Democratic policymakers are noticing people are becoming more isolated . We know our neighbors less, go to church less, and belong to fewer things. This isn’t a small problem.
People derive happiness, purpose, and support from the little platoons they belong to. Man is a social and political animal, and we need to belong.
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We were pleasantly surprised when, in a new report on the epidemic of loneliness, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy acknowledged the role of faith and community, not merely the public-health bureaucracy, in physical and mental well-being.
Now, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) has joined the fight against isolation, alienation, and loneliness. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe this summer, he spoke about the crisis regarding faith and belonging. He was right, and his point was crucial. The withdrawal from public life that Robert Putnam charted two decades ago in Bowling Alone has just gotten worse, and the most consequential case of this is a retreat from church.
For years, Democrats and commentators on the Left spoke of secularization as if it were a good thing and held the religious Right as their greatest enemy. In the wake of Jan. 6 and amid QAnon conspiracy theories, the more perceptive liberals, such as Murthy and Murphy, realize organized religion is a force for good.
It took insight and courage for Murphy to identify and name the malady. It’s too bad that his solution is so ill-fitting.
Simply the name of Murphy’s bill, the “National Strategy for Social Connection Act,” is enough to suggest what’s wrong. Social connection happens at a local level, so a national solution is impossible. Murphy’s proposed “Office of Social Connection Policy” within the executive office of the president is almost a punchline.
If the Biden administration and Murphy want to address alienation and repair social connection, the best thing they can do is not to try to introduce a Washington-based solution but to acknowledge how much Washington is the problem.
Centralization of power, attention, and action is a chief cause of social disconnection. The New Deal and Great Society centralized our safety net. Stripping localities, churches, and nonprofit organizations of their role in serving their communities detached people from their neighbors.
At the same time, national politics has come to consume too much attention. When the federal government takes so much of your income in taxes and hands out so much wealth in the form of “tax credits” and student debt forgiveness, it’s rational to turn attention toward the central state.
Centralizing attention, though, takes people out of the human environment in which they live. They ignore the realm in which they can make a difference — the local, the voluntary — and obsess over national politics, in which people have no say.
If Murphy, Murthy, and other Beltway types want to address the lack of belonging and crisis of faith, the best thing they can do is get out of the way.
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Democrats and the Left have relentlessly attacked religious institutions, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor or Catholic hospitals, that enter the public square. Washington has expanded its power, emaciating the local and the voluntary.
Our epidemic of loneliness won’t have one big solution. It will have 10,000 little solutions. The best Uncle Sam can hope to do is to step aside.
