Links to the news

Last class we talked about David Brooks' most recent editorial, "The Materialist Fallacy," and the new book by Charles Murray, Coming Apart--both of which try to explain the "weakening of the social fabric" in late 20th/early 21st-century America.  In our examination of the revolutionary era, we often think about how war and economic upheaval led to a "weakening of the social fabric," while new nations attempted to build institutions that could repair those fissures.  In the works we've read so far as a class, what "lessons" might you apply from the past to our own times--or do these social commentators help you think about the past in a new way?