The culture war rages on. Recently the New York Post reported that the state of New York has fined a couple for refusing to host a same-sex wedding on their farm. This provides some context for, in Ezra Klein’s words, “the politicization of absolutely everything.” The complaint has its ironic dimensions, and leads us to ponder what caused that politicization—and what can we do about it.
Klein points to surveys showing that Americans are growing increasingly partisan. In one study he cites, participants were given resumes to review. The results showed that, as Klein writes, “race mattered. But political orientation mattered even more. Democrats and Republicans chose the resumes that shared their politics roughly 80 percent of the time.” Perhaps it was ever thus, but I suspect partisanship is more pronounced these days than ever before. (Incidentally, that data might suggest why Republicans, even in South Carolina, are happy to vote for a conservative—white or black, male or female—and it might be why, at the same time, Democrats regard Republicans as racist.)
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