The Frank Forum

Many of us in conservative circles long for, what we envision as, those halcyon days of an American monoculture. There is, I will admit, good reason for this yearning. Robert Putnam, in  The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again,  characterizes the time after the Gilded Age and before the 1960s liberation movement as an era of we-ness, where social cohesion was strong and civic-engagement was blossoming.  Putnam illustrates this time with his famous inverted-U curve (otherwise known as the "I-we-I" curve): Many of us would like nothing more than to return to the mid-20th century, when we truly had a common culture and deep love of country.  But we must face the music: times they are a-changin'. Actually, they've already changed drastically. Troy Olson, whom I often have disagreements with regarding "turning the clock back," conceded in a recent piece for this blog that the period of the 1950s - characterized by a domina...

The namesake of this great corner of cyberspace and I have been debating this topic in mostly agreeable fashion the last few weeks. We both agree that American life needs a civic and communitarian rebirth. It is the absence and need for civic nationalism that brings us to this issue but where we differ (or do we?) comes from whether we believe the project could be a success and how it could be a success.  One might think my proposal for an alternative would focus intently on America's demographic makeup, especially the pre and post-1965 immigration and naturalization act which for the first time opened up America to basically everywhere in the world through the same rule of law, specifically of federal immigration law. The 1980s brought us one round of amnesty which punted the issue of illegal vs. legal immigration down the road another few decades not unlike the compromises in the 19th century did for slavery and the southern states economic dependence on that system. S...

Lately, I've been reading a lot of Amitai Etzioni, the late Israeli-American sociologist, sometimes referred to as "The Godfather of Communitarianism," and I've come to realize that he was not a man content with mere theoretical pontifications: he was a man of action.  Often, after describing a societal problem, he will offer readers some practical prescription. While coming up with answers to deep-seated problems may seem like a daunting task, it doesn't mean we shouldn't at least try. All of my pieces for National Review  conclude with at least a few sentences of prescriptive measures that we can take to improve our current situation. None of the measures I suggest for combating loneliness - like throwing dinner parties, joining softball leagues, or talking to people in the supermarket - are particularly novel, but they sure can't hurt.  For a few months now, I've considered compiling a short, comprehensive list of communitarian acts that we can all ...