The Frank Forum

Earlier this month I attended 9/11 remembrance and memorial ceremonies, as well as carried on my annual tradition of walking down to ground zero, now the 9/11 Memorial. This year it was after a long work day that included a couple of different public ceremonies and in a downpour. Not unlike the downpour we had today and the lighter rain yesterday while attending the NYC opening of the Vietnam Healing Wall. Both of those ceremonies amongst so many kind-hearted and patriotic Americans and the contemplation while walking the memorials become increasingly rejuvenating for me. No matter how hard things get, or how bleak things seem for American life, culture, and society right now, the long-term, long-game optimist in me slowly comes back into view.  It was my default setting in life originally, born perhaps from a combination of a Norman Rockwell-esque painting of a home town and a necessary coping mechanism to upbringing ravaged by mental health issues for my entire memory. While I am...

My Twitter (or sorry, X!) "For you" feed has been ensconced in pictures of Sohrab Ahmari's new book, Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty - and What to Do About It . Here are just a few examples: Can’t wait to dive into @SohrabAhmari ’s groundbreaking Tyranny, inc. His explanation on neoliberalism and how it erodes democracy is one of the best I’ve read so far! #democracy #democraticcrisis #neoliberalismsucks pic.twitter.com/BkJmY6x2fW — Roberto Rocco 🇧🇷 🇳🇱 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@RobertoRocco) September 20, 2023 And I still wonder if a single ‘conservative’ here in Alabama will engage with Sohrab Ahmari’s ‘Tyranny, Inc.’ book. He’s not exactly using Marxism even if he’s read and understands some of it. It’s about the private sector pushing stuff down on citizens. https://t.co/vYBVsYLIlr — John Gunn (@JuntoGunto) September 21, 2023 "Just as Deneen believes that elite rule is unavoidable, so does Ahmari presume the inevitability of hierarchy and...

The in-fighting on the American political right continues with each passing day.  Why, though, do these factions (the NatCon populists and the FreedomCon libertarians) have such disdain for one another? Sure, trade policy has become increasingly thorny, and don't even get me started on foreign affairs...But the squabbling runs deeper than these differences in policy prescription. It is almost as though there is a colliding of worldviews here.  Yoram Hazony, in his all-important and surprisingly palatable work, Conservatism: A Rediscovery, explains the reasoning for the internecine skirmishing on the right.  Ultimately, Hazony explains, these fissures aren't new. In 18th century America, these same ideological cleavages existed. The Hamiltonians were nationalists who believed in tradition and, what Hazony calls, "historical empiricism" (the idea that our future ought to be guided by the trials and tribulations of our ancestors, as opposed to pure reason alone), while t...

Alan Ehrenhalt, one of America's leading Communitarian voices, wrote another salient piece for  Governing last week . The topic of this article: sidewalks. Sidewalks, Ehrenhalt contends, can function as a venue for casual association.  Ehrenhalt recalls a time when he and his friends would gather on the sidewalk for hours at a time: When I was a kid on the South Side of Chicago, we didn’t have front porches. We and our neighbors would congregate during summer evenings on the placid sidewalks of Everett Avenue, trading gossip and opinion while standing around in little knots of weak-tie fellowship. What, though, does Ehrenhalt mean by "weak ties"? Well, weak ties, in contrast to strong ties, represent casual relationships, like those between two neighbors in an apartment building or peripheral acquaintances that smile and nod to each other in the grocery store.  While these passing interactions may seem trivial, they are actually an immeasurably important component of rob...