Introducing…
Welcome to Circle the Answer, a website, blog, news portal, and eventually a newsletter about the intersection of curiosity and truth.
What does that mean?
Well, it will evolve, but the TL;DR is that 15 years ago I died — twice — for a total of 13 minutes. That bone-chilling event got me thinking about some fascinating stuff: the meaning of life and death, the future of sentient creatures on this badly damaged planet, plus arguably the greatest yearlong stretch of quarterbacking the NFL has ever seen.
To start, I’ve pulled together some op-ed articles I wrote for JSOnline and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2022 and 2024. I hope to write more of those types of columns leading up to the November 2026 election. As I do that, I’ll post them here, too.
You can stop here — but there’s more
Subsequent posts will be shorter than the op-ed columns and in most cases shorter than this one, I hope.
You’ll perceive a leftward-leaning tone in the 2022-24 columns. That’s not my fault. Politically I’m a down-the-center moderate who believes in preserving Social Security and reducing the national debt, providing affordable health care and making taxation fair, rewarding those who build and run businesses appropriately while protecting workers and the planet against the absurd excesses we see today.
How can I consider myself a moderate? Other people unfortunately have moved the goalposts to the right, so far that a field goal that would have split the uprights when I was a kid goes wide left today. “Conservative” and “liberal” don’t mean what they used to — “conservative,” in particular, is undefinable now.
Spiritually, I am a “none,” respectful of those who embrace religion sincerely without imposing it on government or others who believe differently. I went to a Catholic high school that encouraged skepticism, postulating that faith should have the strength to withstand all challenges. I applaud that approach to spirituality and hope to employ it periodically here.
If I were to choose a religion today it would be a secular form of Buddhism. Saying that out loud like this, in public, already surprises me. Catholicism does not relinquish its influence easily.
I would be thrilled to get thoughtful feedback from anyone who reads what I have to say. Reasonable points of view that complement or conflict with mine will be welcome and potentially posted here, but I’ll remain the curator. No flat-earth theories or 2020 election rehashes will be presented unless persuasive evidence accompanies them.
My goal — ideally “our” goal — will be maintaining sincere curiosity as we search for honesty and truth.
I invite you to poke around the site, skim the columns, and scan the solid news sources whose stories are updated frequently on the Headlines page. Whether or not you agree with what you see here, please be both smart and skeptical about it.
A note about artificial intelligence bots: I do my own writing and make my own judgments. AI will help with the technical operation of the site and as a proofreader; it wrote the code for the poll and caught a misspelling in this essay, for example. I chose the colors, layout, and fonts using Squarespace, which is quite powerful and user-friendly. If the folks there want to pay me for saying that, they can contact me at:
Chuck Melvin
circletheanswer @ outlook.com