United States: A Polarized Nation
In recent decades, the United States had become a far more self-interested nation, that is, a nation in which most people are more concerned with their own interests, or their own small group's interest (e.g., the AARP lobby; the pro-life movement) than with the interests of the nation as a whole. As a result, the United States as a country is now more polarized than ever before, around special interests such as these. In this essay I will discuss polarization within the United States, in terms of political parties as well as other matters.
The extent of America's polarization, along political lines, may be most plainly seen through the results of U.S. Presidential elections within in the past two decades. The last two landslide presidential elections were won by Ronald Reagan in 1980, against Jimmy Carter, and then again by Reagan in 1984, against Walter Mondale. Since then, the winner-loser margins in U.S. Presidential elections have been decreasing. The best example of this is the 2000 Presidential election, in which Republican candidate George W. Bush defeated Democratic candidate Al Gore only within the Electoral College, and in which Gore actually won the popular vote. In the 2004 election, Bush beat challenger John Kerry by more popular votes (and electoral votes), but still received only slightly over half the popular vote -- hardly a national mandate.
Increasingly, many U.S. voters are "one issue" voters, and will support the candidate who supports their own stance on, say, abortion, or the death penalty, or gun control. Since support (or the lack thereof) for these issues tends to cleave along party lines (more so than in the past, in many respects) people nowadays find themselves voting for an issue, which often...
Catholic church and public policy have remarked that the members of American clergy in general, without even excepting those who do not admit religious liberty, are all in favour of civil freedom; but they do not support any particular political system. They keep aloof from parties, and from public affairs. In the United States religion exercises but little influence upon laws, and upon the details of public opinion; but it
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