The Frank Forum

Antifa, a violent network of left-wing agitators, is back at it again. On Sunday April 24th, a small cadre of antifa members physically assaulted peaceful anti-drag time story hour protestors outside a pizza joint in Fort Worth, Texas.  In a surveillance video recording, Samuel Fowlkes, a member of the domestic terrorist organization, is seen pepper spraying the peaceful protestors. Other antifa activists brandished firearms.  Ultimately, Fowlkes and two other antifa militants were detained and subsequently arrested by Fort Worth police.  This got me thinking: Antifa, though obviously deranged, is still an example of civic associationism, no? These young and troubled people are engaged in group activity. And antifa and other fringe political organizations form their own activist communities, wherein they socialize, communicate with one another, and establish norms of trust and reciprocity.  And while I and other self-proclaimed Tocquevilleans extol the virtues of ci...

I was going through my ever-expanding trove of books the other day and found a couple of passages about community that I'd like to share.  Warning: libertarians and those who subscribe to a rugged individualistic worldview will find these passages hard to bear.  But, regardless of your ideology, there is simply no denying the ubiquity of groups in everyday life. And, furthermore, just because you are a part of a larger collective, doesn't mean your individual character is trivial.  Here's a bit from Deborah Stone's Policy Paradox: Influence, cooperation, and loyalty are powerful forces, and the result is that groups and organizations, rather than individuals, are the building blocks of the polis...people belong to institutions and organizations, even when they aren't formal members. They participate in organizations as citizens, employees, customers, students, taxpayers, voters, and potential recruits, if not as staff, managers, or leaders. Their opinions are shaped...

Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington It occurred to me recently that there are many foundational texts in the political science literature that I have carelessly glossed over.  As I skimmed through my bookshelf, I found a plethora of books that I love, but that are perhaps somewhat unimportant in the larger context of American and geopolitical affairs. While I am a proponent of finding your niche and delving in deeper, it is also necessary to develop a rudimentary understanding of certain works that have contributed greatly to the Western canon. Doing so expands the mind and intellect of the reader, and allows him to participate in a broader range of conversations concerning political discourse.  A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a friend about Francis Fukuyama's earth-shattering literary masterpiece, The End of History and the Last Man, a book that I am very fond of. During our conversation, my friend mentioned Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations , a work that he cla...

Alan Ehrenhalt   On Wednesday, I had the awesome privilege of interviewing the great Alan Ehrenhalt, author of  The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues of Community in America , and former executive editor of Governing Magazine. Mr. Ehrenhalt is, without question, one of the most important figures in social capital literature. His writing on the decline of American community is of utmost importance and should be read alongside the work of Putnam, Fukuyama, and Etzioni.  Frank Filocomo: American discourse right now, both on the right and the left, seems to be overemphasizing the "I". There's a lot of libertarian thought and hyperfocus on individualism. Do you agree that we are ignoring the "we" in American discourse? Alan Ehrenhalt: Well, when I wrote The Lost City, I definitely felt that we had descended into me-first individualism. I predicted, perhaps out of desperation, that in the next generation there would be a return to community and communitarian values. An...

A nation without borders is not a nation at all. And a country without common cultural denominators and at least a patchwork set of shared objective moral principles undisputed in the public sphere cannot hope to foster a healthy society for it's people and their posterity.  The writer is not a political academic in the professional sense. He is not a cosmopolitan, nor an affluent member of society privy to the company of elite members of the wealthy social caste stationed comfortably behind gated estates, immune to the chaotic and sometimes troubling scenes of ordinary contemporary American life. Hailing from a working class background, he is an honest, blue collar and humble man. He offers only his forthright opinions on a current social problem from the perspective of a youth reared in a conservative, christian, patriotic and traditional American family. It is obvious to any American with a rudimentary knowledge of national and cultural history that the United States is not the ...

In 1963 Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba coauthored The Civic Culture, a paradigm-shifting work that emphasized the distinctly participatory nature of American society. As a graduate student, I often cited this book in my work on social capital. It is, in many ways, a testament to the Tocquevillian underpinnings of American culture. Up until the mid-20th century, or thereabouts, Americans essentially governed themselves without the need for a strong, centralized state.  Every time I dust off this old cover, I yearn for a period I never experienced.  I often wondered if there was a word for this false sense of nostalgia. It's nonsensical when you think about it. I mean, how can you yearn for the halcyon days of a time you didn't live through? But, alas, I discovered the word: anemoia. I know what you're thinking: ane-what? Well, according to The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, anemoia is defined as "nostalgia for a time you've never known." Now, again, I know wha...

Coffeehouse book club Coffee, author Richard Brookhiser once wrote , is the "elixir of life". There is something so unspeakably good about a piping hot cup of joe (milk and two sugars, please!). My father, whose first language is Italian, will often say "paradiso!" after taking a sip of his k-cup coffee.  I, for one, am an unabashed caffeine addict. Coffee, to me, is an evocative drink. That is to say, it evokes feelings of comfort, safety, decompression, nostalgia, and even...community.   In post-COVID America, though, many of these little coffee shops have lost their unique communitarian character.  Alan Ehrenhalt, author of The Lost City, wrote about the effects that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on local coffeehouses in Governing .  Alan Ehrenhalt Coffeeshops are not just places to get a quick fix of caffeine; they are hubs of community life! Cafes are often venues for book clubs, game clubs, first dates, and so on...   During the pandemic, however...

In November of 2019, Jodi Dean, a left-wing professor from New York, wrote a thought provoking and surprisingly insightful article in Jacobin , a socialist-friendly political magazine which one Vox contributor called "the leading intellectual voice of the American left..." Though I personally don't subscribe to Jacobin , I could appreciate any kind of genuine political commentary, even if it is coming from a source that would most likely hate my guts. If you could muster up the courage to traverse the socialist, jargon-ridden word scrambles that characterize the piece, you might just take away an important message: we need each other. We are, as Dean astutely notes, stronger and more formidable as a unified collective. Dean, of course, is coming from a serious leftward-bent, if that wasn't already obvious by her repeated use of the word "comrade". Whatever the case, the message is still applicable to those on the right, center, or wherever. This bit sums u...