Quotes from Timothy P. Carney

Europe historically was populated by two types of people. The first type all followed the rules, worked together, and kept order. The second type all liked to go their own way, take risks, and test boundaries. Then one day, the second group all got on a boat and sailed to America.

O] n average," Brad Wilcox writes, with the data to back it up, "Americans who regularly attend services at a church, synagogue, temple or mosque are less likely to cheat on their partners; less likely to abuse them; more likely to enjoy happier marriages; and less likely to have been divorced." 13

On a more fundamental level, research suggests that religious people—all else being equal—are happier than less religious people.

Sociologist Douglas Massey has shown that as racial segregation has diminished, class-based segregation has increased in America.

Local and state governments can help civil society by building towns and cities in ways more conducive to neighborliness and community building. Walkability is a big thing. Mixing residential and commercial development would create real neighborhoods where people can walk to the corner store for a gallon of milk and run into their neighbors. It could allow for "third places" like neighborhood pubs, barbershops, and sandwich shops.

Only in self-sacrifice can man live fully as man, Catholic teaching states. Some people sacrifice for an idea, but really, John Paul argues, we give up our lives only for other people—or for God. And that true sacrifice requires love, which in turn requires true human contact. Community bonds make that love real. And so these two popes show us that true inclusion of the poor—by living in community with them—is the only way to carry out our duty to serve the poor.

The early primary results show that Trump Country is made up of the places where civil society has eroded the most. Trump's cities and towns and counties are the ones where community bonds are the weakest.

Granting that you have more money than others, and that you don't deserve such wealth—but stopping there—allows you to settle the score by paying your taxes and advocating more redistribution. This reductive attitude toward inequality has the added comfort of justifying nasty judgments about the other side.

But what if what the working class—white, black, Hispanic, etc.— needs most isn't a check from the government but inclusion in community? And what if the most accessible form of community—the church—is under constant assault by both culture and the government? And finally, what if the elites frowning upon the deplorable poor won't include them in their community, citing their deplorability?

The primary killer of U.S. factory jobs isn't China or Mexico but robots.

And if you want to know what happens to individuals left without a community in which to live most fully as human, where men and women are abandoned, left without small communities in which to flourish, we should visit Trump Country.