Christine Rosen offers ideas about rebuilding trust in public institutions.
Distrust of elites, cultural institutions, political parties, and even our neighbors is at an all-time high. Are we fated to come apart as a nation? Or is there hope to be found right next door? …
… For too many Americans today, the things that used to work in society and in their individual lives now feel unstable, broken, and unreliable.
Will that bridge collapse while I’m driving over it? Will people who break the law be arrested and punished? Will my local government perform the basic services my tax dollars are supposed to be spent on, such as keeping the streets safe and clean, and schools effectively educating children? Or are local officials instead committed to progressive projects to reimagine criminal justice, education, and housing that are alien to the views of my family and harmful to our sense of well-being? …
… Americans also need to rededicate themselves to their local communities and the people in them. We teach young children “stranger danger” to protect them from adults who might have bad intentions; but when an entire nation lives in “stranger danger” mode with their fellow citizens, healthy awareness and skepticism transforms into unhealthy paranoia and fear.
In previous eras, more Americans were active in community organizations that put them into contact with a range of their fellow citizens, and often forced them to reach agreement to solve problems. Those opportunities for in-person, collective community action have steadily disappeared in America. As Bloomberg News reported, the most recent data on community service collected by AmeriCorps and the Census Bureau found that “less than a quarter of Americans age 16 and older said they formally volunteered through an organization between September 2020 to September 2021, down from 30% in 2019 and the lowest rate recorded since the organization began the survey in 2002.The decline is prevalent across various states and demographic groups, according to the data.”
