A Path With a Heart
Co-creating Our Next More Perfect Union
Carlos Castaneda tells of a young seeker who asks, “What path should I take?” Don Juan answers: Look at every path and ask one question—does this path have a heart? A path with a heart “makes for a joyful journey.” A path without one will “make you curse your life.”1
Castaneda meant the question for an individual. But today the question belongs to all of us: What path should America take?
Most of the time, politics is a choice between imperfect options, each laying claim to the heart of America. But today is not one of these times. As has happened before in America’s tortured history, this is not a time of nuance. It is a time of stark choices.
One path—the path of the American heart—holds the moral ingredients that have defined our best moments. Starting from the Declaration’s proposition that we are all created equal, we are tasked to
establish Justice
insure domestic tranquility
provide for the common defense
promote the general welfare.
This path leads us to the Blessings of Liberty.
The other path—the path that Donald Trump is attempting to take us down—does not.
A path of brutal heart-wrenching ICE raids as sadistic spectacle.
The murder of suspected drug smugglers, purposefully ignoring both international law and the very basics of the Judeo / Christian morality they profess to believe in: Thou shalt not kill.
A path where fellow Americans are reviled as piggy, garbage, vermin.
A path of revenge lists, vindictive prosecutions, and public cruelty.
A path where billionaires buy access, where corruption is not a shame but a strategy.
This is not a path with a heart. It is a path with a clenched fist, a path of wanton cruelty, a path where “might makes right.” Follow it long enough and you lose the moral architecture that sustains a free society.
Follow this path and you kill the magic goose of equality from which the blessings of liberty emerge.
What clarifies this moment is the stark contrast. One path nourishes the blessings of liberty bequeathed to us by the founders, and paid for by the blood, toil, tears, and sweat of those on whose shoulders we stand. The other starves the magic goose of equality from which these blessings flow.
I came of political age in the ‘60s, the last time the choice of America’s path was this clear. On the one side was Bull Connor and his police dogs, George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door saying, “Segregation Forever,” and the brutal murder of Blacks and civil rights workers. There was no heart in the segregationist south.
On the other side 60 years ago stood America’s heart. The freedom fighters. Those who marched on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The ordinary citizens who braved police batons in Selma. The reverends and rabbis who locked arms in prayer. And the students who risked their lives to register voters they would never meet again.
Paths with a heart, Castaneda wrote, make for a joyful journey. In political terms, they make possible the blessings of liberty—opportunity, fairness, affordability, and equal dignity.
Adam Smith understood this. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he wrote that humans seek to be praiseworthy, not just praised. The 7,000,000 of us who marched on No Kings Day are praiseworthy. Donald Trump and his gang are not. The contrast hasn’t been this clear since the 1960s.
As we co-create our next more perfect union, let us build a path that ennobles, not one that brutalizes.
A path dedicated to advancing the Declaration’s proposition that we are all created equal … all of us.
A path of compassion, empathy, community, dignity, and mutual regard, so deep, so open, and so profound as to open the hearts of Independents and non-MAGA Republicans.
A path where the bounties of the blessings of liberty are shared by all.
A path with a heart. A path of joy.
Let freedom ring.
Organizations Bridging America’s Divides
America’s experiment in self-government depends on our ability to work together across differences. These organizations—national and local, issue-focused and broad—are committed to bridging divides, fostering dialogue, and helping us discover the common ground on which liberty stands. They remind us that our differences, when approached with humility and courage, can strengthen the blessings of liberty we hold in common.
I encourage you to get involved.
Agnostic Patriot: Reading / Watching.
An Alleged Bomber, Arrested and Charged, Joyce Vance, Dec 04, 2025: Hannah Arendt wrote: “The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lies will now be accepted as truth, and the truth be defamed as lies, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth vs. falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed.”
The Moment to Pick a Side Has Come, Joyce Vance, Nov 29, 2025: “You must refuse illegal orders.” That’s what was said in the video made by six Democratic members of Congress. Trump accused them of seditious behavior. The FBI launched an investigation. … Then, on Black Friday, the Washington Post ran with an exclusive story about the September 2, 2025, attack on a boat allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean, the first of a series of attacks that have involved strikes on at least 23 boats to date. The Post reported that in advance of the strike, “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. ‘The order was to kill everybody.’”
Why one 16th-century theologian’s advice for a bitterly divided nation holds true today, Michael Bruening, Professor of History, Missouri University of Science and Technology, December 3, 2025. … A monument to Sebastian Castellio in Geneva reads, ‘Killing a man is not defending a doctrine; it is killing a man.’ … Ideological division was tearing the country apart. Factions denounced each other as unpatriotic and evil. There were attempted kidnappings and assassinations of political figures. Public monuments and art were desecrated all over the country. … This was France in the middle of the 16th century. The divisions were rooted in religion.
The Danger of Patriotism Detached From American Ideals: And how Ronald Reagan’s notion of ‘informed patriotism’ offers a path out of our political dysfunction. Mark Hertling, Nov 30, 2025: WHEN RONALD REAGAN delivered his farewell address in January 1989, the nation expected a reflection on the Cold War’s end or on the conservative movement he had shaped. Instead, he focused on civic memory—on America’s tendency to forget its own story. Patriotism, he said, had to be “informed,” grounded in a clear understanding of what America represents in the long history of the world. Without that grounding, the country would lose its way. More than three decades later, that warning feels less like a rhetorical flourish and more like an unheeded alarm.
The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge