I'm just back from vacation, and while Checker spent his holiday reading about how the founders brought our country together, I dug into how "The Big Sort" is tearing our country apart. Bill Bishop's book argues that Americans have been clustering themselves into like-minded, politically homogeneous communities. Blue neighborhoods are getting bluer (think cities and inner suburbs), and red neighborhoods are getting redder (think exurbs and small towns). Almost half of all Americans live in a county that went for either George W. Bush or John Kerry in a landslide in 2004--even though the election was very close nationally.
And we're not just dividing along political lines, Bishop argues. People get so heated about politics not because they care so much about the issues, but because their very identities are tied to their political labels. Many liberal Democrats (who shop at Whole Foods, ride their bike to work, watch Indie flicks, etc.) see themselves as tolerant, well-educated, compassionate, and far-sighted, and aren't happy when the other side paints them as effete, elitist, inauthentic, or privileged. Likewise, many conservative Republicans (who live in new developments, drive SUVs, attend bible studies, etc.) see themselves as patriotic, hard-working, loyal, and principled, and don't take kindly to being called bigoted, stupid, backwards, or Bible-thumpers.
Which explains why the culture wars can get so white-hot. (And why President Obama walked into such a minefield when he said a white, working-class cop acted "stupidly" when arresting a black Harvard professor.) These debates get very personal, very fast.
Now, there are plenty of people who disagree with Bishop's argument, mostly because they think he overstates the partisan divide. There are plenty of Americans in the middle--perhaps most of us--who are exhausted by the culture warriors on the right and left. President Obama himself tapped into that sentiment when talking about "not a red America or a blue America but a United States of America."
Yet the news that broke through on my vacation was about the supercharged debate over health care, with screaming "mobs" of conservatives, and charges by liberals that these mobs??were manufactured, and counter-charges by conservatives that said liberals are out of touch with America, and on and on and on.
It's all very depressing, particularly for those of us who don't feel kinship with either the "red" tribe or the "blue" tribe.
But here's an idea that might be more heartening: the current education debate, for all its rancor, is relatively peaceful compared to what we're seeing on healthcare. Which is somewhat surprising, since education has long been a prime battlefield in the partisan divide. (Bishop argues that the culture wars began in the early 1970s with a big ruckus in West Virginia over politically-correct textbooks.)
Yes, we policy wonks??and educators duke it out over vouchers and charter schools and phonics and testing and all of the rest, but the country as a whole doesn't go bananas over education policy issues anymore. There's widespread agreement on the fundamentals: All kids should have access to free public schools. There should be choices for parents within the public education system (though how much choice is a matter of debate). Too many of our kids are falling through the cracks. More accountability is generally a good thing. Teachers have a hard job, what with all of the craziness in our society, and they deserve our respect.
The healthcare debate, and the culture wars, are fights over fundamentals. In education, we're arguing over the details. That's not such a bad thing.
