We apply critical thinking in our lives to observe, with evidence, what is functioning well and what is not; to examine how social norms and inherited values shape our perceptions of right and wrong; and, ultimately, to engage in the philosophical task of discerning what is worth preserving, what must be reimagined, and what should be ethically let... See more

But the midwestern town was depicted somewhat differently. It was an “inheritor of values of a mythological founding generation” and a “battleground for the characteristics and actualization of those values,” with the result that it “became the center of a conflict about the future of the country itself.”

Yet I didn’t sense a worry that things had gone awry; in fact, it was by passing through these communities that I accessed an emotion at the core of conservatism: why would I change anything?