How can we make our political polarization less destructive?
Ezra Klein suggests structural changes. Darrell West suggests talking to each other.
partisanship
“We have remade our nation before and we can do it again.”
Like goslings, we tend to attach ourselves to the wrong things—like political parties.
Beyond the current Supreme Court case, there are deeper problems—and possible solutions.
A new WaPo/Pew poll finds that 56 percent of Americans thing it’s acceptable for the National Security Agency to secretly access millions of Americans’ phone records. Sixty-two percent favor investigating terrorist threats “even if that intrudes on personal privacy.” Do people just not give a damn about privacy anymore, what with their dreams of reality-TV celebrity and their willingness to function as a Facebook or Google product?
Richard Lugar symbolizes something great but fragile about the American system of government: it relies on partisanship tempered by wisdom.
Per usual, Ross Douthat is in this post occasionally wise but often infuriating: It’s useful to think of Obama’s stimulus bill and Walker’s budget repair bill as mirror image exercises in legislative shock and awe, and the Tea Party and the Wisconsin labor protests as mirror images of backlash. No, that really isn't useful at all.