Has the Death of Faith Made Us More Tribal?

In The Universe Is on Our Side: Restoring Faith in American Public Life Bruce Ledewitz argues that there has been a breakdown in American public life that is beyond issues or politics. He argues that America is living with the consequences of the death of faith, which Nietzsche presumed would be momentous and irreversible.

According to Ledewith, America's future requires that we begin a new story by asking a question posed by theologian Bernard Lonergan: Is the universe on our side?

My conversation with Bruce Ledewitz:

Time for America to create a New Origin Story

If you follow business, you know that part of the lure of every company is its founding story or myth. How the founders came together, overcame objections, and persevered to build their insanely great products. 

Over time the myth takes on a life of its own, as it comes to define the company and its products. In a similar way it’s true of nations, including the United States. 

We were a nation forged from disparate regions. The Northeast, the South, the West, Midwest. Each with different cultures, different philosophies and demographics. And yet we have bought into the myth of one nation, one United States. The proverbial “shining city on the hill.” 

It seems that every few decades the patina wears off. The myth and the differences come to the surface and we struggle to hold it all together. We are living through that now. 

To explain why we need listen to Colin Woodward, author of Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood.

My conversation with Colin Woodard

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Nicholas Kristoff & Sheryl WuDunn: Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope

Back in 1962, sociologist and political activist Michael Harrington published a book entitled The Other America. In it, he argued that a full twenty-five percent of Americans were living in poverty. The book had a profound impact on both Jack and Bobby Kennedy and some said it was responsible for Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.

Forty-one years later in 2003, John Edwards spoke of “two Americas.” A nation divided by race, and by poverty.

And today, a full 58 years after Harrington’s look at poverty, the homeless crises is worse than ever, the streets of cities, large and small, are living evidence. The opiate and drug crises have hollowed out a large part of the country and the latest proposed federal budget reaches new heights in cutting social safety net programs.

It’s hard to think there is hope...for the country or for those left behind.

This is the world that Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn look at though a very personal lens in their book Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope.

My conversation with Nicholas Kristoff & Sheryl WuDunn:

Is America Now A Fascist Country?

The word fascism gets thrown around a lot in the context of Donald Trump. As if he somehow were its progenitor. But the fact is Trump is merely the most contemporary and American exploiter. Right wing nationalist trends, fascist trends, are happening throughout the world. The underlying reasons are many and complex, but the response to those reasons and the way in which it portends towards fascism has been pretty consistent.

Fascism is not some abstract idea, but a clear definable set of attitudes that people like Trump or Le Pen or Nigel Farage know how to exploit and magnify. For all of us experiencing it, it’s like a disease. Only if we know and understand the warning signs can we prevent it. And to help us to understand this, I am joined by Yale Professor Jason Stanley, the author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.

My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Jason Stanley:

Is Trump Mentally Ill, or is America?

Donald Trump may very well be the worst and most unprepared President that this nation has ever had. His racism, misogyny, and ignorance are, at this point, objective facts.

But oddly enough neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton are to blame. By some societal short circuit, roughly one-half of the country voted for Trump. Sure, folks spend hours parsing the nuance of popular vs. electoral votes, and oh but those 87,000 votes, in three states.

But what’s also true, is that something must have been pretty rotten at the core of the country to create the situation that Trump could exploit.

So perhaps, rather than spending resources analyzing Trumps mental state, best, if we're going to move forward, to understand the mental state of the country that elected him. To do that I joined by a man who knows a lot about mental health

Dr. Allen Frances was the chairman of the DSM-IV Task Force and part of the leadership group for DSM-III and DSM-III-R. He is professor emeritus and former chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science at Duke University School of Medicine and the author of Twilight of American Sanity: A Psychiatrist Analyzes the Age of Trump

My conversation with Dr. Allen Frances:

Strangers in Their Own Land

The very fact that an unqualified, demagogic, racist could be close to the Presidency tells us less about the candidates and more about the shape and mood of America in the 21st Century.

The red/blue divide is after all, not about pure politics. It’s not about classical liberalism vs. Burkean or Randian conservatism. It’s not Disraeli vs. Gladstone.

What we see in America today is a cultural divide. One in which our own personal experience breaks out and defines itself into a kind of moral and political matrix that both traps and defines us.

These principles are universal and enduring and perhaps if we can better understand them, we can, if not accept, at least have compassion for the better angels of our opponents.

That exactly what noted sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild has tried to do in Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

My Conversation with Arlie Russell Hochschild:

The Myth of America as a "Christian Nation"

It was Churchill who reminded us that history is written by the victors. Well this is as true of religious history as it is of military, political and geopolitical history.

We’ve all been been told since childhood of the Christian foundation of America. That the history of America is John Winthrop's "Shining City on a Hill."  That the Christian Village Green represented the apotheosis of America.

The fact is, since before the time of Columbus, America has been a pluralistic society. An idea that Jefferson had to battle to prove, just as President Obama has in his recent speeches about religion.

At a time when technology and globalization continue to draw us all closer together, we have a choice. We can either channel our heritage and embrace that religious diversity or pull up the proverbial drawbridge and defend the mythology.

This is the world that Peter Manseau looks at in his new book One Nation, Under Gods: A New American History.

My conversation with Peter Manseau:

An Inner History of the New America

Packer deconstructs the past thirty years of "progress" in America and in so doing brilliantly gives narrative drive to the changes in almost every aspect of American life. You come a way with the realization that we are no longer held together by trusted institutions, but by individual brands, all competing in a crowded and noisy marketplace. The questions is, is this any way to run a Democracy?

My conversation with George Packer: