Scott Reich recently took the TED Democracy stage in Philadelphia to argue that a renewed ethos of service could help repair our fractured country. He joins Dave Troy for a conversation that runs from ancient Athens to a modern "GI Bill for civic service," by way of Robert Putnam, the 1917 baseball All-Star Game, and the simple, radical idea that citizens owe something to one another.
Reich and Troy arrived at similar conclusions by different paths: that social mixing across background, region, and class — not screens and headlines — is how a democracy rebuilds trust. Together they make a hopeful (and stubbornly non-partisan) case for citizenship as a practice, not merely a slogan.
(Production note: a couple of brief internet dropouts affected Scott's audio; we've worked around them.)
Guest:
Scott Reich - presidential historian and attorney; author of "The Power of Citizenship: Why JFK Matters to a New Generation" and the forthcoming "One Day in September: Baseball, Brotherhood, and the Birth of the All-Star Game"; board member of the JFK Library Foundation and a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania.
https://www.scott-reich.com/
Chapters:
00:00 Cold open: why national service
01:18 Meet Scott Reich and the TED Democracy talk
04:34 Citizenship: rights, but also obligations
05:43 From "impossible" to practical: connection and service
07:45 The baseball "farm system": start with the young
10:18 What we stopped teaching: civics and Western civ
12:30 The proposal: a modern GI Bill for civic service
14:03 Ancient Greece and the making of a citizen
15:29 Mandatory or voluntary? Incentives over mandates
18:01 Reviving civic life: Peace Corps, clubs, and lost associations
19:55 The commoditization of youth sports
22:53 We've always argued: Adams, Jefferson, and healthy disagreement
24:49 "One Day in September": how Americans used to gather
29:02 Putnam, disinformation, and the loneliness crisis
30:29 Social mixing as national security
32:54 Cohorts across difference: rural Iowa to the Bronx
37:42 Service, not servitude: beyond the military
43:59 Overestimating the other side
46:05 Leaders as vehicles: JFK and the power of citizenship
50:22 What tragedy teaches: our capacity to unite
54:29 What can one person do? Small acts of citizenship
1:01:13 Outro and links
Host Dave Troy writes at https://america2.news and https://washingtonspectator.org
Dave Troy Presents is published by America 2.0. https://america2.news
