--- title: America Is Living Through a Battle for its Soul description: Why America is living through a battle for its soul, why we must still defend free speech, and more. canonical: https://time.com/4918450/america-is-living-through-a-battle-for-its-soul/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-08-28T16:00:56.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:58:32.223Z article:section: Ideas og:title: America Is Living Through a Battle for its Soul og:description: And four more of today og:url: https://time.com/4918450/america-is-living-through-a-battle-for-its-soul/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: America Is Living Through a Battle for its Soul twitter:description: And four more of today twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # America Is Living Through a Battle for its Soul by [The Aspen Institute](https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/) ## The Aspen Institute Aug 28, 2017 4:00 PM UTC by [The Aspen Institute](https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/) ## The Aspen Institute Aug 28, 2017 4:00 PM UTC **1\.** [**“We are living through a battle for the soul of this nation.”**](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/joe-biden-after-charlottesville/538128/) By Joe Biden in the _Atlantic_ **2\.** [**Why we must still defend free speech.**](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/09/28/why-we-must-still-defend-free-speech/) By David Cole in the _New York Review of Books_ **3\.** [**Move Americans to jobs, not the other way around.**](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-28/move-americans-to-jobs-not-the-other-way-around) By Mihir Desai in _Bloomberg View_ **4\.** [**When shopping online, don’t let reviews fool you into making bad decisions.**](https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/people-favor-highly-reviewed-products-even-when-they-shouldnt.html) By the _Association for Psychological Science_ **5\.** [**New research says we might pick life partners who look familiar.**](https://aeon.co/ideas/keeping-it-in-the-family-why-we-pick-the-partners-we-do) By Tamsin Saxton in _Aeon_  [_The Aspen Institute_](http://www.aspeninstitute.org/) _is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4918450/america-is-living-through-a-battle-for-its-soul/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4918450/america-is-living-through-a-battle-for-its-soul/"},"headline":"America Is Living Through a Battle for its Soul","datePublished":"2017-08-28T16:00:56.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:58:32.223Z","description":"These are today's best ideas","url":"https://time.com/4918450/america-is-living-through-a-battle-for-its-soul/","keywords":["Five Best Ideas","Jobs","Shopping","America","free speech"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"The Aspen Institute","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/five-best-ideas/","name":"Five Best Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4918450/america-is-living-through-a-battle-for-its-soul/","name":"America Is Living Through a Battle for its Soul"}}]}] ```