Why Disagreement Is Good

By Frank Filocomo

Ideas are meant to be challenged. 

I always say: when you enter into a dialectic - in good faith, presumably - you must be prepared for your paradigms to be shattered. In other words, you might very well be wrong on numerous fronts. 

Learning that you were in the wrong about whatever topic mustn't be seen as a defeat; it is, conversely, a sort of triumph. When I was a kid, my uncle, whenever I learned something new, would prompt me to say, "now I know." 

Too often, though, we enter debates with a defensive posture. Nothing is learned when we do this. What's absent here is humility. 

I recently read Norman Finkelstein's heterodox book, I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It. Finkelstein, who starts this 500-page tome by quoting critics who lambasted this work as "incoherent" and "ineffective," argues against the idea of ideological purity, in favor of a Milliean view of Truth-seeking. That is, a process that involves engaging with those whose views you may find rebarbative. 

"If one aspires to dislodging falsehood and replacing it with truth," Finkelstein writes, "it requires openly confronting and persuasively responding to the falsehood."

Amen.

Finkelstein's frequent quoting of Mill throughout the book made me want to re-visit On Liberty.

Mill writes:

...for, being cognisant of all that can, at least obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his position against all gainsayers - knowing that he has sought for objections and difficulties, instead of avoiding them, and has shut out no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter - he has a right to think his judgement better than that of any person, or any multitude, who have not gone through a similar process. 

This, though, is obviously an arduous process, and one, I might add, that most people won't bother perusing. For, to seek the truth in a Milliean fashion requires one to engage oratorically with others with opposing viewpoints. 

What's more: what if people are unable - or at least, unwilling - to articulate strong defenses of their opinions?

I encountered this a great deal in, of all places, college. 

As I've written before:

Some students... were pitifully reticent. I never could understand this. Why would you not at least want to try to stand out? I was easily the most loquacious of all my peers. But I always made sure that my contributions were relevant and substantive. Otherwise, your contribution isn't much of a contribution at all. 

The oratorical muscle atrophies when not rigorously exercised. 

When we are always comfortable, having our convictions routinely affirmed and repeated back at us, our ability to learn and grow as thinkers is stunted. 

Disagreement and polemical exercise - in good faith, of course - is how we become, as David Brooks often says, "more fully human."

Communitarianism Transcends Partisanship

 

The late Amitai Etzioni

By Frank Filocomo

A quick note:

Communitarianism is neither a conservative or liberal ideology. It's adherents - such as the great Amitai Etzioni - believed that it could actually be a depolarizing force. 

In order for it to be an efficacious ideology, however, communitarians must also embrace a robust patriotism. That is, a healthy love of one's country and sense of obligation towards the common good, not a blind and reactionary kind of jingoism. While the former can only make us stronger, the latter might prove fractious. 

This, from Etzioni's Reclaiming Patriotism:

At its core, patriotism points to passionate concern for one's fellow citizens and the community they share, a resolve to love one's nation despite its defects and to work for its flourishing. 

I'll let Etzioni speak for himself here. 

I hope everyone has a great week! 

On a More Selfless Kind of Friendship

By Claire Cordonnier

Recently, I had the gift of making a new friend. We met at a party where both she and I liked the same guy; she confronted me about it immediately saying, “girlfriends before guys.”

I remember being struck immediately by her openness and sincerity. The barrier of entry to our friendship seemed non-existent. One of my favorite things about her is her unbounded generosity. I think that people need to stop using the word “sweet” to describe everyone they meet, because it’s a word that is starting to lose its meaning.

There must be another word for someone who lends you her clothes like it's nothing, compliments you genuinely on the things you care most about, invites you into her life, and shares her friends with you like it's the most natural thing in the world.

I wish that more people approached life with her generous attitude toward others. As one grows older and enters the career space, one is increasingly tempted to view relationships with a transactional mindset. When purely self-centered intentions accompany activities like networking, insincerity can make things unenjoyable for all those involved. “What can I get out of this relationship” is a question that shouldn’t be constantly on our minds.

In one of my classes right now, we just finished a unit where we examined significant themes of sacrifice in the Bible. Sacrifice can take many forms and is especially valuable when thinking about relationships. It requires generosity… which is why generosity is such an important virtue in friendship, which is all about sacrifice.

People like to reference the five love languages (acts of service, physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time, and gift giving) which are actually each a nod to generosity!

Claire Cordonnier is a spring 2025 intern for National Review Institute. She is currently pursuing her bachelor’s degree at New York University, and plans to major in politics and journalism. Before beginning her studies at NYU, Claire spent a gap semester interning for non-profit organizations–The Borgen Project and the Childhood Cancer Society–and working as a barista in a local coffee shop.

Goodbye, Neoliberalism

 

By Frank Filocomo

It's time we jettison neoliberalism, and all its atomizing features. 

And, while we're at it, so long, homo economicus.

In her latest book, The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life, Sophia Rosenfeld writes that, unless we move on from the rational-choice model of human behavior, wherein man is nothing more that an autonomous, choice-making machine, we will eventually "fail to recognize the larger ramifications resulting from our many private choices, and we will continue to underproduce public goods and services."

American sociologist Alan Wolfe, a critic of the economically liberal Chicago school of economics, made much the same argument in Whose Keeper?, a book that promotes a Durkheimian kind of civil society, as opposed to more market-based and state-centric solutions to domestic problems.

In 2025, both parties, and the American electorate writ large, oppose the post-Cold War neoliberal paradigm. In many ways, Donald Trump's election in 2016 typified the atrophying ideology's death knell. 

The modern day Left finds its greatest source of energy in Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed "democratic-socialist," and AOC, a young, wide-eyed egalitarian. The Right's superstars, not dissimilarly, are of a post-liberal bent. That is, they decry the bygone era of "zombie-Reaganism." Think: J.D. Vance, Josh Hawley, and, increasingly, Marco Rubio. 

Both flanks of the ideological spectrum are, in their own roundabout ways, right: neoliberalism no longer serves American interests. 

What is needed moving forward is a communitarian/pro-worker-style bipartisan framework that will empower families and communities around the country.

The rugged individual is no more. 

What if We're Wrong About Each Other?

By Frank Filocomo

Nothing can replace in-person connection.

Lura Forcum, in her new Substack, How to Human, explains how her bimonthly potluck dinners foster interpersonal connections and weak-tie relationships that would otherwise be difficult, if not impossible, to cultivate digitally:

Every other month, on Sunday evenings, people bring a dish for dinner at my house. Anyone is welcome. It’s not fancy, but the food is good and so is the company.

Forcum, who, along with the State Policy Network's Erin Norman, authored Beyond Polarization, is an advocate for socializing with those outside of your ideological orbit (read my write-up of that report in National Review here).

It's true: we tend to surround ourselves with people who are "politically like-minded" and "on the same page," ideologically speaking. 

There's nothing wrong with this, of course, but, if the goal is the engender a culture of high-trust relationships and communitarian values, we must venture outside of our silos and extend social invitations to others whom we may disagree politically, theologically, or whatever. 

It's also true that, party affiliation aside, we may have more in common with each other than we initially think:

From the article:

It’s easy to attribute all sorts of inaccurate, negative characteristics to other people, especially those who are different from us. But in-person interaction confronts us with the reality that the characteristics we attributed to other people aren’t very accurate. We have to correct our assumptions based on the person in front of us.

So, in the spirit of rising above the current climate of toxic polarization and balkanization, I encourage you to dine and converse with those from outside your orbit; you might be surprised by how in-person connection and meaningful dialectic can make your preconceptions about others fall by the wayside. 

Read more by Lura here. 

The City of Roommates

By Claire Cordonnier

“When you’re young, you don’t need much to survive,” a hair stylist told me recently when I was getting my hair done somewhere near 60th street. That’s right, if you keep your necessities cheap and uncomfortable, there’s more money to spend on frivolous things like hair treatments and overpriced clothing.

As you get older, your physical needs become more demanding and uncomfortable things become even more so. New York is full of discomforts, and these can’t be tolerated as easily by the old as by the young. 

The things that make roommates annoying are the same things that make the city annoying. And aren’t roommates more so a “young people” thing? 

One can’t get too far away from their fellow New Yorkers; we’re all siblings in a way. We all live close enough together to observe and be annoyed by each other’s dirty habits. We’re all constantly in one another’s way: blocking the sidewalks with our slow walking, hampering the stairwells with our meandering steps, and causing our business-casual fellow New Yorker to miss his train and wait another 6 minutes.

It’s not enough to check the street intersections for cars, you must also check for the lightning swift biker that comes hurling down the gray street in your direction, who’s trajectory seems prepared to yield at nothing. In more residential areas, your every step ought to be one of caution, as the sidewalk is never guaranteed to be clean. At night, the random unexplained yelling of strangers and the persistent, long honks of cars keep you up.

Our lives occur in such close proximity to one another, we’ve probably both contemplated our deepest sorrows in the same subway car, or enjoyed a happy morning coffee in the window seats of the same cafe. These are not new ideas. We express our affection for one another often in the form of distrustful glances and unsmiling faces. Reluctantly, we’re roommates.

How many young people are here in New York, just living off of the adrenaline of being in the city, that mixes with their youthful feelings to give them a sort of immunity to New York’s discomforts? I hope that they enjoy it.

Forming 'Weak Ties' Through Community Design

 

By Frank Filocomo

"We are happier," writes Robert Steuteville in Public Square, "when we have connections to other people."

People-friendly and human-centric urban design, Steuteville posits, can engender feelings of social-connectedness and facilitate what sociologists often refer to as "weak ties," that is, the loose and informal social bonds we make with our neighbors and fellow community members. 

Much of today's urban landscape, however, feels cold and sterile. And, as I've noted before, we have a tendency to let our environment dictate or at least shape our behavior. In other words, anti-social urban design will be internalized by community members in a way that makes them distrustful of others and connection-averse. And even weak ties are hard to form when people see each other, not as neighbors, but as social obstacles.  

Thoughtful urban planning, though, can transform communities. 

Steuteville writes that,

how we build communities can strengthen social ties, and boost satisfaction. There’s a transportation component: When we walk, we are more likely to have a friendly interaction with another person.

I've written about walkable cities before for National Review. You can read that here.  

Steuteville, in making the case for walkable cities, explains how his children benefited from "prosocial" urbanism:

I raised my children in a historic neighborhood, where they walked to three schools, K-12. They met friends each day and had a personal relationship with the crossing guard at the elementary school, who always had a friendly word. When he retired and later died, they mourned.

Conversely, if we live in sprawl, without the ability to serendipitously bump into our neighbors during our daily stroll or commute to work, we will deprive ourselves of the weak ties that are characteristic of robust and flourishing communities. 

We must look to New Urbanist principles as a helpful aid in the revival of American community.

Before you go: Check out my latest article for Philanthropy Daily here. I discuss how intergenerational-connectedness can help shield the elderly from loneliness and isolation. 

Oh, and The Frank Forum got a little shout-out in Jack Fowler's Civil Thoughts newsletter here. 

See ya next time!

'Make New Friends, but Keep the Old'

By Claire Cordonnier

Make new friends, but keep the old.

One is silver; the other is gold.

A circle is round; it has no end.

That’s how long I will be your friend.

This song, “Make New Friends,” is sung by young girl scouts all over the country. That was certainly my experience. The song is about the importance of friendship and being there for others. The lyrics in the first stanza remind listeners not to neglect their old friendships, calling new friends “silver” and old ones “gold.” Ironically, the song's young audience may not be old enough yet to meaningfully distinguish “new” from “old” friends, though surely they will grow up to find that the message of this song endures.

Making new friends does not isolate one from old friends if one takes steps to maintain and nurture their pre-existing friendships, which can really become as valuable as “gold.” This is because keeping a friendship for a long time often requires both parties to face the challenges that inevitably arise in long-term relationships.

Cancel culture manifests itself in one's personal relationships in that it can encourage one to eliminate others from their own life upon the first signs of the other person being problematic. While it is good to be aware of warning signs in a relationship, how far is too far? Is it possible that the cancel-culture mindset prevents people from persevering long enough in relationships for them to develop into “gold?”

The song “Under the Bridge” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers describes the loneliness experienced by Anthony Kiedis, the band's frontman, and the connection he felt to Los Angeles:

Sometimes I feel like I don't have a partner

Sometimes I feel like my only friend

Is the city I live in, The City of Angels

Lonely as I am, together we cry

Its lyrics also nod at the common experience of loneliness endured by many city-goers. It's a cliche to come to the city to pursue a new life. But many people do, and in doing so, leave behind all of their own friends and end up feeling lonely. They pass by the city’s picturesque locations, ice cream parlors, and cafes - all of which would be wonderful to enjoy with friends - with an ironic weight of sadness in their throats.

But the city is also full of gift shops containing postcards to send back home, and beautiful parks to walk through, with one ear inclined toward an old friend on the phone. So why not beat the loneliness stereotypes by developing “golden” friendships?

Claire Cordonnier is a spring 2025 intern for National Review Institute. She is currently pursuing her bachelor’s degree at New York University, and plans to major in politics and journalism. Before beginning her studies at NYU, Claire spent a gap semester interning for non-profit organizations–The Borgen Project and the Childhood Cancer Society–and working as a barista in a local coffee shop.

Reading Together

 

By Frank Filocomo

Should reading always be a solitary activity?

Nadya Williams, in an article for Front Porch Republic, makes the case for a more communitarian kind of reading. 

"The function of the earliest literature," Williams explains, "was to bring people together rather than give them a delight to hoard all to themselves."

Literature, therefore, was meant, not to be consumed in isolation, but to be experienced in a communal setting.

The Homeric epics were composed and performed orally by traveling bards before there was a Greek alphabet for writing them down. Performances brought communities together for the joy of such entertainment. These occasions also provided people with shared literature to discuss presumably for days after such performances.

I'll admit, my reading is done exclusively alone. I've always found books - good books, that is - to be a sort of vehicle to internal exploration. But, perhaps they can also function as a tool to community cultivation. 

There's different ways that this can go down. There are read-alouds, which Williams does with her children daily, but I'm not sure how applicable those are to other demographics. 

I'm more intrigued by silent reading parties of the sort that Reading Rhythms hosts in NYC and elsewhere. 

To be clear, these are definitely not book clubs; they're parties. 

Everyone brings their own book (no assigned reading here) and then discusses what they've read with a perfect stranger. So, there are intervals of silent reading, followed by intervals of conversation.

Molly Young documented her experience at a Reading Rhythms event in the New York Times. I recommend giving that a read here. 

To be sure, book worms are notorious for their social introversion. When it came time for Molly to turn to a stranger and discuss what she had just read, she recalled feeling "an icy dart of trepidation" shoot through her body. 

She quickly, though, overcame this pang of anxiety and lost herself in conversation and community. 

Some, at first blush, will think this hippy-dippy or a Bushwick-bohemian fad. And, who knows, it very well may be. But, so what? The revitalization of community will inevitably require innovative thinking and resourcefulness. 

I'm tempted to sign-up for one of these "parties." At the modest fee of $20, it is appealing. 

We'll see... 

Will You Go to the Movies With Me?

By Frank Filocomo

The neighborhood cinema used to be a go-to place for date nights, friend hangouts, and various other outings. 

Today, though, the public theater has largely been supplanted by the at-home entertainment system.

What's more, some American towns have no movie theaters at all. 

In Commonplace, Jon Bishop writes that the city of Worcester, Massachusetts doesn't have a single movie theater.

Some reddit users on the r/WorcesterMA subreddit have corroborated this. 

On that forum, u/MattOLOLOL, wrote: "As to why we can't sustain a movie theater anymore, I'm not sure. I'd bet the pandemic was a big factor, but still, we're a city of over 200k."

Another user commented: "I think people just don't go out to the movies anymore." 

Whatever the case, this is profoundly sad. The movie theater, as documented in Giuseppe Tornatore's magnum opus, Cinema Paradiso, is an integral part of community life. Without it, we are relegated to our bedrooms to passively watch Netflix while phubbing on our smart phones. 

This privatization of movie watching, Bishop argues, has further eroded the American monoculture:

Along with the decline of the form itself, the collapse of moviegoing portends the continued collapse of our common culture. Going to the movies with family and friends and then talking about what you saw, perhaps over a meal, after the film was something a lot of people once enjoyed doing. And it was an activity that was truly democratic, as it was something the rich and the poor could do equally. And popular films also led to water cooler conversations.

The "water cooler conversations," that Bishop mentions, are simply harder to have today, as we are all watching different things. 

Michael Brendan Dougherty made a similar point in National Review last year:

There is a sense in which our culture has been frozen since the 1990s. The internet and paid cable TV really got to work on resegregating, silo-ing, and deconstructing what had been a common, mass popular culture. It was thrown to flinders as people bought multiple cheap TVs, and then Napster, the iPod, and the iPad tore it up in a BitTorrent. Eighty-three million viewers had once tuned in to see who shot J. R. in 1980; 76.3 million tuned in to watch Jerry Seinfeld and his friends put in the slammer in 1998.

Now, Seinfeld producer and writer of that finale, Larry David, has relitigated that episode in the finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which was watched by just 1.1 million people.

This is a troubling development...

While streaming Netflix and Hulu and DoorDashing food to your apartment is convenient, it is completely devoid of social connection. 

In fact, Bishop remarks that, with the advent of contactless delivery, we don't even have that brief face-to-face interaction with the person dropping off our meals. 

Everything has become decentralized, impersonal, and individualized. 

This trend, if it is to continue, will only compound our current scourge of social atomization. 

But, as I've said before, people - young people, especially - are yearning for a return to community. 

We see this in the form of hip dine-in theaters like the Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn (this place is always packed with zoomers), and drive-in theaters, which are still present all over the country. 

Look, I understand that the times are changing - I don't mean to sound like a hopeless reactionary - but it's perfectly reasonable to point out the tradeoffs of "progress." Expediency, for instance, comes at the price of interpersonal interactions. We've seen this with the emergence of self-checkout kiosks. 

But, while we can't go back to yesteryear, we can keep some old traditions alive. 

So... will you go to the movies with me?

Are Libraries Getting Louder?

 

By Frank Filocomo

You should be able to hear a pin drop in a library, right? The only sound ought to be the turning of a page or perhaps some faint whispers, no?

Maybe not so much anymore. It appears as though the library as a quiet place is becoming increasingly anachronistic.

Libraries are shifting their focus from places of solitary reading to community centers with a range of programming.

In Governing, Alan Ehrenhalt observes that libraries are embracing their new status as "third places."

From the article:

We are all familiar with the stereotype of the fussy librarian telling patrons to keep quiet. That tradition is disappearing. Nearly all libraries still have designated quiet rooms, but everywhere else in the building silence is no longer a requirement. People can talk as much as they want to.

At first blush, one might lament the changing character of libraries, and that is perfectly understandable. Change is always hard. But, we have to come to terms with our contemporary plague of loneliness and social isolation. If libraries can reinvent themselves and become community-hubs, then all the better. So long as they maintain reservable private study rooms, I doubt many folks will complain. 

More from the piece:

An increasing number of libraries have opened cafes to enhance local sociability. Many have placed job-training centers inside. Seattle’s main library contains a satellite City Hall. Charlotte is building an indoor-outdoor library to attract more customers year-round. The library in Athens, Ga., has become a focal point for chess tournaments...

After reading this, I began to wonder: what does my local library offer? 

I was shocked to see the wide array of programming available: writing workshops, knitting clubs, a videogame group for teens, arts and crafts, and English literacy courses for immigrants. 

How did I not know about this incredible resource that is just blocks away from where I've lived for years?

Encouraged by the fact that my local branch is active - I truly thought it was dormant, nothing more than a vacant building - I applied for a few volunteer positions there. 

So, I encourage you: look into the programs available at your local library. While it'll probably be a bit noisier than you remember, it might just be a valuable place for companionship and social connection.