In a sociology course about gender and work at UGA, not a single man is enrolled. This may not be surprising, but it should be a concern. The way people learn is impacted by their existing values and views of the world. The idea of self-selection into education does not just apply to college access or careers postgraduate, but also to what people choose to learn while in college. When students choose to learn based on existing values, this can create an echo chamber where people are not exposed to new ideas and only reinforce what they already believe. This relates to the concept of endogeneity, where the independent variable (values and beliefs) is influenced by the dependent variable (class choice), creating a feedback loop of mutual influence rather than a single directional impact. In this case, students may choose courses that they have existing knowledge about, and then the course reinforces their beliefs.

Why is this a problem? If people do not want to learn something, why should they? The mere exposure effect explains that people have a “tendency to develop preferences for things simply because we are familiar with them,” thus people tend to make better choices when they have more information. It is therefore likely that the students who typically enroll in gender studies, race-related courses, or other classes that discuss contentious topics already have some knowledge and interest in these areas. 

Although people tend to resist going out of their comfort zone, there are ways to make doing so more attractive. Carl Wieman explains that experts often design classes without fully considering how those new to the subject perceive the content. People familiar with a subject struggle to teach novices because their deep understanding of a subject makes it hard to see how beginners approach learning. Especially when discussing sensitive topics that are often politicized, it is even more crucial for professors to understand how those not exposed to these ideas process the new information. Wieman talks about science education and how the professor and student are unknowingly “speaking a different language.” The same concept applies to social sciences, especially courses discussing topics seen as political. To those accustomed to social science classes, it feels natural to discuss intersectionality or Marxism. Even concepts that social science students assume to be well-known, such as the gender wage gap or institutional racism, may feel foreign, abstract, or complex to those not used to discussing these topics. Further, Wieman explains how students often have misperceptions about science, seeing it as irrelevant to real-life problems. In social science, especially in departments like sociology, people view it as useless or too ideological to apply to their lives or careers.

Understanding the problem is not enough; it is vital to determine the steps needed to address the issue. The availability heuristic explains that experts draw on their recent experiences with a subject rather than their initial learning experiences due to misremembering their performance as novices. Intermediates may be better than experts at understanding novices due to their more recent experiences. In this case, that would require talking to people recently learning about these topics to understand how new people will process the information. Instead of simply assuming why certain people avoid topics like gender studies, data should be gathered to understand their perceptions and make the content more relevant and approachable. Using empirical evidence to improve teaching methods is crucial rather than relying on assumptions.Many potential solutions focus on fostering open dialogue and freedom of expression. For example, a researcher focused on improving climate change education in conservative, religious, or low socioeconomic status communities in the Southeast. They used public dialogue sessions to unite diverse groups and ensured everyone felt respected and free to express their views. The authors argue that “preaching to the choir” does not work when trying to reach groups that are skeptical or dismissive of an issue because it only involves speaking to those who already have knowledge or interest in the issue. In addition, social constructionism explains that reality is constructed through conversations and interactions. People can co-create a positive future through building relationships. Creating an environment where dialogue can flourish helps to overcome polarization in communities, in and outside of the classroom. It seems like stating the obvious that the way to encourage people to learn about topics they may avoid is simply promoting open discussion. Still, it is important to push beyond raising awareness among those who already care about an issue and bring in interdisciplinary perspectives. “Preaching to the choir” can incentivize people who already care to take action and become well-educated about a topic, but it is not enough to create change. Social science concepts can reach beyond the “choir” by focusing on intersectionality with other disciplines. Instead of fostering niche echo chambers, education should be designed to welcome people of all views and give them space for open dialogue.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often portrayed as a conflict between two unwavering and vehemently opposed sides unwilling to make concessions. Reports of the recent rise in violence like that of 13 year old Palestinian Ahmed Mansara, who stabbed two Israeli Jews and was subsequently beaten, have strengthened the salience of this polarized perception of the conflict. In one popular narrative of the struggle adopted by many Palestinian supporters, Israel is a unitary actor that seeks domination of Palestinian lands through any means necessary. The reality is, however, that there exists a multitude of opposing voices within the Israeli government, the Israeli public, and even in the global Jewish diaspora when it comes to the way the conflict should be handled and resolved.

The current Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu represents the right-wing Likud party, which currently holds 30 out of 120 seats in the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament). Many of Israel’s actions today in the West Bank are realizations of the Likud party platform. Concerning settlements, which the U.N. Human Rights Council found to be in violation of the Geneva Conventions in 2013, the Likud party’s official platform says that it will “continue to strengthen and develop these communities” as they are a “clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people.” Concerning a Palestinian state, the Likud party views any unilateral declaration of independence as a “fundamental and substantive violation of agreements with the State of Israel.” In his campaign for reelection this March, Netanyahu pledged that he would never allow an independent Palestinian state to exist, veering away from previous statements that he would allow it under certain conditions.

As is common with most extreme rhetoric, that of Netanyahu and the current right-wing government has dominated global media and drowned out other moderate, opposing voices. The Zionist Union, a center-left party with a progressive platform advocating for Palestinian statehood, won 24 seats in the Knesset this past election and serves as Likud’s biggest opposition. Weeks before the March elections, the Zionist Union’s leader Isaac Herzog, Netanyahu’s most formidable opponent, stated that he would “reignite a process with our Palestinian neighbors” if he won. While the party suggests it will not cede currently occupied land to Palestine, it does call for a halt in the construction of new Jewish settlements as well as the “demilitarization of the Palestinian state,” seeking to boost Israel’s international image and end its international isolation through ending Israeli military presence and control of the area.

Even further to the left is the Meretz party, which represents the shrinking secular portion of Israeli society as religious nationalists gain more power in the government and right-wing ideologies become more prominent. The Meretz party currently only holds five seats in the government, reflecting the changing demographics within Israeli society as one that is becoming more conservative and religious. While it too advocates for a two-state solution and the halt of settlement construction, it goes further and supports a program that would give financial incentives for Jewish Israeli residents in the West Bank to leave and return to Israel proper.

Outside of the government, a number of grassroots movements in the Jewish Israeli public as well the global Jewish diaspora are working to show the world the reality of the occupation, indirectly exerting pressure on the Israeli government to modify its actions. One of the most compelling organizations advocating for an end to the occupation of Palestinian territory is Breaking the Silence. Made up of veterans of the Israeli military, it aims to “expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories” in which “cases of abuse towards Palestinians, looting, and destruction of property have been the norm for years”. Naturally, the Israeli government does not support such work by NGO’s. It has taken multiple actions to reduce their ability to function, including subjecting politically-charged NGO’s to a 45 percent tax rate on funds obtained from foreign entities.

In a talk at the University of Georgia in November, Breaking the Silence representative Avner Gvaryahu commented on the fragmentation that exists in Israeli politics concerning Palestine: “Israeli society has changed, [it] definitely went more to the right…and we see more and more people not willing to listen; but when you look at the polls, even though [Netanyahu] was elected, there is a part of Israeli society that opposes the occupation…so it’s like any other society, it’s mixed”.

Outside of Israel, views within the Jewish diaspora are just as mixed. A 2013 study of the American Jewish population by the Pew Research Center offers an interesting account of how Jews in the United States feel towards the ongoing conflict. While the Israel lobby is extremely influential in U.S. politics, the Pew Research study shows that this far-right lobby does not necessarily represent the majority of American Jews. It found that only 40 percent of American Jews believe that the land that currently makes up Israel was given to the Jewish people by God, in contrast to the 55 percent of American Christians that believe this. Additionally, 61 percent of American Jews believe that Israel and Palestine can coexist peacefully as two separate states, 44 percent believe that Jewish settlements hurt Israel’s security, and only 21 percent believe that Israel is making a sincere effort to craft a peace settlement with Palestinians.

A similar Pew Research study done in Israel in 2012 echoed much of what was found amongst Jews in America, reporting that 53 percent of Jewish Israelis believed that a peaceful two state solution is possible. In a visit to the University of Georgia in November, the Deputy Consul General of the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta Ron Brummer corroborated this saying, “When you read the polls, the vast majority of Israelis believe that there should be a two-state solution”. Despite this, he added, “today, many Israelis are pessimistic”.  Indeed, three years after the Pew Research Study, a poll released in mid-October this year by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University found that 57.1 percent of Arab Israelis and 46.1 percent of Jewish Israelis believe that the two-state solution is dead.

This pessimism towards the prospects of successful negotiations is easily understood when the context of the situation is taken into account. As the Israeli government becomes more right-wing, and polarization and incitement of violence increases on both sides, moderate voices are increasingly being drowned out. With this, the possibility of peace slips farther and farther out of reach. With the failure of negotiations lead by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in 2013 and recent outbreaks of violence, the future for peace remains dim. Only time will tell if moderate Israeli voices will grow enough to change the direction of Israeli-Palestinian relations or if Israeli society will continue to shift to the right, pushing the prospects of an agreement further into the future.

Photo Credit: TIP News

Finally, a reason international affairs junkies should care about domestic politics.

As the national stage is dominated by Republican candidates lambasting each other over drone strikes and Syria, a smaller election within the Republican Party is well underway. On October 29, the House is expected to vote to replace sitting Speaker John Boehner. The results of the impending vote are not at all certain, especially after front runner Kevin McCarthy announced at a closed-door Republican meeting that he was dropping out of the race. Many suspect this was due to his standing dispute with the hardliners in the conservative House Freedom Caucus, who backed Tea Partier Daniel Webster over McCarthy. With Paul Ryan refusing to run, the race has come down to establishment outsiders such as Rep. Chaffetz of Utah and Rep. Webster of Florida. Regardless of who wins, the new Speaker will have long lasting implications for several issues in international relations. Here’s where some of those impacts will be seen:

1. Trans-Pacific Partnership

A new Speaker will likely complicate the passage of the recently inked Trans-Pacific Partnership. The fight over Obama’s massive trade deal is just getting underway as Congress approaches the up-or-down vote in 90 days. In some ways, this fight has already played out in the debate over Trade Promotion Authority, the bill that gave the Obama administration the authority to negotiate the deal in the first place. That battle resulted in a unique dynamic in which GOP leadership backed the Obama administration over an unlikely coalition of Tea Partiers and liberal Democrats. Boehner was instrumental in getting the support for TPA’s close 219 to 211 vote passage – without the Speaker’s support, the chances of success in a trade showdown seems unlikely.

Rep. Webster, the chosen candidate of the House Freedom Caucus, was among the Tea Partiers that lobbied hard against giving President Obama more authority to negotiate trade. Although he is unlikely to win, the House Freedom Caucus’ influence over the Speaker race will undoubtedly harden their resolve to stop the President’s trade deal from going through. Whoever wins the Speakership will need the House Freedom Caucus’ support in the vote on October 29^th. Rep. Chaffetz voted in favor of TPA but received backlash over his subsequent removal of subcommittee chairman Rep. Meadows, after Meadows defied GOP leadership by voting against the bill. There are already serious doubts among the Republican leadership and Clinton’s recent reversal is causing moderate Democrats to rethink their support. The shifting dynamics in the House will hurt the chances of President Obama’s foreign policy centerpiece.

2. Military Budget

The current debate over the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) demonstrates the Republican Party’s emphasis on increasing military spending. Boehner was able to work with Democrats in the past to cut deals regarding defense cuts and sequestration, but the new Speaker will likely be unable to reach across the aisle. The proposed version of the NDAA bill circumvents the 2011 Budget Control Act military spending limits by adding $38 billion dollars to the cap exempt Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund. President Obama has vowed to veto the bill and Boehner is working towards a compromise, but momentum for an override exists. A hardline conservative as Speaker would collapse ongoing negotiation efforts unless more military spending is approved.

The increase in military spending will likely be offset by a decrease in foreign aid. The Tea Party’s foreign policy is characterized by a rejection of “liberal internationalism” in favor of a more hawkish defense posture, and Webster has a history of voting to pull aid from foreign governments on the US payroll. Chaffetz has joined the Tea Party in voting for multiple resolutions to limit foreign aid to Libya, Pakistan, and Egypt.  The current version of the defense authorization bill pushed by the conservative base also includes further cuts in aid to Ukraine and Turkey.

3. Syria

Congress has recently held greater influence on the United States’ response to the Syrian civil war. The ineffectiveness of the Syrian rebel training program coupled with the lack of response to the refugee crisis has put the Obama administration at odds with House Republicans. House and Senate Intelligence committees are currently investigating whether our agencies overlooked threats to US backed rebels or misjudged signs of Moscow’s true intentions in the region. The Republican establishment has repeatedly called for greater intervention in the fight against Assad.

However, Webster and the House Freedom Caucus represent an isolationist branch of the Republican Party who reject US involvement in foreign military conflicts. “While I will seriously consider the information delivered in upcoming classified briefings, at this point I am strongly opposed to military intervention in Syria,” said Webster. A new Speaker would also complicate the administration’s efforts to help Syrian refugees. In a press release last month, Chaffetz stated, “we must not overlook the inherent security risks of this decision by President Obama … I don’t trust this Administration’s ability to vet new arrivals.” In either case, Boehner’s departure will likely result in a further lack of action on Syria.

Final Thoughts

In all fairness, none of this is written in stone. In this changing political climate, tomorrow’s outlook might be very different. If Paul Ryan runs, he could be a stabilizing influence to satisfy the House Freedom Caucus and check the far right within the Republican Party. Some political pundits have even argued that the unique situation makes it possible to have a bipartisan speaker. On the other hand, the 2016 elections could usher in a more conservative majority that reaffirms the House Freedom Caucus’ power. Regardless, this race will definitely shift US foreign policy – whether that’s for better or for worse remains to be seen.

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

My favorite waitress is named Peaches. It’s hard not to adore anyone so kind and competent, and I’m fairly confident that liking
someone named “Peaches” is a requirement buried somewhere in Georgia’s 89-page constitution. She works at the corner of Milledge and Lumpkin, an intersection of Greeks, firemen, coffee-shop hippies, and those that are finally 21. Her workplace provides caffeine and calories for locals, tourists, and inebriated independents. She works, to borrow a phrase from UGA’s own Dr. James Cobb, at the Most Southern Place on Earth.

Waffle House was founded in 1955 in Avondale Estates, Ga., just east of Atlanta in DeKalb County and is currently headquartered in Norcross. The company was the brainchild of Joe Rogers, Sr., a native of Tennessee with experience as a short-order cook and Tom Forkner, a Georgian lawyer who served in the Second World War. Born in the boom years of Eisenhower and Ozzie and Harriet, Waffle House came of age while similar restaurants like Woolworth’s became a national embarrassment for refusing to seat black customers.  The restaurant now has over 1,600 franchises in 25 states, most of which know the correct plural of “you.”

According to this brilliant Deadspin analysis of Waffle House and IHOP America, Waffle House dominates only in those states that prefer their tea sweet and their vowels extended. The dividing lines between the two regions—the term “border state” would be a bit too incendiary, don’t you think?—fall exclusively in the nation’s swing states. Northern Florida remains loyal to Waffle House, while everything south of Tampa might as well be Pennsylvania. WaHo reigns in Virginia south of Richmond, but once you drive north of the Confederacy’s capital and into the suburban counties that gave Obama the state in 2008 and 2012, IHOP takes over. Midwestern swing states like Ohio and Indiana are predictably split. Because Texas is Texas, it’s the only state that does not conform to my model, which I think is part of a personal effort to annoy me. Here’s the one credible example of the long-held liberal dream to “turn Texas blue.”

Waffle House America is the Confederacy with the colonized bits (Northern Virginia, Southern Florida) lopped off. Take that map, throw in a few Mountain West and Great Plains states with more electoral votes than people and you’ll find the reliable red states, those that stood with the GOP even during the wave election of 2008. This is Reagan Country, or in the unkind words of a 2004 viral email, Jesusland.

Anyone who wants to drone on about the polarization of American politics should dwell on that map. For the first time since the Civil War, the South is in a party that makes sense. Long tied to urban immigrants and the northern poor within the Democratic Party, Southerners—Waffle House Americans—were repulsed by the Republicans largely due to their involvement in abolition, Reconstruction, and efforts to ensure that Lost Cause was never found. But in 1964, with  President Lyndon Johnson’s embrace of civil rights and Republican nominee Barry Goldwater’s libertarian-fueled rejection of it (the notion that Goldwater was a racist is a vicious lie; the man was a founding member of the NAACP in Arizona), the Deep South voted Republican for the first time in its history. The Republican “Southern Strategy,” led by men like George H.W. Bush’s advisor Lee Atwater, was born. If you want to hear the origins of this strategy according to Mr. Atwater, click here; the man’s language is too repulsive for us to print.

It’s not a coincidence that 1994, the year Republicans finally took control of the Congressional delegation of most of the Southern states, was also the year that they took control of the House of Representatives. In the next few years you’d see presidents from Arkansas and Texas, a Speaker of the House from Georgia, Senate Majority Leaders from Mississippi and Kentucky, and the Olympics in Atlanta (that’s not relevant, but still fun.)

According to a study recently released in The Atlantic, the areas represented by House Republicans (Waffle House America + Where the Buffalo Roam) are eight percent more likely to be married than Democratic counterparts, have three percent more high school graduates, 2.4 percent more veterans, are two years older, and an astonishing 15 percent more likely to have been born in the United States. Statistician Nate Silver predicts that by 2020, the only states whose populations won’t mostly support gay marriage are Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia (to our shame), and South Carolina. The Solid South is back.

No one who lives north of DC or west of El Paso is capable of hearing a single word that comes from Ted Cruz. Democrats delight in giving us the same warnings about “dog whistles” that Lee Atwater praised, but it’s hard to believe you would hear something like that from a first-generation American (Cruz’s father fled the Castro regime.) No, Ted Cruz’s language isn’t coded, but it’s Southern to the core. His religiosity, his obsequious devotion to manners and diction, his way of pronouncing every phrase as if it’s a request for agreement- as if every sentence is a plebiscite on Our Values- is distinctly and self-consciously Southern.

There will come a day in the next year or so where Ted Cruz or someone like him will speak to the American people, raising enthusiasm and hope within the Republican base and confused stares from Acela corridor liberals. If a New York friend decides to ask you how it is that men like Ted Cruz become so popular, remind your friend that she just can’t expect to understand. She doesn’t have Waffle House. She doesn’t have Peaches.

My favorite waitress is named Peaches. It’s hard not to adore anyone so kind and competent, and I’m fairly confident that liking someone named “Peaches” is a requirement buried somewhere in Georgia’s 89-page constitution. She works at the corner of Milledge and Lumpkin, an intersection of Greeks, firemen, coffee-shop hippies, and those that are finally 21. Her workplace provides caffeine and calories for locals, tourists, and inebriated independents. She works, to borrow a phrase from UGA’s own Dr. James Cobb, at the Most Southern Place on Earth.

Waffle House was founded in 1955 in Avondale Estates, Ga., just east of Atlanta in DeKalb County and is currently headquartered in Norcross. The company was the brainchild of Joe Rogers, Sr., a native of Tennessee with experience as a short-order cook and Tom Forkner, a Georgian lawyer who served in the Second World War. Born in the boom years of Eisenhower and Ozzie and Harriet, Waffle House came of age while similar restaurants like Woolworth’s became a national embarrassment for refusing to seat black customers.  The restaurant now has over 1,600 franchises in 25 states, most of which know the correct plural of “you.”

According to this brilliant Deadspin analysis of Waffle House and IHOP America, Waffle House dominates only in those states that prefer their tea sweet and their vowels extended. The dividing lines between the two regions—the term “border state” would be a bit too incendiary, don’t you think?—fall exclusively in the nation’s swing states. Northern Florida remains loyal to Waffle House, while everything south of Tampa might as well be Pennsylvania. WaHo reigns in Virginia south of Richmond, but once you drive north of the Confederacy’s capital and into the suburban counties that gave Obama the state in 2008 and 2012, IHOP takes over. Midwestern swing states like Ohio and Indiana are predictably split. Because Texas is Texas, it’s the only state that does not conform to my model, which I think is part of a personal effort to annoy me. Here’s the one credible example of the long-held liberal dream to “turn Texas blue.”

Waffle House America is the Confederacy with the colonized bits (Northern Virginia, Southern Florida) lopped off. Take that map, throw in a few Mountain West and Great Plains states with more electoral votes than people and you’ll find the reliable red states, those that stood with the GOP even during the wave election of 2008. This is Reagan Country, or in the unkind words of a 2004 viral email, Jesusland.

Anyone who wants to drone on about the polarization of American politics should dwell on that map. For the first time since the Civil War, the South is in a party that makes sense. Long tied to urban immigrants and the northern poor within the Democratic Party, Southerners—Waffle House Americans—were repulsed by the Republicans largely due to their involvement in abolition, Reconstruction, and efforts to ensure that Lost Cause was never found. But in 1964, with  President Lyndon Johnson’s embrace of civil rights and Republican nominee Barry Goldwater’s libertarian-fueled rejection of it (the notion that Goldwater was a racist is a vicious lie; the man was a founding member of the NAACP in Arizona), the Deep South voted Republican for the first time in its history. The Republican “Southern Strategy,” led by men like George H.W. Bush’s advisor Lee Atwater, was born. If you want to hear the origins of this strategy according to Mr. Atwater, click here; the man’s language is too repulsive for us to print.

It’s not a coincidence that 1994, the year Republicans finally took control of the Congressional delegation of most of the Southern states, was also the year that they took control of the House of Representatives. In the next few years you’d see presidents from Arkansas and Texas, a Speaker of the House from Georgia, Senate Majority Leaders from Mississippi and Kentucky, and the Olympics in Atlanta (that’s not relevant, but still fun.)

According to a study recently released in The Atlantic, the areas represented by House Republicans (Waffle House America + Where the Buffalo Roam) are eight percent more likely to be married than Democratic counterparts, have three percent more high school graduates, 2.4 percent more veterans, are two years older, and an astonishing 15 percent more likely to have been born in the United States. Statistician Nate Silver predicts that by 2020, the only states whose populations won’t mostly support gay marriage are Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia (to our shame), and South Carolina. The Solid South is back.

No one who lives north of DC or west of El Paso is capable of hearing a single word that comes from Ted Cruz. Democrats delight in giving us the same warnings about “dog whistles” that Lee Atwater praised, but it’s hard to believe you would hear something like that from a first-generation American (Cruz’s father fled the Castro regime.) No, Ted Cruz’s language isn’t coded, but it’s Southern to the core. His religiosity, his obsequious devotion to manners and diction, his way of pronouncing every phrase as if it’s a request for agreement- as if every sentence is a plebiscite on Our Values- is distinctly and self-consciously Southern.

There will come a day in the next year or so where Ted Cruz or someone like him will speak to the American people, raising enthusiasm and hope within the Republican base and confused stares from Acela corridor liberals. If a New York friend decides to ask you how it is that men like Ted Cruz become so popular, remind your friend that she just can’t expect to understand. She doesn’t have Waffle House. She doesn’t have Peaches.

“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” – Benjamin Franklin

“Every nation has the government it deserves.” – Joseph de Maistre

Over the last week, a firestorm erupted over comments made by Republican Senate nominee Todd Akin, who suggested that in cases of “legitimate rape,” a woman is unlikely to get pregnant and therefore legal abortion for rape victims is unnecessary. Akin has been excoriated by all sides of the political spectrum, so my intention is not to issue yet another self-congratulating rebuke of an extremely unpopular, fringe position. Rather, I would like to address a more fundamental question about a political culture that seems to give us entirely too many Todd Akins and Charlie Rangels and far too few Roosevelts, Churchills, or Jeffersons.

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth has occurred in recent years over the unbearable “polarization” of the American political spectrum. Charts tell us that our legislative bodies are more divided now than at any point in the previous 30 years, and each side blames the other for the resulting deadlock. Spend 20 minutes on any major news site, and you are likely to find a liberal opinion piece about how the Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh, and other right wing baddies are fanning the flames of the next Civil War by shifting the center irrevocably to the right. Similarly, on the right, Republican obstructionism is justified as a last defense of capitalism against the creeping Stalinism of Obama’s far-left agenda. Everyone seems to agree that the system is broken.

The hair pulling over polarization is exaggerated. Although more fractured now than in the broad consensus years of the post-Soviet world, today’s partisan spats are drops in a bucket compared to the violent social upheavals of the late 1960s. If a 2^nd rate demagogue calling a law student a “slut” is evidence of the collapse of our political discourse, one cannot help but wonder what would happen if anything similar to the Kennedy assassinations were to happen today. However, whatever the degree of its severity, polarization is something of a red herring. It is an answer to the question: “Why can’t America govern itself?” Perhaps we should instead pose the question: “Should America govern itself?”

The late George Carlin had a famous bit explaining why he didn’t vote: “Everybody complains about politicians… but where do people think these politicians come from? …they come from American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses, and they’re elected by American voters. This is the best we can do, folks. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out.” Surveying the current political and cultural landscape, it is tempting to agree.

Popular culture, while never exemplary, has descended into a cesspool of stupidity, fear, sex, and greed. Reality television makes celebrities of the worst our society has to offer – only to have them ripped to shreds in the tabloids like Christians in the Colosseum. Crime shows remind us that around every corner lurks a potential murderous pervert, waiting to kill us and our children, while so-called foreign policy experts ensure us that, despite being the most overwhelmingly powerful empire in the history of the world, we are in constant mortal danger from swarthy foreigners who hate our freedom. Cable news outlets, left and right, find it a better business model to confirm and reinforce our prejudices than to challenge them – all the while assuring us without irony that we are still the Greatest Country in the World. Our concept of Liberty has been debased to mean little more than the right to be left alone and to not pay taxes. Is it any wonder that our politics is so dysfunctional?

Ignorance abounds. Although by now it has become an oft-repeated stereotype, many Americans never read, can’t write, and struggle to answer even the most basic questions about American history. As anyone who has sat through a particularly painful class discussion can attest, basic critical-thinking skills are sorely lacking even among college students. Universities themselves, for all the fear mongering about liberal professors indoctrinating students, have turned into little more than job training centers. A student can quite easily graduate from the University of Georgia having been assigned more works by Malcolm Gladwell than by John Locke, Aristotle, William Shakespeare and Karl Marx combined. This is fine for those whose only ambition to make money. Literature, art, philosophy, history – none of these none of these will earn anyone a job at Goldman Sachs. But an informed, critical-minded public is crucial the functioning of a democracy, and the lack of one may go a long way in explaining the pitiful current state of our government.

We criticize our leaders for their greed, their ignorance, and their duplicity. From Halliburton to Solyndra to every real and imagined scandal in between, outrage abounds – how could they stoop this low? Again? Answers abound, from institutional failure to anonymous money to the ubiquitous “polarization.” Their behavior, however, is entirely consistent with what our society values; what we buy, what we watch, and what we listen to. Our heroes, or at least our celebrities, lie, cheat, and steal to get what they want, and we love them for it. Why should we expect our elected officials to behave any differently?

Is democracy still desirable? Winston Churchill once said “democracy is the worst form of government, except for those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” In absence of a compelling alternative, the answer likely remains yes. However, we should not be so naïve as to think that political moderation, or the victory of our favorite party, will cure our democracy. Representative government puts a great deal of responsibility on the people to decide their own fate. However desirable this may be in the abstract, there is little preventing us from marching ourselves over the edge of a cliff, fiscal or otherwise.