Americans are at war, voters are told. The overwhelming majority of the electorate consists of two sharply divided groups, interminably separated on serious ideological and moral grounds. Listening to many pundits and politicians on both sides of the political spectrum, this alleged conflict comes to sound like a given.
A number of books have been published on this schism, and political activists will often speak of themselves and their efforts with this same militaristic terminology; but is this idea of a deep cultural divide actually an accurate representation of America or its populace?
In the 2011 edition of "Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America," Stanford Professor Morris P. Fiorina claims that no such immense moral divide exists in the general populace. He argues that, contrary to popular belief, a majority of Americans actually agree on the issues which are supposed to be so polarizing.
On the contentious issue of abortion, for example, Fiorina refers to regular polling conducted from the 1970s to the mid-2000s which show that Americans are generally uniform in their attitude toward abortion; they say that abortion should be legal in cases of rape, threats to the mother's health and birth defects. Many Americans also say that extreme financial situations can also be suitable justifications for abortions.
Even when the polls compared results between religious and non-religious Americans, registered members of each political party and between genders, the gap in opinion was insignificant. Fewer religious people and registered Democrats approved of allowing abortions in more circumstances, but only small percentages of each group said they were completely pro-choice or pro-life.
Similarly, the Republican Party made the Terri Schiavo case a divisive moral issue in 2005 despite the fact that a majority of Americans agreed that Schiavo, a woman in a vegetative state, kept alive only by a feeding tube, should have been allowed to die. In fact, a clear majority, approximately 75 percent of Americans, say they support euthanasia.
Other polls conducted in the mid-2000s find that a majority of Americans feel that stem cell research is morally acceptable. Yet, Republican President Bush continued to make it a divisive moral issue.
Finally, when Fiorina took the time to examine public views on gay rights, he found a very similar public consensus. A series of Gallup polls showed that in the mid-2000s, Democrats and Republicans only differed by about 10 percent in their approval of legal homosexual relations like civil unions or marriages.
Going beyond these issues that are supposedly splitting America in two, Fiorina goes so far as to say that this moral division doesn't even have that strong of an effect on the outcome of elections. Looking at the 2004 presidential election, in which moral values are said to have played a decisive role, Fiorina found that 21 percent of voters said that "Moral Issues" was the most important issue of their decision.
This may seem significant, said Fiorina, but it misleadingly lumps gay rights, abortion and broader concerns about the candidates' "values" into one option.
While Fiorina acknowledges and provides statistical evidence that there is a significant positive correlation between regular church attendance and voting for the Republican candidate in the general election, he believes that economic issues are still more important to voters.
If Fiorina is right, and Americans are basically united on these controversial ideological issues, then why are there so many who believe so strongly in the Culture War and its reality? How has this idea of a deep moral division splitting the country gained so much momentum?
Fiorina puts the blame on a misinterpretation of election results, a polarization of the political choices that Americans are offered and a sensationalist media.
The elections of the 1990s were very close races, with no one candidate winning a majority of the popular vote, whereas before the 1992 election, it was the norm for one candidate to win a clear majority. Fiorina says that the media and the political elite misinterpreted this close electoral split as a deep ideological split.
And as evidenced by those perpetuating the idea of the Culture War themselves, the political elite of America have become more polarized. Fiorina suggests that the polarization of the elite has led to more polarized candidates as well.
The presidential candidates presented to the American people have become increasingly distinct and radical, but this doesn't mean that the people at large have followed suit. Fiorina says that the American populace can hover around the middle of the political spectrum, but as long as the candidates are equally polarized, the close division of the voters will remain.
Fiorina attributes this polarization to activists and political elites who control political discourse. He also blames the media for focusing on and exaggerating the political conflict to increase interest.
Fiorina offers tentative explanations for why this polarization occurred over time, but he acknowledges that they are no more than hypotheses. His main message, however, is clear: there is no "us and "them." American culture is not fundamentally divided along social or religious lines, and political discourse does not need to be antagonistic.
www.scribd.com/doc/112000410
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