Articles of Unity

The Articles of Unity, also known as Unity 2020, is a grass roots political movement started by the public intellectual and evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein that seeks to provide an alternative third ticket for the 2020 United States presidential election to avoid electing either Joe Biden or Donald Trump.  The Unity 2020 ticket will consist of two candidates drafted from the left and the right who have agreed to govern as a team with the president of the ticket being chosen by a coin flip.  They would try to make decisions by consensus and the president would only make a decision in a case that there could not be consensus or in the case of an emergency. Unity 2020 has currently selected Tulsi Gabbard and Dan Crenshaw to be the two candidates but neither person has yet to state publicly if they will run on the ticket.

Beginnings

Bret Weinstein first proposed Unity 2020 by posting a whitepaper entitled "Articles of Unity: A Patriotic Plan To Save Our Republic" on the website medium on June 29, 2020 that outlined the basic tenants of the proposal^[1].  The largest announcement was on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast episode #1494 on June 18, 2020^[2] which to date has over 6,300,000 views on Youtube.  

Motivation

The Articles of Unity and the Unity 2020 movement stems out of a concern that the current Democratic and Republican parties in the United States are consumed by extreme partisanship and show a lack of leadership at the highest levels of government. As the most highlighted line in Bret Weinstein’s white paper on the website Medium about the Articles of Unity states: "The need for leadership has never been greater. Yet, the parties have never offered less."^[3]  Pew polls suggest that 87% of Americans are at least fairly worried about the "ability of Political leaders to solve the country's problems" with nearly half of Americans (48%) being very worried and a majority (55%) think that the federal government has negative impacts on problems in the United States^[4]. A majority of voters (89%) think that political corruption is a "crisis" or a "significant problem"^[5]. Additionally, Unity 2020 claims that there are a large number of Americans that fall into the “exhausted majority” (a term coined by the Hidden Tribes^[6] report that consists of Americans with political opinions between the far left and far right) that can form the base of support for the Unity 2020 movement for the 2020 United States presidential election.  Independent voters are the fastest growing group of voters with about 40% of Americans identifying as independent^[7].

Concept

Bret Weinstein has discussed the Articles of Unity on multiple media outlets.  The concept behind Articles of Unity, as described on its website^[8], is that two candidates would be drafted from the left and the right.  A coin flip decides who runs at the top of the ticket as president.  When elected they would agree to govern as a team.  Only when they do not agree or in the case of war or emergency can the president make a decision without consultation with the vice president.  After four years, the president and vice president would trade positions.

Bret Weinstein outlines three minimum criteria for the two candidates, although he does not defined the qualities in detail:

1. Patriotic
2. Highly Capable
3. Courageous

The Articles of Unity and the Unity 2020 movement claims that this plan can avoid being a spoiler for the 2020 United States presidential election because it disempowers both Democratic and Republican parties by drawing candidates from both sides of the political divide. There is also a fail safe; if there is no viable path to the presidency for the Unity 2020 ticket then the race will be suspended.

Articles of Unity and Unity 2020 in the media

Since announcing this on The Joe Rogan Experience, Bret Weinstein has appeared on many media outlets discussing the idea, such as the National Review^[9], Rising on the Hill TV^[10], Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox^[11], Tiggernometry^[12], The Respondent^[13], What Bitcoin Did^[14], Conversations with Tom^[15], and the Charlie and Ben podcast^[16].  The website Big Think has also published an article discussing the idea^[17].    Reason magazine has also published a piece and a video discussing Unity 2020 and compared it to previous and other modern political movements^[18]. There have also been other publications that have published articles on it like the Windermere Sun^[19].

Some controversy has arisen when Twitter banned the Articles of Unity account with no explanation^[20].

List of endorsements

Melissa Chen^[21] (Journalist)

Matt Taibbi^[22] (Journalist)

John Wood Jr.^[23] (Public intellectual, a former congressional nominee, former Vice-Chairman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County)

Nate Boyer^[24] (Former professional American football player and Green Beret)

Eric Weinstein^[25] (Managing director at Thiel Capital and podcast host)

External links

• Articles of Unity Website

References

1. #Unity2020 (June 29, 2020). "The Articles of Unity". Medium.
2. "Joe Rogan Experience #1494 - Bret Weinstein". www.youtube.com. June 18, 2020. Retrieved 2020-08-19.
3. #Unity2020 (June 29, 2020). "The Articles of Unity". Medium. Retrieved 2020-08-19.
4. Parker, Kim; Morin, Rich; Menasce Horowitz, Juliana (2019-03-21). "Public Sees America's Future in Decline on Many Fronts". Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project. Retrieved 2020-09-03.
5. Rasmussen, Scott (April 25, 2019). "Voters Rate Political Corruption as America's Biggest Crisis | RealClearPolitics". www.realclearpolitics.com. Retrieved 2020-09-03.
6. Hawkins, Stephen; Yudkin, Daniel; Juan-Torres, Míriam; Dixon, Tim (2018). Hidden Tribes: A Study of America's Polarized Landscape. More in Common.
7. Maloyed, Christie (2019-06-05). "The rise of the independent voter?". The Current. Retrieved 2020-09-03.
8. "The Vision". Unity2020. Retrieved 2020-08-19.
9. NR Interview (July 30, 2020). "The Unity 2020 Ticket: An Interview with Bret Weinstein". National Review.
10. "Rising - The Hill TV- Unity 2020 Plan". www.youtube.com. Retrieved 2020-08-19.
11. "Bret Weinstein Introduces the Unity 2020 Plan on Tucker Carlson Tonight". www.youtube.com. June 29, 2020.
12. Kisin, Konstantin; Foster, Francis. "Bret Weinstein - We Can Stop a Civil War". Triggernometry. Retrieved 2020-08-29.
13. Ellis, Greg (August 16, 2020). "The Respondent Episode 5 - Bret Weinstein". The Respondent on www.thinkspot.com. Retrieved 2020-08-29.
14. "#Unity2020: Ending the Two-Party System with Bret Weinstein". What Bitcoin Did. July 7, 2020. Retrieved 2020-08-29.
15. "Bret Weinstein on Ending Cancel Culture, Avoiding Civil War and How We can Unity". Conversations with Tom on Impact Theory.com. August 6, 2020.
16. Bret Weinstein On Emotionally Driven Politics And Charisma In Presidential Elections, retrieved 2020-08-19
17. "How #Unity2020 plans to end the two-party system, bring back Andrew Yang". Big Think. 2020-07-02. Retrieved 2020-08-19.
18. Weissmueller, Zach (2020-08-28). "Can the Republican Party Survive Trump?". Reason.com (published August 28, 2020). Retrieved 2020-08-29.
19. Nunamaker, Susan Sun (July 2, 2020). "The Articles of Unity, A Patriotic Plan To Save Our Republic". Windermere Sun. Retrieved August 30, 2020.
20. Harper, Cindy (2020-08-31). "Twitter suspends account of non-partisan group Articles of Unity". Reclaim The Net. Retrieved 2020-09-03.
21. "Melissa Chen twitter account". Twitter. Retrieved 2020-08-19.
22. "Bret Weinstein and Matt Taibbi: Corruption and its Consequences". www.youtube.com. July 18, 2020.
23. "Unity2020 Campfire With Bret Weinstein, John Wood Jr. & Nate Boyer". www.youtube.com. August 12, 2020.
24. "Unity2020 Campfire With Bret Weinstein, John Wood Jr. & Nate Boyer". www.youtube.com. August 12, 2020.
25. "Unity 2020 Campfire Discussion - Bret and Eric Weinstein". www.youtube.com. August 5, 2020.