I Believe

Joel K. Douglas

Government Society & Culture

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Is a Sustainable Environment a Human Right?
Belief vs. Biology: Is a Sustainable Environment a Human Right?This week, the world’s highest court spoke. The United Nations’ top judges issued a sweeping opinion: nations might violate international law if they fail to act on climate change (Associated Press, July 23, 2025, Molly Quell and Mike Corder reported). The International Court of Justice (ICJ) opinion posited that a sustainable environment is a human right. And that nations harmed by climate change might be entitled to reparations. The ruling came in response to a campaign by Vanuatu, a small island nation slowly sinking beneath rising seas. The court’s word carries no binding weight. No country must follow. No law compels it. No court can enforce it. It levies no sanctions, no penalties, and no compliance demands. Though not binding, ICJ opinions shape international norms and give weight to future legal and diplomatic efforts.The ICJ argued that inaction threatening human health, safety, or survival could violate international law. It cements the idea that environmental protection is a human rights issue. Court President Yuji Iwasawa called climate change ‘an existential problem of planetary proportions.’The big idea is simple: if clean air, a livable climate, and ecological stability keep us alive and dignified, then they are human rights.…This ruling feels detached from reality. We need to dig deeper.So this week’s question: Is a sustainable environment a human right?We Have to Start at the Beginning. What is it to be “Human”?Before we decide whether a “sustainable environment” is a human right, we need to ask a deeper question.What is it to be human? A courtroom will tell you a human is a natural person, Homo sapiens, endowed with dignity and moral status. That’s just a shallow definition. Strip it away, and the reality is older and harder.A human isn’t a symbol or a legal category. A human is a biological creature. We arrive slick with blood. We hunt, dig, plant, and tear up what we need to live. We kill both plants and animals to survive. When our crops fail, we raid new ground. When danger comes, we fight or we flee. That instinct carried us through ice ages, famines, and wars. It still drives the hand that guides the harvester combine or closes a factory gate against cheaper imports. Biology never rests.No matter how much philosophy or law we try to layer on top, we can’t escape that fact.But we’re also unlike any other animal. We believe. We invent things no other animal can imagine: laws, borders, rights, money, marriage. Those beliefs let strangers cooperate by the millions. We write constitutions, build courts, and carve order out of chaos. But belief is fragile. When enough people stop believing, currencies collapse, treaties shatter, and thrones fall.These two forces share the same skull. Biology pushes us to survive at any cost. Belief tells us to restrain that push for the greater good. Sometimes they align. Often they clash. The International Court of Justice calls a “sustainable environment” a human right. That is a statement of belief, not a law of nature. It says humans must throttle back the internal engines that feed, warm, and defend us. On paper, the duty sounds noble. But in the flesh, it hits every nerve wired for survival. Humans haven’t been here long in Earth’s timeline. Yet we survived ice ages, famines, and wars by adapting and producing. By overwhelming problems with force. Not by scaling back.If the obligation demands we shrink the engines that power modern life, the conflict isn’t legal. It’s primal. We are watching belief walk into the ring with biology. The court asks us to trade proven tools of survival for a moral blueprint still waiting on bricks and rebar. That trade is not impossible, but it will not be easy, and biology will keep the score.So let’s test this idea against history, starting with the Marshall Plan.The Marshall PlanThe United States launched the Marshall Plan in 1948. After World War II, Europe lay in ruins. Factories were silent, currencies worthless, and cities hollowed out. Communist parties gained ground, and Washington saw the danger. We poured more than $13 billion, over $130 billion in today’s dollars, into Western Europe. The program remains a rare case study of large‑scale aid that actually worked: it restored stability, jump‑started shattered economies, and lowered the risk of renewed violence. But the motive was not ideology alone. The United States also needed solvent trading partners to buy American goods and help anchor a fledgling rules‑based order.Europe needed security; we needed industrial muscle. America cranked up production of steel, food, fuel, and machinery at a pace that could hold the continent together. The emissions were massive, but the overriding question was survival, not cleanliness. We had to build fast enough to keep Europe from falling apart.Look at the Netherlands. German fortifications and Allied bombing leveled whole districts of a city named The Hague and displaced more than 130,000 residents. After the war, America churned out the steel and cement that rebuilt the city, and the smokestacks poured emissions into the sky. Today, The Hague is the home of the same International Court of Justice that ruled a sustainable environment is a human right. Marshall Plan funds of about $1.1 billion, the highest per‑capita aid in Western Europe, paid for coal, cement, and specialized equipment to the Netherlands. We rebuilt ports, factories, and housing stock. Within a decade, the city had gone from “largest building site in Europe” to a functioning capital again.Would we generate more industrial and manufacturing capability to rebuild The Hague today, if necessary? Absolutely, yes. Even though the court that sits there ruled that the resulting emissions might violate international law. The Marshall Plan demonstrated what happens when biology takes precedence over belief.But of course, nothing is black and white. The ICJ opinion looks forward, not back. It doesn’t punish the Marshall Plan or any past policy. Let’s look at another story.The Right to Clean Air: Delhi, India, 2019In 2019, the air in Delhi turned poisonous. Schools shut down. Authorities grounded flights. Visibility dropped to near zero. Emergency rooms filled with children who couldn’t stop coughing. Construction halted. People wore masks long before COVID made it normal. The Indian government called it a public health emergency.This event was the predictable result of crop burning, unchecked industrial pollution, vehicle emissions, and seasonal weather patterns that trapped smog like a lid over the city. It happened every year, and every year, people died.Then, inside India, in one of the most polluted cities on Earth, belief overruled biology in court.Biology said: Adapt or suffer. People were coughing blood. Kids were developing lifelong respiratory damage. Entire populations were living in a toxic cloud, and from a purely biological standpoint, they should have either fled the region or accepted the toll as the cost of living.But they didn’t. Citizens sued.In 2021, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the right to life included the right to clean air as a binding constitutional right. The court ordered governments to coordinate, enforce pollution controls, and protect public health. For India, this point wasn’t woke ideology. It was survival. No emissions cuts would fix it overnight, and Delhi still struggles with pollution, but the ruling forced governments to act. Environmental collapse became a human dignity violation, not a policy failure.Follow-up data show that the ruling was more than symbolic. Since the court’s directives and India’s National Clean Air Programme kicked in, Delhi’s air is about fifteen percent cleaner today. Still triple the safe limit, yes. But every fraction means fewer asthma attacks, fewer cardiac emergencies, and thousands of school days reclaimed each winter. Belief did not cleanse the air overnight. But it forced measurable gains. It’s proof that a legal idea tied to enforcement and money can bend biology in the right direction.But Now, the Brutal TruthEven if America reduced its emissions today, would climate change stop? No. Even if we cut all emissions to zero tomorrow, the planet wouldn’t stop warming. Not right away. Not for decades.Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. What we’ve already emitted, along with China, India, Europe, and the rest, is already baked in. That legacy carbon keeps trapping heat, melting ice, and driving storms, no matter what we do now.And we aren’t the only emitter. We are currently responsible for about 13–15% of global emissions, depending on how you count. China emits more than double that. India’s emissions are rising fast. Developing nations, in total, now emit more than developed ones. And we are improving. We’ve cut emissions from electricity production by 35% since 2007.But even if the United States went to zero, the warming would continue. Sea levels would keep rising. Places like Vanuatu would still drown, just more slowly.That’s not an excuse for doing nothing. But we need to be honest.Cutting emissions isn’t a rescue plan. It’s a brake. It slows the damage. It might help future generations, but it doesn’t undo the past. And it doesn’t save the people standing in the water right now.If we’re serious about survival, emissions cuts aren’t enough. We need adaptation. We need infrastructure. And we need to stop pretending courtroom declarations can replace concrete, steel, and hard physical work.We survive by adapting, producing, and overwhelming problems with force, not by scaling back. Countries like Vanuatu need our help, not promises made in cities we rebuilt with industrial might that pumped emissions into the air.What’s It Going to Be?We began with a court opinion and a question of rights. We trekked through biology, belief, wartime industry, and Delhi’s burning air to see how those rights collide with reality. Now the path loops back to you, the listener.Here is our problem, simplified: believing that a stable climate is a human right does not cool a single degree of ocean or raise a single stretch of road. Biology will continue to test us, and belief alone will fail that test.Our solution is equally plain: we need to turn belief into infrastructure. We need to cash our chips out as reinforced coastlines, relocated villages, cleaner grids, and resilient economies. Engineers first, lawyers later.Every nation, especially the ones with means, has a choice. We can cling to declarations and watch biology take its toll, or we can pick up the tools that have saved us before and aim them at the new threat. History will judge us by reformed infrastructure, not by the eloquence of our court filings.Belief may bind us together, but it will not overcome biology. Belief sets the goal. Biology will keep the score and decide the winner.So this week’s question stands: Is a sustainable environment a human right? And if we say yes, what will we build to prove it?May God bless the United States of America. May we find the resolve to build the consensus to adapt.Music from #Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/tactical-approachLicense code: KTT8RMR85MWMPE5V Get full access to I Believe at joelkdouglas.substack.com/subscribe
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What Would It Take to Make State Government Matter Again?
State Government Funding Is a ParadoxState governments do important work, but too often, they’re boxed in. If we want better roads, stronger schools, and healthier communities, we don’t need to cut federal support. We need to change how it works.Fragmented control kills leadership and accountability. Federal and state officials often share authority with different priorities. That overlap creates seams: delays, miscommunication, and gaps where problems fall through. Even an imperfect decision-maker, if clearly responsible, can move faster than a tangle of agencies working at cross purposes. Clarity beats complexity.Effective leadership means guidance, resourcing, results, and accountability. To orient in the right direction, there’s one mission, one leader, one line of authority. State power hasn’t been lost in a courtroom or an election. It’s been hollowed out by how the money works. Federal grants now pay for most of what states do, including roads, education, agriculture, healthcare, and law enforcement.That might sound like help. But if we look closer, we see that money comes with strings, and those strings are a leash. Voters elect one set of leaders. Then a second, unelected set inside federal agencies writes the rules through grant conditions, deadlines, and compliance forms. The people don’t know who to hold accountable.So this week we ask: What would it take to make state government matter again?After all, We the People was never meant to describe a bureaucracy. It was a declaration of self-government. Government of, by, and for the people. Not federal control, but local judgment. Not compliance. Purpose.The Problem: Compliance Masquerading as GovernanceEvery year, taxpayers send vast sums to Washington. That money returns to the states, but not freely. It comes with instructions: mandates, formulas, eligibility rules, and layers of accounting. States must apply for federal grants, and they don’t always win. In theory, it’s a partnership. In practice, it’s a transaction with terms that limit what states can do.State leaders don’t really govern under this model. They implement. Legislators may pass budgets, but terms are set in federal agencies. Local needs or voter demands don’t shape priorities. Instead, federal guidance, often years in advance, sets the conditions.This isn’t always malicious. The intent is to standardize, promote fairness, and ensure funds are spent wisely. But good intentions don’t guarantee good outcomes. Over time, this system rewards compliance over creativity, and risk avoidance over responsiveness. Innovation dies in the red tape.Federal power expands under the banner of help; state autonomy shrinks under the burden of compliance. What looks like governance is just administration. What looks like support is control.The Slow Death of Local JudgmentState governments must be able to set their own priorities, shaped by the needs of their communities. For a long time, they did. As examples, education, transportation, and agriculture were handled almost entirely at the state level. States had less money, but more authority.Before the 1960s, states ran their own public schools with minimal interference. That changed with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which expanded the federal role. The funding helped rural areas, but it came with strings. Testing mandates and performance targets now shape classroom policy, but national academic outcomes haven’t meaningfully improved, especially in reading and math.Transportation followed the same pattern. After the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, federal funding brought federal design standards, environmental review processes, and route constraints. Local projects came to depend on federal approval. States could no longer freely set priorities.Agriculture shifted, too. Local extension offices once worked directly with farmers to adapt to local conditions. That changed with the rise of USDA-administered programs. Now, farmers make decisions based on eligibility for crop insurance, conservation compliance, and commodity subsidies.One of the clearest effects? Instead of a variety of food crops, the Midwest now grows mostly two: corn and soybeans. Neither is meant for direct human consumption, but they’re the safest bet under federal policy. The heartland used to grow more vegetables; food for people, not for fuel or feed.To sum up: kids don’t run in PE because they’re prepping for federally required benchmarks, but math scores didn’t go up.Most roads got safer, but Wyoming got the Snow Chi Minh Trail. It’s I-80’s scenic southern route, built against local advice, now one of the windiest, snowiest, most shutdown-prone highways in America.And all our food now contains federally subsidized corn sugar. A 2016 study in JAMA Internal Medicine found that Americans whose diets were highest in subsidized calories had significantly higher rates of obesity, high blood sugar, and inflammation.None of this is inherently malicious. Some of it works. Some doesn’t. But the pattern is clear: as federal dollars expand standardization, local authority shrinks.The First Stand for States’ RightsThis tension isn’t new.June and July, 1798. The Fifth Congress of the United States, under President John Adams, passed a series of four laws that became known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. Congress claimed the laws were meant to restrict the activities of foreign residents and silence dangerous speech.In reality, they made it a crime to criticize the federal government. If an American wrote something unflattering about the president or Congress, they could be fined or jailed. This wasn’t a fringe proposal. They passed and became law. And people were actually arrested, including congressmen, newspaper editors, and publishers.Now imagine you’re a state leader: a governor, a legislator. You’ve just joined this new American experiment. The Constitution is still fresh. The idea of a federal government this powerful is still new. Suddenly, it starts to look a little too much like the old one you just fought a war to escape. The kind of federal control that reminds you why we added a Second Amendment in the first place. Even Thomas Jefferson, the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution, started to worry. And they didn’t just stand by.Jefferson drafted the Kentucky Resolutions in October 1798 and quietly passed them to political allies George Nicholas and Wilson Cary Nicholas in Kentucky. The legislature adopted them on November 16.A few weeks later, Madison followed suit. He drafted the Virginia Resolutions in secret and worked behind the scenes to move them through the legislature. They passed on December 24, just in time for Christmas.Both men kept their involvement quiet. Jefferson was Vice President. Madison was still in Congress. They knew that open authorship could trigger political backlash, or even charges under the laws they were challenging.Their resolutions argued that the states had created the federal government, not the other way around, and therefore retained powers not explicitly given away. They claimed the states had both a right and a duty to declare federal laws unconstitutional if those laws went too far.The resolutions didn’t carry legal weight, but they planted a seed that grew into later doctrines of nullification and state sovereignty.They weren’t perfect. The resolutions were later cited by those pushing secession at the onset of the Civil War. But in the moment, they were a clear stand for state autonomy against federal overreach.Most states rejected the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. But the ideas stuck, and they helped carry the next Democratic-Republican candidate, Thomas Jefferson, into the presidency. When Jefferson took office, he let the Alien and Sedition Acts expire and pardoned those who had been convicted under them. He even returned some of the fines. He erased the laws and made sure their damage didn’t linger.Today, federal control looks different. It doesn’t come through dramatic laws. It comes through funding and the rules that come with it.Some of that funding does real good: roads, hospitals, schools. But the more Washington funds, the more it dictates. And the more it dictates, the less space state leaders have to lead.Federal agencies don’t see day-to-day realities clearly. They’re too distant to make the right call, but they still write the rules.Maybe there’s a better way.A Better Way: Fund Goals, Not ControlWe need a better way to structure federal support. One that honors constitutional balance, improves real-world outcomes, and respects state autonomy. A model built on four principles: guidance, resourcing, results, and accountability.Guidance doesn’t mean silence. Congress should set national priorities through laws and budgets. But those broad directions often get buried in red tape, splintered into grant conditions, reporting mandates, and timelines divorced from local realities.Instead of prescribing how to act, guidance should focus on what we aim to achieve. That means setting shared outcomes, not universal methods, and trusting states, with their varied geographies, cultures, and capacities, to chart their own course. Federal oversight still matters, especially to protect civil rights and prevent abuse, but oversight is not the same as control.Federal agencies don’t need to vanish. They need to collaborate. Agencies and state leaders should jointly define goals and align their work to meet them. A federal office doesn’t have to report to the state, but it should recognize the state’s voice as legitimate within its borders.Missouri and Illinois might pursue different agricultural policies. California and Nevada may diverge on environmental rules. Different is okay. A joint state and federal agency team making progress and achieving the goals matters more than methods. The goals are the decisive element.…ResourcingGoals without resources are empty. If states are going to lead, they need the tools to act: funding, usable data, and flexibility. Resourcing isn’t about writing checks. It’s about building capacity and letting strategy guide how dollars are spent instead of bureaucracy. In a better system, as long as states pursue the shared goals, they should be free to reallocate resources as needed. Leadership works adaptively, not by spreadsheets. …ResultsPeople don’t care if a program met its compliance checklist. Not how many forms were submitted, or whether a benchmark was technically met. They care about bridges and infrastructure, if the ER had a doctor, and whether the school taught their kid to read. Measuring results is harder than measuring process. It requires trust, collaboration, and the humility to admit when something isn’t working. It takes courage to admit we don’t achieve a goal, because it makes us accountable.Still, we have to measure results against the goals we set. Not because data is perfect. But if we don’t ask whether we succeeded, the system becomes self-justifying.…AccountabilityIn sum, we have the decisive element in place: shared goals. We have the resources to achieve those goals and the flexibility to move them as needed. We have the courage to admit when we succeed, and when we don’t. We have set the conditions for accountability. When a program fails today, no one knows who to blame. States point to federal rules; agencies point to state mismanagement. When authority aligns with responsibility, voters know exactly who to hold accountable.Simply Saying We Believe in States’ Rights Isn’t Good EnoughWe started with a paradox. State support has become federal control. But the solution isn’t less support; it's smarter support. Support that restores autonomy, honors local judgment, and delivers real outcomes.We can’t just say we believe in states’ rights. We must prove it. Set goals. Trust states. Measure outcomes. Then hold leaders accountable. Only then will state government matter again.Government of the people means trusting local judgment more than distant control.At the same time, federal agencies bring expertise and capability that states don’t have. Rather than cutting federal agencies that seem to be underperforming, we need to reorient our approach. Set joint goals. Trust states. Measure what truly matters. Demand accountability. What would it take to make state government matter again?May God bless the United States of America, that government of the people might once again serve the people. Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/hartzmann/next-focusLicense code: YZCVYFK6RPF9FAHD Get full access to I Believe at joelkdouglas.substack.com/subscribe
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If Justice Isn’t Real, What is Its Market Price?
We Don’t Build a Country on Things We Can TouchNot really.We build it on belief.We believe a piece of paper can be worth a dollar. We believe strangers can govern us. We believe that if we follow the rules, justice and liberty will protect us. None of that is real, not like gravity or fire.But it works because enough of us believe. That’s what holds a nation together. Not armies. Not buildings. Not slogans. Belief. We think institutions hold society together. But it’s the other way around. We hold them together with belief. When nothing is real, belief gives institutions value. Today, we ask, if justice isn’t real, what is its market price?And I don’t mean metaphorically. I mean literally. What do Americans pay out of pocket to achieve the justice our Constitution promises?Money Isn’t RealMoney isn’t real. Not like gravity. Not like death. You can’t drop it on your foot. You can’t breathe it. It has no weight, no heat, no life.Its value depends on whether others believe in it.Even the bills in our wallets mean nothing. They’re just cotton paper and ink. And most money isn’t even physical. It’s digital, just zeroes and ones on a computer somewhere. If no one believes those numbers are worth anything, they aren’t.But when enough of us believe in them, they become real. When we go to the store to buy eggs and butter for breakfast, we might use a debit card for our purchase. We give the store some of our digital zeroes and ones for real eggs that we can eat. In this way, money facilitates society. It’s a fiction that organizes everything from breakfast to war. Again, money isn’t real. Even if we think it matters, that’s not enough. It only matters if others think it does. If we stop believing, our money is worthless.But because enough of us believe in it, belief itself creates the value. The belief makes a dollar worth a dollar, and not just what the cotton paper would suggest.This principle is society’s basis.In the same way that money only has value because other people believe it has value, our institutions only have value when enough of us believe in them.Our institutions aren’t real outside of our shared beliefs. They become real only because we act like they are. Religion, law, the stock market, America, and the Constitution exist only in the human mind, but once enough of us believe, we begin to shape the world.Our churches can only bring relief to the needy in our communities if enough of us believe not in the rituals, but in the responsibility to care for the needy. It’s not a physical reality. It’s a collective commitment. Shared belief only matters if it produces real outcomes. We measure the value of our churches in meals for the needy, addiction recovery programs, volunteer hours, and youth mentoring. If those disappear, the steeple means nothing.Our law can only bring order to society if enough of us believe it applies to all of us. If we don’t believe the law applies to all of us, order dissolves. We measure the effectiveness of law by disputes resolved without violence, access to and fair treatment in court, and access to counsel no matter your income. Belief is the foundation of our institutions. When enough of us share these beliefs, our institutions gain value.The Day George Washington Gave the Army BackWe think institutions hold society together. But it’s the other way around. We hold them together with belief.Scene: December 23, 1783. Annapolis, Maryland. The war is over. The Constitution doesn’t exist yet. George Washington entered Congress to resign his military commission.Everyone held their breath. Washington had led the Continental Army through eight brutal years of war. He was a war hero: beloved, feared, and trusted. If he wanted to become king, no one could stop him. Rumors of Washington’s intentions to give up power had already crossed the Atlantic. King George III reportedly told the American-born artist Benjamin West that if Washington gave up power, he would be the greatest man in the world.The American people loved him. He was a star. He didn’t have to give up power. He could be king. The night before the ceremony, they threw him a party. Washington “danced in every set, so that the ladies might have the pleasure of dancing with him, or as it has since been handsomely expressed, get a touch of him.”But instead of claiming fame and power, he gave it back to the people. America would owe allegiance to no king, and George Washington believed in America. He would not become king. The next day, he stood before the Confederation Congress, a weak, fragile institution barely holding the states together, and gave up command. To complete his tear-filled address, he said … “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action... and take my leave of all the employments of public life….”He didn’t have to. He could have stayed in command.Washington’s single act gave birth to civilian rule. A weak Congress became legitimate, not because it inherently had power, but because one man believed it should. And once Washington believed, others followed. Washington relinquishing command transferred his belief to his fellow Americans.His belief in rule by the people gave value to the institution that became the Constitution. When James Madison and the other authors wrote the Constitution, they opened with an idea that didn’t exist in governance: ‘We the People of the United States.’ People stopped believing that the Almighty ordained rulers at birth because they came from a ruling family. They started believing people consent to governance for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The idea didn’t stop at the Potomac. It crossed the Atlantic. Less than ten years later, the French violently overthrew their monarchy. The streets of Paris ran red with blood. The Bastille fell. The people executed their king and queen. They refused to be subjects any longer. And it didn’t end in France. Across Europe, the old order trembled. Monarchies began to fall or reform. The divine right of kings gave way to constitutions, parliaments, and citizens.The transfer of Washington’s belief in rule by the people to the Constitution is sharply evident. Where a king might believe primarily in order, people believe in justice. A king might believe in rules and obedience. People believe in liberty, protest, and the right to bear arms against their rulers.His belief in rule by the people made the people believe in themselves. Washington’s act powerfully illustrates how shared belief underpins our institutions. When we believe in an idea, we build institutions. When enough of us share that belief, those institutions gain value.Of course, like money, we need to be able to measure this value. To measure justice, we need to pick something concrete and clear. We need measures that reflect real opportunity.Measuring Ideas Like Liberty and JusticeSome think tanks say they can measure the payoff of our belief in the Constitution’s promises. They call their metrics “market quotes” on the value we assign to liberty, justice, and other national ideals.Organizations like Freedom House publish global reports with titles like Freedom in the World. They attempt to track civil liberties and political rights across 195 countries. These reports have been cited for over 50 years. But we should reject every proposed measure that comes from outside sources instead of the people. The people are the governed, and only the governed can say whether they are free. An external judge of internal values falls short.Others suggest questionnaires, letting people rate their own experience. But surveys are subjective. If belief is real, it must leave a measurable trail. We must be able to measure our values like we measure the dollar.So, how would we measure ideas like liberty and justice? Let’s consider justice. Justice has a dual meaning. It is equal treatment under the law, and it is access to fair opportunity, no matter where you were born. Let’s consider two critical areas in society: housing and education. Why these two? Because where you live and what you learn directly determine the opportunities you have. Housing and education aren’t luxuries. They’re the foundation of fairness.Genius hides in poverty. A child born in a trailer or housing project must succeed by structure, not by luck. We need empirical data to measure whether we achieve our national goal of justice. If they are willing to work for it, a kid born in a trailer or project housing needs to be able to buy a house in a safe neighborhood with a good school for their children. To measure our ability to achieve this goal, we need a test. To pass it, America needs a healthy supply of homes for first-time homebuyers that cost only double the household median income. The median cost for a house in 1960 was $11,900, when the median income was $5,600. The median household income in 2023 was $80,610. So a fair entry point today would be a home under $160,000.Next, education. Any loan a low-income student must take to attend a public college is a measurable price of fairness. That price tells us how far short we fall of our national ideal.We need to track three numbers; each for first-time, full-time undergraduates from the bottom income quartile at in-state public colleges:First, the average net price after grants: tuition, fees, living costs, minus all aid. If that price rises faster than family income, the system is failing.Second, the average federal loan balance at graduation. If the poorest students graduate with the biggest debts, we have not achieved equal opportunity.Third, the three-year default rate on those loans. If defaults are rising, the ladder of opportunity is breaking.We BelieveWhen we believe in an idea, we build institutions. When enough of us share our beliefs, our institutions gain value.If money isn’t real…If liberty and justice aren’t real…If even America isn’t real...Then our common belief is everything.Led by George Washington, ‘We the People’ owe allegiance to no king. We believe in the America that is justice and liberty for free people. Simple ideas, like access to housing and education for Americans no matter where they were born, are achievable. But we will not achieve our goals if we do not measure them.Justice might not be physical, but its price, what ordinary people pay just to access fairness, is as real as any dollar.So, if justice isn’t real, what is its market price?May God bless the United States of America, as we work to ensure every American, rich or poor, has the chance to work, to succeed, and to prosper together.Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/vens-adams/adventure-is-calling License code: 7TYGIBPLI2MRUBGU Get full access to I Believe at joelkdouglas.substack.com/subscribe
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Philosophy and the One Big Beautiful Bill: Debt vs Property, Promise, and the Dead’s Silent Claim
The One Big Beautiful Bill: A PoemOur lives pass like shadows, despair takes root within us. We convince ourselves property is our natural right; that we can own the land here before us, remaining when we are gone. We guard it jealously, believing what we earn must remain ours alone. We charge our leaders with duty: to defend our lives, our liberty, our property. Yet to do so, we bury the unborn beneath our debt. One generation fades, another rises. The earth endures; we are dust, mere travelers through a brief season. We tax our days with worry and grief over troubles we might never see. We borrow endlessly, debts stretching beyond bearing; chains placed silently upon shoulders yet unborn. They never chose, never consented. The dead hold no rights over the living, yet we, the living, pledge away a future’s harvest, earnings of lives not yet begun. Theft, delayed. When we pass, soon enough, what do we gain from our toil if all we leave behind is burden? …We say we protect property by cutting taxes. So our question: Can we protect what we own today by stealing from the unborn?Debt Versus PropertyOur lives pass like shadows, and despair grows in us. We tax our days and wring our hands with worry and grief over what may never come. No matter how hard we labor, what we own eventually passes to others. We arrive with nothing, leave with nothing, and gain nothing from our labor that we will take with us.And it makes us worry.Our humanity creates this problem. Aware of our smallness and short time on earth, we gather what we can and hold tight. We want to keep it. Even when our children die, we carry the feed bucket anyway. The desire to keep what we’ve earned is as old as the first harvest, the first hands that grasped their work with pride.Out of this hope came the idea of property as a right; that no ruler, mob, or distant power could unjustly take what we’ve earned. This belief is freedom itself. If our labor belongs to us, we are free. If it can be seized, we are servants, whether our master is king, neighbor, or voting majority.We established laws to protect what we earn, rules that say no one’s wages, harvest, or home can be taken without true cause. Protecting property safeguards liberty.When we are free to keep what we work for, we can express our being. We can choose. We can grow from the effects of those choices. That is liberty.But liberty has a cost. To protect our property today, we’ve embraced a dangerous shortcut: borrowing from tomorrow. We say cutting taxes preserves our property, that government should take only what it must. But instead of paying the cost with our own labor, we mortgage the lives of our unborn children. We pass the bill forward to generations who have no voice.This is our tension. Our contradiction.We protect the property of the living by indebting those not yet born. We say no one should steal from us, but we steal from those who will follow, who have no vote, no voice, no choice.PromiseWe made a promise in property, and a promise in liberty. We believe a person is entitled to the fruits of their own labor. That what they build, they may keep. That no power, however great, may seize it without just cause. If this is not so, then no man is free.But this promise carries another. If a person is entitled to the fruits of their labor, then we cannot buy our comfort with another’s sweat. We cannot, by our actions, burden those who had no voice.Yet today we break both promises at once. We declare no one may take what’s ours, that no ruler or future vote may steal it. But in the same breath, we pledge the labor of unborn generations to pay our debts.This contradiction cannot stand. A nation cannot uphold a principle and violate it simultaneously. We cannot protect today’s harvest while mortgaging tomorrow’s.Seed corn is the harvest reserved for planting next year’s crop. Eat it today, and we survive, but guarantee starvation tomorrow.We must not consume our children’s seed corn or warm ourselves by burning their future fuel. Liberty isn’t free. It cannot be bought with debt or paid with the wages of those yet to be born and who cannot speak, vote, or stand for themselves.If we believe in keeping what we earn, we must guard it ourselves, paying our cost today. Spending our children’s money means standing for a principle even as we betray it.An America built on contradiction will not survive.Broken promises bleed forward, generation to generation, until only the dead remain to answer.The Dead’s Silent ClaimThe dead hold no claim over the living. The next generation owes nothing to the bones beneath the grass.Every age must choose for itself. Every generation must decide which burdens it will bear, which debts it will pay, and which work it will complete.We have erred. We claim to protect our property, to keep what is ours, to stand free. But we build our freedom on promises made with labor not our own. We insist future generations pay debts we refuse to shoulder today.This cannot stand. Freedom and bondage cannot coexist. We cannot guard our harvest by mortgaging someone else’s future. A nation cannot love liberty while chaining children who never chose their burden.We call ourselves defenders of property, but we steal from tomorrow. With one hand we raise our fists and shout ‘freedom!’ With the other, we tighten our chains.If reason has a law, it must be this:A generation cannot call itself free while binding the next.The dead have no rights over the living. Neither do we have any right to seize from those not yet born, to pile debt on backs that have yet to draw breath.We claim to guard what is ours, but we have promised away what was never ours to promise.Back to our question: Can we protect what we own today by stealing from the unborn?May God bless the United States of America, and grant us the courage to pay our debts today before we ask our children to pay what they do not owe.Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/roo-walker/courage License code: DCL6TJYRATU8RIUS Get full access to I Believe at joelkdouglas.substack.com/subscribe
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Should the American People Fund Cancer Research at Harvard?
When the Cure Doesn’t Serve the People, the System Fails the Constitutional TestPublic money, on its face, should yield public benefit. But every year, the federal government sends almost sixty billion dollars to universities like Harvard for research and development, most of it through the Department of Health and Human Services. A university takes federal funding, makes a breakthrough, and licenses it to a drug company. Nothing stops that company from setting a high price, because while the research was public, the product isn’t.Taxpayers fund the research, then get stuck paying again at the pharmacy. For many, the cost of needed treatment puts the remedy out of reach.…We drift because we forget our purpose. The Constitution names six national goals: Union, Justice, Domestic tranquility, Liberty, the common defense, and the general welfare. Every law and every dollar must serve at least one. When a policy misses the mark, it serves power, not people.The point of American governance is to serve the people. That philosophy is the reason we were born at war. Why we owe allegiance to no king. Why we have our uniquely structured Constitution.We lose sight of aligning our effort with these national goals. We need to get back on track. So today, we’re asking whether public funding for private research still serves the general welfare. Does it help all of us, or just a few? To answer that, we go back to the beginning, with a boy named Jimmy, a Boston hospital, and a small act of hope that changed cancer research.Jimmy’s Radio MiracleIn May 1948, a boy named Einar Gustafson wanted to watch his favorite baseball team, the Boston Braves. Einar had a problem: he didn’t have a television. But he had a bigger problem. He was in the Children’s Hospital ward in Boston, dying of leukemia.At the time, leukemia was effectively a death sentence. It had been first identified a hundred years earlier, but there was still no treatment, just blood transfusions and comfort care. Then came Dr. Sidney Farber.…Farber was a pathologist at Children’s Hospital. He’d grown tired of trying to learn why a patient didn’t respond to treatment after they had died and decided to try something new. He devised an experimental blood treatment he thought would block the food cancer cells needed to grow. His small study of just 16 children showed that 10 of them improved. The remissions didn’t last, but the fact that they happened at all was groundbreaking. It was the first time a chemical agent had ever worked against a non-solid tumor. Farber had introduced the world to chemotherapy, or now the more common term, just “chemo” treatment for cancer.That same year, Farber and a member of the Variety Children’s Charity were looking for a way to raise money for research. They needed a face for the cause. They found it in Einar, but to protect his identity, they called him “Jimmy.”…So they told his story on a national radio broadcast. They said Jimmy wanted a television to watch his Braves. They said cancer research needed support. The country responded. In just eight minutes of airtime, Americans sent in $231,000, more than three million in today’s dollars. The Jimmy Fund was born.That money launched the Children’s Cancer Research Foundation, which later became the Sidney Farber Cancer Center, and eventually the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, now Harvard University’s principal cancer research center.But Farber didn’t stop at the lab. He kept pressing Congress, explaining that major breakthroughs would take national funding and sustained effort. And Congress listened. Between 1957 and 1967, the National Cancer Institute’s budget more than tripled.…Then, in 1971, President Richard Nixon called on Congress for an extra $100 million, nearly $700 million today, to launch an intensive campaign to find a cure for cancer. Later that year, he signed the National Cancer Act, declared a formal War on Cancer, and pumped billions into cancer research nationwide. The act expanded the National Cancer Institute’s power, created new research centers, and marked the first time the federal government treated cancer as a coordinated national challenge.Since the increased 1971 national commitment, the American people have sent more than $1 trillion to universities for medical research. Progress slowly advances. This year, Harvard Medical tested an anti-tumor vaccine with promising results. …We could look at this story as either a success or a failure. A success in that private contributions provided seed money that helped create a medical breakthrough. We have made great advancements. A failure that significant public obligations showed diminishing returns. We have not cured cancer, and American life expectancies have not increased in the last 20 years. But that is too short-sighted. It’s not that we should rely only on private funding commitments, or that public funding for private institutions is irresponsible.Likewise, the crux of the matter is not that public funding is essential to make progress in research and development.The decisive point is: does our effort advance our progress towards achieving one or more of our national goals? Let's ask the hard questions clearly.Justice and the General WelfareCan we definitively say that giving universities money for research and development improves the general welfare? Can we say the effort advances justice?Certainly, national infrastructure benefits the whole country. Medical research depends on nationwide clinical trials, standardized data sharing, drug-approval pipelines, and outreach to rural and underserved areas. Only the federal government has the mandate and capacity to serve everyone. We don’t serve the general welfare if cures stay bottled up in Boston.But if we pay for research and development, and private companies turn the patents into private property and set prices that most families can’t afford, then the investment the American people made to advance justice and general welfare falls short.The prostate-cancer drug Xtandi is a classic example. Our money helped discover it, but the company that holds the license lists the therapy at more than one hundred twenty-nine thousand dollars a year. More than ten thousand dollars a month! Far beyond the reach of most American families.Patient advocates have multiple times asked the government to use its lawful authority to force wider access. NIH refused both times. In total, this authority has never been used in the forty-plus years it has existed. Let me say that again.In more than four decades, the federal government has never once stepped in to come to the aid of the American people to lower the price of a publicly funded drug.When a publicly funded drug ends up on the market at a price well beyond what the average American family can afford, the spending fails the general welfare test. It also fails the justice test, because wealth divides the rich and poor, urban and rural, insured and uninsured.Yes, inequality exists everywhere. But America was built to be different, on purpose.Part of the reason America exists is justice. Every state in the union agreed that if the people fund medical research, then a poor man and a rich man should have equal access to the benefit.So… it seems the way we structure public funding for cancer research at Harvard and other universities doesn’t align with our national goals.How Would We Change That?Right now, universities take our money in the form of federal research grants, but only part of that money goes to the actual research. The rest, sometimes nearly half, goes toward overhead. This includes administrative costs, building maintenance, and salaries for university staff who never touch the lab. At Harvard, that indirect rate is nearly 70 percent for research conducted on campus. The indirect rate for research conducted at other Harvard facilities is still high, 26 percent. So when the American people send a million dollars to find treatments for cancer, four hundred thousand might go toward the effort. The rest feeds the institution.Second, we have a problem with private ownership of public money. Since 1980, universities have been allowed to patent inventions made with public money. They can then license those patents, often exclusively, to drug companies. There’s no requirement that the final product be affordable or widely available. The government has the power to step in when the public is denied the benefit, but in over forty years, it has never once used it.Third, we admit where trials fall short. There are rules encouraging inclusion across race, gender, and geography, but enforcement is weak. Most trials still happen at elite hospitals. Rural Americans, tribal communities, and low-income patients are left out.Again, the structure of public funding for cancer research doesn’t align with our national goals. It doesn’t reflect justice or promote general welfare. A better system would start with a simple rule: 100 percent of public money goes to the research. If a university believes in the work, it can cover its own administrative costs. The taxpayer’s role is to fund discovery, not to subsidize building cafeterias and paying deans.Next, any treatment developed with public dollars must be subject to a universal access guarantee. That means open licenses for nonprofit hospitals and VA clinics, and a price ceiling for commercial sale. If a private company uses public research to build a profitable product, the benefit must reach the people who paid for it.Finally, we demand equity in clinical trials. That means conducting research across the country and proving that results apply to everyone. If we measure every dollar spent by whether it serves the people, across race, income, and geography, then we align with the Constitution.The effort isn’t intended to punish universities or end research. The effort intends to ensure that the commitment the American people make to justice and their general welfare serves the nation in return.Wait…What Happened to Einar? Einar Gustafson, or “Jimmy,” lived. He left the hospital and went home. He stayed out of the public eye until 1998, when he revealed his identity at a Jimmy Fund event in Boston. By then, he was in his sixties, working as a potato farmer in Maine.We don’t lack commitment or generosity. We don’t even lack funding.What we lack is purpose and structure. Our question isn’t whether we should fund research. We already do. It’s not whether we can make breakthroughs. We already have.Our question is whether we’re serious about what our Constitution says that funding is for. This story isn’t about punishing Harvard. It’s about the promises we made when we became a country. It’s about justice, the general welfare, and holding ourselves to our highest standard.If our effort doesn’t serve justice and reach the people who paid for it, then we are failing to achieve the goals America stands for. So, should we continue to fund cancer research at Harvard and other universities?May God bless the United States of America.Music from #Uppbeathttps://uppbeat.io/t/monument-music/ambitionLicense code: PRSOQJAYAAYGTXA5 Get full access to I Believe at joelkdouglas.substack.com/subscribe
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