polarization

• 
• 10/18/2020
  

  Lessons from the 18th Century Dutch Republic

  by Matthijs Tieleman

  The history of the Dutch Republic demonstrates that polarization can gradually destroy a country from within and can easily be exploited by foreign actors. The embrace of political pluralism by every citizen is the key antidote to the rot of polarization.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/8/2020
  

  Are We More Divided Now Than Ever Before? (Review)

  A political scientist argues that today's polarization is enabled by the collapse of political diversity within the major parties, not by an especially ideological electorate.

• 
• 9/6/2020
  

  Americans Have Feared Another Civil War Since the End of the Last One

  by Richard Kreitner

  The ink was hardly dry on Lee's surrender at Appomattox before Andrew Johnson's conciliation toward the former Confederacy clashed with the unfulfilled goals of freed slaves and radical Republicans to threaten further violence. These fault lines have been hidden but never healed in the restored American union.

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  5/4/2020
  

  Kent State: 50 Years After the Shootings

  by Thomas M. Grace

  Myth has obscured the conflict that led to the killings at Kent State: a long-building clash between a broad set of youth-led protest movements and established authority. That clash continued after May 4, 1970.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/4/2020
  

  Four Students Were Killed in Ohio. America Was Never the Same.

  by Richard M. Perloff

  Fifty years after May 4, public expression of unpopular views remains endemic to democracy. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  2/14/20
  

  Think the US is more polarized than ever? You don’t know history

  by Gary W. Gallagher

  To compare anything that has transpired in the past few years to this cataclysmic upheaval represents a spectacular lack of understanding about American history.

• 
• SOURCE: Facebook
  6-4-18
  

  How business broke the post-war consensus and gave us Movement Conservatism

  by Heather Cox Richardson

  Coming out of the Depression and World War II, there was not a lot of daylight in America between conservatives and liberals.

• 
• SOURCE: The Washington Post
  3-28-18 (accessed)
  

  Niall Ferguson says we should be alarmed by the polarization associated with social media

  In a fascinating interview he sees dangerous parallels between the birth of the printing press and the establishment off social media.

• 
• SOURCE: NY Review of Books
  3-6-18
  

  Today’s Eerie Echoes of the Civil War

  by Manisha Sinha

  We would do well to pay heed to the old enmities bubbling up in our politics: it is not that we are on the verge of another civil war, but that the Civil War never truly ended.

• 
• 3/4/18
  

  Worried About Political Partisanship?

  by Gordon S. Wood

  Adams and Jefferson showed that even the harshest partisans can enjoy a warm friendship. (It helped that they had a common enemy.)

• 
• SOURCE: WSJ
  2-2-18
  

  Gordon Wood, the noted historian of early America, says Adams’s Federalists and Jefferson’s Republicans were far more divided than today’s political parties

  What was striking about the 1790s, Mr. Wood emphasizes, is the extent to which each party sincerely believed the other posed an existential threat.

• 
• SOURCE: Harvard Gazette
  1/29/18
  

  Social scientists' review history and conclude US polarization is a flashing light danger to democracy

  "One factor that underlies most of these breakdowns is extreme polarization."

• 
• 10-22-17
  

  No One Should Be Surprised We’re so Polarized

  by Richard Archer

  We have a history of being divided.

• 
• SOURCE: The American Historian (OAH)
  8-24-16 (accessed)
  

  OAH President Nancy Cott says the Library of Congress is being politicized

  by Nancy Cott

  Her comments come in the wake of the nomination of Carla Hayden as the new Librarian of Congress.

• 

• Why are we so polarized and when did this start? An interview with William Galston.

  by William Galston

  This interview stems from “Polarization in a Historical Perspective,” filmed at the Miller Center in 2014.

• 
• 11-30-14
  

  What Makes a Democrat a Democrat and a Republican a Republican? It's More Complicated than You Think.

  by Jason Weeden and Robert Kurzban

  Even with the recent uptick in people with fulsomely liberal or fulsomely conservative views, it remains the case that a large majority of the public has liberal views on some issues and conservative views on others.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  1-16-14
  

  Our Politics May Be Polarized. But That’s Nothing New.

  by David W. Brady and Hahrie Han

  Political science provides an answer.

• SOURCE: Salon
  1-27-13
  

  Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg: No Red States, No Blue States

  Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg are professors of history at LSU and coauthors of "Madison and Jefferson," now a Random House paperback. When Virginian Thomas Jefferson provocatively wrote that the tree of liberty would have to be refreshed periodically with the blood of patriots and tyrants, he did not reckon on tyranny arising in the midst of the Virginia state Legislature from a creeping faction of smarmy hooligans primed to convert Democratic districts into Republican ones overnight. It’s in the news this week. But it’s been brewing ever since Bush v. Gore.Someone’s always talking about dumping the general ticket plurality system – the way we have tallied the votes of the states in presidential elections since 1789 – in favor of the district system. By this means we would be tallying electoral votes one congressional district at a time rather than awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to a single candidate. Article Two, Section 1 of the Constitution says that each state legislature determines on its own how its presidential electors (i.e., those who comprise the Electoral College) are to be chosen.