Division by Zero

In National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg challenges the sound-bite that 'President Bush is a divider, not a uniter'. Senator John Edwards cornered the market on this meme--his platform rests on only two claims: 1) there are two Americas, split like never before; and 2) President Edwards could fix it. Jonah disputes both:

[U]ntil you've got more than 600,000 American bodies stacked up like cordwood, spare me the "more divided than ever before" talk. We have this phrase in political discourse which is very useful. It goes like this: "...since the end of the Civil War..." You can put it at the end or the beginning of almost any sentence to indicate that you are discussing trends that began after the War Between the States concluded. Because that period in American history is what you might call a statistical outlier. We were really divided then, what with all the shooting each other and stuff.

Not only is the fractured America concept factually wrong, it's so superficial as to be impractical:

[T]here is no constitutionally or morally acceptable program that could possibly eliminate the elemental social fact that some people will be better off than others. Sure, the divide between the haves and the have-nots can be narrowed, and you can certainly change how the system rewards people (not that a trial lawyer has much interest in that). . .. [S]ince Edwards lives in privileged America himself. . ., I'm sure he can let a few hard-luck folks crash at his pad and maybe his country house too. But where's he going to put up the other 269,999,990 allegedly underprivileged peeps?

Similar sloppy thinking infects international relations, particularly regarding the Middle East:

How many times do we need to hear that the road to peace between Israelis and Palestinians or Pakistanis and Indians will be illuminated through "greater understanding"? The truth is that the greatest hatreds have always been between those groups who understand each other best (it's not like the Confederacy and the Union didn't understand each side's point of view, ditto the Irish and the British, the Greeks, and the Turks etc).

Back on planet earth, America is no more divided today than 30 years ago (or have you forgotten Vietnam and Watergate?). We still are Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals--and we just disagree. Compromise sometimes provides a solution. But, when compromise is impossible, two choices remain: continued disagreement or surrender. I'll be glad to meet candidate Edwards (or any other Democrat) at Appomatox and accept the surrender; absent that, I'm short-selling "unity" shares.

Update:

Via Jonah on The Corner an astounding chart of one symtom of the divide.

More:

Frederick Turner, writing at TechCentralStation.com, says the difference is that the divide now is between libertarians and communitarians. I hope he's wrong, because I see flaws in each approach.

Still More:

The Edwards campaign finally does something useful: an interactive electoral map. (Via Jonah on The Corner)