We're here to help you make sense of this crisis, and to develop the virtues you need to face it.

Email not displaying correctly?

View it in your browser

[link removed]

.

Dear John,

When disaster strikes, communities unite. Families, neighborhoods, churches, towns: these are our “little platoons,” as Edmund Burke would put it, the intermediary institutions of civil society that Alexis de Tocqueville rightly believed made America so exceptional.



But this crisis is different. The cruel irony of the coronavirus is that it turns our support systems into vectors of deadly disease. This pandemic has created urgent physical, emotional, and spiritual needs, to which we are called to respond in charity. But we shouldn’t forget about the long-term fallout, either. In the days, months, and years ahead, we will need a strong web of character-forming institutions more than ever before. We will need thick communities whose members support each other when times are tough. Thankfully, there’s a new initiative, called #GivingTuesdayNow

[link removed]

, that is being launched to encourage the kind of generosity that “has the power to unite and heal communities in good times and bad.”



Public Discourse is here to help. To heal our communities, we all need to develop the habits of mind and heart that allow us to persevere through suffering. We need to be thoughtful and precise, weeding out misinformation and rejecting inflammatory rhetoric. And we must resist the temptation to assume the worst of our interlocutors, rushing to find a scapegoat for the suffering we see around us.



We hope that our essays are helping you to make sense of this crisis, and to develop the virtues you need in order to face it. If so, we hope that you’ll consider making a gift to support the work of Public Discourse

[link removed]

.

Faithfully,



Serena Sigillito

Editor, Public Discourse



[link removed]









Follow on Twitter

[link removed]

Like on Facebook

[link removed]

Forward to Friend

[link removed]

Copyright © 2020, All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is:


Witherspoon Institute
16 Stockton Street
Princeton, NJ 08540


unsubscribe from all emails

[link removed]

update subscription preferences

[link removed]