Commentators today are more often discussing the differences between high-trust societies, where citizens have a high degree of faith in both one another and their leaders, and low-trust societies, where the desperate search for security and belonging leads people to create relationships built upon kinship and tribalism that exclude anyone outside of one’s own group—while ignoring and disdaining the needs of others. A country that lacks interpersonal trust and shared ethical values is one where conflict predominates and common cause is elusive. It seems to me—and to many others these days—that America has become a low-trust nation. This is not just a gut feeling. Poll after poll shows we have crushingly low faith in one another and our major institutions, and the time bomb of government overspending and unsustainable debts, which is the result of decades of stupidity, malfeasance, and Read more