The Partly Cloudy Patriot

I’ve met Ayn Rand fanatics all over—among Silicon Valley venture capitalists, at the office of the Tampa Bay Tea Party, even on a road paving crew. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (who read Atlas Shrugged in high school) brought her pitiless philosophy of egoism to policymaking on Capitol Hill. Libertarianism speaks to the American myth of the self-

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The shining city on a hill was supposed to replace remote big government with a community of energetic and compassionate citizens, all engaged in a project of national renewal. But nothing held the city together. It was hollow at the center, a collection of individuals all wanting more. Free America measured civic health by gross domestic product.

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Related to this unsubtlety is our lack of gravity—the disregard for limits and sense of eternal possibility in new things. We untether, flit, and make ourselves over as if nothing is too fixed or solid for change. We are world-class inventors, especially of ourselves. At the same time, we take pride in ordinariness and are suspicious of airs, espec

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Here is what to say: American democracy is built on the ethic of citizens caring about other citizens. Its moral mission is to protect and empower everyone equally by the provision of public resources. The Public is the foundation for the Private—for decent private lives and for private enterprise that works. No one makes it on his or her own witho

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