I was tempted to use this journey to go down a familiar path: a policy rabbit hole. To sort socio-economic ideas into neat columns—good ones here, bad ones there. I’ve done that most of my life.
But I’ve come to see how easily that becomes another version of a trap I know well: partisanship.
For most of my life, I knew exactly where I stood politically. I was a Republican. Now—if I’m honest—that identity has fallen apart. If asked, sometimes I say I’m “Independent,” but that mostly means nothing. The reality is I don’t feel politically homeless so much as unwilling to live in a house that demands loyalty before truth.
What I believe instead is simpler, and harder: that governing authorities exist to help a society flourish.
Even as I write that, I can hear a voice in my head saying, How naïve you’ve become, Peter. Maybe. But instead of arguing, I want to walk the journey that led me here—and invite you along.
Politics as Inheritance
I grew up in a home where politics wasn’t just a topic. It was a map of the world. A moral compass. The soundtrack of our dinner table.
My father was an attorney shaped by Small Town America, the Great Depression, and World War II. He believed—deeply and sincerely—that Republicans were the guardians of freedom, and that Democrats were, at best, misguided and, at worst, dangerous.
He had watched governments promise equality and deliver oppression instead: Russia becoming the Soviet Union. China becoming Maoist. State control turning into coercion. For him, the Republican Party wasn’t just preferable—it was a bulwark against tyranny.
So I followed his lead.
Growing up, being Republican wasn’t merely about policy positions. It meant:
- We loved freedom
- We trusted business
- We feared communism
- We distrusted government spending
- We believed people should earn what they receive
It wasn’t just belief.
It was belonging.
It was loyalty.
It was family.
We followed elections the way we followed football. We cheered for Republicans the way we cheered for the Minnesota Vikings.
Insight #1
Belonging can feel like belief.
But they are not the same thing.
Business School & the Gospel of Markets
As an adult, this inherited identity became professional.
Business degree. MBA. Consulting.
Reagan. David Stockman. The moral clarity of markets.
Trickle-down economics didn’t just feel logical—it felt righteous. If the market rewarded you, it was because you deserved it. If you struggled, it was because you hadn’t earned more help.
I believed:
- Low taxes meant freedom
- High taxes meant punishment
- Government spending meant waste
- Free markets meant fairness
It was elegant.
It was clean.
It made the world legible.
Insight #2
When a framework is elegant, it’s tempting to assume it’s true.
But elegance is not evidence.
The Graph That Cracked My Loyalty
Then came 2004.
An economist stood on a stage and showed a graph—an arc rising sharply upward, like a rocket leaving earth. It wasn’t GDP. It wasn’t wages. It wasn’t innovation.
It was the federal deficit under George W. Bush.
Same Republican Party. Same talking points. But now they held the presidency, the House, and the Senate. And spending exploded. Tax cuts tilted heavily toward the wealthy. Deficits ballooned out of an inherited surplus.
Everything I believed Republicans stood for—restraint, responsibility, stewardship—collided with what I was seeing.
I didn’t leave the party that day.
But something essential cracked.
Insight #3
When a belief system requires you to ignore your own eyes,
it’s no longer belief. It’s captivity.
2008: When the Ground Gave Way
Then came 2008.
Housing collapsed.
Lehman Brothers failed.
Markets froze.
The financial system cracked like thin ice.
John McCain panicked. He suspended his campaign. He spoke like someone grasping for certainty in a dark room.
Barack Obama didn’t.
He was calm. Measured. Steady.
Not a savior—but not a liability either.
So for the first time in my life, I voted for a Democrat. Not because I’d switched teams, but because the jerseys no longer told me who was capable of stewarding the moment.
Insight #4
When the world shakes, you discover whether your politics is a worldview—
or a security blanket.
A Collapse of My Own
That winter, my own life collapsed.
A back injury.
Unrelenting pain.
Bedrest.
Cancer.
A brush with death.
And in that fog, a question surfaced—quiet, insistent, impossible to dismiss:
Why is fiscal responsibility the hill you’re willing to die on?
What if the purpose of government isn’t efficiency… but meeting needs?
It didn’t accuse.
It invited.
What if the measure isn’t the smallest budget—
but the most people flourishing?
Those questions became the hinge on which everything turned: economics, theology, identity, policy. All of it began to re-orient.
Where This Journey Leads
This is where the story turns—not toward a party, but toward a posture.
From:
Who deserves help?
To:
Who needs help?
From:
How small can government be?
To:
How much flourishing is enough?
From:
Scarcity
To:
Sufficiency
From:
An empire story of winners and losers
To:
A vision of life together ordered toward the common good
This is not a story of switching teams—from Right to Left—
but of re-imagining what politics is for.
It is a journey toward flourishing—
and toward the shared work of life together.
An Invitation into the Journey
This journey is not an argument for a political program, nor a defense of a party or ideology. It is a personal exploration of a larger question:
What allows human beings to flourish—together?
In recent years, research across economics, psychology, public health, and sociology has begun to converge on a shared insight: people thrive not in isolation, but within conditions of trust, stability, meaning, and care. These findings echo something long known across cultures and traditions—that the good life is not merely individual, but communal.
The reflections here are not offered as conclusions, but as waypoints. They trace how my own thinking about power, policy, responsibility, and care has shifted over time—from certainty to curiosity, from loyalty to discernment, from scarcity to sufficiency.
If you’ve ever felt uneasy about inherited political identities, frustrated by the limits of ideology, or curious about what life together might require of us, I hope this journey gives you language—and space—to think, too. Hopefully alongside me.
SeePhas 