I think we've lost something in our collective civic toolkit since Tocqueville called the US a nation of joiners. Now, instead of spending an evening or two a week at Rotary, the Elks, PTA, Farm Bureau or whatever other civic organization that allied us with like-minded people who might not completely agree with every hair-brained idea we might have, forcing us to get used to, and maybe even like, compromise in the civic sphere, we go home and turn on HBO or 24 or some other form of passive entertainment. I'm not even going to get into the decline of churches organized on principles of congregational polity and the ascendency of mega churches with autocrat pastors, some who are even founding hereditary bishoprics.
