The Stump 341

Humanity should remain a larger category than political allegiance even as we openly—and, one hopes, bravely—discuss and work through our politics.

President Carter showed what was possible when people came together for a cause and acted out of decency.

Whenever we see such an avoidance of questions like these, we are witnessing someone protecting an ideological dream world.

I believe in personal responsibility; insurance companies believe in impersonal responsibility.

The writing may still be on the wall, but a different story is being written in our block.

And Robin and I really hope that this book can be part of that movement to help people get outside the Machine, throw sand in its gears, and live as…

Instead of appreciating the local and the staggering beauty of our God-given world, as FPR suggests we do, the good life requires million-dollar jaunts into outer space.

Are we capable of that on a scale that will regenerate our political life? Perhaps not, at least for now, but we can take heart from the knowledge that, over…

I am not sure if Garfield ever made chili for his supporters. The men and women who descended on his property were there to meet a future president. What Garfield…

The Very Online Right might be riding high now, but I anticipate that the election jackpot of the moment will not last and that this victory will soon look more…

Proper forgetting depends on the idea of a nation itself. For Renan, “a nation is a soul, a spiritual principle” built on two things, the past and the present.

To prove the American proposition, we must dedicate our lives to its truth with our deeds every day, and maybe someday with our lives themselves.

Like the very young and the very old among us, we must forget the learned delusion of independence that revolution prefers and accept the radical dependence of the human condition.

Perhaps one day moral clarity on this issue will be found or the values of the American people will align more neatly. Until that day arrives, if ever it does,…

A democracy is not kept by filling in a ballot bubble once every four years. It’s kept by responsibly and virtuously exercising our freedoms in our homes, communities, and institutions…

When Christ died on the cross, the disciples did not know he was going to rise again. But for Christians today, we see the full picture, and these are not…

If there ever comes a true accounting of the costs we’re racking up for making, using, and discarding our mobile (de)vices, we will be obliged to admit that there has…

You don’t have to be normal. You don’t have to be weird. You just have to be a person – which is a moral ideal, not a fact of nature…

If we choose to befriend our many obligations—to connect with other people, to love, to serve, to create, to borrow, to lend, to repair, to celebrate, to support—instead of buying…

It is a reality not frequently enough acknowledged: like so many other things in life, the love of reading is caught, not taught.

The future of our built environment is in our hands. We can reject the alienation of modernism and instead foster spaces that cultivate connection, celebrate history, and create a sense…

If we don’t experience full, unqualified “concrete, historical community,” then we won’t experience full, unqualified “genuine deliberation.”

These questions would cause little debate or consternation without the importance of place tethering them. And, despite the erasure of communitarian mindsets and regional identity, place still matters.

While it is impossible to be sure what the ultimate cultural importance of this movie will be, I do think Walsh has hit a nerve.