Two Nations Under One Flag Americans are losing cohesion with one another, with politics and societal values becoming more and more polarized. Where is this leading?
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oday nearly everyone has become acutely aware of the huge and growing divide between Americans on cultural issues. We could quote statistics without end documenting the growing acceptance of immoral behavior among large sections of the populace while others remain staunchly resistant. The recent Supreme Court overturn of Roe v. Wade, the court’s 1973 decision that made abortion legal across the country, has starkly revealed Americans’ ideological split over this issue. The changes in American K-12 education that allow teachers in many school districts to divide children between “the oppressors and the oppressed” has sparked backlash among millions of American parents. We see the growing rift among the states. Newscasters, pundits and others point out that liberal and liberal-leaning “Blue America” covers the American Northeast, the West Coast and a few interior states such as Illinois, Colorado and New Mexico. The rest, mostly the Midwest, Southeast, Plains states and most of the Mountain states, are now classed as conservative-leaning “Red America.” Michael Podhorzer, a longtime political strategist for labor unions who heads the liberal Analyst Insti-
by Mike Kelley
tute, says the two blocs should be thought of as “fundamentally different nations uneasily sharing the same geographic space.” He further writes: “When we think about the United States, we make the error of imagining it as a single nation, a marbled mix of Red and Blue people. But in truth, we have never been one nation. We are more like a federated republic of two nations: Blue Nation and Red Nation. This is not a metaphor; it is a geographic and historical reality” (Michael Brownstein, “America Is Growing Apart, Possibly for Good,” The Atlantic, June 24, 2022). Yet the division is becoming more pronounced. As conservative commentator Pat Buchanan recently wrote: “For a nation, a country, a people, a democracy to endure, there needs be a broad consensus of belief, culture, custom and politics . . . We are a country whose people have a diminishing confidence in almost all of its institutions, from big business to the churches, universities and media” (“How, When, Do We Come Together Again?” Aug. 15, 2022). Is the country again becoming a “house divided,” as Abraham Lincoln, using imagery from Jesus Christ, asked during the American Civil B Tm a g a z i n e . o r g
War? And where will this take us? Parallel institutions The growing divide is prompting the rise of parallel institutions. Social media restrictions and censoring have given rise to new, more conservative, social media platforms like Parler and Gettr. The nation has always had church-owned private schools, but now we see them exploding in numbers as more and more parents recoil from anti-religious and immoral teachings in public schools. Conservative universities such as Hillsdale College and overtly religious schools attract more interest as parents revolt against the lax moral attitudes and socialist policies of most of what passes for higher education in America today. Following the old marketing advice of “Find a need and fill it,” enterprising entrepreneurs have started conservative alternatives to the increasingly liberal mainstream media. Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News in the mid-1990s, which almost immediately enjoyed success. Conservative newspapers soon followed, such as The Epoch Times in 2000 and the Washington Examiner in 2004, the latter launched as a direct competitor to the liberal Washington Post. They join •
November-December 2022
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