IF THE BARN IS FULL OF RATS, STOP CALLING THE RATS STAKEHOLDERS.

How many times can an institution fail, get a new logo, announce a task force, hire six consultants, and present the same steaming pile of bullshit in a slightly more reassuring font? Barnburners would like to know. We would also like the invoices.

We are Mugwumps who specialize in the uncomfortable question: what if this thing is not broken by accident? What if its design is the problem? Then quit polishing the fucking thing and tell us what comes next.

One important detail before anyone calls the fire department: this is political reconstruction, not literal arson, sabotage, intimidation, or a license to trample people's rights. We want a lawful plan, a replacement that works, and a transition that does not dump the consequences on the very people the institution already failed.

BARNBURNERS | BB

We are the demolition-estimate caucus of Mugwumps. When a program, agency, market structure or political rule has been audited, repaired, renamed and still cannot do its job, we ask whether keeping it alive is the expensive mistake.

But we're not here to torch a public service and call the smoke 'efficiency.' If an institution feeds children, processes benefits or protects people from abuse, its functions have to survive whatever restructuring comes next. A Barnburner who cannot explain the replacement has brought a tantrum, not a plan.

ROOTS · THE DEMOCRATS WHO WOULD RATHER SPLIT THE PARTY

Back in 1840s New York, Democrats were at each other's throats. One faction became known as the Hunkers; the other, the Barnburners. Their fight involved appointments, spending, party control and—most consequentially—the expansion of slavery into new U.S. territories. The Barnburners increasingly opposed that expansion and resisted party leaders who wanted to keep the issue safely buried under a pile of 'let's not make this political.' (Sources 01, 02)

In 1847 and 1848, the split became impossible to paper over. Barnburners held their own meetings and helped form the Free Soil coalition, which nominated former president Martin Van Buren in 1848. He lost, but the campaign made slavery's expansion a central national issue and helped reshape coalitions before the Civil War. A split can change political possibilities without producing an immediate electoral victory. (Sources 01, 03)

Do not confuse those Barnburners with twenty-first-century abolitionists or racial-equality advocates. The National Park Service explains that many opposed the extension of slavery without supporting abolition where it already existed. Some were concerned with protecting white free labor or weakening Southern political power. Their historical limits matter. We are borrowing a confrontational question, not endorsing every view held by the original crowd. (Source 01)

THEIR OPPONENTS WERE CALLED HUNKERS

Hunkers were generally more attached to the existing party organization, its patronage networks and the prospect of preserving unity through compromise. Barnburners were more willing to risk breaking the organization. That tension remains useful even when the modern issue is an obsolete regulation or failing agency rather than an antebellum party convention. (Sources 01, 04)

FUN FACT · YES, THE NAME IS ABOUT BURNING DOWN A BARN TO KILL RATS

The name was an insult: their opponents compared them to a farmer so determined to eliminate rats that he would burn down his entire barn. A spectacular solution! Unfortunately, now you've lost the barn and the rats can move next door. Smithsonian and National Park Service archives preserve political cartoons turning that very joke into election propaganda. (Sources 01, 05)

It's an excellent warning as well as an excellent name. Do not burn the infrastructure the people depend on just to announce you've solved the corruption problem. Remove what is rotten. Keep what works. Build something better before the roof comes off. A responsible Barnburner should be as suspicious of the demolition contractor as of the landlord.

→ Explore the Vault

TODAY · BURN THE FUCKER DOWN

FIRST, SHOW US THE FAILURE

Whether it’s the radical and extreme communistic DJT administration seizing the means of production from private capitalist American companies like Intel, deputizing masked vigilantes to terrorize American citizens and shoot them in the face in broad daylight or opening the floodgates for the Trump cabal to pilfer taxpayer coffers and take everything not nailed down, Grinch style.

WHY THE FUCK DOES IT KEEP HAPPENING?

Is the rule impossible to administer? Is the funding perverse? Is there a monopoly, a conflict of interest, an unaccountable office, or a procedure with no lawful appeal? Stop firing the receptionist for a system the board designed.

WE ARE IN CHARGE OF ABOLISH, NOT REPLACE

Name the institution taking over, the protections it must provide, the budget, the deadline, the legal authority and the metrics for success. 'Abolish it' is a headline. 'Here's how people still receive their medicine on Monday morning' is governance.

DEMAND JUSTICE IF NECESSARY

The people who depend on the institution should not be the collateral damage of reform. Protect continuity of essential services, due process, records, employee rights and access for the people most likely to be overlooked. Publish the milestones. Audit the result. If the new system fails, say so without inventing a new ribbon-cutting ceremony.

WHAT WOULD A BARNBURNER ACTUALLY INVESTIGATE?

We are especially interested in institutions that have survived years of complaints without fixing their underlying problem: enforcement agencies with weak oversight; corporate arrangements that concentrate ownership; government processes duplicated across offices; prisons whose financial incentives conflict with rehabilitation; political systems that make public participation needlessly difficult; and spending programs whose outcomes nobody can explain.

Some cases will justify abolition. Others will justify consolidation, separation of powers, stronger oversight, new staffing or simply enforcement of a good law that already exists. Barnburning is the willingness to consider foundational change—not an obligation to choose the most dramatic possible option.

POLICY TAGS · FIX IT, REBUILD IT, OR EXPLAIN WHY IT EXISTS

Institutional Reconstruction · Agency Consolidation · Constitutional Oversight · Corruption & Conflicts of Interest · Public Procurement · Regulatory Capture · Antitrust · Private Prisons · Immigration Detention Oversight · Criminal Justice · Electoral Reform · Independent Audits · Service Continuity · Workers' Rights · Due Process

The tags describe questions Barnburners might follow across Justice and the Vault. They are not proof that every caucus member supports the same proposal. We are here to inspect the machinery, not replace the owner's instructions with our own.

→ Explore Federal Agency Consolidation & Cost Savings

→ Explore ICE & DHS: Abolition, Reassignment & Constitutional Scrutiny

→ Explore Department of Justice Reconstruction & Accountability

→ Explore End For-Profit Prisons & Build Rehabilitation-Centered Corrections

→ Explore End Corporate Monopoly, Oligarchy, & Kleptocracy

→ Explore Abolish Closed Primaries & Electoral Reform

SIMILAR TO · SAME BUILDING, DIFFERENT TOOLBOX

ANTI-EPSTEINS | AE

They hunt documented misconduct, concealed influence and accountability failures. Barnburners ask what structure made those abuses possible and whether removing a few bad actors would leave the machinery intact.

PROGRESSIVES | PG

They study reforms that improve public outcomes. Barnburners become especially interested when a long parade of reforms has failed and the institution's design needs replacing.

BOURBONS | BO

They bring the audits, budget controls and constitutional questions. We bring the uncomfortable possibility that the agency is a magnificent, audited, perfectly legal waste of money.

GREENBACKS | GB

They follow the debt, credit, banks and rules of money. Barnburners examine whether those rules need a tweak, a breakup or a completely different institutional arrangement.

LESS LIKE · NO, WE ARE NOT ALL REQUIRED TO LOVE DEMOLITION

This section compares starting instincts, not enemies. All of these caucuses belong to the same Mugwumps movement. No one gets expelled for asking us to measure twice.

STALWARTS | ST

They are the friend who asks whether the bridge can safely be repaired. We are the friend with the inspection report showing the pillars have turned to oatmeal. Both jobs matter.

NEW DEALERS | ND

They tend to begin with durable guarantees and the public institutions delivering them. Barnburners may argue that the current delivery mechanism itself needs a complete redesign.

FEDERALISTS | FD

They see the value of coordinated national capacity. Barnburners sometimes question whether consolidation would create a single enormous point of failure instead.

BLUE DOGS | BD

They emphasize practical oversight, due process and public safety. Barnburners may pursue larger structural change, but should take those continuity and rights concerns seriously.

FIFTY HYPOTHETICAL BARNBURNERS · THE FIRE MARSHAL REQUESTS A MEETING

Ten politicians, ten celebrities, ten television characters, ten book characters, ten wildcards. An impossible dinner party of people who have challenged established systems—or who demonstrate how spectacularly wrong demolition can go. These are comparisons, not memberships, endorsements, personal political diagnoses or suggestions that any living person supports Mugwumps.

The test is not 'would we vote for them?' It's 'what did they try to dismantle, what did they build, and who paid for the change?' Some examples are admirable in one respect and cautionary in another. Nobody gets a lifetime exemption from questions just because they brought a sledgehammer.

01 · TEN POLITICIANS · THE ESTABLISHMENT HAS CALLED AN EMERGENCY MEETING

TEN THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS. ZERO ENDORSEMENTS. Each illustrates a reform instinct, a cautionary failure or a question about replacing power—not membership, approval or agreement with every action.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Helped secure the Thirteenth Amendment ending constitutional protection for chattel slavery. A reminder that some institutions cannot be made humane by appointing a friendlier manager. The abolition was a collective struggle, not one president's solo performance. (Source 06)

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Used federal antitrust power against corporate combinations. He'd ask whether the monopoly needs a fine or a breakup, and the monopolist would suddenly remember a conflicting appointment.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

Built Social Security and an expanded federal policy architecture during economic collapse. The radical act was not burning everything; it was replacing inadequate protection with a different institutional framework. (Source 07)

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

Signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act after sustained organizing and congressional work. A reminder that an entrenched discriminatory system sometimes requires federal enforcement, not another speech about patience. (Source 08)

SHIRLEY CHISHOLM

Took 'Unbought and Unbossed' into a presidential race that challenged the gatekeepers of both gender and race. The party bosses did not invite her to rearrange the furniture. She showed up anyway. (Source 09)

RONALD REAGAN

Changed the terms of federal labor relations by firing striking air traffic controllers in 1981. A cautionary Barnburner exhibit: destroying an established arrangement can shift risk onto workers. Demolition is not automatically liberation. (Source 10)

MARGARET THATCHER

Privatized major British state-owned enterprises, changing ownership and regulation. Another cautionary example: pulling the state out of a business raises questions about prices, labor protections and who controls the replacement. (Source 11)

BERNIE SANDERS

Has argued for replacing fragmented private health-insurance arrangements with a Medicare for All system. The blueprint must still answer financing, provider capacity and transition questions. The phrase 'we'll figure it out' is not an implementation schedule.

ELIZABETH WARREN

Helped champion the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Instead of pretending broken consumer-credit rules would fix themselves, she pressed for a new regulator. The regulator still has to prove itself. (Source 12)

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ

Has advocated large-scale changes to climate and economic policy through the Green New Deal framework. It's a proposal for institutional transformation, not a law that magically rebuilt the grid overnight.

02 · TEN CELEBRITIES · THE PUBLICIST IS HIDING UNDER THE TABLE

TEN THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS. ZERO ENDORSEMENTS. Each illustrates a reform instinct, a cautionary failure or a question about replacing power—not membership, approval or agreement with every action.

PRINCE

Fought over recording contracts and the control of his work. In a music business where a name can be an asset owned by somebody else, he turned even his stage identity into a fight about control.

BRITNEY SPEARS

Her conservatorship was terminated in 2021. The wider question isn't celebrity gossip; it's how legal power over a person's decisions is created, reviewed and ended.

SINÉAD O'CONNOR

Used a mainstream television performance to protest abuse in the Catholic Church and faced severe backlash. A Barnburner moment can be costly before the institution agrees the issue deserves daylight.

TAYLOR SWIFT

Re-recorded albums amid an ownership dispute and later acquired the original masters. Didn't burn down the recording industry; did demonstrate that leverage can force another arrangement.

DOLLY PARTON

Turned her influence into an international book-gifting program. Sometimes the old system is inadequate and the most subversive act is building an alternative that actually delivers.

MADONNA

Provoked religious and gender expectations within mass entertainment. Public outrage is cheap; the harder task is asking what control a creative worker gains from the spectacle.

COLIN KAEPERNICK

Used his NFL platform for protest, then found his employment prospects deeply contested. When work and expression collide, the people writing the contracts hold serious power.

MUHAMMAD ALI

Refused military induction over the Vietnam War, lost his boxing title and endured legal consequences before his conviction was overturned. Conscience can come with a very expensive bill.

RUPAUL

Built a global media business around an art form long dismissed by mainstream entertainment. The next Barnburner question is how the workers making that business possible share its protections and profits.

JANE FONDA

Moved between screen fame and protest across decades. She knows what sustained public controversy looks like; critics are entitled to scrutinize each cause and claim separately.

03 · TEN TV CHARACTERS · WHO GAVE THESE PEOPLE THE DESTRUCTION PERMIT?

TEN THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS. ZERO ENDORSEMENTS. Each illustrates a reform instinct, a cautionary failure or a question about replacing power—not membership, approval or agreement with every action.

DAENERYS TARGARYEN · GAME OF THRONES

Promises to break the wheel, then demonstrates that being convinced you're the liberator is not a substitute for restraint. Her final decisions belong in the cautionary section of every transition plan.

CERSEI LANNISTER · GAME OF THRONES

Can remove a roomful of political opponents and still leave the kingdom with more problems. Please do not mistake eliminating rivals for fixing institutions.

WALTER WHITE · BREAKING BAD

Rebels against humiliation and builds an empire with himself at its center. The original system's failures do not make the replacement remotely acceptable.

LESLIE KNOPE · PARKS AND RECREATION

Will rebuild the department, organize the town hall and make everybody a binder. She might even remember to check whether the residents actually wanted the new park.

RON SWANSON · PARKS AND RECREATION

He would happily abolish half the department and then make something magnificent out of wood. Somebody else needs to verify the municipal services still exist.

LISA SIMPSON · THE SIMPSONS

Finds systemic injustice in a town accustomed to shrugging. She'll provide citations, a petition and music for the fundraiser. She may need help accepting a compromise.

BUFFY SUMMERS · BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

Doesn't follow the Watchers' Council simply because it has a grand title and a library. If an institution won't protect the people it claims to serve, she'll question the chain of command.

WEDNESDAY ADDAMS · WEDNESDAY

Will interrogate the school's secrets before the principal has finished explaining the dress code. Excellent investigator; questionable choice for the student-wellness committee.

OLIVIA POPE · SCANDAL

Knows the cover-up is often the real institution. She can dismantle a corrupt arrangement—if somebody else watches how she uses the replacement power.

THE DOCTOR · DOCTOR WHO

Shows up, discovers the planet's ruling system is monstrous, and refuses to accept that 'it's tradition' counts as a defense. The new regime must not become the next episode's villain.

04 · TEN BOOK CHARACTERS · THE LIBRARIAN IS CONSIDERING MARTIAL LAW

TEN THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS. ZERO ENDORSEMENTS. Each illustrates a reform instinct, a cautionary failure or a question about replacing power—not membership, approval or agreement with every action.

KATNISS EVERDEEN · THE HUNGER GAMES

Understandably refuses a political order that turns children into television sacrifices. Also learns that replacing one manipulative ruler with another is not freedom.

HARRY POTTER · HARRY POTTER

Challenges a Ministry that suppresses inconvenient evidence. The magic-school version of the problem: if the institution refuses facts, the students start their own defense lessons.

HERMIONE GRANGER · HARRY POTTER

Organizes for people she believes are treated unfairly and insists that the school rules can be questioned. She'd have the legal memo ready before the others located the broomsticks.

MATILDA WORMWOOD · MATILDA

Refuses to accept a school run on humiliation and fear. Her reform strategy contains magical elements and should not be adopted by a local education board.

JEAN VALJEAN · LES MISÉRABLES

His life exposes a punitive legal order that can treat poverty and survival as permanent criminal identity. A Barnburner would examine whether mercy can be built into the law instead of relying on one policeman's conscience.

HESTER PRYNNE · THE SCARLET LETTER

Lives under a moral code designed to make one woman's punishment everybody's entertainment. She challenges the legitimacy of a society that confuses public shaming with justice.

WINSTON SMITH · NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

Tries to resist a state that manufactures truth. His tragedy is a warning: systems can become so coercive that personal rebellion without an organized alternative is vulnerable.

ALICE · ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

If the queen's rules make no sense, she asks why. One of the most cost-effective forms of institutional reform is refusing to pretend that nonsense is wisdom.

JO MARCH · LITTLE WOMEN

Will not let gender convention dictate every possible future for a writer. Doesn't need a wrecking ball; a pen and a contract can challenge a whole arrangement.

OFFRED · THE HANDMAID'S TALE

Survives a state that has made coercion a governing principle. Her story warns how swiftly rights can disappear, and why abolishing a dictatorship must include protections against the next one.

05 · TEN WILDCARDS · THE BUILDING INSPECTOR HAS LEFT THE CHAT

TEN THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS. ZERO ENDORSEMENTS. Each illustrates a reform instinct, a cautionary failure or a question about replacing power—not membership, approval or agreement with every action.

HARRIET TUBMAN · ABOLITIONIST

Helped enslaved people escape, repeatedly risking her life against a system that defined human beings as property. Never confuse the destruction of an unjust institution with destruction for entertainment.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS · ABOLITIONIST

Used speech, writing and organizing to challenge slavery and demand citizenship. He would have asked who benefits from the old rules before accepting a compromise that left them intact.

ROSA PARKS · CIVIL RIGHTS ORGANIZER

Her refusal was part of organized action against segregated public transportation, not a spontaneous personality quirk. The bus system had to change, not merely the seating chart on one trip.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. · CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER

Helped build a movement demanding changes to segregation and voting rules through mass nonviolent organizing. The reform was structural because ordinary people organized to enforce it.

NELSON MANDELA · ANTI-APARTHEID LEADER

Fought the apartheid order and later participated in building a democratic constitutional system. Replacing a regime is only the first sentence in a much longer governance plan.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY · SUFFRAGIST

Voted in 1872 knowing the system denied her a ballot. Her record also includes exclusionary racial arguments, a reminder that fighting one unjust rule does not make a person right about every other one.

MARK TWAIN · SATIRIST

Our historical inspiration would enjoy a caucus named after a joke about destroying a barn. He would probably ask why the rats had a lobbyist and a federal grant.

ROBIN HOOD · FOLKLORE

Challenges a predatory sheriff's distribution system. Very appealing as mythology, although the Bourbons still want a budget and the Stalwarts want proof the local food supply survives.

BUGS BUNNY · LOONEY TUNES

Turns the bully's machinery against him. Excellent cartoon tactics; actual anvils, traps and explosive cigars are not approved public-sector procurement.

GODZILLA · CINEMATIC ICON

Nobody is better at demolishing a city. Nobody is worse at preparing the replacement city's zoning plan. The definitive example of why demolition alone is not policy.

OUR NO-ARSON CLAUSE · READ THIS BEFORE YOU BUY A MATCH

Barnburners is a metaphor for lawful institutional redesign. No actual fires, threats, violence, sabotage or intimidation. No guilt by association. No stripping people of due process because an accusation is exciting. If the proposed replacement cannot protect the people who depend on the existing service, it is not ready. You are allowed to be angry; you are still required to do the homework.

The contemporary public figures above are hypothetical analogies, not declared Mugwumps, endorsers, allies or recruitment targets. Fictional characters cannot sign membership forms. Some comparisons are explicit warnings about the harm caused when would-be reformers become rulers without limits.

THE CHECKLIST · BEFORE YOU CALL IT AN ABOLITION

WHAT EXACTLY IS BROKEN?

Name the specific rule, function, market incentive or constitutional defect. Provide the evidence. Do not confuse a bad officeholder with a permanently unfixable office.

WHAT EXACTLY REPLACES IT?

Write the statute or administrative change, funding mechanism, timeline, responsible institution, emergency continuity plan and enforceable protections. The first replacement draft may be ugly. It still has to exist.

WHO BEARS THE TRANSITION COST?

Check workers, service recipients, disabled people, low-income households, local governments and anyone the old system already ignored. If reform saves money by abandoning those people, you've changed the accounting, not improved the country.

WHO AUDITS THE NEW SYSTEM?

A plan with no measurement, reporting or independent review may simply build a new barn for the same rats. Announce how success and failure will be measured before the ribbon-cutting. And then publish the results.

EXPLORE · BRING YOUR OWN BLUEPRINT

→ Explore Mugwumps

→ Explore All Thirteen Caucuses

→ Explore the Five Pillars of Justice

→ Explore the Vault

→ Explore Membership

SOURCES & HISTORICAL NOTES

01 · National Park Service — The Election of 1848: Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men; Hunkers, Barnburners and antislavery coalition.

https://www.nps.gov/mava/learn/historyculture/the-election-of-1848-free-soil-free-labor-free-men.htm

02 · National Park Service — Fertile Political Ground, formation of the Free Soil Party in 1848.

https://www.nps.gov/places/fertile-political-ground.htm

03 · National Park Service — Martin Van Buren's Return to the Soil, 1844–1848 and the Free Soil ticket.

https://home.nps.gov/articles/martin-van-buren-s-return-to-the-soil.htm

04 · Gustavus Myers — The History of Tammany Hall, chapter on Barnburners and Hunkers (historical account).

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/53115/pg53115-images.html

05 · Smithsonian National Museum of American History — The Strife between an Old Hunker, a Barnburner and a No Party Man (1848 cartoon).

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_325595

06 · National Archives — Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1865.

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment

07 · Social Security Administration — History of the 1935 Social Security Act and Roosevelt's proposal.

https://www.ssa.gov/history/fdrbill.html

08 · National Archives — Voting Rights Act of 1965, historical background and statutory text.

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act

09 · U.S. House History, Art & Archives — Shirley Chisholm's 1972 Presidential Campaign.

https://history.house.gov/Blog/2020/September/9-14-Chisholm-1972/

10 · Ronald Reagan Presidential Library — Papers relating to the 1981 PATCO strike.

https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/finding-aids/northrup-herbert-r-papers-patco-strike-1972-1991

11 · UK Parliament, House of Commons Library — Privatisation: 1979 to the 1990s (research briefing).

https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP14-61/RP14-61.pdf

12 · Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — Elizabeth Warren, Priorities for the New CFPB, December 2, 2010.

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/archive/newsroom/priorities-for-the-new-consumer-financial-protection-bureau/

13 · National Archives — Civil Rights Act of 1964, primary source and historical summary.

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/civil-rights-act

WE ARE ONE.  ·  E PLURIBUS UNUM.