by jpitney | Mar 6, 2023 | Polarization, Public Opinion
David French at NYT: And where are we now? Has the fever passed? Not by a long shot. America is in the grips of a simply staggering amount of partisan animosity. As I wrote in my newsletter last week, overwhelming majorities of Republicans and Democrats believe that...
by jpitney | Feb 11, 2023 | Civility, Deliberation, Polarization
Robert Alexander at RealClearPolitics: In order to move beyond this “polarization pandemic,” we must start with civility. Our politicians must set a better example for all of us. Tolerance is a key feature of healthy democracies and is most likely to prevail when...
by jpitney | Nov 3, 2022 | Bipartisanship, Congress, House of Representatives, Polarization
For years, writes Don Wolfensberger at The Hill, a conservative coalition forged compromise in the House. But that model was understandably challenged by a large cohort of new, liberal Democrats elected in 1974 (“the Watergate Babies”) who had been schooled in the...
by jpitney | Oct 18, 2022 | Polarization
Charles Homans and Alyce McFadden at NYT: As a new poll suggests, the increasingly stark ideological divides of American politics have come with personal consequences. Nearly one in five voters — 19 percent — said that politics had hurt their friendships or family...
by jpitney | Aug 26, 2022 | Higher Education, Polarization
Samuel Abrams at AEI: Far too often, the headlines are missing the fact that so much closed-mindedness and balkanization in terms of openness toward engaging with political difference is far more pronounced on the left. And this is a phenomenon that I have observed as...
by jpitney | Aug 23, 2022 | Civility, Deliberation, Polarization
Daniel Stid: Many civil society groups are responding to our fraught times by building bridges between citizens and groups that see the world differently and enabling them to engage in constructive dialogue. Given all the factors accelerating tribalism, depolarization...
