Check out these recent articles from around the web:

What’s Behind America’s Loneliness Crisis? by Ian Marcus Corbin: “The lonely will scramble for community, even if it requires believing or doing terrible things. No app or lifehack or doctor’s appointment is going to save us here. If the American experiment is going to survive the current century without turning into something awful, we will need the vision and courage to radically reimagine the purpose of our collective life and to allow for the wide distribution of meaningful tasks. We will need to make ourselves a nation of agents.”

The Political Theology of Recognition by Fr. Patrick Gilger: “Absolutizing either a politics of universalism or a politics of difference is not on offer. What is on offer, then, is not a “fix” for this dilemma but a suggestion for how multicultural polities might learn to inhabit the tensions of a society made of multiple moral sources. Taylor’s claim is that, although the dilemma cannot be eliminated, its dangers and fallibilities can be flagged and thereby avoided (or at least softened) and that this can be done by articulating the dangers inherent within each form of politics. What this requires is the ongoing effort to call those who prefer one type of politics to remain open to the good held out by the other. For advocates of equality, then, it would mean being reminded that although equality is an inestimable good, societies nevertheless ought to work hard to remain hospitable to difference. Such persons need to be reminded that authenticity remains an invaluable moral source in democratic societies. But advocates of difference require something different: they need to be reminded that while authenticity is a vital good, societies also ought to strive to preserve equality both in fact and opportunity. Such persons need to be reminded that equality remains a fundamental democratic ideal.”

How the Philosopher Charles Taylor Would Heal the Ills of Modernity by Adam Gopnik: “By wresting our identities away from a sense of community and common purpose, the new “atomist-instrumental” model was, he thinks, bound to produce our familiar modern alienation. We became estranged from a sense of belonging and meaning. We experienced the attenuation of the citizen-participation politics we need. We wanted to be alone, and now we are.”

What Left-Wing Democrats Haven’t Learned From Defeat by Michael Powell: “Too many on the left wing of American politics have become inured to the effect of their overheated rhetoric and histrionic displays of fealty to in-group norms.”

Gambling Enters the Family Zone by Christine Emba: “Suddenly, gambling seems to be everywhere. This sort of vice creep, a societal normalization of what used to be seen as unsavory habits—gambling, smoking marijuana, watching porn—is accelerated by people’s addiction to devices, in this case giving casual bettors the tools to become compulsive wagerers and easing the way for gambling to become a constant part of life.”

How Neoliberalism Cuts Off Community by Chris Murphy: “America’s seminal founding document, the Declaration of Independence, commands government to guarantee every citizen the right to pursue happiness. This right has been systematically undermined by neoliberalism’s canonization of the individual and devaluation of the common good. It’s time for policymakers to realize that if we don’t invest in policies that reconnect us to each other and build our sense of obligation to community, not just our own success, that inalienable right will just keep drifting further and further out of reach.”

What Will Become of American Civilization? by George Packer: “But the homeless population of metro Phoenix has nearly doubled in the past six years amid a housing shortage, soaring rents, and NIMBYism; multifamily affordable housing remain dirty words in most Valley neighborhoods. Nor is there much a mayor can do about the rising heat. A scientific study published in May 2023 projected that a blackout during a five-day heat wave would kill nearly 1 percent of Phoenix’s population—about 13,000 people—and send 800,000 to emergency rooms.”

At Least 750,000 on Brink of Starvation and Death in Sudan, Experts Warn by Declan Walsh: “t least 750,000 people are on the brink of starvation and death in Sudan, where a devastating civil war has left over half the country’s 48 million people in a situation of chronic hunger, the global authority on famine said on Thursday.”

Loving America Means Expecting More From It by Esau McCaulley: “These emotions of love, pride and regret can reside in the same heart. It is the truest form of patriotism, a love that isn’t complacent, one that demands more than crumbs from justice’s table.”

Why We Should Care About Low-Carbon Leisure by Johanna Bozuwa: “Sports are already such an integral part of American culture that provide people a sense of belonging. Making sports more accessible and joyful could be an integral strategy to building solidarity with the working class and providing an on-ramp to radicalization. Imagine: democratized, decarbonized, re-localized sports. Free or low-cost tickets to games and accessible public transit to the stadium. Teams and arenas owned by the fans.”

The Antisemitism of the Left by Peter Berkowitz: “In contrast, left-wing antisemitism’s alliance with identity politics brazenly rejects America’s most basic political commitments and seeks revolutionary transformation. To assume that rights inhere in groups, not individuals; to believe that people must be sorted into oppressor and oppressed classes; to insist that supposed oppressors can do no good and supposed oppressed can do no evil – is to repudiate America’s constitutional ethos.”

The Civil Theology of Robert Bellah by Matthew Rose: “Bellah saw modernity as an attempt to free human knowledge from its primordial basis in ritual, symbol, and narrative. He never denied its advances, but he feared that they had come at heavy costs, both to our humanity and to the natural environment.”

From ‘culture wars’ to ‘cultural exhaustion’: James Davison Hunter diagnoses our cultural ills by MSW: “James Davison Hunter has done the culture a favor. This is a highly detailed and intelligent diagnosis of our cultural ills. Whether we will, or can, find sources of renewal is doubtful but not impossible. I can’t help thinking that there is almost no way to achieve cultural health that does not pass through Catholic social teaching, especially our Christian anthropology.”

10 Ways Christians Can Protect Democracy by Maria Stephan: “Reducing the threat of authoritarianism and building an inclusive democracy must be woven into every part of our civic life and have a long-term strategy.”

Legislation alone won’t heal our lonely and isolated nation by John Kenneth White: “Ultimately, what is needed is a greater recognition of the problem and an end to the isolation that too many Americans experience.”