2026年3月19日 / 美国东部时间下午1:31 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
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“我们不只是一个政府，”新泽西州参议员科里·布克写道，“我们是一个民族，一个被共同的核心美德所凝聚的人民。”
在他的新书《[坚守]》（3月24日由圣马丁出版社出版）中，布克告诉我们，在当今美国公共生活诸多领域支离破碎的时代，美德是一种能够唤醒我们共同使命感的策略。
请阅读以下引言，并不要错过3月22日《哥伦比亚广播公司周日早间新闻》中科里·布克与费思·萨利的访谈！
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[科里·布克《坚守》]
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引言
这本书讲的是美德。
我知道这听起来可能有些崇高、抽象，甚至与我们面临的危机脱节。
我们的国家四分五裂。在我们的社区，甚至在我们的家庭中，部落主义不仅驱使我们产生分歧，更让我们相互憎恨。政治已成为对敌人的痴迷。煽动性言论盛行。威权主义威胁着我们的宪法原则。
腐败正被常态化。希望显得稀缺。我们的注意力被我们所反对的事物占据，而关于我们所拥护的更深层问题却无人问津。
所以我已经能听到有人提出异议：“天啊，布克，我们的国家正处于危机之中，你却要谈论……美德？”
是的。
美德不是奢侈品，也不是目的本身。美德——我们最高理想的自律实践——是我们国家生存和胜利的策略。
它是我们战斗的方式。是我们获胜的方式。是我们治愈的方式。
我为这本书选定的十大美德——行动力、脆弱性、爱国主义、真理、谦逊、社区精神、创造力、毅力、优雅和远见——是我在自己生活中不断探索的实践。在接下来的十章中，我将探讨这些美德如何成为个人和国家在成功、生存、救赎和复兴中的关键，并论证在当下为何每一种美德都至关重要。从乔治·华盛顿到柯南·奥布莱恩，从女权运动领袖爱丽丝·保罗到残障权利活动家詹妮弗·基兰-查芬斯，从亚伯拉罕·林肯到约翰·刘易斯，我从过去和现在领袖的故事中汲取灵感，同时结合我在自己生活中艰难学到的教训，为我们这个危机与挑战并存的时代寻找指引。
在这本书中，我认为我们许多前人以及当代许多人都反复证明了美德是实用的：它们扩展我们的力量，加深我们的归属感，并使我们能够忍受最终取得胜利。美德是赢得选举、推动立法、塑造政府优先事项的策略。但最重要的是，美德是一种超越性的策略：唤醒我们的共同使命感，重燃我们共同的信念，并重新点燃我们命运相连的信念。反过来，美德会让有效治理的实际工作变得更加可行。
内战初期，当美利坚合众国的生存岌岌可危时，联邦军队牧师塞缪尔·F·科特牧师以一个尖锐的问题抓住了冲突的本质：“我们是一个国家吗？还是说，我们只是拥有一个政府？”
他的问题关乎定义：我们是谁？我们信仰什么？我们坚守什么？除了法律、政策或政府提供的服务之外，是什么将我们凝聚在一起？
我们的开国元勋们，尽管他们是不完美的天才，却不仅寻求建立一个政府，更要建立一个以美德为根基的国家。他们研究并借鉴了启蒙运动哲学家的思想，辩论历史和人性。他们知道，仅凭政府本身无法将我们凝聚；只有植根于人类最美好一面的共同价值观才能做到。这些理想启发了宪法的制定，也启发了这样一种理念：我们的宪法必须由后代通过集体斗争和民主进程不断修正和完善，以弥补他们的不足并解决他们的不完美。他们也向我们展示并让我们明白，美德并非自我实现或不可避免的。它们需要持续的努力。
因此，在我们历史的每一个时代，美国人都一次次做出了深思熟虑且艰难的选择，转向美德以应对最大的挑战，并回应我们国家“使我们的国家成为更完善的联盟”的号召。
现在，轮到我们了。
我们不只是一个政府。我们是一个民族，一个被共同的核心美德所凝聚的人民。这些美德不是无关紧要的遗物。它们是生存的纪律和胜利的工具。
我知道现在很多人感到恐惧、愤怒、受伤和绝望。正是在这样的时刻，我们再次面临艰难的选择。不可避免的诱惑是为了便利而牺牲美德，用我们最高的理想换取权宜之计的虚假承诺。但我们现在不能放弃美德，还指望以后能重拾它们——牺牲我们赖以团结的美德，我们的国家可能就再也没有未来了。
我成长于民权运动的一代。从我父母、祖父母和他们的朋友们那里，我听到了英雄主义的故事——来自所有背景的普通美国人成为了一场运动的步兵。他们以勇气、牺牲和奋斗挑战了看似不可能的 odds。在那段艰难的时期，当人们沉浸在伤痛中、希望难以寻觅时，他们展现了伟大的美德。对他们来说，美德是一个艰难但最终有回报的选择。它成为了一种无价的韧性武器、抵御压迫的盾牌，以及指引他们前进的指南针。
我的父母小时候常引用一句话，以至于我小时候几乎都听腻了。现在我长大了，这句话再次激励我，并带来了新的紧迫感。
这是我们所有人都熟悉的 refrain：“如果你不为某个事物挺身而出，你就会为任何事物卑躬屈膝。”
我们历史中的美德不是软弱的情感或道德上的细枝末节。
当事情变得艰难时，它们让我们屹立不倒。
它们是黑暗时期指引方向的星座。
在风暴中，我们的美德是我们那极具美国特色的坚定立场：为自己，为彼此，为我们所热爱并共同拥有的国家。
节选自科里·布克所著《坚守》。版权所有©2026年作者，经圣马丁出版集团许可重印。
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[科里·布克《坚守》]
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- 科里·布克《坚守》（圣马丁出版社），精装版、电子书版和有声版，3月24日上市
- [新泽西州参议员科里·布克 (民主党)]
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Book excerpt: “Stand” by Cory Booker
March 19, 2026 / 1:31 PM EDT / CBS News
St. Martin’s Press
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“We are more than a government,” writes New Jersey Senator Cory Booker. “We are a nation, a people bound by shared bedrock virtues.”
In his new book, [“Stand”] (to be published March 24 by St. Martin’s Press), Booker tells us that, at a time when America is splintered in many areas of public life, virtue is a strategy that can awaken our sense of common cause.
Read the introduction below, and don’t miss Faith Salie’s interview with Cory Booker on “CBS Sunday Morning” March 22!
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[“Stand” by Cory Booker]
Prefer to listen?[Audible]has a 30-day free trial available right now.
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Introduction
This book is about virtue.
I know how that might sound—lofty, abstract, even detached from the crises we face.
Our nation is fractured. In our communities, and even in our families, tribalism drives us not merely to disagree with but to despise one another. Politics has become an obsession with enemies. Demagoguery is ascendant. Authoritarianism threatens our constitutional principles.
Corruption is being normalized. Hope feels scarce. What we are against preoccupies our attention, while the deeper question of what we are for is left unanswered.
So I can already hear someone objecting: Dear God, Booker, our country is in crisis and you want to talk about … virtue?
Yes.
Virtue is not a luxury or an end in itself. Virtue—the disciplined practice of our highest ideals—is the strategy through which we as a nation survive and prevail.
It is how we fight. It is how we win. It is how we heal.
The ten virtues I have selected for this book—agency, vulnerability, patriotism, truth, humility, community, creativity, perseverance, grace, and vision—are practices I have wrestled with in my own life. Over the next ten chapters, I explore how these virtues were the keys to success, survival, redemption, and renewal in the lives of individuals and the life of our country, and I argue why each is desperately needed in this moment. From George Washington to Conan O’Brien, from suffragist Alice Paul to disability rights activist Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins, from Abraham Lincoln to John Lewis, I have looked to the stories of leaders from our past and present, along with lessons I have learned the hard way in my own life, for instruction in our time of crisis and challenge.
In this book, I argue that many Americans who came before us, and many among us today, have consistently proven that virtues are practical: They expand our power, deepen our sense of belonging, and equip us to endure and ultimately prevail. Virtue is a strategy that wins elections, moves legislation, and shapes government priorities. But, most importantly, virtue is a strategy that transcends: awakening our sense of common cause, reigniting our shared convictions, and rekindling the belief that our destiny is bound together. In turn, virtue makes the practical work of governing effectively all the more possible.
In the early days of the Civil War, when the survival of the United States of America itself hung in the balance, Reverend Samuel F. Colt, a Union army chaplain, captured the essence of the conflict in a piercing question: “Are we a Nation? Or, Have we a Government?”
His question was definitional: Who are we? What do we believe in? What do we stand for? What binds us together beyond laws, policies, or our government’s delivery of services?
Our founders, imperfect geniuses as they were, sought to create not only a government but a nation rooted in virtue. They studied and drew from Enlightenment philosophers and debated history and human nature. They knew that the government alone could not bind us; only shared values, rooted in the best of humanity could. Those ideals inspired what was written into the Constitution, and the very idea that our Constitution must be amended and our nation improved by future generations who could redeem their shortcomings and address their imperfections through collective struggle and the democratic process. They also knew, and showed us, that virtues are not self-fulfilling or inevitable. They require constant work.
And so, again and again, in every era of our history, Americans have made the deliberate and difficult choice to turn toward virtue to meet their greatest challenges and to rise to the call of our country to make ours a more perfect union.
Now it is our time.
We are more than a government. We are a nation, a people bound by shared bedrock virtues. These virtues are not irrelevant relics. They are disciplines of survival and instruments of triumph.
I know many are feeling scared, angry, hurt, and hopeless right now. It is in times such as these that we again face a difficult choice. There is the inevitable temptation to sacrifice virtue for convenience, to exchange our highest ideals for the false promise of expediency. But we can’t abandon our virtues now and hope to pick them up later—sacrifice our binding virtues and there may be no later for our nation at all.
I was raised as a child of the civil rights generation. From my parents and grandparents and their friends, I heard stories of heroism—ordinary Americans of all backgrounds who became the foot soldiers of a movement. People who defied impossible odds with courage, sacrifice, and struggle. Amidst their trying time, when people were drenched in hurt and hope was hard to find, they demonstrated great virtue. For them, virtue was a difficult but ultimately rewarding choice. It became an invaluable weapon of resilience, a shield against oppression, and a compass that guided them forward.
My parents quoted something so often in my childhood that it almost lost its meaning for me. Now that I am older, it compels me and imparts a renewed sense of urgency.
It is a refrain familiar to us all: “If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.”
The virtues within our history are not soft sentiments or moral niceties.
When things get difficult, they keep us upright.
They are a constellation by which to steer through dark times.
In the midst of a storm, our virtues are our defiant, deeply American insistence on standing: for ourselves, for one another, and for the nation we love and share.
Excerpted from “Stand” by Cory Booker. Copyright © 2026 by the author, and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
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Get the book here:
[“Stand” by Cory Booker]
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For more info:
- [“Stand”] by Cory Booker (St. Martin’s Press), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available March 24
- [Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.)]
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