Join us for a special NEXT GEN presentation by Tony Woodlief, Executive Vice President at the State Policy Network, on how America can move toward depolarization, and reclaim our right to self-govern.

While pundits on the Left and Right perpetuate the notion that America is a deeply divided nation on the verge of civil war, ample data prove exactly the opposite. Most Americans are non-ideological and harbor a strong dislike of our two major political parties. What’s more, large majorities of Americans are patriotic, tolerant of others’ religious and political beliefs, enthusiastic about free enterprise, distrustful of big government, and firmly in favor of individual freedoms.

Despite what pundits and politicians assert, the real threat to America is not everyday Americans; it is a political class that has systematically taken authority that rightly belongs to individuals, communities, and states, and concentrated it in Washington, D.C.. This political class benefits from polarization and perpetuates the myth of looming civil war to justify its undemocratic impulses. Fortunately, there are actions any American citizen can take to resist. And by working in concert, we can even begin to restore the American self-governance bequeathed by our Founders.

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Host Committee

Stephanie Bell

Will Bubelis

Jake Burrola

Rich Chrismer

Susan Herold

Timothy Luby

James Moog

Brian Moore

Isaac Musselwhite

William Scharf

Katie Sinquefield

Carter Smith

Ethan Todd

James Townsend

Rebecca Willard

About the Speaker

Tony Woodlief is Executive Vice President at the State Policy Network. He helps oversee SPN operations, supports SPN’s president in her guidance of the leadership team, and helps ensure the organization’s projects and programs measure success, evolve as SPN grows, and maintain alignment with our vision and mission.

Tony previously served as president of the Bill of Rights Institute, and before that the Market-Based Management Institute. He has also served as president of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. An alumnus of the University of North Carolina, he has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan, and an MFA from Wichita State University. Tony has appeared in media outlets including Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post, National Review, and C-SPAN’s Washington Journal.

Tony is also the author of I, Citizen: A Blueprint for Reclaiming American Self-Governance. In writing I, Citizen, Tony conducted extensive research on American public opinion to find out what Americans believe and uncover the source of their political animosities. Through his research, Tony discovered that America is more united than divided, despite what the pundits tell us, and traced the source of our perceived animosity to a small minority of dedicated partisans within the political establishment of Washington, DC. I, Citizen tells the story of how these partisans have created the myth of a divided America and how they’ve concentrated power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and partisan elites, and offers practical solutions for how we can reclaim our right to self-governance by focusing on solutions and commonalities closer to home.

Presented by Show-Me Institute