Jon Haidt's Blog at CivilPolitics

I have an essay in today's NYT on America's growing polarization. Marc Hetherington and I show what's happened over the last 50 years, not just in Congress but among citizens, in 3 simple graphs.The first one is below, from McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal. It shows that things were really polarized in the late 19th century, after the civil war, then they got much less polarized, but it's been a rapid climb upwards since the 1960s. We talk about why.

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Guest post by Timothy Ryan, graduate student in political science at U. Michigan Read more »

Here's a lovely essay Read more »

The group NoLabels.org has put forth a 12-point action plan to "make congress work."
Here we list the 12 points, along with a few comments about which ones we think are likely to work, based on what little evidence can be brought to bear. This blog entry starts off relatively empty on March 22, 2012, and we'll add to it as time goes on. This post will be jointly authored by many contributors. Read more »

In a 1907 essay title Christian Science, Mark Twain explains the normal psychology of group identity, and spins it into a plea for moral humility:

“Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other, it will unriddle many riddles, it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now... Read more »

Tom Edsall, a journalism professor at Columbia who writes for the New York Times' "Campaign Stops" blog, recently undertook an illuminating project. He asked a few liberals to say what they think conservatives are right about, and he asked a few conservatives to say what they thought liberals were right about. Read more »

The text below is an email exchange among some of the contributors to CivilPolitics.org in the wake of the 2010 election, as many commentators were beginning to say that civility and bipartisanship are suicidal strategies when pursued by one side more than the other. (This exchange occurred before Frank Rich’s diatribe against civility, which we will respond to shortly). We struggled to clarify what exactly we mean by “civility,” and when and how it should be pursued.

I have a confession to make: I enjoy listening to Glenn Beck. He's funny, quirky, and always interesting. He presents a coherent moral worldview that is widely shared in America, and that I respect. It is based on personal responsibility, patriotism, tradition, and the Protestant Work Ethic. (See my essay on The Karma of the Tea Party.)
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Michael Tomasky published a helpful essay, "The Specter Haunting the Senate," in the New York Review of Books (9/30/10).

Exerpts:
--"The truth is that no institution of American government is more responsible for our inability to address pressing national problems than the Senate, and no institution is in greater need of reform. Another truth, alas: probably no institution is more resistant to reform." Read more »