Hi! I’m Dean Clancy.
I’m a health freedom advocate, policy analyst, consultant, opinion writer, and public speaker. I have more than twenty years’ high-level policy experience in Congress, the White House, and the U.S. health care industry. I work as a senior policy fellow at Americans for Prosperity. I’m also president and founder of HSAs for All, and a partner at Adams Auld LLC, a public policy consultancy. My hobbies are vaping, watching old movies, listening to pleasant music (Dixieland jazz and Louis Armstrong are special favorites), and playing with my grandchildren.
I have some policy passions, which dominate this admittedly odd little website. The most important is what I call ‘renewing the promise of American life.’ I want to see our country happy and united again without unduly coercive conformity. And I think we can make it happen. But it can only happen by restoring the principles of the American founding to the center of our national life.
We already know the formula for happiness. We just have to follow it.
In political terms, I describe myself as a ‘decentralist,’ rather than using a more familiar label like ‘conservative,’ ‘liberal,’ or ‘libertarian’ — terms that have lost their usefulness through overextension. I am a small-d democrat and a small-r republican. I oppose monopoly and stand for the little guy and common sense. I believe in equal opportunity for all, special privileges for none — a government of laws, not men. I think we can never be truly happy without personal and local self-government. Small is beautiful. I am not a socialist. I recognize the existence of natural law, and I can read history. And without strong protections for private property, we can kiss our liberty goodbye. I strongly support civil rights, understood as individual, not group rights — I am grateful the Constitution is color-blind. I support what I half-jokingly call McKinleynomics, the traditional American policy mix of balanced budgets, honest money, and no income tax. I regard the income tax as the ‘root of all evil’ and government money-printing as a polite name for theft.
These views, and my passion for reform, have led me to compile what I pretentiously call my ‘American renewal plan,’ fourteen ‘planks’ of policy recommendations that, together, constitute my personal answer to the question, ‘What would it take to make America America again?’ — I mean America in the best and noblest sense.
E.F. Schumacher and Orestes Brownson have been important influences on my thinking. Also, a trio of British Christians with initials for first names: C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and J.R.R. Tolkien. I like to say James Madison is my homeboy, Walker Percy is my spirit guide, and Toshiro Mifune is my BSF (best samurai forever). And I would rather be George Smiley than James Bond.
I was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and grew up in Aurora, Colorado. I’ve spent most of my career in Washington, D.C. Since 2016, I’ve worked remotely from sunny Florida. My wife and I have been married for more than thirty years and have been blessed with four children and, so far, three grandchildren.
To me, the happiest kind of life is the one in which you forget yourself in the service of others, pursue justice without fear, and let yourself be moved by wonder and beauty.
Be of good cheer. There’s always hope. Life’s an adventure. Each new day is an opportunity. And every person is a miracle — even the annoying ones.
Dean Frazier Clancy
Sarasota, 2024