Last night we hosted our third monthly gathering, back at Jasper's Backyard in Conshohocken. We had eight guys out. Some of the core crew who have been there since the very first one at McNally's, and a couple of new faces joining us for the first time.

Still humble beginnings, but I left genuinely encouraged. What struck me most is how consistent the type of person showing up has been. An appreciation for history, especially being here in the birthplace of the country. An orientation toward freedom, liberty, entrepreneurship, and high agency. Faith came up more than once. And above all, a real desire to get offline and build community in person. If you're reading this and those words describe you, you're in the right place, and I'd encourage you to come out to the next one.

Funny enough, the conversation found its way back to something I wrote about a couple weeks ago, how quiet the 250th felt. I wasn't the only one who noticed.

Between the three gatherings so far, we've had roughly fifteen different people come out. Small numbers, but high signal, and exactly the right people. I also left Wednesday with a page full of ideas for where to take this: ways for you all to connect with each other between gatherings, different formats like dinners at historic spots around the area, family centric events and how we grow this while keeping the room high quality. More to come on all of that in the weeks ahead.

The next gathering will be in August. Details soon. If you've been on the fence, make that one your first. We would love to host you.

Important: Gathering number three is in the books. The next one will be in August, and I'm working on the date and the spot now. Details in an upcoming edition.

If you came out last night, thank you. If you haven't made one yet, August is your month.

In the meantime, please do us all a favor, forward this to a friend, a family member, or both who would like to join us, I want to grow this intentionally and organically. The best way to do that is by leaning on you all to build this community together.

For the past few weeks I've been writing about what happened at the Pennsylvania State House, Independence Hall today. The vote on July 2nd, the document adopted on the 4th, the first public reading in the yard on the 8th. Like I've said from the start, I'm learning most of this in real time right along with you. But this week's find surprised me the most: while all of that was going on, a second revolution was starting up in the same building.

Declaring independence from Britain created an immediate problem for Pennsylvania. The old colonial government answered to the king, so it had effectively collapsed, and something had to replace it. On July 15th, 1776, eleven days after the Declaration was adopted, a convention gathered at the State House to figure out what. Benjamin Franklin, fresh off the Declaration committee and while still serving in Congress, was elected its president.

What they produced over the next ten weeks was the most radical constitution in America, and probably the most democratic form of government anywhere in the world at the time. No governor at all. A single-house legislature elected every year. The doors of the assembly were required to stay open so any citizen could walk in and watch. Bills had to be printed and circulated to the public for consideration before they could become law. And the vote went to every taxpaying man in the state, no property requirement, which at the time was about as wide open as any place on earth.

It's also worth pausing on who wrote it. Not the famous names. Much of the drafting fell to men like a schoolteacher of mathematics, a self-taught astronomer and clockmaker, and a brewer's son who, a few weeks later, would pen the official parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence with his own hand. Ordinary tradesmen, writing a government from scratch.

Not everyone was impressed. John Adams, whose Thoughts on Government I wrote about back in April, thought Pennsylvania had gone way too far. He called the constitution "so democratical that it must produce confusion and every evil work." He may have had a point. The thing was so contested that Pennsylvania replaced it fourteen years later with a version closer to Adams' model, the one with checks and balances that looks like what we have today.

But for a stretch of years, right here, the most democratic experiment in the world was running out of the same building where independence had just been declared. Two revolutions in one summer, under one roof. 250 years ago this week.

If you haven’t done so already, please reply to this email and let me know the following:

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