The nation is reeling from hurricanes, earthquakes, the Great Recession, two wars, and severe public sector budget cuts, among other challenges. A broken politics sits at the heart of our inability to move forward. But beneath that is something even more important and vital to our long-term health: people clinging to their sense of humanity and dignity.

Yesterday’s opening of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial is a poignant reminder of how we must engage to re-shape our nasty politics and public life. On the side of the memorial is this inscription: “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.” At issue is how we take these words in and live them especially at a time when our politics are so distasteful and sorely lacking in a sense of possibility.

Political bullying is in vogue now and the question you can hear bubbling up throughout the country is, “Who will stand up to the bullies?” Michele Bachmann is only the latest in a line of political bullies roaming our streets, and she was on full display following her win in the Iowa straw poll.

Politico, the daily newspaper and online service, ran this headline today and with it an article that outlined how Obama operatives are getting ready to destroy Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s character in the hopes of maintaining The White House. But is this the right path for any candidate to take, especially one that ran on “hope?”

The debt ceiling crisis brought out some of the worst of people’s tendencies in the country. Today, many of us are asking what can be done to get things moving in a better direction. Here are five questions that can help you and others bring out the best in ourselves, and which you can put to use immediately in your own life, work and community.

The debate over what to do about the nation’s debt ceiling only gets sillier by the day. Demands and counter-demands are producing little progress, which leaves the debate at an impasse. So what to do? Of paramount importance is to restore people’s faith in their leaders and themselves. One key step: The president should immediately call an open, televised roundtable discussion with congressional leaders as he did on health care.

I spent last week in Brazil, and came away with a feeling of immense possibility for that nation and its people. Part of my trip took me to the rain forest where my colleague, Lisa Flick Wilson, and I visited one of them most innovative schools I have ever seen. And where there are lessons for all of us.

Our politics are incredibly toxic, and at times conditions only seem to be worsening. But look around and it’s possible to see the emergence of a competing set of conditions – what I’ll call the New Civility. I say it’s “new” because the old civility is about people holding hands and singing Kum-by-yah. We’re in need of something more potent and realistic.

More politicians are mobilizing supporters and raising buckets of dollars through “money blurts” – intentionally-timed, incendiary comments about opponents that stoke social media and rake in cash. But we live at a time when we need to mobilize people to address our growing concerns, not divide them. Below are two sets of sound bites, one rooted in hate, the other in hope. The hopeful ones you can bank on as antidotes to growing negativity in public life.

I was sitting all the way at the other end of a large table from Delores in Champaign, Illinois, and I needed to do everything I could not to let the tears fall from my eyes. Here was a woman desperately struggling to keep her head above water in today’s economy and her acts of compassion were simply overwhelming to me. Throughout Main Street America, her story is not uncommon.