I, Citizen: A Blueprint for Reclaiming American Self-Governance

by Tony Woodlief

This is a story of hope, but also of peril. It began when our nation’s polarized political class started conscripting everyday citizens into their culture war. From their commanding heights in political parties, media, academia, and government, these partisans have attacked one another for years, but increasingly they’ve convinced everyday Americans to join the fray.

Why should we feel such animosity toward our fellow citizens, our neighbors, even our own kin? Because we’ve fallen for the false narrative, eagerly promoted by pundits on the left and the right, that citizens who happen to vote Democrat or Republican are enthusiastic supporters of Team Blue or Team Red. Aside from a minority of party activists and partisans, however, most voters are simply trying to choose the lesser of two evils.

The real threat to our union isn’t Red vs Blue America—it’s the quiet collusion within our nation’s political class to take away that most American of freedoms: our right to self-governance. Even as partisans work overtime to divide Americans against one another, they’ve erected a system under which everyday citizens don’t have a voice in the decisions that affect our lives. From foreign wars to how local libraries are run, authority no longer resides with We the People, but amongst unaccountable officials. The political class has stolen our birthright and set us at one another’s throats.

This is the story of how that happened and what we can do about it. America stands at a precipice, but there’s still time to reclaim authority over our lives and communities.

264 pages, Hardcover

Published December 7, 2021

About the author

Tony Woodlief is a writer born and raised in North Carolina. He spent many years in the Midwest before moving back to a small town in his home state, and along the way he earned a PhD in political science from the University of Michigan and an MFA from Wichita State University. His essays on faith, parenting, politics, and culture have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Post, and other publications. His short fiction has appeared in Image, Ruminate, Dappled Things, and elsewhere. His story “Name” received a Pushcart Honorable Mention in 2010, and was included in Image Journal’s 25th anniversary anthology.

Tony’s 2010 spiritual memoir, Somewhere More Holy , was listed among Image’s top ten works of that year. His 2021 book I, Citizen , has received praise from readers across the political spectrum, and sparked the 2023 documentary Undivide Us . His novel is forthcoming from Slant Books later this year.

Reviews

[Todd Davidson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. I, Citizen is full of engaging stories at the same time, it is thoroughly researched—the bibliography is 17 pages long.

Woodlief starts by making the case Americans share similar values and desires. We’re not that divided. The story of divide comes from those that spend all day fighting on Twitter & profit from the divide. These people are out of touch with reality, we should stop listening to them.

Tony shows how public opinion polls manufacture a divide that isn’t there (and he does this with engaging writing). Turns out forcing the public to answer either/or, yes/no questions don’t allow for much nuance and make us look more divided than we are. I especially appreciated the takedowns of pundits that screed 5,000-word essays ridiculing "ignorant Americans" based on nebulous poll questions in which Americans only get to answer with 4 words (agree, disagree, not sure).

Woodlief argues political elites and pundits use all of this “analysis” and stories of a divided America to centralize decision-making to politicians, bureaucrats, and judges in DC. Tony goes into detail about how power and decisions have crept up to DC and further centralized to congressional leadership and the executive branch. On this issue, he takes partisans of both stripes to the woodshed.

Then through stories, he shows the real human cost of this uber centralization of decisions. A particularly tragic tale of Victor Fuentes who was healing the addicted and the abused.

But there's hope to fix all this. Because we're not as divided & stupid as pundits would have you believe, we can govern ourselves. We need a return to self-governance.

The book ends with a practical manual of what you can do and some healthy congressional reforms. The solutions are realistic and actionable. They start small--things you and I can do today--and work up to grander solutions. None of this promises a panacea but its a start at a better United States.

[John Hood · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his fascinating new book I, Citizen: A Blueprint for Reclaiming American Self-Government, Tony Woodlief argues that the nation’s capital has become “an imperial city.” Its conquests have not only overturned America’s constitutional order but also needlessly made enemies of citizens who, despite their many disagreements, ought to be able to live together in peace and mutual respect.

“A decades-long ideological war waged by political elites in our name,” Woodlief writes, “has punctured the reservoir of goodwill that characterized American civic life for generations. Simultaneously, centralization of power in D.C. has eroded the authority of our elected legislatures, which has reduced control over our own government.”

If you think Woodlief is only blaming elected officials for this state of affairs, you’re mistaken. The political class he describes includes journalists who for their own purposes devote more attention to clowns than to conciliators. It includes pollsters who construct artificially either-or questions to produce artificially rigid measures of polarization. It includes consultants and activists and other private interests who prefer to play their rigged game in the Washington casino rather than having to engage us in the real, robust, inherently untidy communities across our sprawling country where we spend most of our time pursuing our own conceptions of the American Dream.

Moreover, if you think Woodlief’s book concludes with one of those standard, wonky checklists of public policies that can “solve” the problem, you’re mistaken again. While he supports some institutions reforms of the federal government, such as strengthening the Government Accountability Office, Woodlief thinks it’s more important to strengthen our state governments, local governments, civic associations, and families so they can more effectively resist federal encroachment and offer Americans more opportunities to exercise true citizenship closer to home.

It’s a hopeful message for what is still, at its core, a hopeful nation. “We are not broken,” Woodlief concludes, “the political class is. We are not at war, they are.”