By: Phil Williams
There is a line in the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie that speaks volumes. Captain Jack Sparrow and Will Turner used an upside-down rowboat to walk underwater causing Turner to say, “This is either madness or brilliance!” Sparrow responds, “It’s amazing how often those traits coincide.”
So true. Sometimes the craziest ideas are the best ideas. They’re audacious, pugnacious, contumacious…but brilliant. Crazy ideas are often what breaks the status quo. This is exactly what we are watching as President Trump commissioned Elon Musk to be an outside consultant with authority to turn over every rock and find what has been hidden. Its madness, and brilliant, all at the same time. It’s that attitude that makes America a world leader. The doing of things so maddeningly risky, outright crazy, that few would ever think of doing it. It reminded me of a story from 1960 when a man parachuted from the edge of space. The Cold War era saw the Space Race, but also included experimental aircraft that could fly the periphery of the atmosphere and break the sound barrier. Wild stories of daredevils like Chuck Yeager galvanized the world as test pilots flew by the seat of their pants. In the late 1950s, the U.S. Air Force launched Project Excelsior to determine whether a manned flight could break up at extreme altitude and the pilot still safely eject. There was no way to know without trying, and the volunteer was 32-year-old Air Force pilot Captain Joseph Kittinger.
His first attempt from 76,400 feet (fourteen miles up!) did not go well. When Kittinger jumped, he could see the curvature of the earth. The main chute malfunctioned, the shroud lines wrapped around his neck, he was knocked unconscious as he spun downward at twenty-two times the force of gravity. The automatic reserve chute saved his life.
He was asked if he would jump again. It was about something bigger than him: the safety of extreme flight pilots. The brilliant idea had to be accompanied by absolute madness.
On Aug. 16, 1960, Kittinger ascended above New Mexico in an open gondola suspended from a huge helium balloon. At the door of the gondola some joker had put a sign that read, “This is the highest step in the world.” He wore a fully pressurized suit, much like an astronaut, and nineteen miles above the earth (that’s 102,800 feet!), Kittinger jumped. He fell at speeds exceeding 600 mph for over four-and-a-half minutes. At 14,000 feet, Kittinger pulled the ripcord of his parachute and safely landed. Problem solved. Holy cow, it was madness and brilliance!
Look back at some of the greatest innovations of history and you will find they often were deemed mad when first proposed. Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing revolutionized the world of media when they built The Daily Wire from their garage. They saw a way to communicate conservative views using the Internet, social media, and radio combined. They were fired by their boss for dreaming it up. Eight years later, The Daily Wire is the largest non-traditional media company in the world with annual revenues of over $200 million. Madness and brilliance. The world of media will never be the same. In 1902, the New York Times announced that the automobile was an impractical fad. They predicted no way to achieve an inexpensive means of putting automobiles in the hands of the average consumer. They didn’t see the madness and brilliance of Henry Ford’s mass production assembly line. The price of automobiles came down, and the world of travel and commerce was forever changed.
I could tell a dozen more stories of inspiration, innovation, and heroic effort. True stories of Americans doing that which was deemed absolute madness and turned out to be brilliance.
It is that sense of things that is needed to fix our government. The Left calls it madness, the Right calls it brilliance.
But with the advent of DOGE, common sense executive orders, the pardoning of political prisoners, the termination of bad actors, securing of the border, investigation of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the cutting of wasteful spending on frivolous projects, the restoring of destroyed areas of North Carolina, the demand for accountability in the war in Ukraine, the end of DEI, and the restoration of military readiness…I could go on, and you know I could…we are watching a pace that no one ever thought possible in the realm of government. The left plays constant catch up to the day-to-day running of the righting of the American ship of state. It is madness and brilliance all at one time.
I don’t want a government that settles for status quo. This is the nation that won the Space Race, invented atomic energy, and tore down the Iron Curtain. We survived our own civil war and established the world’s premier civil rights. We have solved problems throughout our history that many thought unsolvable.
We did it because as a people, as a culture, we are mavericks. We see problems and know that solutions will take madness and brilliance, and we love that. It is part of who we are.
This is the by-God United States of America, where we break norms, tear down walls, and run through obstacles just because we can.
And the only way to keep that brilliant craziness going is to take the leap off of the highest steps in the world. And that means having a government that is not bloated, or slow, or belligerent. It means having a government that is lean, and hungry for more, and which empowers the private sector to pursue crazy ideas that change the world.
So, yes, I’m loving the changes I see in government right now. It is madness and brilliance…it’s amazing how often those traits coincide.
By: Phil Williams
March 7, 2025
