Throughout this past week, I’ve been thinking much about how America was founded. There’s plenty of articles written lately on patriotism, on liberty. From Time Magazine’s cover piece to essays on Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison.
If you read the great documents such as the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Federalist Papers, you get a sense that these men were perhaps America’s real “Greatest Generation”. They not only understood the beauty of the philosophies of Locke and Voltaire and Rousseau, but were able to translate them into action, establishing a new nation based upon freedom and liberty.
They were also amongst the most elite of their time. The wealthiest, the most educated, the most “connected”.
A study put out this week by George Washington University’s Henry Farrell, John Sides, and Eric Lawrence bring out to the surface an issue that I think is problematic for American politics and culture: the polarization of the political blogosphere. This had become more evident over the past few years as the country’s political dialogue has grown ever more coarse.
The study finds that those that participate in the political blogosphere are more likely to be further to the right or further to the left, more rigid in their beliefs, less likely to engage in discussions across political ideologies and (as I have personally discovered in my own involvement on blogs) less tolerant opposing views.
I find this troublesome because their study also shows that those whose views are more tolerant, less rigid, and less idealogical are less likely to be politically involved as those who take an active participation in the blogosphere. That’s not good. Here’s why…
1 Comment » Posted on July 9th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn
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