When Philosophy Meets Politics: A Conversation About America's Forgotten Foundation

Some conversations make your brain work in ways you didn’t expect. My recent interview with Damien Terrence Dubose on Lens of Hopefulness with John Passadino was one of those conversations that had me pausing, rethinking, and honestly needing to study up before we even started recording.Damien is a Washington, DC-based financial professional and author of America’s Ethical Archetype: Establishing the Psychology of Moral Authority and Correcting Our Country’s Broken Politics. And I’ll be honest with you — when I first read his book, I had to put it down a few times. Not because it wasn’t good. But because, as I told Damien, “this man has a beautiful mind.”The book is intense. It covers psychology, philosophy, political theory, and leadership in ways that made me realize I needed to do my homework. So I did. And the conversation that followed was worth every minute of preparation.Not Your Typical Political ConversationLet me be clear about what this interview wasn’t. We didn’t argue about personalities. We didn’t debate who’s right and who’s wrong. We didn’t get into the usual shouting match that passes for political discourse these days.What we did talk about was something much deeper: the psychology and philosophy of leadership itself.I tried to frame the core of Damien’s argument early on. His book, I said, isn’t about the usual policy prescriptions — “it’s not, well, we need to impose more tariffs…or we need better unions. It’s not that.” What Damien is actually proposing is something far more foundational: a whole new approach to leadership, one that we haven’t seen in a long time, that blends psychology and philosophy.Damien confirmed that’s exactly right.Ayn Rand and the IndividualNow, I’ll admit — I didn’t know much about Ayn Rand before reading Damien’s book. I know her now. And I understand why she’s controversial.Rand founded objectivism, which is rooted not in egotism in the sense of someone with a big ego, but egoism as an ethical philosophy. It’s based on the freedom and rights of the individual.“A person’s individuality or individual character is what we should be focusing on,” Damien said. “The thing that makes them different from other people, makes them an individual, centering a view of life around that.”When I asked for a practical example, I landed on the word that makes a lot of people uncomfortable: capitalist.“Exactly,” Damien said. “That’s this exact frame of reference I’m thinking about.”And right away, I knew some people’s hackles would go up. When I think of capitalism, I think of free market — versus socialism or communism at the other extreme.My Corporate Experience and Individual FreedomI worked for corporations my entire career — JPMorgan Chase and IBM. These companies employed a lot of people. They allowed me to retire at a relatively young age. During that time, I was all for free market and business because I wanted to stay employed. I felt like if they got tax breaks and could operate within reason — not polluting rivers and all that — they needed to grow and invest for the company to thrive. And both companies have been thriving for over 100 years.But Damien pushed deeper than just economic outcomes.“A lot of times people look at the outcomes of situations,” he said. “But really what’s at the root of it is: as an individual, I get the right to choose. And I’m not saying that I get the right to take your life or injure you or do anything of that nature. That’s where we get to the rational and irrational perspective. But essentially, I’m not here to make decisions only that you approve of. I’m not going to limit my life to that realm.”How Did We Get Here? The Wisdom of the Founding FathersOne of the most impressionable moments in the conversation came when I pointed to the opening pages of his book. The Founding Fathers, he wrote, “established the United States on the core principles that emphasize the role and rights of the individual.” America was built as a constitutional republic firmly rooted in those axioms.So what happened?Damien’s answer was both historical and psychological. The individualist perspective, he explained, is actually a fairly new concept in human history — only about 500 years old. Before that, we lived in collectives, tribes, castes. We didn’t see ourselves as individuals apart from our groups.And here’s what struck me: we underestimate the wisdom of the people who built this country. “They foresaw a lot of the things that are happening today,” Damien said. “That is exactly why the system is set up the way it is today.”I shared what I’d heard from a philosophy and rhetoric professor: that back in those early days, you had to study, you had to command the ability to communicate, you had to execute rhetoric efficiently — or you’d better know how to fight. There was no casual scrolling through a feed and forming a ...