Feeling connected to my country and to all its citizens is consistent with my progressive beliefs, in particular because Americanness can be — even though it hasn’t always been — an inclusive form of national identity. Americanness can offer a model whereby people of every imaginable background see themselves as part of a single community, a model that stands in powerful contrast to fundamentalism and hate. That's the kind of identity that builds bridges rather than walls. And that’s the kind of America I can wholeheartedly love.

By Ian Reifowitz

Last month after a dinner, I was sitting in my friend’s car, and for the first time in our two-year relationship, we discussed our shared experience of growing up with abusive fathers and abused mothers who did nothing to save us. Recently, I’ve been making an effort to be more transparent about the experiences I had growing up, opening up in ways that go beyond the obligatory statement that my dad isn’t a nice man. “How do you explain this to people?” I asked my friend. “How do you explain that you were terrorized by your parent when you were a kid, continue to endure their abuse as an adult, and still go out of your way to help and care for them?” My friend, who finds himself in oddly similar circumstances to mine, replied, “You can’t explain it. It’s cultural.”

By Tina Vasquez

To celebrate International Women's Day, tonight In The Fray tweeted links from stories we've published over the past decade that relate to violence against women. We joined thousands of other individuals and groups in a twenty-four-­hour, global tweet-­a-thon to raise awareness about gender-­based violence. In case you were asleep during our time slot, here are the links we tweeted:

Breaking the Silence, by April D. Boland

When Rape Becomes Normal, by Anna Sussman and Jonathan Jones

Naked Feminists: A Conversation with Director Louisa Achille, by Laura Nathan-Garner

Gender Outlaws, by Emily Alpert

Genocide Is Not a Spectator Sport, by Anustup Nayak

Sisters of Fate, by Sarah Marian Seltzer

Look below the fold for the tweets.

By Victor Tan Chen

The topline numbers in the recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center are not good. There are now more hard-right, antigovernment “Patriot” groups than there were at the movement’s previous heyday in the mid-1990s. The number of hate groups identified by the SPLC has been on a steady climb over the past dozen years.

By Ian Reifowitz

The fear of a race war is clearly delusional, but it draws strength from the half-truths and outlandish comments that reverberate in the partisan media's echo chamber. For example, black nationalist leader Louis Farrakhan said in a recent interview that the film Django Unchained — a fictional account of a freed slave seeking retribution — is “preparation for a race war.” Conservative media — from Rush Limbaugh to Fox News to Breitbart.com — breathlessly spread word of Farrakhan’s remarks. With pundits so willing to piece together high-level conspiracies out of random shouts and murmurs, it’s no wonder our politics have become so toxic.

By Ian Reifowitz