Be an Ideologue, Not a Partisan - Bloomberg View - 0 views
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partisan ideology politics closure faction polarization
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when rivalry hardens into a sullen standoff -- not a contest of ideas but a bloody-minded refusal to engage -- you have a problem. And to put it mildly, the U.S. has a problem.
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The Pew study shows that the ideological gap between the median Democrat and the median Republican (measured on a 10-point scale of political values) has widened a lot over the past 20 years
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Today, according to Pew, 92 percent of Republicans are to the right of the median Democrat, compared with only 64 percent in 1994; 94 percent of Democrats are to the left of the median Republican, up from 70 percent.
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Also, more liberals than before are consistently liberal -- that is, liberal in most or all of their views. The same goes for conservatives.
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Thirty-eight percent of Democrats now have a "very unfavorable view" of the Republican Party (up from 16 percent in 1994); 43 percent of Republicans (up from 17 percent) feel the same way about the Democratic Party.
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liberals are more likely to say racial and ethnic diversity is important in a community; conservatives emphasize shared religious faith.
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73% of consistent liberals say it’s important to them to live near art museums and theaters, just 23% of consistent conservatives agree
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Fully half of consistent conservatives and 35 percent of consistent liberals say it is important to them to live in a place where most people share their political views
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There's no contest unless people who disagree actually engage. Apparently, that's something many of the most committed conservatives and liberals would rather avoid. Instead, they talk among themselves about the stupid or evil people on the other side.
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this paper by Shanto Iyengar of Stanford University and colleagues. It proposes a different definition of polarization -- one based not on ideology but on "social distance."
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"Using data from a variety of sources, we demonstrate that both Republicans and Democrats increasingly dislike, even loathe, their opponents,"