"The Big Sort": We're dividing ourselves up too much

"The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart"

by Bill Bishop

Houghton Mifflin, 370 pp., $25

Americans might be surprised to hear that too much prosperity can be a bad thing. But that's what journalist Bill Bishop says in his eye-opening book, "The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart."

Able to pick up and move to be among more-agreeable folks, we have become more extreme in our views and less compromising over the past 30 years. We head off two by two: latte-drinking liberals with Prius-driving liberals, churchgoing conservatives with gun-toting conservatives. People are hunkering down at the extreme edges of issues ranging from gay marriage to immigrant rights, not because of nefarious politicians manipulating a gullible public but because of fundamental changes in how we live.

Nearly 100 million people moved from one county to another in the 1990s — and they tended to move toward clusters of the like-minded. Bishop himself moved to the Travis Heights neighborhood of Austin, Texas, in 2004, enamored of its parks, porches, dog walkers and clever bumper stickers like "You Keep Believing; We'll Keep Evolving." Outed as a lifestyle liberal by his choice of neighborhood, he stays admirably nonpartisan in his writing.

Bishop offers reams of data about voting records and county-by-county population over the past three-plus decades. In 1976, for instance, fewer than 25 percent of Americans lived in counties where the presidential vote tilted heavily to one candidate. By 2004, writes Bishop, "nearly half of all voters lived in landslide counties." And Bishop's data shows it's not because of congressional redistricting: People are re-sorting themselves.

Americans have always been rangy types, of course: Pioneers went west, factory workers relocated to Detroit, Southern blacks moved to Northern industrial cities after World War II, middle-class whites left those same cities in droves in the '60s.

But after 1965, "Americans lost their faith," says Bishop, as they witnessed urban riots, civil-rights clashes and violent protests against the Vietnam War. There were steep drops in party identification and trust in government. But at the same time, we were entering a new era of "post-materialism," a time when — with basic needs like food and shelter met — people could bother to look for meaning.

In the crisis of faith in traditional institutions — mainline churches, government, employers — people gravitated toward tribes who would help define life for them. They happened to fall neatly in two poles: conservative, religious, community-minded and rural versus liberal, technology-savvy, college-educated and urban.

"Americans have used wealth and technology to invent and secure places of minimal conflict," he writes. Studies Bishop cites also show that hanging out with people who agree with you tends to reinforce extreme positions.

Bishop's analysis should be required reading for any politician, marketing executive or voter. Bishop explains that the rise of Rick Warren's 22,000-member Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., is due in part to the pastor's emphasis on convenience and customization for target demographics, just like with any successful consumer product. Likewise, Republican Party heads in 2004 grasped that getting out the base through face-to-face social networking would meet with more success than attempting to win over undecided voters with out-of-towners.

But this bunker mentality creates a "niche democracy" and "caffeinated federalism," where states and cities go it alone, American way be damned. Blue states legalize civil unions and set higher power-plant emissions standards; red states outlaw gay marriage and pass "stand your ground" gun laws.

Bishop's surprising solution to this lack of national consensus is indecision. The third way, for him, is the Zen-like method of "questioning, watching and waiting." Fuzzy as that is, it sounds a lot better than another raft of attack ads.

Carly Berwick is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.