America is going to hell in a handbasket culturally, so what am I going to do about it?

There’s been a lot of chatter for decades now about how America has lost its way in terms of civil discourse, and those on the right of the political spectrum say it is the fault of left-wing liberals and media. Those on the left blame mean-spirited Christians on the right politically for turning Jesus into a political weapon, particularly on the flammable issue of abortion.

There’s enough room to share the blame, including right-wing conservatives and Republicans. Fortunately, there are ways to patch the holes in the cultural walls, but only if everyone pitches in and does their part, or rather, does the same work their great-grandparents and ancestors did on a daily, grinding, perpetual basis starting today.

There’s something to be said about having to face a common enemy that pulls people together and doesn’t push them apart. Our parents and grandparents suffered together through the Great Depression and then fought the Nazis and the Japanese Empire in the deadliest worldwide war in history from 1941-45. There were political differences about the conduct of the war and restarting America’s moribund economy. However, turning red in the face to scream at someone for their views on social issues must have seemed peculiarly inconsequential when the morning and afternoon newspapers were screaming about how Adolf Hitler was leading his maniacal Nazis to world domination so they would enslave everyone else or, far worse, eat them after weeks of torture.

Our ancestors, left, right and middle, volunteered for duty to save the country they had learned to love growing up from patriotic parents, neighbors and friends, just as our children and grandchildren can learn to do if we adults will start doing the same basic things our forefathers and mothers did back then. But it won’t just happen by magic or luck. And God knows no one wants another world war to force us all to do what, intuitively, we all know we need to make things right again in America.

Here are two books that might help kickstart the process if everyone just gets them and reads them right now.

The first one, “The Air We Breathe” by Glen Scrivener, seeks to unpack how and why all Americans just come to believe everyone deserves equality, freedom, kindness and progress simply because they stand on U.S. soil. Not every culture in history or even today believes the same things. There’s something uniquely different about the American experience that we are in danger of losing within a generation unless we dramatically change how we do things in our daily personal and political lives. Bernard Bailyn explains the foundational cornerstones of what we are in danger of losing in his seminal work, “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,” published in 1967. Reading both books in tandem will give you a safety net against which you can bat your ideas and arguments, rather than doing so in public and suffering possible embarrassment. Instead of spewing poisonous venom and being vindictive, you can add to the restoration of enlightened public discourse.

Good luck in your efforts.