Category Archives: 1947 – Quote, Unquote

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Though Utah is very conservative, its residents generally don’t romanticize rugged individualism or Darwinian hyper-capitalism. It has the lowest income inequality in the country, and ranks near the top for upward mobility. The relative lack of racial diversity no doubt helps skew these metrics—structural racism doesn’t take the same toll in a state that is 78 percent white. But economists say the tightly networked faith communities have provided a crucial extra layer to the social safety net.
~ McKay Coppins via The Atlantic

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The ground that unites the powerless against the powerful is always about to collapse. Our irrepressible red-blue conflict is always ready to set Americans against Americans in every conceivable way: education, race, religion, age, gender, region, even views of foreign wars. It’s better to be honest about these differences, and try not to rub them raw until they destroy the chance for a better country, than to assume that they don’t matter or wish them out of existence.
~ George Packer via The Atlantic

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I don’t remember the first time I heard this story, but I do know where I was when I committed it to memory. As a Mormon teenager in suburban Massachusetts, I woke up every morning at 5:30 to attend a “seminary” class held in the bishop’s basement. This was no mark of special devotion on my part; all the Mormon kids were expected to be there, and so all the Mormon kids were, Mormonism being a religion that prizes showing up
~ McKay Coppins via The Atlantic

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At some point during my lifetime—I am not sure when—the American republic as we know it began to die. Like most natural deaths, the causes are numerous and interwoven. No one incident, emergency, attack, president, political party, law, idea, person, corporation, technology, mistake, betrayal, failure, misconception, or foreign adversary “caused” death to begin, though all those things and more contributed.
~ Dean Ball via Hyperdimensional

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