The Great Separation: Why American Politics Is Coming Apart at the Seams

American life, and American politics, are increasingly divided: by party, by geography, by education. Just by knowing your zip code, analysts can probably predict your opinions about abortion, climate change, national health care, and immigration. They can also predict consumer choices, such as whether you prefer Levis or Wrangler jeans. And of course, it’s possible to make a very good guess at which party you’re going to vote for in November. Red and blue are separating so completely that it’s getting harder to find common ground. Why is this happening? And what can we do to fix it?

Megan McArdle, an opinion columnist for the Washington Post since 2018, will discuss these questions  Sept. 14 at 5:30 p.m., in Room 198 of Statler Hall. This event, free and open to the public, will also be streamed. To participate online, please register here.

McArdle is “a wide-ranging writer, smart and funny, libertarian-leaning but not dogmatic. She has a knack for stating, judiciously and concisely, where things stand in America today,” said Barry Strauss, Bryce and Edith M. Bowmar Professor in Humanistic Studies, History and Classics, and Director of the Program on Freedom and Free Societies, which is sponsoring the talk.

For nearly two decades, McCardle has been writing about business, politics, and public policy. Her work has also appeared in The Economist, The Atlantic, Newsweek, the Daily Beast, Bloomberg, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time, the Guardian, and Reason. She was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, a fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, and the Egan Visiting Professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. She is the author of “Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success” (2014).

The Program on Freedom and Free Societies’ sponsorship of the event is made possible by to the support of Michael J. Millette ’87 and the Millette family.

David Guaspari works on communications for the Program on Freedom and Free Societies.