The paradox of “muscular institutions”

The simplest way to tell the story of my life is as an ongoing formation through a series of very muscular institutions: family, the Church, an all-boys Catholic school, the Marine Corps, Little League, and my local Fire Department. Each of these institutions had strong norms that facilitated connecting across difference—and, in practice, each of t... See more

Doing stuff together, especially with people from different backgrounds than our own, is going to be really important for the future of the country. And it’s going to take a set of “muscular institutions”—institutions that aren’t bashful about asserting their prerogatives—to get us there.