Foer: But why have you decided to elevate love at this precise moment?

Booker: I was almost going to try to challenge your presupposition, but I think you might be right. I find myself leaning even more into it now. We are heading toward a point in my lifetime where I haven’t seen a level of tribalism like this. I was reminding people in New Hampshire this past weekend that commercials ran in their state against Chris Christie for the singular sin of hugging Barack Obama. I mean, it’s gotten so bad that touching another American is considered a betrayal of tribe. We’re at a point in American history where when I hugged John McCain on the floor, literally after he got his cancer diagnosis, I get home and I’m getting pilloried on Twitter.

Foer: A lot of politicians talk about bipartisanship and restoring civility. But love is a very different way of explaining the problem.

Booker: My heroes have been not afraid to talk about love. Martin Luther King Jr. talked about the “beloved community.” He talked about the Greeks, who separated love into three categories: eros, philia, and agape love. I think patriotism, by its very definition, is love of country. But we seem to have become a country where the highest thing we’re reaching for is tolerance. When you say “bipartisan,” you’re really saying, “Hey we’re going to tolerate each other.” Go home and tell somebody that you live with, or your neighbor, “I tolerate you.” That’s not a high aspiration.