The Founders’ Warning
What America’s Founders Might Tell Us Today
What if America’s Founders could return to the Republic they created—and see what became of it?
1789 – 2020 - 2040. Three moments in America’s story. One continuing experiment in self-government.
In The Founders’ Warning, author and political economist Werner Neff brings America’s Founders into an imaginative journey across time.
1789: The new Republic takes shape. The Founders debate freedom, representation, the Constitution, the separation of powers, checks and balances, and the responsibilities of citizens and leaders. They disagree on important questions, but share an extraordinary challenge: how can a free people govern themselves while preventing the concentration and abuse of power?
2020: More than two centuries later, the Founders encounter the country their experiment produced. Through fictional dialogue, they examine a deeply divided political landscape, declining public trust, contested elections, inequality, and the strengths and weaknesses of the institutions they helped create. Their conversations continue through the events surrounding January 6, 2021, raising a fundamental question: How resilient is a constitutional republic when its democratic traditions are tested?
2040: The journey moves into an imagined future. Looking back on the preceding twenty years, the Founders consider what America might learn, what might change, and what principles could continue to guide the Republic.
Blending history, political thought, and fictional dialogue, The Founders’ Warning does not ask readers to agree with a political party or ideology. It invites them to think alongside the Founders.
What did they get right? What did they fail to foresee? And what responsibility does each generation carry for preserving a free republic?
The Founders created the framework. The future belongs to those who inherit it.
A conversation across centuries. A warning for today. A vision for tomorrow.
The text of this book was first published under the title:
What Would The Founding Fathers Tell Us Today?
Restore Trust
Economic Solutions to Current Social and Political Issues in the U.S.
RESTORE TRUST is an invitation to take a fresh look at the current socio-economic reality in this country. Neff discusses economic solutions to dysfunctional politics and offers a conclusive call to action to restore trust and defend the needs and core values of the American people.
Neff offers opportunities and solutions to create a shift to strengthen our democracy. Poverty is a structural problem created by economic thinking errors and institutional poverty traps, revealed, and discussed in detail in this book. Neff argues that America is a welfare state.
Democratic principles are distorted. The current political system allows the wealthy and large corporations to covertly influence legislation and bend economic laws in their favor.
Economic thinking errors are the source of our entitlement society.
The working poor are a social problem created by politics. The low minimum wage does not support a most basic lifestyle and as a result, food stamps, free medical services and other social programs become necessary to cover the gap. Half of the Federal budget supports the poor and the elderly across the country. Americans, mostly the middle class, subsidize this insufficient minimum wage with their taxes and unknowingly and indirectly support the bottom line of companies that underpay their employees.
Restore Our Democracy
The Case for Equality and Justice
The gifts we inherited from our Founding Fathers are The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Bill of Rights: guidelines for peacefully living together. These democratic principles are based on values and needs, to guide our leaders in good times and bad.
We have also inherited unhealthy ideals and patterns from our ancestors who impact us still today and hold us hostage in the past, stuck in entitlement, racism, dominance, and inequality. Many of these ideals no longer serve us. We must reevaluate leadership and revisit our commitments to the American People.
RESTORE OUR DEMOCRACY is a reflection on history, political philosophy, and the current political and economic reality. The author takes a raw look at how our unconscious loyalty to the past continues to impact our society still, today. The book revisits the original values and principles of Democracy. Neff warns of the dangers of the current distortions of our democracy and calls it a covert betrayal on the American people.
