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I wrote not long ago that “American culture has a way of defying pessimistic expectations. We social scientists can never quite stop selecting on the dependent variable – we look for signs of hope or decline in the places where signs of decline are more visible than signs of hope….The signs of decline are always right where you expect to find them; the signs of hope spring up in the last places you expect.”

In his daily email, Jim Geraghty points out that the American birth rate just increased by the highest amount in five years, at a time when rates of teenage pregnancy, birth and abortions are hitting record lows.

Here at Hang Together we’re approaching our third July 4 (well, third if you count our inaugural post, in which Ray Charles did July 4 on Labor Day). I don’t know what the future will bring any more than anyone else, but I know that hope is a Christian virtue and I know that Scott McCloud was right: If there’s a 99% chance of total disaster, the only rational response is to concentrate all the more on the remaining 1%.