Unify America

WE ARE MORE UNITED THAN YOU THINK

Americans from all walks of life largely agree on the highest aspirations for our country. We disagree on tactics. For example:

• We disagree about gun control, but most of us hope for less violence.
• We disagree about ObamaCare, but most of us want high quality, affordable health care for everyone. 
• We disagree about the ethics of the death penalty, but few of us want to see innocent people behind bars or put to death. 

Unify America is working to help us see that we are far more unified than we believe, and that THERE IS A WAY to address our greatest, most intractable problems in a spirt of unity and cooperation.

ABOUT

The U.S. Constitution does not mention political parties. Indeed, the Founders warned of the harm that parties ("factions") could have upon the union. 

The problem is not just with political parties; it is with politics itself as a mechanism for decision-making.  Would we purposefully choose a system where we make national decisions by creating a contest among factions, each with much to win or lose, who compete to get the result they want through influence, power, money and marketing?

When pressed to make a critical decision, ideally, most of us would first work to clearly understand the nature of the problem, collect relevant and authentic facts, and with an open-mind weigh alternative solutions, keeping in mind how everyone involved would be affected. In short, our decision making process would eschew power and money, and embrace reason and empathy.

Unify America asks, given the tools and technology we now possess, how could we evolve our democracy to realize the hopes of our Founders?  Is there a way that we the people could make critical national decisions in a spirit of unity and consensus?

We think there is and we have a hypothesis about how to do it. Unify America was founded to test that hypothesis.

OUR FIRST STEP

We’re doing initial research to see if we can prove out this hypothesis: 

Americans agree on what our country’s goals should be.

We are currently in the qualitative phase in the development of a national survey. There are exceptions to every rule, but the survey will ask Americans to agree or disagree in general with statements like these:

• We should give all children the opportunity to rise to the level of their potential.
• We should work to reduce the number of abortions.
• Our government should be efficient in how it uses our tax dollars.
• All adult, working-age, citizens should have the opportunity to earn a living wage.

We also want to determine if the vast majority of us share some of the same basic civic beliefs, for example:

• Are all children born equally precious?
• Should the law treat everyone equally, regardless of station?
• Does everyone have a right to privacy, as long as one isn’t harming others? 
• Do we have a personal responsibility to take care of ourselves and our children?
• Do we, together, have a responsibility to care for those who cannot care for themselves?​

We are setting out now to interview 200 Americans from all walks of life and from all over the country to guide us in wording ​the questions on the survey. The next, quantitive phase will include thousands of Americans, representing the broad diversity in this country: political, religious, ethnic, racial, generational, gender, sexual-orientation, geographic, regional, educational, socio-economic, mental & physical ability, workers and business leaders.

If Unify America is able to demonstrate that Americans, do, in fact, have shared goals and shared beliefs, then we have a foundation to move forward together to chase after our shared aspirations. 

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