The Crisis of American Polarization

Contrary to the conventional wisdom of political science, the American public is ideologically highly polarized. It became polarized in the late 1960s and has grown more so in the intervening decades. Ideological polarization intensified and expanded into the political parties in the 1990s and more recently into social group associations (political sectarianism). The emergence of an ideologically-fortified feudal class structure has produced a social and political crisis: an unraveling of the Lockean liberal tradition in America–declines in trust in government and in other institutions, in patriotism, and in political tolerance.