Love demands candor.
Today, America is marred by growing inequality, constricting opportunity, and increasing social alienation. We are haunted by anxiety and insecurity about the future. And we have become so atomized that we often feel powerless to do anything meaningful about it — a perception that gives rise to growing despair and desperation. 
Some on the right and the left have taken to the streets in protest.
Despite their many differences, they share a deep sense of anger and betrayal.
Meanwhile, our poisoned public discourse has become increasingly polarized even as our politics have become more volatile. Today, our nation is more sharply divided then ever. Deep crevices are forming in our social fabric.
It is becoming harder to reach across the chasms.
This may be life, but it is not living.
We deserve something better, a world where we can breath again and flourish, one with broad horizons where the sun still shines. 
In 1980, in the shipyards of Gdask, people in Poland found their voice as a trade union called Solidarity emerged to challenge the soul-crushing tyranny of communism.
Ordinary people mustered the courage to bear witness to the truth and confront an unjust system.
They believed in a seemingly impossible dream, and could envision a different future for their nation.
Together, they changed the course of history. 
Today, there is a need for a new social initiative in America, for our own version of Solidarity, a transpartisan, interfaith, movement for justice, personal dignity, and cultural renewal, dedicated to rebuilding the bonds of community and reciprocity in our society.
Solidarity is an apt name for such an initiative.
It is a well-developed concept in Catholic doctrine, where it is viewed as both a “social principle and as a moral virtue.” It is rooted in the Biblical Seventh Commandment, which Pope Benedict XVI has characterized as “a yes to solidarity, to social responsibility, to justice…”
Solidarity recognizes that we are one human family and has been described by the late Pope John Paul II as “a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say, to the good of all and each individual, because we are all really responsible for all.”
In the final analysis, it is through solidarity that our own individual dignity as human beings is affirmed.
A Solidarity-type social initiative in America is not as far-fetched as it may seem.
The market we worship will not produce justice and equity on its own- indeed, left to its own devices, it drifts toward monopoly and oligarchy, and can be just as destructive of authentic human development and the common good as communism.
And, as growing inequality and social discord demonstrates, our society has been marred by failures in commutative, contributive, and distributive justice.
Indeed, these failures helped bring on the current crisis.
As Pope Benedict XVI has noted, “The Marxist system, where it found its way into government, not only left a sad heritage of economic and ecological destruction, but also a painful oppression of souls. And we can see the same thing happening in the West, where the distance between the rich and poor is growing constantly, and giving rise to a worrying degradation of personal dignity through… deceptive illusions of happiness.”
We can define, with precision, the nature of these “deceptive illusions.”
To paraphrase Chris Hedges, it is the belief that personal gratification, “enrichment and profit are the sole aim of human existence.”
This is a lie as profound, and as destructive, as any present in Marxism.
Today, a new Solidarity movement here in America would extend an open invitation to all people of good will.
It would remind us that we are one family and that we share a responsibility for each others’ integral development.
It would foster a new sense of community and civic responsibility.
And, most importantly, it would advocate for social and economic justice by, in the words of Pope John Paul II, identifying and “denouncing the economic, financial, and social mechanisms and structures that are manipulated by the rich and powerful for their own benefit at the expense of the poor” within our nation. 
In the face of serious threats to our future, we must rally together and say yes to solidarity, yes to social responsibility, and yes to justice.
By so doing, we articulate a better vision of our common future. And, like the shipyard workers in Poland, together, we can change the course of history.
(Michael Stafford is a former Republican Party officer and the author of “An Upward Calling.” Michael can be reached at anupwardcalling@yahoo.com.)n