Part I: A House Divided: "The Big Sort" and Its Threat to Republicanism

This week, we’ll explore polarization in America. Today’s post dives into the data behind the phenomenon. Tomorrow, we’ll look at how America can remain united by recognizing how diverse means can be applied to common ends.

“Whether you hail from Surbiton, Ulan Bator or Nairobi, your genetic make-up is strikingly similar to that of every other person on Earth.”

--Roger Highfield, “DNA Survey Finds All Humans are 99.9pc the Same,” The Telegraph, 2002 

For generations, “We’re not so different, you and I,” has been a recurring trope in Hollywood, from James Bond to Austin Powers. The phrase, often said by a villain to a protagonist in a moment of self-serving self-reflection, evokes a sentiment that is universal—that for all that separates us from one another (race, sex, class, nationality, religion), there is so much more that we all have in common.

To paraphrase President Clinton’s famous line from his first inaugural address, no difference between people is so vast that the fear and hatred it evokes cannot be cured, mitigated, and ultimately overwhelmed, by our common humanity.

It hasn’t always been easy for people to acknowledge this essential truth. In earlier eras, when the world was flat (not in the Thomas Friedman-sense of the term), interactions between peoples of different backgrounds often carried significant risk of violence.

As Harvard University Professor Steven Pinker detailed in his book The Better Angels of our Nature, the world has witnessed an immense decline in violence over the past several centuries (and an even greater decline when compared to previous millennia). Pinker argues that the “pacification process” (where people agree that a State-like authority should have a monopoly on violence), when combined with the “civilizing process” (in part a boom in commerce between and among peoples) and the “humanitarian revolution” (a recognition of human rights and the moral ill of violence and torture), has led to the steep declines in violence across the globe.

In short, while ignorance of the customs of another tribe is a common prelude to fear and conflict, an understanding of those customs and a symbiotic relationship between peoples (via commerce, art, storytelling, etc.) can be preludes to inspiration and interconnectedness.

Nevertheless, despite Pinker’s exhaustively researched book and the undeniable genetic truth that we are all more alike than may appear at first glance, people continue to struggle to make sense of our differences. Nowhere is this more evident than in politics.

 

CC License: Flickr User "jermiac"

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported on an extraordinary series of studies and polls that “paint a picture of two Americas—not just with differing proclivities but different life experiences.” The core difference identified by researchers is not political party or race, sex, or class. Rather, it boils down to where you live—in a rural or urban setting.

One data point is a particularly blunt indication of this phenomenon. “In 1992, Bill Clinton won 60% of the Whole Foods counties and 40% of the Cracker Barrel counties, a 20-point difference. That gap that has widened every year since, and in 2012, Mr. Obama won 77% of Whole Foods counties and 29% of Cracker Barrel Counties, a 48-point difference.” 

This trend is grounded in the continued self-segregation of Americans by ideology. In McCollum v. Board of Education, 333 U.S. 203 (1948), a case involving the “set aside” of time in public schools for “voluntary” religious instruction, Justice Felix Frankfurter declared that such “voluntary” instruction was not truly voluntary because, “The law of imitation operates, and non-conformity is not an outstanding characteristic of children.” 

Frankfurter was surely right. But maybe his grand conclusion was too narrow. Maybe non-conformity is not an outstanding characteristic of people. As Bill Bishop states in his groundbreaking book, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart, “As Americans have moved over the past three decades, they have clustered in communities of sameness, among people with similar ways of life, beliefs, and, in the end, politics.”

Indeed, as recently as 1976, 27 percent of Americans lived in counties where the Presidential election was a landslide (defined as a margin of 20 percent or greater). In 2012, over 52 percent of Americans lived in these counties.

The political effects of this clustering are stark. As David Jarman wrote for Daily Kos in 2012, “Even without considering the pernicious effects of gerrymandering, the clustering of more and more Democrats in fewer and fewer places creates a lopsided map of fewer dark-blue districts and more light-red districts,” making it harder for Democrats to win the House of Representatives even as they continue to triumph in national races, as detailed here….and here.

While the effects on the fortunes of political parties continue to generate significant debate (not to mention consternation in many circles), what is most troubling to me as a citizen is the potentially devastating long-term effect of this division on the strength of the American Republic.

From the beginning of our great experiment in democratic self-government, we have recognized that a spirit of cooperation—of common values and principles (even within an otherwise diverse polity)—is essential to our success. In a letter to publisher Hezekiah Niles in 1818, President John Adams famously wrote, “The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations…This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.”

What happens to a society when those “principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections” are no longer common to all who pledge allegiance to our flag? And what, if anything, can we do to mitigate the effects of the “Big Sort” and prevent the Nation’s foundations from being eroded by division? (if you think this is hyperbole, take a look at the recent rise in secessionist movements in the U.S.).

We’ll tackle those questions (and try to find some solutions!) in tomorrow’s post.

"Innate Differences" and Ideology as an Obstacle to Truth

It does appear that on many, many different human attributes—height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability—there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means—which can be debated—there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population.

-- Lawrence H. Summers (14 Jan. 2005)

9 years ago, Lawrence (“Larry”) Summers, President of Harvard University, openly wondered whether the underrepresentation of women in the sciences could be explained, in part, by differences in ability between the sexes.

The immediate reaction to his remarks was fierce. Nancy Hopkins, a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the New York Times, "When he started talking about innate differences in aptitude between men and women, I just couldn't breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill.”

Others came to Summers’ defense. When asked by the Harvard Crimson whether then-President Summers’ comments were “within the pale of legitimate academic discourse,” Harvard Professor Steven Pinker (a former professor of mine) replied, “Good grief, shouldn’t everything be within the pale of legitimate academic discourse, as long as it is presented with some degree of rigor? That’s the difference between a university and a madrassa.”

Summers, who had endured a series of smaller disputes with faculty during his short tenure at the helm of America’s oldest university, would eventually resign the Presidency, in February 2006.

8 years later, stories of “innate differences” between the sexes continue to stoke controversy. Just this week, two stories—one a 60 Minutes feature on how drugs affect men and women, the other a feature in the Times Magazine concerning whether egalitarian marriages have less sex—once again placed sex differences from and center.

As CBS reported, the FDA recently cut the recommended dose of the popular sleep drug Ambien in half for women because men and women metabolize Ambien very differently, leaving women with more of the drug in their bodies the next morning, and therefore at a greater risk of impaired driving.

Physicians interviewed for the 60 Minutes piece hypothesized that drug studies ignored or failed to even consider gender differences because, in the past, “women’s health” was confined to reproductive issues and breast cancer.

I think this explanation misses the boat. Instead, let me suggest another, more insidious explanation: that in the latter quarter of the 20^th century in America (and perhaps the first decade of the 21^st), it was unacceptable to even consider the idea that men and women had innate differences. The fear, unspoken but real, was that if studies showed that men and women were different on one metric, what was to keep science from identifying differences between the sexes that made us uncomfortable—that suggested that tendencies typically ascribed to socialization and patriarchy were, in fact, rooted in biology.

This political correctness was so deeply entrenched that what appears common sense in retrospect—the need to study the effect of drugs on both men and women—wasn’t even considered. As Doris Taylor, a leading stem cell expert at Texas Heart Institute in Houston told 60 Minutes, “I am embarrassed to admit that, as a woman, it had never really occurred to me that doing the experiment in male versus female animals would give completely different results.”

The Times story suggests that the decades-long effort to eliminate gender discrimination and make relationships more egalitarian—laudable as it is—may have unintentional negative consequences on the sex lives of heterosexual couples. As Esther Perel, a couples therapist, told the Times, “[T]he values that make for good social relationships are not necessarily the same ones that drive lust…[M]ost of us get turned on at night by the very things that we’ll demonstrate against during the day.”

What Summers’ demise showed and what these latest stories once again raise, is the danger of ideology, in science and in politics. Ideology, as I am defining it, is not the belief in certain goals. Rather, ideology is a rigid adherence to a means to an end—an unyielding belief, for instance, that doing right by the poor means lowering taxes on the super-rich, evidence be damned. To the ideologue, truth is irrelevant. In fact, even a free and earnest search for the truth is viewed as a threat to be condemned.

The truth, however, is precisely what we should seek in determining the course of action best tailored to reach the goals motivating our professions—whether curing disease in medicine, creating wealth in economics, or improving public policy in government. To that end, we must seek out leaders who are willing to change their mind about the best way to achieve our collective goals, rather than shunning these individuals as “flip-floppers” or worse.

As Pinker stated,

[T]he truth cannot be offensive. Perhaps the hypothesis is wrong, but how would we ever find out whether it is wrong if it is “offensive” even to consider it? People who storm out of a meeting at the mention of a hypothesis, or declare it taboo or offensive without providing arguments or evidence, don’t get the concept of a university or free inquiry.

That radical concept—free inquiry—must remain at the heart of the American Experience, not only on our campuses and our labs, but also in our Town Halls, Statehouses, and the hallowed halls of Congress.