In Search of Civility

America is a big, complicated place—and, as the Founders knew, pluralism was essential to holding together our shared experiment in self-government. But the alignment of personal identity and political identity increasingly strains our pluralist commitments. “One reason we’re dangerously divided is because when so many of the identities and preferences that matter to us line up with our politics, it changes how we feel our politics,” writes Guzmán. “It makes politics way more personal.” When people closely identify their cultural values with their political opinions, the stakes appear higher, and the prospect of political defeat becomes more personally devastating.