Glenn Beck, President Obama & the Hunger for Purpose in Times of Transition
Arianna Huffington

This is a time of great transition for the country.

The way we have long approached our lives is no longer viable -- and what will replace it is still not clear. And with virtually every institution that once provided stability to American life now in question, millions are being thrust into a new, much harsher reality.

A few weekends ago -- which included the fifth anniversary of the needless tragedy of Katrina, a presidential visit to New Orleans, and Glenn Beck's rally in Washington -- found me in the middle of my own family's transition, dropping my daughter off for her freshman year of college and listening to the welcome speech delivered by Yale President Rick Levin.

He really struck a chord in me when he spoke of the "emerging burden of citizenship," and of responsibilities beyond "self-gratification and personal advancement." He urged the next generation to "raise the level of public discourse."

Great advice for college freshmen, but equally useful for Americans at any stage of life. As I detail in my forthcoming book, "Third World America," our democracy is failing us, and making it more effective is only going to happen from the bottom up, not as a result of those in Washington.

Millions of Americans are being forced to go outside the range of their experience by the staggering decline of the middle class. And discussions of what it means to have a good life, of what's really valuable in life, are no longer confined to the classroom.

With Rick Levin's words still running through my head, I traveled to Nantucket for a friend's birthday -- and later that day was at a gathering with Michael Sandel, discussing many of the same themes. Sandel is a professor of government at Harvard whose class on "Justice" has attracted a huge following.

In our discussion, as well as in his brilliant book "Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?," Sandel presents his vision of a "more robust and engaged civic life than the one to which we've become accustomed." In explaining how we get there, he quoted Barack Obama's speech in Washington, D.C., on "A Call to Renewal" in June 2006. It's a powerful and deeply spiritual speech in which then-Senator Obama talked about "the role that values and culture play in some of our most urgent social problems" and the need for "an injection of morality in our political debate."

But, by and large, since taking office, the president has failed to feed the hunger for a larger purpose in public life, and left the moral and spiritual aspiration on the backburner. This is all the more problematic now that the crises facing America are much deeper than when Sen. Obama spoke on the Call to Renewal in 2006 or on the 2008 campaign trail.

The large turnout at Glenn Beck's rally on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech speaks to the fact that the yearning has not been satisfied. Beck gave a speech noticeably devoid of partisan rhetoric -- talking instead about values and morals and God and the power of individuals to change the world. "For too long, this country has wandered in darkness," said Beck. "This country has spent far too long worrying about scars and thinking about scars and concentrating on scars. Today, we are going to concentrate on the good things in America, the things that we have accomplished, and the things that we can do tomorrow."

In 2006, Sen. Obama warned that if progressives didn't "reach out to evangelical Christians and other religious Americans and tell them what we stand for," others would "fill the vacuum." In 2010, the president's stepping back from his promise to call us to a higher form of civic engagement means that a vacuum has been left during this historic moment of transition.

And in this time of economic turmoil, it's time to reevaluate how we value things. "A just society can't be achieved simply by maximizing utility or by securing freedom of choice," writes Sandel. "To achieve a just society we have to reason together about the meaning of the good life."

What were thought by many to be the ingredients of the "good life" just a short time ago -- a job, a home, a secure retirement, a college education for your kids and prospects for a brighter future for them -- are no longer attainable simply by hard work and playing by the rules.

It's becoming clearer by the day that whatever "good life" the country is going to have in the future, it's not going to be delivered by consumption -- and, in the foreseeable future, it is unlikely to be delivered by Washington. The new "good life" will have to be "reasoned together" by all of us and forged together in our own communities and in our own families.

Hard truths and big ideas. A narrative arc to our lives. The emerging burden of citizenship. Now that "the better life" is beyond the reach of so many, Americans are hungrier than ever for a new definition of "the good life." While Washington is dithering, we can step up the work of transforming our communities and the lives of those around us. And that's something both Barack Obama and Glenn Beck should agree on.

Available at Amazon.com:

Presimetrics: What the Facts Tell Us About How the Presidents Measure Up On the Issues We Care About

The Feminine Mystique

The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy

The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics

Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks

The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House

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