The Frank Forum

Don't let politics ruin good things.  With the Presidential election just two weeks away, this is especially salient advice.  Over the years, I've lost many friends due to ideological differences. Many of my right-of-center friends have also encountered this.  I refuse, however, to give into toxic polarization; if we let trivial political differences fracture good relationships, we will, ultimately, come apart as a country.  Remember: we have, in some capacity, always been politically pluralistic. The Jeffersonians and the Hamiltonians; Whigs and Democrats; Democrats and Republicans; libertarian-oriented Republicans and their paleo-conservative counterparts. I can go on and on...  One's own politics - which, if you are anything like me, are constantly evolving - should be of little import. There is only one thing that we should take into consideration when it comes to relationships: fundamental values.  Earlier today, I read a beautiful piece by David Spereall in BBC .  He

  The importance of robust public spaces cannot be overstated.  I've always believed that the quest for social connection was, first and foremost, something that had to come about through a sort of internal spiritual awakening. That is, a collective understanding that we can not go it alone as purely self-maximizing individuals; we need each other. While I still believe that to be true, I do think that, in the past, I've downplayed the vital role of external environment and the affects it can have on us as social creatures.  People-friendly spaces, as opposed to sterile spaces devoid of engaging amenities, can facilitate social connection and much-needed weak-tie relationships .  It's pretty intuitive, actually: if people are not physically around each other, their prospects for social connection are not very good.  Public places in and of themselves, however, are not enough to combat our current plague of social atomization.  As Shawn McCaney writes for Governing , people

  I, like you, have a smartphone. Sometimes, though, I wish I didn't.  Up until my sophomore year of college, I used a Verizon Octane, a neat little flip-phone with a horizontal keyboard.  Verizon Octane Being a student in 2016, however, required me to use certain apps which I was unable to access on my clunky dumb-phone. So, out of necessity, I caved and purchased an iPhone SE. I was soon addicted. I downloaded every app from Instagram and Facebook, to games like Plants v. Zombies and The Sims. I have, like so many other people my age, become tethered to my phone.  But not everyone has capitulated. In an article for The Lamp , a thoughtful Catholic publication, Peter Tonguette describes himself as a "proud, almost-exclusive user of landline phone-service." It is mystifying to think that, in 2024, people can function without a smartphone. Peter doesn't disdain our contemporary smartphone culture; he just finds no need to abandon what is tried and true: the ole landli

  It is important that we do not conflate loneliness and solitude; while the former connotes a sense of yearning and discontent, the latter describes a much-needed time of introspection and recombobulation.  A good communitarian will strike a healthy balance between extroversion and self-reflection. Without ample time to engage in solitude, we deprive ourselves of essential cognitive development. Before we express our outward-facing selves to others in the realm of civil society, we must first work to better understand and enhance our inner-beings. While the practice of solitude may seem simplistic, it can actually be quite arduous, requiring the self to, at times, drift into boredom and embrace that boredom as a naturally-occurring and integral component of being happily alone.  Sherry Turkle - in her important book, Reclaiming Conversation - writes that, "children can't develop the capacity for solitude if they don't have the experience of being 'bored' and then

  How can we truly become, as the late Amitai Etzioni put it, a "community of communities?" Or, put differently, how can we reclaim a kind of patriotism that engenders feelings of togetherness and societal cohesion?  In an essay  for the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs , Walter Russell Mead extols the virtues of a Hamiltonian-inspired patriotism. "Then, as now," Mead writes, "Americans must embrace a duty of care toward one another... And just as individual Americans have duties and ties to their family members that they do not have to the public at large, they have obligations to their fellow citizens that do not extend to all humankind."  Conservatism today, in contrast to the kind of small-c conservatism embraced by Hamilton, is too often conflated with a obligation-free libertarianism. While the former puts emphasis on responsibility and duty, the latter jettisons all of that in favor of maximum autonomy and un-ordered liberty.  A country of

  Raj Chetty is an unsung hero.  When it comes to the area of social capital, his exhaustive and trailblazing research is unmatched.  My first article for National Review, Conservatives for Community , written in August of 2022, was inspired by Chetty's study on social capital and economic mobility in Nature.  To quote myself: The study, which breaks down social capital into three categories — economic connectedness, social cohesion, and civic engagement — found that children have a much greater chance of being upwardly mobile if they reside in communities with high levels of “economic connectedness.” Economic connectedness (EC) refers to the integration of people from different economic backgrounds. The study concludes that levels of EC vary depending on one’s geographical residence. Impoverished inner-city areas, for example, have remarkably low levels of EC, since most residents occupy the same socioeconomic stratum. Conversely, an area with a healthy combination of high-income

  Is Kamala Harris channeling her inner-Amatai Etzioni? Let's take a closer look... Harris is known for being a rather confounding orator. Often times, it does appear as if she is trying her hand at a sort of avant-garde slam poetry. Former President Donald Trump - whose name I don't believe I have written before for this blog - quipped in an interview with Tucker Carlson that Harris "speaks in rhyme." This, I think, is an apt descriptor of her unorthodox rhetorical style.  But perhaps we ought to give her some credit. Maybe she is actually saying something ? Andrew Day, a staff writer for Robert Wright's Nonzero Newsletter ,   has pioneered a new term that I think beautifully encapsulates Harris's elusive ideological disposition: Coconut Conservatism.  Day explained , rather convincingly, that Harris's now-viral remarks about falling from a coconut tree are oddly reminiscent of a Burkean, small-c conservatism, or, put another way, communitarianism.  Craz

To any casual observer of contemporary American politics, it is clear that the United States is at a serious cultural crossroads. In the figurative sense, America today is like a ship without a sail or a vessel without a destination. Historically founded upon Enlightenment-Era principles rooted in Judeo-Christian values, the country prospered socially and fiscally primarily due to the virtuous characteristics of many communities comprised of families and individuals who sacrificed and contributed for the greater good. While changes have been gradually occurring in American society over the last six or more decades, the realities of social decline within the nation are today arguably at their most glaring point in history. This deterioration is, at root, most visible at the "micro" level- in family units and individual households, communities and states. Make no mistake: these various "micro" spheres of social composition are not small in relevance or weight- in fact

  What do we miss out on when we fail to notice ? I recently re-read a brilliant piece by author Elizabeth Stice in Front Porch Republic: The Power of Place: Payphones.  Stice is a self-described "payphone flaneur." In other words, she traverses areas off the beaten path in search of old payphones. This new hobby, she explains, has significantly augmented her sense of place and spatial awareness.  Here are just a few payphones that Stice has photographed: You can find a plethora of such photographs on Stice's Instagram page, @phoningpalmbeach . She updates this account regularly, with her last post from just a day ago.  From Stice: The value in seeing payphones is the way it develops a practice of seeing. So often we are driving or walking down streets, unaware of what serves us no purpose or where we aren’t heading. Looking for things forces you to notice things. I'll admit: I shut off my peripheral vision when traveling to work, or even when going to meet a friend.

The societal salience of two-parent households used to be obvious. Today, however, this social structure has been labeled reactionary, an antiquated norm from a bygone era.  But there is no disputing the facts: children raised by both parents are far better equipped for the world than their counterparts from single-parent households.  While inconvenient for some to hear, this is an empirical reality.  Robert Putnam in his 2015 book, Our Kids: The American Dream In Crisis , takes this even further with his thesis that kids raised by a mother and father with college degrees have the best outcomes.  His rigorous research, both qualitative (interviews and anecdotes) and quantitative (graphs and regression models) makes his conclusions hard to challenge.  But, college education aside, we must concede the point: children from two-parent households are more likely to perform well in school and in their professional careers, and are less likely to become addicted to drugs and commit crime.  Wh

This quote from the late Amitai Etzioni has become my new mantra: "...we are not merely rights-bearing individuals, but also community members who are responsible for each other." While these words sound good on paper, are they realized in practice?  The answer to that is quite simply: no.  This, from Joseph Longley in  Governing : In 2023, for the third consecutive year, drug overdose deaths robbed more than 100,000 Americans of their lives, according to  recently released data . The scale of this loss — a fivefold increase from the early 2000s — is shocking: Overdose deaths today  outnumber fatalities from gun violence and car accidents combined. Would a nation of people who truly felt "responsible for each other" stand idly by as over 100,000 of their brothers and sisters suffered such miserable and premature deaths? I would think not.  Longley presents us with some disturbing data: Despite the crisis we are in,  85.1 percent of people with a substance use dis

Dale Carnegie - in his 1936 book, How to Win Friends and Influence People - wrote that "a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language."  Too often, though, I find myself forgetting people's names at various functions and gatherings. This is not only embarrassing for me, but insulting to the person on the receiving end of my lapsed memory.  Your name is your identity.  As Alan Ehrenhalt once told me, "At the pharmacy that I go to, I know the names of all of the technicians, and they know my name, and I actually find that rather comforting."  One thing that can help facilitate name-to-name, weak-tie relationships are name badges. This is something that Starbucks understands.  Sherry Turkle, in her book,  Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, writes: When Starbucks got into financial trouble, it rebuilt its brand with seemingly small changes, some of which highlighted the importance of conversations b

**The Following Post is Adapted from a X post made earlier in the day by the author, it's been edited slightly from its original version** In 2012 I was 9 months into my deployment overseas. I had a two week leave at the latest you possibly could have it. To coincide with my then-fiancé's law school graduation. By this point, time was moving excruciatingly slow. As an engineering company we mostly knew our hardest missions were behind us, and thankfully we were kept very busy still, but we were very much in the rear. At the time I was disappointed by this, which is something I look back on with shame. My personal disappointment was more relief for everyone who cared about me. But you don't think about these things when you're a young man. In this era Afghanistan was becoming more and more of a mess, and worse, an unreported-on mess. ISIS was a “JV team” and I knew the country back home was checked out. This fact frustrated me further. When I got to the last point

  Skateboarding was an integral part of my childhood.  Though I was never particularly good - with my specialty being the tic tac , a trick that one of those skateboarding pugs could probably do - I enjoyed it thoroughly.  While skateboarding for me was mostly a solitary activity, I did, on occasion, meet up with friends to ride the metaphorical concrete waves.  In fact, an old buddy and I used to spend hours on end playing SKATE using silly, made-up tricks.  Sort of like this  (but nowhere as good, obviously).  Samuel J. Abrams, in an article published earlier this year for AEIdeas , described skate parks as "critically important third places that drastically improve neighborhood social capital and community strength."  Before I go any further, I want to make sure we're all on the same page about what "third places" are, so I'll let Ray Oldenburg, the man who pioneered the term, explain it himself: The third place is a generic designation for a great varie