identity

In both messaging and missions, bridges instead of bubbles.

In J. D. Vance’s Munich Security Conference speech, echoes of the Pera-Ratzinger debate’s basic questions about identity, democracy, and the West—and the ability, the very place, of the people to democratically offer answers to those questions.

The “best kind of dialogue across racial lines is not dialogue about race,” said the historian, who has died. We “are all people with many common interests to talk about, and a call for a dialogue on race sets us in opposing camps. ‘Oh, you are the spokesman for the white position and you are the spokesman for the black position.’ That, I don’t think, is likely to lead us to a better society.”

A decade-old report still has much to teach us.