Stop Poasting. Start Marching.

RFK Jr.'s return to the White House heralds the revival of the 50-mile march. Let us heed the call.

Sixty years ago, Robert F. Kennedy Sr. walked in Oxford shoes along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal towpath, slogging fifty miles through snow and slush.

His aides all dropped out by mile 35, but he pressed on until his feet bled. Not because it was easy, because it was hard.

I’ve told the story so many times here that the words feel stale and cliché. But on Thursday, RFK Jr. breathed new life into this little-known tidbit of American history in a White House speech, after being sworn in as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

As he prepares to command our national health apparatus, it feels like a good time to take stock of the challenge that gives this Substack its name: the 50-mile march that once invigorated the nation, and can do so again!

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When President-Elect John F. Kennedy wrote ‘The Soft American’ for Sports Illustrated in late 1960, he warned that modern comforts were dulling our national edge. At the time he voiced these concerns, Americans were far healthier and more robust. Under President Kennedy, a seventeen-year-old boy was expected to run a mile in about 6:06, perform thirteen pull-ups, and complete over fifty pushups.

Today, seventy-seven percent of young people don’t meet the basic requirements for military service (which are not particularly demanding). That statistic loomed large as RFK Jr. stood in the Oval Office, the very place where his father and uncle once plotted to renew our national vigor.

In accepting the HHS post, RFK Jr. didn’t dwell on vaccines, pharmaceuticals, or the truth about seed oils. Instead, he invoked the memory of his father staggering home after eighteen snow-choked hours—a man spent, yet transformed.

This story about the original 50-mile march, along the C&O canal towpath, was the preface to his remarks about his own decades-long mission to end the epidemic of childhood chronic disease in this country.

For the past 7 years, my writing has focused on the necessity of a certain extremism when it comes to restoring American vitality. Moderation can work for maintaining health, but not for recovering it. A sick nation needs strong medicine.

Take just two data points:

• Average testosterone levels in men have fallen on average by one percent each year since the 1980s.

• Grip strength has declined from 117 pounds of force in 1985 to 98 pounds in 2016.

These might not sound so dramatic – until you extrapolate them another 50 years into the future.

We’re getting weaker.

But it’s not only about diminishing physical strength, excess weight or chronic illness. It’s about how our material lives have overtaken our sense of purpose. We’ve grown spiritually obese. Even the trim among us lug around so many burdensome possessions and so many illusions of wealth.

It was Teddy Roosevelt who first warned of how peace and plenty might erode our martial spirit. JFK admonished the American people for becoming “a nation of spectators.” We’ve gone far beyond that threshold—we’re a nation of scrollers and strollers, meandering through life without much sense of individual or collective purpose. The kick in our step is all but gone, and it’s making our souls sick.

As RFK Jr. notes in his brief speech, a healthy man has a thousand dreams; a sick man has but one (to be well). Nearly two-thirds of Americans now suffer some form of chronic illness, their horizons narrowed to mere management of their condition.

I experienced a similar diminishment in my early twenties—suffering from what I self-diagnosed as chronic fatigue from an extended bout with mononucleosis (in hindsight, I think it was Swine Flu). After months of illness, my old-school family physician properly diagnosed me with having "lost the Will to Live." Modern medicine might have dosed me with prescription pills, but he wisely recognized that I needed a mission.

By embracing what Teddy Roosevelt called “the strenuous life,” I gradually recovered my health and began the longer-term work of rooting out remaining sources of weakness and illness, both internal and external.

The resulting strength and purposeful energy has been a great enabler in my life. I can lift logs and build burn piles that some would think would require heavy machinery. I can carry my big kids up the stairs and play “Bear Game” with them on all fours. I can lift an alfalfa bale on to a truck bed so I can feed our family dairy cow who, in turn, provides us with a fridge full of milk and all the derivatives my wife is learning how to make.

These might seem quaint and trivial, but for me they are the core of what Making America Healthy Again should mean. It’s about returning to basics, stepping away from technological dependence, and embracing the tools of conviviality that give us vital purpose and honest labor.

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For years, I believed freedom meant only the absence of state meddling, of constraint; the lifting of regulation. This was the libertarian's view: that government should simply get out of the way. But like Roosevelt, I’ve come to see that real liberty demands action—a robust engagement with the world, including politics. And that requires the positive freedom of a sound mind in a sound body (mens sana corpore sana). In that sense, RFK Jr. stands in a worthy tradition. He sees health freedom as more than avoiding disease. It’s a pre-requisite for healthy citizenship and self-governance.

Yet no single man, no matter his name, can rescue us if we do not wish to rescue ourselves.

Every few generations, a figure comes along to remind us of our own responsibility for preserving essential freedoms. From Teddy Roosevelt’s original fifty-mile order for Marine officers to JFK’s revival of that challenge in 1963, we have been called to combat the corrosive effect of prosperity on our bodies and souls. The JFK 50-mile march is both metaphor and method — a template for national renewal and a tool for personal transformation.

I encourage all able-bodied Americans who identify with the MAHA movement to go a step further than tweeting about diet, debating seed oils, or stacking supplements—and instead step into the arena. Follow in the footsteps of both RFK Jr. and Sr.

Walk the miles. Test your limits. Prove, through action, that health isn’t just something you optimize—it’s something you earn.

The collective psyche can be manipulated by fear—lockdowns and masks taught us that. But it can also be elevated by a vision and mission to undertake seemingly impossible feats.

Consider sixteen-year-old Jim Troppman, student body president at Redwood High in Larkspur, California (my alma mater). In February 1963, just six days after the news of Kennedy's marching challenge broke, Troppman organized what became known as "The Great Marin County Hike." Four hundred students showed up in cut-off jeans, Bermuda shorts, and football jerseys, ready to march 50 miles to Point Reyes Station and back. The school physician protested, warning it could be a "killing effort." The principal wrung his hands but couldn't stop it - it was a school holiday.

By midnight, 97 students had completed the full fifty miles. Their success sparked a wave of imitation. A week later, 3,500 young people marched to the Oregon state capitol. The nation was gripped by a contagious can-do spirit.

That spirit must be revived, and it must start with you. As recently as last October, I wrote that I thought a nationwide revival of physical culture was improbable.

Since then, I’ve seen a budding appetite for vigorous participation and challenge.

Take, for example, Andrew Huberman’s recent endurance challenge of walking a mile with a heavy kettlebell:

This, I should note, should be undertaken with caution (listen to your body, folks) but for men accustomed to thinking of strength solely in terms of bench press PRs in the gym, is a step in the right direction.

RFK’s speech signals that the time is ripe. His appointment is significant, but the real potential lies in your boots, your roads, and your tribe.

We need a responsible radicalism—what I call the 'far center.' This isn't about finding compromise between extremes. It's about pushing beyond the false choice between passive libertarianism and bureaucratic control. The far center is where we take responsibility for rebuilding our strength from the ground up. Before we can reform institutions, we must reform ourselves. Before leading others, we must prove our capacity for difficulty. The long march builds the judgment and will required for wise governance.

I’ve been organizing fifty-mile marches for five years, and 2025 beckons with fresh possibility.

For my part, on the advice of a battle-tested Army Special Forces and Recon Marine, I’m beginning a regimen of three weekly training sessions: two weighted rucks (with gradually increasing weight and distance) plus one run. These are my non-negotiables.

But discipline alone can’t spark a nationwide revival—culture does.

In many ways, the MAHA (Making America Healthy Again) movement has gained momentum in the culture through memes—the irreverent disdain for seed oils, the cult of raw milk, the iconic mystique of RFK Jr. himself. Memes are more than jokes; they’re forerunners of cultural change, transmitting deep truths through viral trends. Think about it: the 50-mile march was, in its own era, a kind of proto-meme—a simple, tangible challenge that spread like wildfire across the country. Its power lay in its clear, audacious form—fifty miles. All or nothing. On order from the President.

I’m all for the memes that keep us curious and provoke us to question authority. But if there’s one meme we need to propagate right now, it’s this: get stronger, move your body, and rediscover the will to do the hard things that used to define a healthy, free people. You can call that “MAHA” or you can call it common sense. Either way, the JFK50 might just be the meme that brings us off the couch and back to life.