As a holiday meditation, consider that many of the things that fill people with understandable fear for our national future—polarization, extremism, radicalization, mutual incomprehension across cultural, moral, and theological chasms—are also, in their own way, signs of national vitality. It is good that so many people from so many different backgrounds continue to think that America’s future is worth fighting for. It is potentially good that the oddballs, the eccentrics, and the crackpots are increasingly occupying a place in our politics alongside sensible moderates. It is potentially good that both the far right and the far left are seeking to reimagine the national narrative, incompatible as those imaginings may seem. We face a difficult global situation and a bad choice, which seems to be a belated imperial one, in November—but many of our disturbances are also indicators of a healthy discontent with the comfortable decadence of developed societies. From many angles, the American experiment appears to be in danger – but better to be in danger than to remain in place, torpid, stagnant.
Maybe that’s what you think when you have your fifth child. But I think there’s a good chance, a very good chance, that my children will inherit an America that is very different from our past golden or silver ages, but that will nonetheless remain the best place in which to be born, live and thrive in our time.
Here is the link.
