The Social Fabric Frays. The Patches Aren't Obvious.

“In Washington,” says Utah senator Mike Lee, “we measure GDP, we measure government outlays and revenues -- all kind of things that are quantifiable and monitored like vital signs, blood pressure and heart rate. But we don’t always take the time to measure other things that are just as important to our life as a country.” One of those things is the state of America’s “associational life,” which is the topic of a new report from the senator’s staff on the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.

The report sets the scene by invoking the titles of some high-profile books by Robert Putnam, Charles Murray and Yuval Levin: “There is a sense that our social fabric has seen better days. Leading thinkers have issued warnings that we are increasingly ‘bowling alone,’ ‘coming apart,’ and inhabiting a ‘fractured republic.’ At the heart of those warnings is a view that what happens in the middle layers of our society is vital to sustaining a free, prosperous, democratic, and pluralistic country.”