Opinion: America isn't broken. It's a country where 'the vast majority quietly do the right thing every single day.'

Most Americans are too busy living daily life to hate
on other Americans. (Photo by Dyana Wing So, Unsplash)

TV commentary, social media or major news websites can leave readers wondering where our country went wrong and why Americans hate each other so much. But is that honestly how average Americans see their lives and each other?

Mike Allen doesn't think so. In his opinion for Axios, Allen declares that the blasts of newsy angst and misanthropic disgust are a "ubiquitous, emphatic, verifiable lie. . . . Most Americans are too busy for social media, too normal for politics, too rational to tweet."

The most American "Super Majority" isn't online 24/7 looking for ways to throw tomatoes at other busy Americans, Allen insists. They may be at their desks grinding it out, their kids' sporting events, attending a book club or helping their neighbor with lawn care, but they are not working on hating others.

"Most Americans are patriotic, hardworking, neighbor-helping, America-loving, money-giving people who don't pop off on social media or plot for power," Allen writes. "It's the terminally online news junkies who are detached from the actual reality."

Allen writes, "Most people agree on most things, most of the time. And the data validates this, time and time again. . . . The system feels broken. The people are not."

Instead of allowing any other people to tell you who Americans are, look around you. Allen writes, "In a given year, you see hundreds of people frequently enough to appraise their character. Are they good people? Would they help shovel after a snowstorm or lift groceries for an aging neighbor? . . .We bet the answer is a resounding yes. This is America's Super Majority."

In 2024, Americans "gave $592.5 billion to charity — a record, with individuals accounting for two-thirds of it," Allen adds. "This isn't a broken nation. This is a generous one, where the vast majority quietly do the right thing every single day."

Next time you consider how you feel about your country and "your screen tells you America is broken, close it," Allen writes. "Walk outside. Talk to your neighbor. Coach the team. Go to the town meeting. That's the real America — and it's a hell of a lot better than the one being manufactured for clicks, clout and cash."

Baptists helped found the American debate over the 'separation of church and state'

Photo by Joshua Hoehne, Unsplash

Beginning in America's fledgling colonies during the 1700s and moving into the present day, Baptists have helped shape the national debate over religious freedom in the U.S. for nearly 400 years. "An honest look at their history reveals that Baptists have taken various stances in this debate," writes Christopher Schelin, a political theologies professor for The Conversation.

The ideal of dividing church and state business "famously traces back to an exchange between Thomas Jefferson and a group of Baptists," Schelin writes. But a nascent version of separating church and state powers began years earlier, with a Rhode Island preacher, Roger Williams, who helped found the nation's first Baptist church.

As Baptists practiced their faith in early America, differences in approach to how government and religion intersected emerged. Baptists who believed in strict separation of church and state held that "the conscience of each individual must be respected," Schelin explains. Other Baptists leaned toward an ideal where the "government cooperated with religion."

The historical and current debate between the two perspectives, along with other renditions of what constitutes a balanced relationship between church and state, shapes some of the disagreement about public displays of the Ten Commandments today.

In the fall of 2025, Texas law mandated that the Ten Commandments be displayed in all public school classrooms. Some Texas citizens, including the Rev. Griff Martin, a Baptist pastor, objected to the law and filed suit.

Martin rejects the Ten Commandments mandate as "not just a violation of American precepts but religious ones as well," Schelin writes. In a press release, Martin said that "the separation of church and state (is) a bedrock principle of my family’s Baptist heritage.”

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a Baptist from Louisiana, supports his state's mandate to hang the Ten Commandments in all public schools because he "perceives the matter differently," Schelin adds. "The Louisiana law is not an effort to establish religion, but to acknowledge the country’s 'history and tradition,' Johnson told reporters in 2024."

"Are you a good Baptist if you oppose government-mandated displays of the Ten Commandments?" Schelin asks. "Or are you a good Baptist if you support them? From a historical perspective, the answer to both questions is yes."

Rural Assembly Everywhere 2025 is all about rural people and regions flourishing even when resources are limited

Rural Assembly Everywhere is less than two weeks away. 

It's time to rev your rural engines and sign up for the virtual Rural Assembly Everywhere event happening on Wednesday, Sept. 17, from 1 to 2:30 p.m., E.T.

Rural leaders, community members, advocates and allies are invited to join this free, virtual gathering. Register here.

Virtual participants will have access to all programming, speaker panels and real-time chat with rural leaders across the country. The event is broadcast live via Crowdcast, which allows participants to ask questions and engage in discussions with one another before and during the event. Find more details here.

Everywhere 2025 highlights this year's theme: "A Bigger Pie: Cultivating Abundance in a Time of Scarcity." Event conversations and resources will delve into actionable ways to shift scarcity mindsets, enabling more rural communities to continue growing with renewed and resilient spirits.

The Rural Assembly and Everywhere 2025 are part of the Center for Rural Strategies.

'White Christmas' is a carol all Americans can enjoy; its history has lessons about overcoming sad times

'May your days be merry and bright.'
(Photo by Chandler Cruttenden, Unsplash)

Dreaming of a White Christmas? Many people do -- even 80 years after the song's debut. With a "new kind of Christmas carol" Irving Berlin and Bing Crosby helped make Christmas a holiday all Americans could celebrate, writes Ray Rast for The Conversation, a journalistic platform for academics. In 1940, Irving Berlin, a Jewish immigrant, wrote "the quintessential American song, White Christmas, which the popular entertainer Bing Crosby eventually made famous."

But the 1940s was a "profoundly sad time for humanity. World War II – what would become the deadliest war in human history – had begun in Europe and Asia, just as Americans were starting to pick up the pieces from the Great Depression," Rast explains. "Today, it can seem like humanity is at another tipping point: political polarization, war in the Middle East and Europe, a global climate crisis. Yet, like other historians, I've long thought that the study of the past can help point the way forward. White Christmas has resonated for more than 80 years, and I think the reasons why are worth understanding."

Part of the song's lasting charm is its melodic nostalgia for what Americans hope for during the holidays. "The Christmases that Berlin and Crosby 'used to know' were those of the 1910s and 1920s, when the season expanded to include the nation's first public Christmas tree lighting ceremony and the appearance of Santa Claus at the end of Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade."

Berlin's inspiration for the song came in 1937 when he spent Christmas alone. "Berlin had connected his lonesome Christmas to the broader turmoil of the time, including the outbreak of World War II and fraught debates about America's role in the world," Rast explains. "This new song reflected his response: a dream of better times and places. It evoked a small town of yesteryear in which horse-drawn sleighs crossed freshly fallen snow. It also imagined a future in which dark days would be 'merry and bright' once again. . . .This was a new kind of Christmas carol. It did not mention the birth of Jesus, angels or wise men – and it was a song that all Americans, including Jewish immigrants, could embrace."

Bing Crosby was already an American favorite. When 'Holiday Inn' premiered in August 1942, "reviewers barely mentioned the song, but ordinary Americans couldn't get enough of it," Rast writes. "By December, it was on every radio, in every jukebox. . . . The key reason was the nation's entry into World War II. . . . White Christmas was not overtly patriotic, but it made Americans think about why they fought, sacrificed and endured separation from their loved ones. As an editorial in the Buffalo Courier-Express concluded, the song 'provided a forcible reminder that we are fighting for the right to dream and for memories to dream about.'. . . This made it a song all Americans could embrace, including those not always treated like Americans."

To read Rast's entire essay, click here.

Wendell Berry getting another big award, this time for his conservative values

Agrarian poet-philosopher Wendell Berry has astounded us again, this time with the continuing length, depth and political sway of his admirers.

Witness first the unabashed love letter to him from National Review reporter and essayist John Miller, in the form of a profile as Berry prepares to receive the Russell Kirk Paideia Prize this Friday. It seems the 77-year-old liberal-talking, Democratic-voting sheep farmer who was honored to give the 2012 Jefferson Lecture at The Kennedy Center in April is getting a prize named for the author of The Conservative Mind. The prize is awarded by the CiRCE Institute, which promotes Christian classical education, for “cultivating virtue and wisdom.” If that weren't enough, notes Miller, last year ISI Books, part of the conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute, published The Humane Vision of Wendell Berry, a collection of essays that seek to illuminate, according to the dust jacket, the “profoundly conservative” ideas of its subject.

Miller's trip to Berry's Henry County, Kentucky farm informs his essay, "A Jeremiah for Everyone: Why Left and Right like Wendell Berry." It's here where Miller remembers old-time conservative Kirk's words to make his case. Kirk, a longtime National Review contributor who, like Berry, opted for a rural life, discovered the Kentuckian around 1978. Kirk, writes Miller, "was probably the first prominent conservative to detect an undercurrent of conservatism in Berry’s work: suspicion of progress, support for local autonomy, and a preference for the old ways of doing things. Berry certainly doesn’t view himself as a conservative, and he seems both puzzled and amused that his work would find favor with conservatives." But he has conservative streaks, telling Miller, "Abortion for birth control is wrong. That’s as far as I’m going to go. In some circumstances, I would justify it, as I would justify divorce in some circumstances, as the best of two unhappy choices."

Miller concludes, "As Berry enters the final stage of his career . . . he appears content with the way he has lived out his convictions, no matter how they’re labeled. 'It’s been an extraordinarily rich life,' he says. At the same time, the contentment always fades to worry. The world is going to pot, and, if you leaf through Berry’s body of work, you’ll see that it’s been going there for a long time." (Read more)