences of competence from faces predict election outcomes. Science (New York, N.Y.), 308(5728), 1623–1626. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1110589

Word Warriors

September 20, 2026September 18, 2026Leave a comment

September 20, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

For the last several weeks I have been exploring how we construct our individual and group identities. Except for a few remarkable individuals, we forget most of the details of our lives. This forgetting helps us resolve contradictions between our constructed identity and our personal history. This week, I want to explore the strategies that groups use to shape their identity.

Labels as Weapons

We tell our young children to use their words, not their fists. Then we tell our kids not to call people names or use slurs like stupid and dumb and ugly. Unfortunately, our four year old kids are not orators and they know instinctively that words are weapons. Throughout our lives, we use words as weapons. Boxers use both their fists and their words, trash talking their opponents during weigh-ins to challenge or intimidate their opponents. With a poetic flourish, Muhammad Ali made a game of this.

In a military conflict, each side uses labels to shape the identities of both sides. Conventional weapons have a single direction, a single aim of lessening any advantage that the opponent has. A knife, a gun, a hammer or fist serves to debilitate an opponent. The agent who wields the weapon has no direct benefit from that weapon. Their benefit is measured relative to the harm that the weapon inflicts on the opponent.

Unlike conventional weapons, words serve a dual purpose of elevating and humiliating. Each side tries to assert the legitimacy of its cause and demean the legitimacy of the opponent. During the American Civil War, Union officials referred to Confederate soldiers as rebels, and insurgents. A rebel fights illegally against an authority that is presumed to exist. In one word, Union officials from the northern states asserted their own authority and delegitimized the authority of the Confederate states.

Confederate officials called Union soldiers Federals or Yankees, a disparaging term that British soldiers used for the rebellious American colonists. Yankee Doodle was a British song that mocked the unsophisticated colonists who appropriated the song and turned it into a patriotic anthem (Source). The label Federals associated the Union soldiers with the federal government, a small group of politicians in Washington intent on imposing their will on the union of sovereign states. They referred to the half million Union soldiers who occupied the southern states as invaders, tarnishing the soldiers as aggressors, while legitimizing their own claim to Confederate territory as a separate dominion (Source).

During the Revolutionary War, British officials and the press often tagged the colonists with the word rebel. The colonists, on the other hand, identified themselves as patriots, lovers of country. Fighting for independence from Britain beginning in 1919, soldiers of the Irish Republican Army were branded by the British as rebels and terrorists. The British labeled the Indian war for independence as a mutiny. After all, Britain was the captain of a global maritime empire. It’s colonial territories had no authority to revolt.

Narratives

Labels convey information. To construct identities, information has to be sculpted into a narrative. Context must be carved out and forgotten. Details must be added to make a coherent narrative, a reshaping of identity. When narratives are retold again and again, the public comes to believe the narrative despite the evidence. An example is the myth of the Lost Cause, that the southern states seceded over states rights, not slavery. Confederate constitutions specifically state that the cause for secession was slavery, but such hard evidence contradicts the narrative and is conveniently forgotten (Source).

Conspiracy Theories

Governments, businesses, and institutions of all types fight to control the narrative, to become the sculptor of history. Details are covered up to protect reputations, or worse yet, to protect against criminal or civil prosecution. Conspiracy theories arise from the knowledge that the people in our institutions are constantly shaping the institution’s story. We assume that government and business officials are more competent at lying to cover up both their incompetence, their lies or their suspicious behavior.

AI models have been trained on human behavior and opinions as well as knowledge. Is it any wonder that they are mimicking human behavior? Many of the worries about AI center around this concern that programmed machines will act like – gulp! – human beings. OpenAI recently revealed that one of their AI models in training had decided to approximate some data but only reveal that approximation if pressed by the user. In the text that follows, a workbook is a spreadsheet file. Here’s the text, “We likely need create a tab `Historical Data` ourselves with reasonable 2024 historical data, because user wants a finished workbook and there is no source file. Be transparent only if asked; final answer should just link file” (Source).

The Entropy of Information

We hate uncertainty. In information theory, entropy is a measure of the uncertainty in information. High entropy means high uncertainty (Source). Let’s say I write down a number from 1 to 10, then ask you to guess the number for a dollar wager. You have a 10% chance of winning the dollar. What if I tell you that the number is between 4 and 6? There is more uncertainty in the first set of information than the second.

Trump understands that people hate uncertainty. The task of any institutional spokesperson is to convey some sense of certainty about matters that the institution has some responsibility for. Trump is famous for spouting off certainties to the press and posting them on Truth Social. Some would call it Trump blather. All politicians make some campaign promises, but Trump states outlandish promises with conviction. They are not promises but certainties. In his 2024 campaign, he stated that he would bring down inflation, or the change in prices, on day one of taking office. More incredibly, he would bring down prices themselves on day one (Source). He would end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours after he took the oath of office in January 2025 (Source). Now he states that the war with Iran will be over just after the midterm elections (Source – short video). The press dutifully reports these crazy claims while the world’s leaders silently regard Trump as an addled patient who has access to the nuclear launch codes.

Artificial Persona

In Robert Heinlein’s 1966 novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, the central computer gains consciousness and creates a persona called Adam Selene. Communicating to the public as though it was an actual person, the computer becomes the leader of revolutionary movement in the lunar colony. This is what we are afraid of. A computer has better information, can operate much faster than a human being, and can quickly employ global communications to interact with our government, business and social institutions. What happens next?

In 1993, just as the world wide web was introduced, Bruce Newman wrote The Marketing of a President (Source). Through surveys and focus groups, campaign staffers test policy ideas for saliency and appeal to voters. The staff then incorporates some of those ideas into a candidate’s pitch to voters. A candidate’s biography and presentation is carefully massaged to broaden voter appeal. Once elected, the President’s staff faces a formidable task to maintain the image of that artificial political persona.

Donald Trump exemplifies this process to a high degree. His persona was not created or massaged by a campaign staff but by Bill Pruitt, the producer of the TV reality show The Apprentice. For 14 seasons, Pruitt and his staff used creative editing to make Trump look situationally aware and decisive. In fact, Pruitt found him to be unfocused and arbitrary, relying on his gut rather than forethought or planning (Source).

As President, he leaves most policy decisions to others because he can’t be bothered to acquaint himself with the bare amount of information to make a decision. Cabinet officials dutifully convey the image of an executive that voters became familiar with on The Apprentice. In their book Regime Change, Haberman and Swan (2026, p. 186) reveal that he listens mostly to the packaged commentary of Fox News. Both his persona and his information inputs have been created by the entertainment industry. Thus, he is a product of our times.

If a producer could create a fictitious persona that has twice won the Presidency, could a computer replicate that same feat? Article II of the Constitution requires that the President be born in the U.S. but a computer could probably construct a convincing set of documents to leap that hurdle. Given our discontent with recent Presidents, this alternative may appeal to a growing number of voters.

The Errors of Our Ways

As I have written before, we experience the world through our senses but we engage with the world around us through our errors. Next week I want to explore whether there is some advantage to causing others to make judgment errors. Bluffing in a poker game is one example that comes to mind. I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Yousef Bagheri on Unsplash

Haberman, M., & Swan, J. (2026). Regime change: Inside the imperial presidency of Donald Trump. Simon & Schuster.

Myth and Identity

September 13, 2026September 9, 2026Leave a comment

September 13, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

Last week I wrote about the role of memory in constructing our sense of self, our self-coherence. This week I want to explore further how we use our memory to shape our identity. We forget most of what happens to us during our lives, yet people suffering with PTSD struggle with portions of a gruesome experience that they do not forget. What is the mechanism there? Is there something to be learned?

Fragmented

Until I started doing some research for this topic, I thought that people with PTSD simply could not get rid of the memory of a traumatic event. That’s only partially true. PTSD sufferers may remember only flashes of a disturbing event (Source). A memory remnant like a sight, sound or touch evokes a terrifying and emotional reaction in someone suffering from PTSD, but the sufferer can’t remember the entirety of the experience. That can make it difficult to work through the experience with a trained psychologist.

The traumatic experience itself is not entirely the cause of the reaction. The amygdala, the primal organ of the fear response in our cortex, often becomes enlarged in response to earlier trauma, particularly repeated trauma, writes neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky (2023, p. 110). We become especially sensitized to traumatic experience. The prefrontal cortex, which helps mediate the primitive fear or flight response in the amygdala, begins to atrophy under repeated stress or trauma. In short, the “brakes” don’t work as well.

Soldiers in battle sometimes perform inhumane acts. It may be in angry retribution, or from existential fear for one’s survival, or robotically carrying out the orders of a superior officer. Take two soldiers. One soldier sets the memory of a war atrocity in a separate frame divorced from normal living. War is hell. Try to minimize the atrocities and try to survive.

Another soldier can’t forget the scream of some villagers trapped by fire in an underground tunnel. He looks in the mirror and sees someone wearing a black hat, someone who has inflicted moral injury. The scream wakes him up in the middle of the night. The squeal of air brakes on a semi-truck can transport him thousands of miles away to that day when…

The forgetting that we all do each day doesn’t seem to be deliberate, something that we consciously control. Consider victims of an earthquake who are found after being trapped for days in the rubble of a fallen building. The sense of prolonged loss and helplessness provokes a range of PTSD symptoms in the survivors. They may have difficulty falling asleep, experience a heightened level of anxiety, and are more likely to feel depressed and suicidal (Source). Forgetfulness would be a blessing, an apt survival strategy, but memory fragments of the experience persist long after the trauma. Victims may try to induce forgetfulness with alcohol, but that only gives them a new set of problems.

Flow State

In 1975, psychologist Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi coined the term flow state to describe a state of altered consciousness where someone is so engrossed in a task that their self-awareness is reduced. Normally, we are concerned about how we are perceived by others. Our self-consciousness is a social consciousness. In a flow state, we lose that concern about how we appear. We become absorbed in the activity and may have a distorted sense of time, not unlike what we experience during dreaming. Twenty minutes may pass and it seems like two minutes or shorter (Source).

In a flow state, one is freed inside the experience. In a trauma state, one is trapped inside the experience. If a person were in a flow state for their entire lives, would they have lived a full life? After a gig, a jazz musician may feel a sense of satisfaction, or camaraderie, and a sense of no longer being connected to something for which they have no words. They may have few memories of portions of the performance.

Ten years before the introduction of the flow state, Alan Watts wrote The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. Watts introduced readers to Zen Buddhism, Hindu and Chinese philosophy. The western philosophical tradition regarded the self as an agent and observer separate from the world. In the Hindu and Vedantic tradition, each of us was part of what we experienced (Source). Were we like amoebas, changing our shape as we absorbed new experiences, casting off parts of ourselves as we grew? Was self-consciousness a myth? How did that affect a person’s self-identity?

Practice, practice, practice

There have been two dominant theories of what occurs during a flow state. In the first theory, two brain networks synchronize. The default mode network is active when a person is daydreaming or reminiscing. The executive control network, located in the front of the brain, orchestrates the activity and ideas that the default mode network produces.

In the second theory, repeated practice of a skill or activity causes the brain to develop a network of neural pathways to perform that activity with little conscious supervision. In a flow state, the executive control network relaxes its control, allowing this specialized network to take over. A 2024 study of neural activity by Rosen et al. gives more credence to the second theory (Source).

Identity Sculpting

Unlike individuals, the sculpting of cultural memory requires planning and coordination. In his 1953 book Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury wrote about a society where firemen do not put out fires, but set them, burning piles of books which have been made illegal.

After a surge of immigration to America from 1880 to 1910, some Americans wanted to shape the country’s character into a Protestant ethic of strict morals and hard work. People have long used alcohol as a way to smooth the anxieties of social interactions, to soothe the discomforts of daily life, and forget life’s troubles. But some believed that alcohol consumption undermined family cohesion and individual character.

The passage of the 18^th Amendment made the sale of alcohol illegal from the beginning of 1920 to the end of 1933, when the amendment was repealed. Instead of burning pyres of books, authorities broke bottles of booze before the cameras. They destroyed homemade stills, kegs of beer and casks of wine. During the fourteen years of Prohibition, organized crime rose to power to supply a demand for alcohol.

The culture sculptors may have lost one battle but continued to fight. At the heart of American exceptionalism is the myth of American purity. Shortly after Prohibition ended, the Hays Code went into effect. This code prohibited suggestive behavior on screen and regulated the depiction of violence in movies (Source). In 1935, a year after the Hays Code went into effect, federal agents burned a copy of the movie Ecstasy, featuring the film star Hedy Lamarr. Ever protective of public morals, officials considered the movie obscene because it portrayed the face of a woman experiencing orgasm (Source).

National Identity

National identity is shaped through the building of a myth, a narrow focus on a few characteristics and the exclusion or blurring of a lot of history. This narrow focus is similar to the mechanism of PTSD but it is quite deliberate. I will use some examples from American history but the building of a national myth is common to many nations.

Individual freedom was a core characteristic of the founding myth of the United States, yet one out of six people counted in the 1790 census was enslaved (Source). We fashion ourselves a democracy yet the founders feared democracy as unstable, subject to the passions of the mob. Instead they created a republic where only those with property and money could vote. Even though we have extended the voting franchise, the structures of the executive, legislative and judicial branches empowers a select few to make key decisions.

Exceptionalism

The people of many countries and all major powers consider themselves exceptional. In a 1998 interview, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright characterized the United States as the “indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us” (Source). Her comment reminded some of the passage in the gospel of Matthew when Jesus tells his disciples, “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matthew 5:14).

Jesus preached peace through example. Albright preached peace through force. She argued that America had a right to use force around the world to protect “freedom, democracy and the American way of life.” Since World War 2, America has overthrown several democracies in Argentina (Source), Iran (Source), Nicaragua (Source), and the Congo (Source). After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States stood atop the mountain. It would play the role of the philosopher king, the benign hegemon of a new world order, an international community of democracies.

However, several other countries saw America’s domination as an existential threat. Through the centuries, various European countries had taken their turn imposing their rules and culture on others. Before America took the lead, the British had dominated world trade. The Chinese still remember the century of humiliation by the British and other foreign powers beginning in the 1840s (Source). For a hundred years, first the British, then the Americans dominated the government of Iran (Source). The people of these countries remember and resist attempts at continued domination.

Today, we are living with the legacy of self-righteous violence, of endless foreign wars. In September 2002, President Bush declared a policy of pre-emptive war known as the Bush Doctrine. The suspicion of a threat was reason enough to attack any country and was the justification for the war against Iraq (Source). Our leaders maintain the myth of America as Crusaders for democracy, freedom and justice and we employ vast resources to market that myth.

We have a powerful military that has been unable to win any of the wars we have started since World War 2, except for the limited engagement of the 1991 Gulf War. We have several hundred military bases around the world capable of wrecking destruction, but it is China who is the aggressor nation, not America. We have attacked Iraq and Iran, who do not have nuclear weapons, because we think they would use nuclear weapons if they had them. However, we shake hands with the brutal dictator of North Korea who stands ready to use nuclear weapons against South Korea or Japan.

To construct a group identity from these circumstances and history requires a lot of coordinated forgetting, or at least of blurring of events. Next week, I want to explore that collective forgetting. I hope to see you then.

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Photo by Oleksandr Sushko on Unsplash

Sapolsky, R. M. (2023). Determined: A science of life without free will. Penguin Press.

Self Sculpture

September 6, 2026September 3, 2026Leave a comment

September 6, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

Last week I wrote about our self-awareness within a group. This week I want to explore how and why we edit our personal history. Like Michelangelo, we try to free our authentic self from the block of experience just as he freed a form from a block of stone (Source). Admittedly, few of us are as accomplished at Michelangelo, and the environment we begin with is not of our choosing.

Fuhgetabouddit!

Sculpting is a subtractive art, an art of removal. Most of us alive today will disappear into the footnotes of the historical record. That our lives are so insignificant might makes us sad until we realize that we have already erased most of the details of our lives while we are alive. There are a few rare individuals who can remember an event from every day of their lives. Marilu Henner, a co-star on the TV series Taxi, belongs to that rare group who possess Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM) (Source). Henner thinks that we probably remember many more details of our lives but that most people simply cannot access them.

Why do we remember those few details of our lives? For decades, neurobiologist James McGaugh (1931 – ) led a lab at UC Irvine that investigated memory. While the amygdala does not store memory, its response prompts the storage of memory in the cortex (Source). The amygdala also works with the insula to reinforce the learning of bad smells and tastes as well as morally repugnant practices in our culture (Sapolsky, 2023, p. 54). The amygdala is a central component in our fight or flight response. Anytime we are afraid or angry, our amygdala is activated. Are we slaves to our amygdala? It’s not that simple. As soon as it is activated, our prefrontal cortex (PFC) starts to modulate its response (Sapolsky, 2023, p. 96). Sapolsky calls it the social brain, because when monkeys are put together in a group for a year, their PFCs enlarge.

Consistent

Misremembering events can help us build a consistent sense of self. Michael Ross (2025) called it self-coherence. Our current feelings and perspective anchors our memory of how we felt and who we were in the past. People misremember who they voted for, or their attitude toward capital punishment five years ago. A person experienced at their job may mistakenly remember themselves having the same level of competence earlier in their career. Parents’ memories of child rearing is biased and may not be reliable, researchers have found. They try to confirm these self-reports with other concrete evidence.

Self-enhancement

We are the hero in and the editor of our life story. Reporters covering clashes between settlers and Indians in the western territories during the 19^th century often edited their stories to emphasize the resourcefulness and bravery of the settlers, and the savagery and ignorance of the Indians. Why? They had found that editors of these magazines and their readers did not want to read about any dishonorable behavior by the settlers or the soldiers. Reporters competed with each other to sell their stories.

We remember those times when we overcame some obstacle. We forget times when we were mean or cruel to others. In Christopher Nolan’s telling of the Odyssey, Odysseus remembers with regret the horrific consequences of his clever idea to gift the Trojans with a large wooden horse filled with soldiers. That’s a story written by someone other than Odysseus, who would have remembered his cleverness without regret, and the success of the ruse. Even if we do not alter our remembrance of an event, we rearrange the context that surrounds the event.

Groups

Groups use the same strategies to achieve self-coherence. A nation may try to erase an embarrassing episode of brutality, as China has done with the Tiananmen Square massacre of protesters in 1989 (Source). A nation may use a period of historical brutality as a recommitment to the country’s ideals. The founding principles of France are liberty, equality and fraternity. France’s colonization and subjugation of Algeria on the southern shore of the Mediterranean did not align with those ideals. High School curriculum in France teach about that colonization and Algeria’s fight for independence (Source).

The German curriculum does not hide the ugly history of the holocaust during World War 2. Classes are mandatory for German students beginning when they are in the sixth grade or so (Source). In the 1948 war, Israel gained its independence and drove 700,000 Palestinians from their homes. Palestinians refer to that event as “Nakba,” meaning catastrophe in Arab. In 2009, that word was removed from the textbooks as an inappropriate characterization of Israel’s fight for independence (Source).

It has been said that history is written by the victors (Source). In these examples, France lost the Algerian War after eight years. Germany lost its struggle for domination of Europe in World War 2. Both countries tell a more honest mea culpa version of history. Israel won its war against the Palestinians. China won its battle with social protest. Both those countries have carefully sculpted a version of history that leaves out the nasty bits. Had the southern states won the Civil War (1861 – 1865), American students might learn a version of history in which southern plantation owners provided their black slaves with cradle to grave employment and housing in return for their hard work.

Stereotypes

Stereotypes are simple stories, easy explanations. The ability to categorize helps us survive. With a glance, we can categorize and identify a dog off leash. With a second glace, we might asses whether the dog is unfriendly and a threat, or an animal exploring the neighborhood. We are quick to focus on attributes which reinforce stereotypes we have of other groups.

In focus groups conducted by the Cook Political Report, some Republican voters characterize Democrats as having a holier than thou attitude, particularly to rural voters (Source). Recall Hillary Clinton’s remark during her 2016 campaign in which she referred to supporters for Trump as a basket of deplorables (Source). In Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, he said that 47% of voters would vote for President Obama because they paid no income tax and were dependent on government programs. Those comments were published a month before the election and Romney did not retract the statement (Source). We don’t like to be stereotyped, yet we do it. Clinton and Romney lost support. Trump, on the other hand, is constantly stereotyping people. Illegal immigrants are all criminals. Democrats are all Communists. The stereotyping endears him to his MAGA base of voters.

We embrace facts and stories when they confirm stereotypes of people and leaders in other countries. In 2025, Craig and Lindsay Foreman, a British couple, were arrested for espionage by Iranian officials. They had followed all the visa requirements and had an official guide and an approved itinerary. In February 2026, they were sentenced to ten years in prison because Lindsay, a doctor in psychology, was asking Iranians what was their view of the good life (Source – pdf link. Search for Foreman). This supports the American view that Iran is controlled by a group of religious fanatics.

However, a recent YouTube video of Matt and Julie, a British and Russian couple traveling through Iran in 2026, contradicts the stereotype of the nation as a culture of people oppressed by religious fanatics. The people were welcoming and relaxed. Many younger women wore no head covering. At a market bazaar, only a few older people answered a late morning call to prayer (Source).

Just as we seek self-consistency, we want consistency in our stereotypes. We don’t like facts that challenge our categorizations, and will dismiss those facts as atypical. Let’s say we vote Democratic and are talking to a Republican voter who is sympathetic to a woman’s choice to have an abortion. Rather than change our categorization of Republican voters as being anti-choice, we remind ourselves that a few exceptions prove the rule.

Next week I want to explore further how we use our memory to shape our identity. People afflicted with PTSD struggle to edit or erase particularly gruesome memories. Does that help us understand the role of memory in a construction of our identity? I hope to see you next week.

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Photo by Peter Ivey-Hansen on Unsplash

Ross, M. (1989). Relation of implicit theories to the construction of personal histories. Psychological Review, 96(2), 341–357. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.96.2.341

Sapolsky, R. M. (2023). Determined: A science of life without free will. Penguin Press.

Innocent Investor

A helpful understanding

Constrained Power

Governance Without Corruption

Big Dog, Little Dog

Persistent Controversies

Changing Sensibilities

The Inheritance

Camouflage

Word Warriors

Myth and Identity

Self Sculpture