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“We are more than a government,” writes New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. “We are a nation, a people bound by shared bedrock virtues.”
In his new e book, “Stand” (to be revealed March 24 by St. Martin’s Press), Booker tells us that, at a time when America is splintered in lots of areas of public life, advantage is a technique that may awaken our sense of widespread trigger.
Read the introduction under, and do not miss Faith Salie’s interview with Cory Booker on “CBS Sunday Morning” March 22!
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Introduction
This e book is about advantage.
I understand how which may sound—lofty, summary, even indifferent from the crises we face.
Our nation is fractured. In our communities, and even in our households, tribalism drives us not merely to disagree with however to despise each other. Politics has develop into an obsession with enemies. Demagoguery is ascendant. Authoritarianism threatens our constitutional rules.
Corruption is being normalized. Hope feels scarce. What we’re towards preoccupies our consideration, whereas the deeper query of what we’re for is left unanswered.
So I can already hear somebody objecting: Dear God, Booker, our nation is in disaster and also you need to speak about … advantage?
Yes.
Virtue isn’t a luxurious or an finish in itself. Virtue—the disciplined observe of our highest beliefs—is the technique by means of which we as a nation survive and prevail.
It is how we combat. It is how we win. It is how we heal.
The ten virtues I’ve chosen for this e book—company, vulnerability, patriotism, reality, humility, group, creativity, perseverance, grace, and imaginative and prescient—are practices I’ve wrestled with in my very own life. Over the following ten chapters, I discover how these virtues had been the keys to success, survival, redemption, and renewal within the lives of people and the lifetime of our nation, and I argue why every is desperately wanted on this second. From George Washington to Conan O’Brien, from suffragist Alice Paul to incapacity rights activist Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins, from Abraham Lincoln to John Lewis, I’ve appeared to the tales of leaders from our previous and current, together with classes I’ve realized the onerous means in my very own life, for instruction in our time of disaster and problem.
In this e book, I argue that many Americans who got here earlier than us, and plenty of amongst us right this moment, have persistently confirmed that virtues are sensible: They broaden our energy, deepen our sense of belonging, and equip us to endure and in the end prevail. Virtue is a technique that wins elections, strikes laws, and shapes authorities priorities. But, most significantly, advantage is a technique that transcends: awakening our sense of widespread trigger, reigniting our shared convictions, and rekindling the idea that our future is certain collectively. In flip, advantage makes the sensible work of governing successfully all of the extra potential.
In the early days of the Civil War, when the survival of the United States of America itself hung within the steadiness, Reverend Samuel F. Colt, a Union military chaplain, captured the essence of the battle in a piercing query: “Are we a Nation? Or, Have we a Government?”
His query was definitional: Who are we? What can we imagine in? What can we stand for? What binds us collectively past legal guidelines, insurance policies, or our authorities’s supply of companies?
Our founders, imperfect geniuses as they had been, sought to create not solely a authorities however a nation rooted in advantage. They studied and drew from Enlightenment philosophers and debated historical past and human nature. They knew that the federal government alone couldn’t bind us; solely shared values, rooted in one of the best of humanity may. Those beliefs impressed what was written into the Constitution, and the very concept that our Constitution have to be amended and our nation improved by future generations who may redeem their shortcomings and tackle their imperfections by means of collective battle and the democratic course of. They additionally knew, and confirmed us, that virtues should not self-fulfilling or inevitable. They require fixed work.
And so, repeatedly, in each period of our historical past, Americans have made the deliberate and troublesome selection to show towards advantage to fulfill their best challenges and to rise to the decision of our nation to make ours a extra good union.
Now it’s our time.
We are greater than a authorities. We are a nation, a individuals certain by shared bedrock virtues. These virtues should not irrelevant relics. They are disciplines of survival and devices of triumph.
I do know many are feeling scared, offended, harm, and hopeless proper now. It is in instances reminiscent of these that we once more face a troublesome selection. There is the inevitable temptation to sacrifice advantage for comfort, to trade our highest beliefs for the false promise of expediency. But we will not abandon our virtues now and hope to choose them up later—sacrifice our binding virtues and there could also be no later for our nation in any respect.
I used to be raised as a toddler of the civil rights technology. From my dad and mom and grandparents and their mates, I heard tales of heroism—abnormal Americans of all backgrounds who grew to become the foot troopers of a motion. People who defied unattainable odds with braveness, sacrifice, and battle. Amidst their making an attempt time, when individuals had been drenched in harm and hope was onerous to search out, they demonstrated nice advantage. For them, advantage was a troublesome however in the end rewarding selection. It grew to become a useful weapon of resilience, a defend towards oppression, and a compass that guided them ahead.
My dad and mom quoted one thing so typically in my childhood that it nearly misplaced its which means for me. Now that I’m older, it compels me and imparts a renewed sense of urgency.
It is a chorus acquainted to us all: “If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.”
The virtues inside our historical past should not tender sentiments or ethical niceties.
When issues get troublesome, they hold us upright.
They are a constellation by which to steer by means of darkish instances.
In the midst of a storm, our virtues are our defiant, deeply American insistence on standing: for ourselves, for each other, and for the nation we love and share.
Excerpted from “Stand” by Cory Booker. Copyright © 2026 by the creator, and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
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