Grateful To Be an American

 

By Frank Filocomo

This is not a political blog, nor will it ever be. 

But some things are so egregious, that I feel a need - nay, a duty - to call them out.  

Last week, a gaggle of DSA-endorsed Leftist radicals won their respective primaries in three New York congressional districts: Brad Lander in NY-10, Claire Valdez in NY-7, and Darializa Avila Chevalier in NY-13. 

These three are not the Democrats that my parents grew up with, and, at times, voted for. No, these are revolutionaries. They detest Americanism, and, by extension, Western Civilization. 

As University of Pennsylvania Law Professor Amy Wax would rightly ask of these Marxist, pseudo-intellects: "Does the spirit of liberty beat in their breast?"

The answer is an unequivocal and resounding no. 

Now, at this point, some might ask, and perhaps exasperatingly so: "Frank, why are you wading into the world of political punditry? This is supposed to be a blog about 'the revitalization of America's distinct civic culture.'" 

If you find yourself asking suck a question, I hear you. But, as stated earlier, some things are so offensive, and so rebarbative, that they must be addressed. 

This goes beyond politics; this is about who we are, and, perhaps just as important, who we are not.

Since the beginning - 250 years ago, that is - we've been a people who have embodied an ethos of ordered liberty, self-governance, and a dedication to the pursuit of human flourishing. 

This is the country that my father, born in Southern Italy, emigrated to in 1960. My dad's old hometown, while beautiful (just look up a picture of Roccella Ionica, a town in Calabria), was devoid of economic opportunity, or of any chance of upward mobility. 

My father (left) and my late Uncle Frank (right) on their way to America

America provided my father, not just with better economic opportunities and schools (there were no colleges in Calabria until the University of Calabria was established in 1972), but with a new identity, tethered to an awesome inheritance and history. 

My father, along with a great many other immigrants, many of whom I have met, is forever grateful for having become an American. 

An ascendent group, however, hates America and actively seeks to dismantle it, starting at the founding. 

Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old professional college student and victor of the Democrat Party primary for NY-13, called America a "f**king disgrace." 

What's more, in 2019, Chevalier tweeted the following: ""I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me."

2019 Tweet from Darializa Avila Chevalier

This doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of this Marxist trio's long history of disgusting, anti-American and anti-Western smears. 

If we are meant to be, as Amitai Etzioni writes in his 2019 book Reclaiming Patriotism, "members of one overarching community with a shared set of core values and interests," then we must thoroughly reject and condemn the above sentiments. They are incompatible with Americanism. 

Sadly, we must shake hands with the fact that the DSA wing of the Democratic Party is, indeed, ascendant. 

It will be up to thoughtful Democrats - and Americans of all stripes, for that matter - to discard the warped, revisionist packaging of America that the Mamdani-ites are selling, and put forth something better. 

The Social Isolation of Remote Work

By Frank Filocomo

Working from home is certainly convenient, but it can also be socially isolating.

I'm a remote worker. 

My commute is from my bed to my desk, which is pretty nice. 

I spend a lot of quality time with my 19-year-old cat, Vinny, too. He's a regular on my organization's weekly Zoom staff calls. 

At my last job, I took the train from South Brooklyn to our office in Midtown Manhattan: a commute of about an hour and change. 

There's no doubt that I'm grateful for my current situation - very grateful, indeed - but I'd be lying if I said there were no downsides. 

By virtue of working remotely, I am largely cut off from social connections from the hours of 9-5. 

Sure, there are exceptions to this, particularly thanks to Zoom, but it's mostly just me, myself, and I... and Vinny the Cat, of course.

In an article for NPR, Rhitu Chatterjee reports on a new study in Science that documents the drawbacks of remote work, particularly as it concerns lack of social connectedness. 

From the editor's summary:

After the pandemic, workers in remote-capable jobs spent more time working alone and avoided social activities with their friends, remaining more isolated both during and after work. This pattern was most pronounced among remote workers living alone: They spent entire days without human contact and their mental distress, use of mental healthcare, and antidepressants increased acutely.

The study's authors, Chatterjee writes, "found that workers in remotable jobs had experienced a 58% rise in hours spent alone compared to people in non-remotable jobs. These workers also saw a 72% rise in chances of spending their whole day with no human contact."

Humans are not built for this...

In Reclaiming Conversation, a book that I have included in Frank's Bookshelf: Recommended Reading for the Communitarian Mind, Sherry Turkle writes about the impromptu meetings and face-to-face conversations that used to be part and parcel of in-person office work. 

From the book:

Audrey Lister, a partner at Alan Johnson Miller and Associates, has worked at this large Chicago law firm for more than twenty years. She joined the firm straight out of law school. Lister talks about her early days at AJM, when she and her colleague Sam Berger were just starting out together. The two young associates would knock on each other's office doors and visit all the time. Lister says that this kind of close relationship made 'work feel like family,' 

When we work remotely, however, we miss out on these surprise office visits and workplace camaraderie.  

This begs the question: Do we all need to return to the office in order to engage in social interaction? 

My answer to that is a simple no. 

Remote work is the way of the future, whether we like it or not. 

Many have remarked that remote workers are more productive than in-office workers, and offices themselves are significant expenditures. 

So, while I commend employers who are setting the clock back and mandating in-person work, remote work isn't going anywhere. 

Thus, it is up to us work-from-home employees to introduce social connections into our day-to-day routines. 

That means: go to the neighborhood diner for your lunch break and make an attempt to familiarize yourself with the waitstaff; schedule touchpoints with your colleagues over Zoom, or if possible, in person; and, perhaps most importantly, go out after work. 

That latter point is imperative.

Work needn't be your whole life. As I always say, look to see what your community has to offer. 

Whether it be a darts or pool league, book club, open mic, or whatever, remote workers must make socialization a priority. 

I Was Raised in 'Tocque-ville'

 

By David Churchill Barrow

The fabric of our society is unraveling, but we are Americans, and we can stop that unraveling and begin “sewing the repairs,” if you will. 

It was a crops farm upon a few dozen acres of upland surrounded by swamp (yes, I am a genuine “Swamp Yankee”) in a little New England town that made Andy Griffith’s Mayberry look like Manhattan. My mother died when I was two, and when my WWII Marine father looked at me, he may have seen a glimpse of my mother. He seldom raised his voice to me, let alone spank me (in the days when most children were spanked!). When I was 12, he built a little cabin in the woods behind our house for me and my friends so I could grow up carefree. This scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade makes me tear up, because it sounds like my father talking.

Did I get away with much? Not in THAT town. Everyone knew my dad. He was a Selectman, which also made him a police commissioner. Any dangerous or destructive shenanigans were sure to get back to him. On the other hand, folks would give us kids a ride if they saw us walking somewhere, and the nurse who lived across the cornfield would patch up my inevitable cuts and bumps. I was raised to call our closest neighbors “Aunt Betty” or “Uncle Joe.” So long as I kept my grades up and our only full-time cop, Hubie, didn’t have to stop by and have a chat with my father too often on my account, I was free to come and go as I pleased.

In Democracy in America, Tocqueville cited the New England town meeting as a source from which American exceptionalism sprang. We had one every year, where the town’s citizens themselves were their own legislature. These could be entertaining to say the least. This scene from Blazing Saddles brings back fond memories. For years my father was up on the stage with his fellow selectmen, the town’s only lawyer (with whom I would later apprentice) serving as moderator. When I came of age, I played a minor role as planning board member. There wasn’t much to plan, but I got to march in the Memorial Day parades along with my dad.

Russell Kirk pointed out decades ago that there are only two alternatives to these extended families of voluntary association: atomic individualism, or compulsory collectivism.

This was a town where Burke’s “little platoons” and Tocqueville’s “associations” grew like weeds. Burke saw these “platoons” as cultivating the natural desire God placed in mankind to be in communion with one another. As Marcus Aurelius wrote in his Meditations, we are made to cooperate with each other as hands are to feet. The larger attachments, love of country, and regard for humanity in general, spring from these “platoons” and do not arrive sua sponte. Russell Kirk pointed out decades ago that there are only two alternatives to these extended families of voluntary association: atomic individualism, or compulsory collectivism.

We see the consequences of atomic individualism all around us: loneliness, suicide, despair, depression and general hopelessness (Frank has often written upon this subject, see his latest on Gen Z loneliness). Some call this “freedom,” but it is, as John Adams called it, “the freedom of the wolf.”  As for compulsory collectivism (a position approached by the far-left today) we need only look to the 20th century horrors of Nazism, Mao’s cultural revolution, or Cambodia’s killing fields for just a few examples of where that road can lead.

The fabric of our society is unraveling, but we are Americans, and we can stop that unraveling and begin “sewing the repairs,” if you will. It can start right outside your front door. If you have kids, go outside, push them ahead of you, and leave the electronics behind. Maybe get a dog and walk around, or go to a local dog park. You’d be surprised how many neighbors you will meet that have dogs, or just want to get acquainted with yours. Join and support a local church, civic organization or charity doing much that is good in your neighborhood. Find out who might be elderly or in need of a friend. Find what Frank calls a good “Third Place” beyond work and home, where spontaneous connections are made, much as they were in the iconic “Cheers” bar. Erosion is slow but certain. Our local communities are our foundation, and it needs shoring up, if we are to continue to be what Lincoln called “the last best hope of earth.”

David Churchill Barrow is a Massachusetts “Swamp Yankee” descendant of William Bradford and Myles Standish of Pilgrim fame, who grew up on a farm that has not been sold since first built in the early 1700s.  In that farmhouse still hangs the commission of James Churchill as a captain in the Massachusetts militia signed by John Hancock, and the sword of Thomas Churchill, a Navy engineer who served in the Blockade of the Confederacy.  He met his wife, MaryLu, in high school. They were married in 1979 and have three adult children. MaryLu is a former elementary school teacher. Today they live just outside Tampa, Fla. They are the authors of And Justice for All, Even Redcoats,  and are working on their next novel about the Pilgrims. David also writes for PJ Media.

A Roundabout Way To Make Communities Safer

 

By Frank Filocomo

American cities ought to be walkable and safe. That shouldn't be too much to ask. 

Unfortunately, though, our car-centric culture has made pedestrian safety an afterthought. 

Just read Streetsblog to get a taste for how dangerous many of New York City's intersections are.

This, from a recent Streetsblog article:

Will the city wait until a kid is killed before making a notoriously dangerous Queens neighborhood safe?

That’s what parents who send their children to the Baby Steps daycare in Rego Park are wondering after another near-miss right in front of the early childhood education facility that took out the front fence as well as crushed a memorial to a cyclist killed by a driver in 2017. That crash was in the same week in April 2025 when another driver struck a 5-year-old crossing the street.

Americans, however, need not be subjected to these dangerous intersections. 

In an instructive article for Public Square, Robert Steuteville makes the case for roundabouts as a safer alternative to the all-too-quotidian traffic light intersections:

Roundabouts force cars to slow down, thus creating a safer environment for pedestrians to navigate. What's more, unlike the traditional intersection, roundabouts keep traffic flowing. 

Carmel, Indiana, Steuteville writes, has a whopping 158 roundabouts. 

From the article:

A city with few traffic lights, such as Carmel, needs few turn lanes—which blow out intersection dimensions and make crossing distances much longer. Instead, crossings at roundabout intersections are broken into two, giving pedestrians refuge in the middle. Well-designed roundabouts slow traffic to 20 mph or less—speeds that are much safer for people outside of cars.

This is the way, and other cities should be taking notes. 

According to Dr. Virginia Sisiopiku of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, roundabouts reduce severe crashes by 78%. 

I'm convinced: roundabouts work. So, the question is: why don't we have them all over the country? 

Conversations at Baseball Games

Citi Field, 5/29/26

By Frank Filocomo 

On Friday, I went to a Mets vs. Marlins game with my good friend, Laik Green, whom, despite being a New Jersey- resident and former part-time New Yorker, is a fan of the latter. "The Fish," he usually calls them. 

To be sure, I'm a life-long Yankees fan. My father, upon coming to this country by way of Calabria in 1960, quickly became a diehard fan of the ole Bronx Bombers. He used to listen to games on his little radio. And that was when they sucked! 

Anyhow, on Friday, I was, along with Laik, a Marlins fan, too. 

Laik and I are baseball fans, so we we're pretty dialed in the whole game. In fact, most of our conversation consisted of strategy, play-by-play commentary, and other rank punditry. 

Sure, we spoke about other things, but, for the most part, we were invested in America's Pastime. 

The whole time, I couldn't help but notice the Zoomers to the left of us who were standing in a circle, talking, and facing away from the action for the duration of the game. Laik and I were confounded.

If socialization was the point, why do it at a baseball game and not at a bar? 

Then, I thought to myself: Are we doing this wrong? Should this be a time for non-baseball-related banter? It just didn't make sense to me...

But then I reminded myself: Quality time with friends can be spent in relative silence. 

I think there's a bit of a misconception about what it means to have a good hang, so to speak, that conversation must be flowing the whole time, like how a radio show isn't supposed to have any "dead air." 

That is false. One need not be loquacious to have a good time with friends. Sometimes, just being in the presence of people whom you care about is enough. While the two of us were laser-focused on the game, we still exchanged the odd quip and took time between innings to get hotdogs and over-priced beer. 

When it comes to conversation, sometimes less is more. 

Finding Your Local Third Place

 

Playing at an open mic in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

By Frank Filocomo

I've written about my local pub's open mic before (see here), but I think a follow up is warranted. 

Thursdays at 8:00PM have become a constant in my life. It's when I show up at Kitty's, greet the regulars, and jot my name down on the sign-in sheet, which fills up quick. Tardy artists might have to wait until midnight to play, if at all. 

This past Thursday, I played some lighthearted swing tunes, with accompaniment from my friend John on the cajon. For those who don't know, the cajon is a drum that you sit on. For the price of a Guinness, John will be your percussion section for 10-minutes. He busted out the brushes for my two tunes. 

This is my third place, and everyone needs one. 

Third places, to reiterate, are casual, socially-leveling places outside of home and work. They are a respite from life's obligations. What's needed of you: a loose, easygoing disposition and a willingness to shoot the breeze with others. 

You can't be reticent in a third place. I mean, you can, but you'd be missing out on what makes a third place a third place. 

Being that I've become rather prolific in the area of loneliness and social isolation, people often ask me: "what is the prescription for the loneliness epidemic?" 

My response: "Look to see what your community has to offer."

More often than not, there will be a Facebook page for your town. Or perhaps someone has a blog with listings for nearby events. 

In Bay Ridge, we have a helpful site called Queen of the Click, written by a "Bay Ridge resident who makes lists and watches politicians." Want to know the goings-on in Bay Ridge? Queen of the Click is the site to check out. Every locality ought to have one. 

We're lucky to have such a helpful tool here. Every town, though, will have some resources that can be utilized. You just have to be proactive. 

Try things. Some will stick; some won't. The key is exploration. 

So, what are you waiting for? Go find your third place. 

Field of Dreams Is a Conservative Film, Actually

By Troy M. Olson

What true American wouldn't want to play catch one more time with their father?

"I experienced the sixties."

"No, I think you had two fifties and went right on into the seventies." 

This exchange during a school board meeting between Annie Kinsella, the wife of protagonist Ray Kinsella, and a woman intent on the removal of books from an Iowa public school district, and much of the plot of 1989's Field of Dreams, is meant to put the 1960s generation on a pedestal of moral righteousness. I do not fundamentally disagree with this take recently from Jack Posobiec about its intent. 

Field of Dreams was written for former 60s radicals to tell themselves how great they are even though they sold out. Love the baseball parts but the rest of the plot is so self-serving and dumb

— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) May 14, 2026

However, like with 1994's Forrest Gump, one of my favorite genres is the "accidental conservative or traditional values" film. 

Yes, the film was written by a radical or from the ranks of Hollywood's liberal class, yet its conclusion, themes, and takeaways end up being decidedly conservative, whether they were going for that or not. 

The fundamental conservative values of the sport of baseball have been well established by conservative commentators like George Will. I don't have to rehash them here. But the rest of the plot and scenery of Field of Dreams is very hippie, radical, and steeped in 1960's main character lore. 

"Oh my God! You're from the sixties."  For every reference, there is a derisive comment about the decade that follows. There is a disillusionment that has set in to the decade's true believers that I predict will soon happen with many of the fellow travelers of our current era. 

The 1960s radical son who wouldn't have a catch with his father merely serves as a precursor to the magic flight that takes shape at the end of the story. The son does play catch and reconcile with his father, and even gets to do it when they are both young. 

The reclusive writer, Terence Mann, a loosely-based stand-in for the real life-J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye), takes a magic flight of his own by seeing exactly what Ray and his family get to see, the baseball players from the past like Shoeless Joe Jackson playing right before them. His dream is presumably fulfilled just as the people are coming to the middle American farm in Iowa and the end credits are rolling, as he is off-screen eating popcorn next to Shoeless Joe and watching the Brooklyn Dodgers play at Ebbets Field. 

Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams

Then there is Moonlight Graham, the small-town Chisholm, Minnesota doctor who told Ray, and the audience, that if he had only gotten to be "a doctor for five minutes, now that would've been a tragedy." When this film was released, free agent salaries in baseball were beginning to truly explode, and we were just a half-a-decade away from the 1994 players strike which drove a dagger through the heart of America's pastime. The message: being a small-town doctor with generosity of spirit is greater than having an extensive page on baseball reference. 

Then there is even the closest thing the story has to an antagonist. The brother-in-law who represents the interests of the bank and wants to foreclose on the loan and therefore, end the field of dreams. By the end, he too can see the players. This is a story about belief, about familial and spiritual reconciliation 

The film is littered with conservative and return-to-tradition messages in the end, and the hippie wife Annie is increasingly losing the argument today against the big meanie conservative school board activist in the public imagination. America doesn't want to ban The Boat Rocker, it just questions whether explicit and sexual material should be available in a K-12 school. Considering America's so-called "banned book list" is entirely made up of the most available books ever, more and more people are catching on to this sort of gaslighting. 

Field of Dreams, Forrest Gump, and a whole host of films made in the late 1980s and first half of the 1990s all have one thing in common: these conservative-in-message films written by Hollywood liberals were being made when the baton of leadership in the culture was transitioning from the Greatest Generation to the Baby Boomers. 

In the next decade or so, a similar transition will be taking place from Baby Boomers to Millennials and the surrounding generations. It has already started, but it will accelerate. 

Understandably, right now the culture is not too kind to the legacy of the baby boomers, but for the elders, the children, and the squeezed and stressed out generations in between, I hope the rising political coalition and rising generation takes a long hard look every spring and summer at the true message behind this 1989 classic rather than writing it off. And I hope we make some new Capra-esque magic of our own, because our culture sure could use it.

Whether we agree or get along or not, what true American wouldn't want to play catch one more time with their father? And even if you cannot or do not, you can always revisit the times you did through the magic flight of America's great game of baseball.

Troy M. Olson is an Army Veteran, lawyer by training, and co-author of ‘The Emerging Populist Majority’ available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Target. He is the Sergeant-at-Arms of the New York Young Republican Club and co-founder of its Veterans Caucus. He has appeared on CNN, CBS, and OAN. He lives in New York City with his wife and son, and is the 3rd Vice Commander (“Americanism” pillar) of the first new American Legion Post in the city in years, Post 917. You can follow him on X/Twitter and Substack at @TroyMOlson

We Need to Get Serious About the Loneliness Epidemic

 

By Frank Filocomo

22-year-old YouTuber Jett Franzen has been living alone in a basement for the past seven months.

In an unusually candid - albeit, somewhat concerning - YouTube video, Franzen, who has nearly 200K subscribers on the platform, goes into detail about his struggles with loneliness and social isolation.

"I get, on an average day, zero interaction with other people."

Anyone can see that Franzen looks tired, drained, and depressed. In the background of the shot is a small, dimly lit, cluttered basement. Miscellaneous boxes are strewn across the floor. 

Franzen is, by all means, very articulate and appears to be quite intelligent. Still, there's an emptiness behind his eyes. He is monotone and thoroughly unenthusiastic. 

While he explicitly says that he didn't upload this video with the intention of soliciting sympathy or pity, Franzen is clearly hurting. 

Humans, he says, "crave connection."

His isolation, however, something that he admits is largely "self-inflicted," has become "an addiction."

He's come to prefer the safety of a "controlled environment" over the uncertainty of the outside world. 

When you opt to stay inside and forgo social engagements, you eliminate the risk of awkward or potentially anxiety-inducing interactions. There's no question about that. At the same time, though, reclusiveness deprives one of life's most joyous moments: laughs over glasses of beer at your local pub, first dates, get-togethers with your friends, and other little and seemingly trivial timestamps in life that give us purpose, belonging, and camaraderie. 

Franzen, I'm afraid, is not alone.

Zoomers are easily the loneliest generation. 

His video, which, to date, has accrued nearly 600K views, has a comment section replete with users expressing similar sentiments. 

One user wrote, "I’m literally living the exact same life, completely isolated no friends no job.."

Another posted, "I understand.  I'm only here because my parents haven't given up on me.  Being human is pretty f**ing hard for me."

This is a problem that isn't going away. We better start getting serious about it. 

Post-Liberalism, or Just Common Sense?

 

By Frank Filocomo

I don't care for labels. 

We have enough isms as it is: liberalism, libertarianism, conservatism, paleoconservatism, centrism, radical-centrism, and on and on. 

In vogue now: post-liberalism. 

Post-liberals fancy themselves real conservatives, rather than socially liberal Republicans who only care about deregulation and lower taxes. 

They believe that Reaganism is passé. 

Post-liberals say that their time has come. 

But, as I've argued in this very blog, post-liberalism is nothing more than a re-packaging of social conservatism, Rick Santorum style. 

Now, don't get me wrong, I admire a lot of so-called post-liberals. Some of my favorite writers and thinkers include Patrick Deneen, Yoram Hazony, Phillip Blond, and other kindred spirits. 

I am, at least on paper, a post-liberal, too. 

What does that mean? 

Well, I believe that...

• while trade liberalization has undoubtedly had some economic benefits, we ought to have a robust industrial policy that will reshore American manufacturing jobs;
• social obligation should come before individual desire;
• we should be governed, not by reason alone, but by historical empiricism;
• and that the sexual revolution has profoundly and negatively impacted the family unit. 

I am, of course, leaving many important bullet points behind here, but this is more or less my world view. 

As R.R. Reno wrote in a recent article for First Things:

Is it far-fetched to think that liberalism and its strong emphasis on the individual have played a role in bringing us to our present, unhappy condition—and offers little guidance about how to reverse course and chart a path toward a society more likely to protect human dignity and sustain a ­culture of freedom? 

The answer is, of course, no. No, it's not far-fetched to say that the excesses of liberalism have worked to our own collective detriment. Liberty without order leads to decadence, profligacy, and overall moral decay. Plain and simple. 

The answer is not a Leviathan, nor is it authoritarianism. Rather, the solution is balance. That is, balance between liberty and social order. It is the communitarian way. 

But, why give this a new name? Post-liberalism honestly just sounds pretentious. No need for a new label. 

I say we call it Americanism. Or, perhaps, the Western way of life. We don't need to reinvent the wheel here.

To be sure, I'm guilty of using labels myself. I often say things like "communitarian," or "small-c conservatism."

Perhaps those terms are not always helpful. Instead, I'm going to make it a habit to say: "I'm an American and product of Western Civilization. I am grateful for this awesome inheritance, and for my ancestors before me. I want to preserve what we have here, and help those around me."

That's human-speak. Something that a lay-person can understand. 

No more isms. Just common sense. 

The Fleeting Cultural Prosperity of the 1990s

 

By Frank Filocomo

Were the 1990s the best time in human history to be alive?

Edward Dutton seems to think so. 

Dutton - an ascot-wearing Englishman who authors The Jolly Heretic on Substack - just posted the following video, "Were the 1990s the peak of civilization?" 

In the video, Dutton waxes nostalgic about the halcyon days of 1990s England. 

To his point, the 1990s predated mass waves of non-Western immigration in much of Western Europe. There was also a remarkably high standard of living. And wokeness wasn't a thing. 

Good times, good times. 

For Dutton, most of this could be attributed to the fact that the generations in charge were born between the 1920s and 1940s. So, pre-Boomer. 

In other words, the people who ran the culture were from the Greatest Generation and the Silent Generation, two generations typified by conservative values, faith in God, and patriotism. 

They had lived through hell on earth: war, poverty, and what today would be nearly-unthinkably low standards of living. 

Dutton says the following about the generation in charge during the 1990s:

They suffered. They seriously suffered. And that means, of course, that they're not going to be decadent. They're going to realize that high living standards are something fragile. They're going to also be inculcated with certain ideas that were prominent at the time: ethnocentrism, patriotism, religion, the idea that there's something greater, the idea that there's something eternal, the idea that you should sacrifice your own good for the good of the group.

The ruling class's ethos was that of small-c conservatism and communitarian values. 

Dutton is somewhat right here. But the 1990s was also when many prominent sociologists began to seriously document the West's descent into an ethos of me-ness and hyper-individualism. 

The way Dutton sees it, though, there was a balance. So, while individualism was indeed ascendent, traditionalism hadn't completely eroded just yet. 

England in the 1990s had, in effect, hit a sweet spot, wherein cultural creativity and freedom was blossoming, and decadence and libertinism were kept in check. 

What's more, while there were moderate levels of immigration, England remained more than 90% Anglo. That is, new arrivals from the non-West had basically no choice but to assimilate to their host country and become English, or at least as close to English as possible. 

Today, however, immigration, particularly from the non-West - euphemistically called the developing-world - is so overwhelming that new arrivals are able to balkanize and avoid assimilation. It is, after all, less demanding on immigrants to avoid acculturation by forming ethnic enclaves than it is to learn a new language and a new set of cultural norms. 

In Who Are We?: The Challenges to America's National Identity, Samuel Huntington writes that "the more highly concentrated immigrants are, the slower and less complete is their assimilation." 

Today, the West imports, not smatterings, but hordes of concentrated groups of culturally-different peoples. There's no doubt that this jeopardizes national cohesion.

All in all, Dutton makes valid points about the 1990s. Perhaps we did strike an ideal balance between immigration and assimilation, community-obligation and individual creativity. 

Whether or not the halcyon years were the 1990s or 1950s, though, is immaterial. What matters now is modern day cultural renewal. 

Fukuyama on Trust

 

Screenshot from Frankly Fukuyama on YouTube

By Frank Filocomo

You may not agree with Francis Fukuyama's politics - I, for one, mostly do not - but his book, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, published in 1996 - is a must-read for anyone interested in how human cooperation and social capital propels civilizations forward, and how the lack thereof stunts their progress. 

Fukuyama has also written additional essays on the topic, notably: Social Capital and Civil Society in 1999. I particularly like this piece because it gets into the nitty-gritty of the term, as well as its positive and negative manifestations in America. 

Thus, Fukuyama's bona fides on the topic are well documented.

In a new 8-minute video for his YouTube channel, Frankly Fukuyama, the End of History author sounds an inauspicious note as it relates to the current state of trust and cooperation in America. He explains that in Trust he characterized the America of the 1990s as being typified by high levels of trust and social capital. In 2026, however, he's not so sanguine: "Now, unfortunately, if I were to rewrite Trust today, I would not characterize the United States any longer as high trust."

For Fukuyama, the main culprit of the erosion of trust in America is political polarization:

We don't accept a common set of facts on issues like vaccine safety or election integrity, and live by a series of conspiracy theories that inform us that things are not what they seem and are being manipulated by hidden elites.

This is certainly true. I've had conversations with a lot of people in my social orbit - most of whom are either Zoomers or late-millennials - who, disaffected with the orthodoxies of elites in academia and the legacy media, no longer trust anyone or anything. 

This disaffection, in turn, relegates them to their own tailor-made internet silos, wherein, increasingly, they begin to inhabit a reality incomprehensible to those who don't share their particular ideological persuasion. 

We no longer see people with whom we disagree as "friends across the aisle," but as evil actors, or, in some cases, as being sub-human. 

In an article for her Substack, How to Human, Lura Forcum writes about the dangers of "infra-humanization," the tamer kin to "dehumanization" 

From the article:

In fact, in laboratory research, while most participants won’t endorse the idea that another person is actually a cockroach or snake (i.e., dehumanization), they will readily agree that another person doesn’t experience as many emotions as they themselves do (i.e., infra-humanization).

Forcum continues: "Any time we suggest, no matter how subtly, that someone lacks the qualities that make humans uniquely human, it’s a steppingstone to full-on dehumanization."

This is a behavior steeped in distrust, and certainly one not conducive to the Tocquevillian spirit of togetherness and cooperation. 

Fukuyama notes that trust doesn't come about easily. "Trust," he remarks in the video, "takes time to build up, through a process of repeated interaction." A trust relationship that took years to cultivate, however, "can be undone in an instant if one of the parties betrays the other."

Our plague of hyper-polarization has, in effect, engendered feelings of betrayal towards our fellow countrymen. How, in other words, can we work and collaborate with those whom we see as "neo-Nazis" or "anti-American Maoists?" The answer, of course, is that we can't. 

Fukuyama is right in identifying political polarization as an impediment to trust and collaboration, but I think there are some other variables that he leaves out, namely, our ethos of hyper-individualism which has manifested itself in the libertarianism of the Right and the libertinism of the Left. That is, both the unbounded economic liberalism promoted by conservatives and the insatiable social liberalism of the Democrats have worked in tandem to erode the backbone of America: family and community. 

The third way, so to speak, is that of communitarianism, a social philosophy that seeks to strike a balance between the excesses of the Left and Right, and restore order, while still maintaining liberalism, in society. 

Communitarianism has made inroads in recent years, but there's still a lot of work to be done if the ultimate goal is to restore the America that preceded its descent into me-centric libertarianism.