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Light Many Fires began as a book called When We The People Lead, The Leaders Will Follow. It is becoming much more. The book grew out of a simple but unsettling observation: America’s core problem is not that we are hopelessly polarized. It’s that most people—the exhausted, reasonable 70% majority—have gradually been separated from our sense of agency. We don’t vote regularly, we consume politics as entertainment, and assume that meaningful change is the work of others. The r

A Better Way to Engage People Whose Politics We Don’t Share At an event I was facilitating recently about active citizenship, a couple of people said they hoped they would come away from the session better equipped to talk to people whose political views are different from theirs. I got the feeling they were after ideas about how to change others’ minds. I understand the impulse, especially if you live with people whose views are extreme or have them as neighbors. But t

Global warming isn’t the only type of climate change we’re facing. And it might not be the worst. WHEN WE AMERICANS TALK ABOUT the challenges facing our country, we usually point to politics or economics. We argue about elections, public policy, taxes, inflation, inequality, or government dysfunction. These issues matter. But what if they are not the core of our troubles? Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who served as the United Kingdom’s chief rabbi from 1991 to 2013, believed they are

The Gilded Age spawned reformers of all kinds. I think this is happening today, as well. Do you? Can our time be compared to America’s Gilded Age, the 1870-1900 period marked by immense fortunes, political corruption, and social upheaval? I’ve read many such comparisons lately, and the similarities are striking. This is why I’m reading The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again by Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett. In their book

The case for keeping legal power in human hands For years, discussions about artificial intelligence felt abstract to me—impressive, sometimes unsettling, but still comfortably distant. Then I watched an interview with Yuval Noah Harari. Harari is the author of several bestselling books including Sapiens, Nexus, Homo Deus. In the interview, he says the way to understand both the benefits and threats of AI is to understand the distinction between tools and agents. Something cl

Every election season, politicians ask us for the same things: Vote for me. Donate. Knock on doors. Put a sign in your yard. Then the election ends. They go off to govern. We go back to our lives. End of story. Isn’t something missing? Imagine a politician who stood before a crowd and said: “I can't fix this country by myself. Neither can Congress. If we’re going to make America stronger, I need your involvement—not just your vote.” How often do we hear anything l

NEAR THE END OF HIS MAGNIFICENT BOOK, Man’s Search for Meaning, written in 1945, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl offers an observation that feels surprisingly relevant to America today. “Freedom,” he writes, “is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.” What he meant was freedom without responsibility is no more than selfishness. In this book, Frankl makes a remarkable suggestion. The Statue of L

Book: Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America, by Chris Murphy (This review was published by The Fulcrum on July 18, 2026.) By Richard McKnight, PhD Author of When We The People Lead, The Leaders Will Follow Chris Murphy, the junior senator from Connecticut, has written an important and timely book. Although he writes as a Democratic politician, his central concern transcends party politics. He asks why in America, by most stand

Democracy Begins at the Next Stop Sign! IT'S DRIVING SEASON and I’ve been thinking about how crucial virtue is for both driving and democracy. What got me started was road rage—my own. Here’s what happened. My wife and I were returning home from an evening out in downtown Philadelphia near where we live. The traffic was very heavy. We pulled off the expressway at the usual exit only to see it backed up a very long way. Inching along, an impatient driver decided to go ar

When we say “We’re all polarized,” we empower extreme voices, contribute to sidelining the Exhausted Majority, and encourage our own passivity. A RECENT COLUMN IN THE NYT notes the growing pushback of Americans against data centers, observing that “more than half of all Americans support a national ban.” I like hearing this, but then, it goes onto to say something that almost breaks my heart: “In our virulently partisan country, this constitutes a rare show of consensus.” I

THE QUESTION I HEAR MOST OFTEN as I talk about the themes in my book is What can I do? It’s a sign that I’m getting through—the listener understands the difficulties our country faces and the need for everyone to get involved in addressing them. It’s a hard question for me to answer for someone else, not because possibilities for action don’t come to mind, but because the question means different things to different people. For one person, the question might reveal a sense of

I HAVE A DEEP AVERSION TO TELLING others what to do, feel, or say. In this essay, I throw this personal commitment overboard. Why? Because I just read a Pew Research report from March that says “Americans are more likely than people in other countries surveyed in 2025 to question the morality of their fellow countrymen.” According to Pew, “The United States is the only place we surveyed where more adults (ages 18 and older) describe the morality and ethics of others living in

Young people trying to "stay out of politics." (Good luck.) A NEW FRIEND, GLYNN BOLTMAN, recently shared a podcast she created about young voters. In it, she reflects on what she learned while interviewing young people across America’s heartland. She conducted interviews in three swing states. Hoping to better understand why so many young Americans feel politically disengaged, she spoke with people in fast-food restaurants, gas stations, and coffee shops. (Listen to Glynn's b

5/14/26 In my book, When We The People Lead, The Leaders Will Follow, I implore young people to get involved in fixing what ails our country, admitting that my generation—I’m a Boomer—has left the young a hornet’s nest of intertwined problems. I recognize the potentially offensive irony: We created a mess, now you should go fix it. My generation is turning over a country caught in a self-reinforcing cycle of civic decline, oligarchy, and political extremism, all of which co

OLDER AMERICANS often look at younger voters and see apathy. They see low turnout at No Kings rallies and note weak voting participation, then conclude that young people are apathetic. I believe this conclusion misses what is happening. The issue is not that younger Americans don’t care. It’s that many young people don’t think their participation will make a meaningful difference in improving things. That distinction matters enormously. Young people, compared to older A

by Richard McKnight, PhD Citizenship is often treated as something external: a legal status, a set of rights, a periodic obligation to vote. But that definition is far too thin to sustain a democracy—especially one under strain. Citizenship is both inner and outer work. The outer work is visible: voting, organizing, serving, showing up. The inner work is quieter but just as essential: making a decision about our relationship to America and the role we play within it. To make

Don't believe the headlines about polarization. Here's an example. Is it true or false? “America is a nation split into two furious camps, locked in an endless culture war.” It's actually false or mostly false. It's a picture that is badly distorted. The next time someone tries to intimate that we are a nation of slavering jackels at one another's throats, push back. In my book, When We The People Lead, The Leaders Will Follow, I spell out what is far closer to the truth: The

In a recent print conversation between NYT columnists, conservative Bret Stephens, who calls himself “a law and order guy,” and liberal Frank Bruni, discussed the cruelty on display in Minneapolis and the shooting of Renee Good. Stephens did not dismiss the horror, but stressed that America has endured worse moments. Bruni’s response to this caught my attention: “‘We’ve survived a lot worse’ sounds increasingly to me like a psychic binky—more pacifier than reality check.” H