Is the Universe on Our Side?

Abstract

America cannot go on this way without risking the end of constitutional democracy. We have already entered post-liberalism. But there is something to be done. We can launch a new story, and thus begin to recover normal public life, by asking the ultimate question bequeathed to us by Bernard Lonergan: Is the universe on our side? Asking an ultimate question restores faith in questioning itself. That kind of questioning ends the Age of Evasion. We ask Lonergan’s question through a loose cultural entity he called “cosmopolis.” As long as we agree to live by our answer to this question, even a no can contribute to the healing of American public life.