Rick Santorum.

”Bill Clinton gave a speech that contrasted a selfish Republican Party to Democrats committed to ‘a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibilities, a we’re-all-in-this-together society.’ It’s tendentious but brilliant, because it is sadly plausible given the contemporary conservative inability to speak convincingly about solidarity. Conservatism cannot succeed–will not deserve to succeed–unless that changes.”

This speaks to me. But so does The People’s Romance.

In my Vietnam-inflected youth, I disparaged the solidarity of patriotism and religion, and sang along with John Lennon’s Imagine. Yet when I would “Imagine all the people sharing all the world,” they didn’t look like the dissolving working-class families of my acquaintance. Freedom from social constraints doesn’t seem so benign. (Admittedly, problems are greatly compounded by freedom from a regular paycheck.)

Apparently, jettisoning social solidarity results in dysfunction. But any given source of social solidarity may result in overweening oppression of minorities. What remedy? Arguably the optimal outcome is – well, kinda like what we have: multiple, rival claims to social solidarity. If we need patriotism to maintain social cohesion, let’s at least have a widely-shared moral system from which to criticize patriotism when it becomes unhinged. And let’s have a widely-shared sense of civil virtues from which to criticize the moral system when it becomes unhinged.

Lennon was wrong: We don’t need fewer claims on our loyalties; we need more, and more compelling, claims. The Thoreaus among us will still be able to carve out their own paths – but it will still be difficult, and consequently their numbers will still be few. Social forces will cause most of us to be conformist – and…