There are no general-interest media that all of us can tap into. I'm not a good person to talk to about social media. I just avoid it. I'm suspicious also of the culture of venting. But the bigger question is, How can we in this media world have a genuine civic conversation? I mean, look at Franklin Roosevelt. He had these radio talks that all Americans listened to, and there was a common civic conversation that came out of it.

Disgust relies on moral obtuseness. It is possible to view another human being as a slimy slug or a piece of revolting trash only if one has never made a serious good-faith attempt to see the world through that person’s eyes or to experience that person’s feelings. Disgust imputes to the other a subhuman nature. How, by contrast, do we ever become able to see one another as human? Only through the exercise of imagination.

The Greek tragedies and comedies are like a roadmap to all the ways in which trying to live this rich, full life can go wrong. You could get into a war. You could find that you have members of your family on the wrong side of a political crisis. You could be raped. You could find that your child has gone crazy because of some horrible experience she's had.

But the life that no longer trust another human being and no longer forms ties to the political community is not a human life any longer.

I do think there's a lot of bad writing, and I worry about that in philosophy. I worry about it even more in literary studies, but I wouldn't blame it on any one methodology.

After all, the nation is not just an entity. It's a story. It's a story of what's salient, what brought us together, what we are willing to live and die for.

We have to change men's expectations, as they grow up, regarding their share of domestic work, of child care, but also of elder care, which is less pleasant and which men don't want to do.