Culture War?: The Myth of a Polarized America

Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America (Great Questions in Politics Series) (2nd Edition) (Great Questions in Politics) Some say that the United States has become extremely polarized while others say that the electorate is more "centrist" in nature. Who is correct? Fiorina does an excellent job of creating convincing evidence that both contentions are correct. Partisans are divided by a deep chasm of conservatism and liberalism yet those who wear the Independent label are more moderate just left and right of center. The author covers possible reasons for this divide and succinctly offers a glimpse into the future of the American electorate. This is a great book to add as an additional textbook for an undergraduate or graduate level course or just as a book for a "political junkies" who wants to learn more about United States politics.

This book was an assignment for my political science class, and I started it believing, as most do, that America was a deeply divided nation of red and blue states. However, this book brilliantly shattered my views by just giving me the data without too much political rhetoric behind it. While some reviewers believe the author is a demonstrably biased "red-stater" I think that regardless of whether or not this is the case, it is irrelevant to the overall integrity of the book which does a fantastic job of objectively presenting the data. Anyone who believed as I did before I read this book that you live in an America at war, read this book and realize that average Americans really haven't changed all that much - the politicians have.

Red states versus blue states. We have all heard of the great divide in the United States for so long that it has become something close to "received wisdom." This thin little book, authored by the well-respected Morris Fiorina (with the assistance of Samuel Abrams and Jeremy Pope), questions this widely held view of a culture war raging in the United States. Fiorina, for those readers who are familiar with his academic research, is a skilled researcher, well schooled in statistics. It is to his credit that he presents evidence in a way that is accessible to lay readers (his technical publications would not be so easily understandable to nonacademic readers). In short, he believes that the idea of a great culture war is dead wrong. As he says in Chapter 1: ". . .the sentiments expressed. . .[by] scholars, journalists, and politicos range from simple exaggeration to sheer nonsense." Chapter 2 suggests strongly that the differences between citizens in red and blue states is not so great as advocates of the culture war say. While there is greater polarization between leaders of the Republicans and Democrats across the country, this same polarization is not nearly so manifest among the bulk of the American people. Indeed, the United States, in his view, remains a centrist, moderate country politically. All in all, a good read and a provocative thesis. Worth reading by those interested in how well "culture war" serves as a metaphor for American politics.

We are using Fiorina's book as a supplementary text to the primary text book in our Introduction to Political Science course at the community college where I tutor. It helps to add dimension to the more basic exposition of the structure of government (separation of powers, federal systems, etc.) by looking at partisan and party political issues more in-depth, and more currently. This book starts with the wonderful quote from Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who once stated that all are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Fiorina walks a fine line between opinion and fact, and does so with skill. The book goes through the midterm elections of 2002 for its data; hopefully an update will be forthcoming soon. Still, the closely divided nature of the country is still present throughout, a roughly 50/50 nation of red states and blue states, with plenty of blue in the red, and plenty of red in the blue. This is a key understanding for Fiorina - the nation is not sharply divided or deeply divided, but rather closely divided. He points to events such as Patrick Buchanan's speech in 1992 heralding a replacement of the Cold War with the Culture War, and showing that, despite the best efforts of commentators on all sides, the typical American will still be a centrist and moderate in many respects. The idea of a culture war is a myth, according to Fiorina. This is based on the misrepresentation of facts, or misinterpretation of such data as election results and polling data. The polarisation of America is more of an appearance or illusion brought out by statistical manipulation than a reality inherent in the system. At the highest levels, Fiorina states, the parties are indeed more polarised, but this sharp identification left or right is greatly diluted, the further from the party centre, the less polarised people are. One example of this is the issue of gay rights and gay marriage, which came to the forefront strongly in the run-up to the 2004 Presidential and Congressional elections. Fiorina analyses this, forecasting that the idea of a permanent shift from economic to religious-based issues is a premature conclusion that many commentators are drawing, and that more traditional identifications are still very strongly present in the American political spectrum. Fiorina also examines the way in which extreme voices on both sides of the political spectrum can influence, and indeed dominate, American politics in the media, and how this can be understood and put in proper perspective by the middle-ground majority. He identifies three major developments: the rise of the purists, the expansion of government, and the increasing level of participation in democracy in the country. These three elements (together with other factors) make for a tricky situation in the future. Fiorina's humour is apparent in various ways - he uses a quote from Stealer's Wheel ('clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right...') to describe much

This is a very brief and tightly argued book of enormous relevance to us in 2004. It makes the following remarkable points: 1. On close inspection of individual opinions, the vast majority of the electorate in the U.S. are *moderate*, not radically polarized into liberals and conservatives. That is, most of us are, as we would like to believe, capable of thinking independently for ourselves rather than strictly along party ideological lines. We are a _closely_divided_ nation, as reflected in the very close recent elections, however we are NOT a _*deeply*_divided_ nation. That is, we are not really a nation of two distinct warring camps and a couple of swing states as the media sometimes present it for dramatic purposes. Fiorina sugests that we are actually something close to an ambivalent nation which divides itself in poltitical matters because we have no choice when presented with highly divided options. 2. The American public has *not* become dramatically polarized even over such hot topics as abortion. Rather, relatively small differences among us have been magnified by the rhetoric used to present the issues to us. 3. The political choices we have are determined by a distinct class of politicians, party activists, and interest group leaders, who *have* become increasingly polarized over moral and religious ideology as well as economic ideology. 4. A large part of the polarization of the political class has been the result of the realignment of the South, such that republicans aligned aggressive foreign policy with hostility to the welfare state, and democrats aligned antiwar sentiment with support of those at risk. This is represented particular well by the "gender gap" which widened at the same time this realignment or tuning of the ideologies of the parties was taking place. Fiorina suggests that when Bill Clinton once said early in his presidency that he was Pro-Choice, but against abortion, most Americans knew what he meant, that most of us, liberal or conservative, do not want to legislate morality for others, even though we have a clear sense of what is right and wrong. Fiorina also points out for example that most 80% of us believe that abortion should be legal under some conditions (even if wrong), and illegal under others. The extremes at each end which promote unconditional rights for unborn babies or for mothers are roughly the 10% tail at either side of a normal curve. Finally, he also provides data showing that the averaged opinions of self-identified liberals and conservatives regarding abortion differ only regarding under what specific conditions they think abortion should be legal, not the legality of abortion in general. The result is that the supposed "culture war" is really a war between increasingly ideologically polarized political parties and their activists who arent really even aware of each others reasoning, with most of us in the middle getting hit by friendly fire from both sides, but being forced to c