In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.
Where is our attention? Across the country, the loudest voices insist that America is tearing itself apart. Talking heads shout. Single-issue campaigns divide. Experts sort citizens into warring tribes.
But beneath the noise, a quiet and shared sense of reverence grows across our nation.
It appeared when a country song by a previously unknown singer named Oliver Anthony spread across the nation — not because it was polished by a music industry machine, but because millions recognized their own unease in it. Truck drivers, teachers, single mothers, veterans, young men working construction, retirees living on fixed incomes — these people shared “Rich Men North of Richmond” not as entertainment but as testimony: Yes. That’s how it feels. To be unseen, talked down to, ignored, and worked without dignity.
Then came 20 Buddhist monks, walking across the United States — no money, no slogans, no party affiliation. As they passed through towns and cities, ordinary Americans emerged from homes, diners, farms, and offices simply to greet them. They offered water, food, and sometimes their tears.
No one asks who they voted for. No one demanded a position paper. People simply recognized something they had been missing.
These are not isolated cultural curiosities. They are signals. The song revealed how tired we have become. The monks stirred our conscience’s desire for peace.
America’s greatest suffering is not political division. Americans are not morally dead — we are morally depleted. This is a moral exhaustion that sets in when people are exposed to constant moral conflict without clear resolution, no agency, and no shared victory.
The elites — on both the Left and the Right — believe the central struggle in America is power: who governs, which coalition wins, which demographic prevails. But ordinary Americans are responding to something else entirely. We are searching for moral grounds to stand on. Not policy, but purpose.
The Romans had a word for what sustains a civilization: pietas. It meant love of God, loyalty to family, devotion to community, and duty to country — all woven together. This was not sentiment, but obligation rooted in gratitude. Over time, moral exhaustion and civic depletion weakened the bonds that held the Roman Empire together. As virtue eroded and unity fractured, Rome became unsustainable.
A healthy civilization does not survive on rights alone, but on reverence as well.
The crowds greeting strangers walking in silence; the millions sharing a raw song across social classes; the growing hunger for community, faith, and belonging: These are not protests. They are pleas. Beneath the arguments about race, class, and party, millions are quietly saying together that they want a country that means something again.
When a nation loses the ability to honor what is good about itself, it does not become more just; it becomes more fragile. A people ashamed of their own story cannot defend it, improve it, or pass it on.
To pass on the whole story of our nation truthfully is not to deny the history of oppression, but neither is it to overlook the courage, sacrifice, and triumph born from it.
There was, of course, the unrepentant Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who defended slavery as a necessity. But there were also the three black barbers who operated a critical Underground Railroad network alongside nearly 1,200 white farmers in Ohio — with support from two Native American tribes.
Together, they enabled an estimated 50,000 enslaved black men, women, and children to escape to freedom despite the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which made such acts punishable by imprisonment or death. They risked their livelihood and their lives to express their desire for peace and to uphold moral authority.
There was the white sawmill owner who, in 1909, donated a large supply of lumber to build Piney Wood School, the nation’s oldest continuously-operating historically black boarding school today. There was Julius Rosenwald, a white Jewish businessman who partnered with Booker T. Washington to build nearly 5,000 schools that educated one-third of poor black children in the South.
These are concrete examples of American virtues in action. Moral courage is not owned by any race. Not all whites were villains, and not all blacks were victims.
This is the story our children are to inherit. Adversity is real, but it does not excuse the surrender of virtue nor the abandonment of responsibility.
Telling every story — stories of both adversity and of virtue — helps show what citizenship looks like when conscience is stronger than fear.
America’s history is more than a record of injustice. It is also a record of courage.
In America’s history, we see a shared moral impulse that transcends identity politics: a longing for peace rooted in responsibility, agency, and love of neighbor. This is the durable peace that emerges when citizens strive, imperfectly but persistently, to live out the Constitution’s promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness through virtue, faith, and self-governance.
Telling this side of U.S history does not excuse wrongdoing. But refusing to acknowledge virtue, especially across racial lines, traps us in resentment and keeps us from moving forward together in reconciliation and growth.
When people face moral opposition, some defend it, some resist it, and some rise above it. History is shaped by the choices that are made.
We need to shift the national dialogue so that our leaders and our children make the right choice, so that we have a future rooted in responsibility rather than resentment.
We will not restore this nation’s moral health through better messaging, better programs, or better coalitions.
Renewal will come when we recover what formed us: Forgiveness that resonates louder than grievance, a sense of duty before demand, faith before ideology, and acts of service before status.
The future of the nation cannot be decided first in Washington, universities, or media studios. It will be decided in neighborhoods, churches, schools, and families, by whether we teach our children that they belong to something and therefore owe something to one another.
A people united only by politics eventually fractures. A people united by shared moral purpose endures.
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Beneath all the shouting, America is telling us which one it still longs to be.
May America’s founding principles long be celebrated in both song and practice. And make no mistake, this is something worth protecting.
