Dignity in an Alienated America

Sometime within the next couple of weeks I’m going to release my reading list for 2019. I’m nearly certain that among my top recommendations will be Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America by Chris Arnade, as well as Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse by Tim Carney.

My book was already going through final copy edits by the time I sat down with these two. Had I read them earlier, they certainly would have shaped some of what I wrote. Especially when considered as a pair, they have shaped the way I communicate some of the social observations that I’ve struggled to put into a Strong Towns context.

I’ve been fortunate to have Arnade twice as a guest on the podcast. His framing of “front row” and “back row” America is unique and, in my opinion, deeply insightful. And his framing of dignity as a centralizing human need urgently puts Maslow’s hierarchy into a modern American context. Arnade is one of a handful of people I follow on Twitter, and I do so because he continues to challenge my thinking in important ways.

I was able to meet Tim Carney in person this fall when I was invited to give a response to his speech at a Catholic conference here in Minnesota. The most novel part of his book, in my opinion, is how he contrasts religious voters in the 2016 Republican primary. There are two divisions of the self-identified religious: the kind that regularly attend services and those that don’t. Those who practice religion tended to vote for someone other than Donald Trump while those who identified as religious but did not regularly attend services tended to vote for the eventual president. For Carney, what Carney would call dignity is closely aligned with whether one belongs to something that provides a purpose, something that gives higher meaning.

Last week (when our Team was in California), the American Enterprise Institute released a fascinating video recording of these two in conversation. I listened to it twice on the way home — it was that good. I’m sharing it here because I think you’d like it.

Also worth noting: Carney is pretty clearly on Team Conservative and Arnade identifies as Team Liberal, so I appreciate not only how they speak with each other (very respectfully, even where they disagree) but also where they find agreement and how those points tend to differ from the predominant political conversations we are having in this country. If I have a New Year’s wish for this country is it that our 2020 be filled with substantive conversations just like this one.

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