David Brooks

One is that we have a social order, that there are certain rules and certain beliefs and values that we share that form the basis of how we live.

George Marsden is a great historian, and he wrote this about Martin Luther King's rhetoric.

He says, what gave King's rhetoric such force is the idea that right and wrong are written into the fabric of the universe.

That slavery is not just wrong and sometimes in some places.

It's always wrong.

Segregation is not just wrong and sometimes in some places.

It is always wrong.

Right and wrong are written into the fabric of the universe.

And when you have that social order, people feel held.

You can have a society because we have a shared understanding of what's right and wrong.

We have a shared set of norms about what's right and wrong so we can behave each other.

We can trust each other.

Two generations ago, 60% of Americans said, yeah, my neighbors are trustworthy.

That's not a liberal or conservative thing.

That was a great human achievement.

And what happened?

We shredded the shared moral order.

And that was not just a conservative project.

It was a liberal project too.

And so one of the things we did is we privatized morality.