The surprising story of how American politics polarized

The surprising story of how American politics polarized

We talk a lot on this podcast about the epic levels of political polarization and how much of our ongoing breakdown they explain. But what was American politics like before it was polarized? And what got us from there to here? Sam Rosenfeld is a political scientist at Colgate University and author of the book The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era. I’ve read a lot of books on polarization, and Rosenfeld’s is the best I’ve seen at painting a picture of what American politics looked like before Republican meant conservative and Democrat meant liberal, and why polarization seemed like a good, necessary thing to many of the people who drove it. While you listen to this history, try to think about it not from the perspective of someone sitting in 2018, looking at a political system in crisis, but someone in 1955, observing a system that offered nothing but false and confusing choices. Would you have been on the side of the polarizers? Recommended books: On Capitol Hill by Julian Zelizer Making Minnesota Liberal by Jennifer Delton Social Policy in the United States by Theda Skocpol Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Episoder(766)

Why Bill Gates is worried

Why Bill Gates is worried

“To put it bluntly,” wrote Bill and Melinda Gates in their foundation’s annual Goalkeepers Report, “decades of stunning progress in the fight against poverty and disease may be on the verge of stallin...

15 Okt 201859min

Reihan Salam makes the case against open borders

Reihan Salam makes the case against open borders

In his new book, Melting Pot or Civil War: A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders, Reihan Salam tries to do something difficult: build a pro-immigrant case for a more restrictive immi...

11 Okt 20181h 30min

Jose Antonio Vargas on living undocumented in Trump’s America

Jose Antonio Vargas on living undocumented in Trump’s America

Jose Antonio Vargas was born in the Philippines in 1981. When he was 12, his mother sent him to America, to live with family. When he was 16, he went to the DMV to get a driver's license and found out...

8 Okt 20181h 27min

Rebecca Traister: Women's rage is transforming America

Rebecca Traister: Women's rage is transforming America

Why did Christine Blasey Ford have to smile and politely ask for breaks while Brett Kavanaugh could rage at the cameras and dismiss the hearings as a farce? The answer is in Rebecca Traister’s essenti...

4 Okt 20181h 10min

Patrick Deneen says liberalism has failed. Is he right?

Patrick Deneen says liberalism has failed. Is he right?

Liberalism, write Patrick Deneen, "has been for modern Americans like water for a fish, an encompassing political ecosystem in which we have swum, unaware of its existence.” Deneen, a political theori...

1 Okt 20181h

Francis Fukuyama’s case against identity politics

Francis Fukuyama’s case against identity politics

Is all politics identity politics? And if so, then what does it mean to condemn identity politics in the first place? That’s the subject of my discussion with Stanford political scientist Francis Fuku...

27 Sep 20181h 32min

Carol Anderson on the myth of American democracy

Carol Anderson on the myth of American democracy

The president of the United States was the runner-up in the popular vote. The majority in the US Senate got fewer votes than the minority. And even if Democrats win a hefty majority of the vote in 201...

24 Sep 201855min

Martha C. Nussbaum on how fear deforms our politics

Martha C. Nussbaum on how fear deforms our politics

In her new book Monarchy of Fear, famed philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum identifies fear as the oldest and deepest of our emotions. Fear takes hold in our earliest infancy, when we can experience need b...

17 Sep 201856min

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