polarization 
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SOURCE: New York Review of Books
1/19/2021
Why It’s Time to Take Secessionist Talk Seriously
by Richard Kreitner
"The Confederate flags the insurgents carried through the Capitol weren’t about the past, but the future." (note: Subscription required to read source article.)
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SOURCE: Keeping Democracy Alive
1/19/2021
One Nation, Indivisible: Really? Forever?
Richard Kreitner, author of "Break It Up" joins Burt Cohen's podcast to discuss the history and future of calls to break up the United States.
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12/20/2020
Can Biden Broaden Our American Dream?
by Walter G. Moss
Can a program of national service create pathways to individual opportunity while also building the social cohesion America needs to recover?
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SOURCE: Politico
12/16/2020
How Secession Became America’s Favorite Idle Threat
With one notable exception, secession has been an idle threat in American political discourse. Richard Kreitner's book on secession movements anchors columnist Jack Shafer's analysis.
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12/13/2020
Review of Robert Putnam’s "The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again"
by Walter G. Moss
Robert Putnam's book on the "Great Divergence" toward economic inequality, political polarization and social fragmentation contains ample historical generalization, but asks big questions that it will be worth historians' time to engage.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
11/16/2020
Just Forget About Donald Trump
by Peter Wehner
It may be difficult for many Americans to let go of deep anger at Donald Trump and the political movement he represents, but it will be necessary.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
11/11/2020
A Battle Between the Two Souls of America
by Ibram X. Kendi
We the people of the United States do not have a single national soul, but rather two souls, warring with each other. The battle for the soul of America is actually the battle between the souls of America.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.)
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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.
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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."
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10-22-17
No One Should Be Surprised We’re so Polarized
by Richard Archer
We have a history of being divided.
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