Eliza Griswold's new book Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church is about a church in Philadelphia that was started by a couple who became dramatic converts to Christianity in the 1970's. They became Jesus people.

And unlike many others in that movement, they stayed pretty radical. Griswold's book tells the story of this couple's attempt to hand the church off to the next generation. It doesn't go well.

I thought the book was an example of something I’ve lived, experienced and observed: placing far too much hope in what a local church can do and provide.

Griswold is a contributing writing for The New Yorker and directs the Program in Journalism at Princeton University. Her 2018 book Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, won the Pulitzer Prize.

Major Garrett is chief Washington correspondent for CBS News, and as he told me in our conversation, he is an "accidental television journalist" who "never imagined" working in TV and "never wanted it." He was a print reporter for 17 years before entering the world of television. Since then, he's proven to be one of the most formidable, best prepared interviewers in journalism. This dude is rigorous, smart, and fun! And you know what? Damn it, he cares.

Major is the host of The Takeout podcast and author of five books, including The Big Truth: Upholding Democracy in the Age of the Big Lie, and Mr. Trump's Wild Ride: The Thrills, Chills, Screams, and Occasional Blackouts of an Extraordinary Presidency.

Major read Amusing Ourselves to Death in the 1990's. He then soon after became a TV reporter for CNN, where he spent two years before moving to the then-nascent Fox News, where he became a Washington fixture as White House correspondent. That's where he was when I met him during my time as a White House correspondent for The Washington Times.

I was glad, as I told him, that Major has a textured view of Postman's work. I didn't want a cheerleader. But Major talks about the impact of the work on him, his views of its shortcomings, and its lasting value.

Aurelian Craiutu is the author of Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals.

Craiutu is the chair of Indiana University's political science department. He is reclaiming a word and idea — moderation — that is typically despised and criticized as weak and cowardly. This is a misunderstanding of what moderation is, he insists.

Moderation is not for the weak or the indecisive, Craiutu says. Instead, it is a fighting creed which requires courage, strength, and savvy. It's not for everyone, he says. In other words, the implication is that some people don't have what it takes to be a moderate, because it's much easier to be a radical, or a purist, or an ideologue.

"Maintaining our civilization is an endless and complex task," (23) Craiutu writes.

Moderates do not look for silver bullets to perform this task. They recognize that it is an ongoing, never-fully-solved challenge. And they have a "willingness to exist inside open-ended situations that do not come full circle and cannot be unequivocally settled" (72).

In other words, moderates are fighters who aren't looking for an easy way out or for a vacation from the ongoing and ever present task of maintaining an open and free society.