What Works

摘要

Today's domestic problems are depressing and overwhelming. We all know that. Individual efforts to reverse the tide often feel like a thousand points of light in a million pools of darkness. But the real news in America is not all the despair and degradation. That's old. What's fresher is a gradual, quiet entwining of the spirit of entre-preneurship and the spirit of citizenship, as people launch local civic enterprises. It might also be called the spirit of Oklahoma City. If the explosion exposed America's darkest streak, it also lit its brightest candle—hundreds of individuals pushing aside their grief, their anger, their longstanding differences to pull together in common cause. Part of the explanation for this shift is enlightened self-interest. The government's bankrupt, the frontier is closed and there's just no place to hide anymore from the world's problems. Leadership, it's now clear, begins not with politicians but at home, where the line "It takes a whole village to raise a child" has moved in a few short years from obscure African proverb to Middle American cliche. Our fervid rescue fantasies are just that. We've seen the cavalry—and it is us.