Israeli-American Relations in the Era of “The Big Sort”

While in the U.S. last week for AJC’s stirring annual meeting in Washington and a series of speaking engagements at AJC offices along the eastern seaboard, I read an eye-opening book, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart, by Bill Bishop with Robert G. Cushing. Bishop is a journalist and newspaper editor, Cushing a statistician. Together they examine the impact of internal migration on American politics.

Basing their analysis partially on the work of other scholars, they offer an explanation for the harsh polarization of American political discussion in recent years. They claim that, traditionally, people made decisions on where to live largely on the basis of economic opportunity, taxes, climate, and other similar considerations. But this changed during the 1960s and 1970s, as increasing wealth and mobility meant that more Americans could choose to live where they felt a sense of cultural affinity, and that, in turn, became more and more related to political affiliation. “In 1976 less than a quarter of Americans lived in places where the presidential election was a landslide. By 2004, nearly half of all voters lived in landslide counties.” A landslide county is one where 80% or more voted for one of the two major parties.

Americans have always been restless. Roughly 4–5% of the population moves every year from one county to another. Over the last decade that amounted to some one hundred million people. The authors use the term “the big sort” to denote how Americans are self-segregating into communities of the like-minded.

The authors argue that this process poses a grave danger. It tends to narrow shared public space where people of differing worldviews might meet, discuss, debate, educate and possibly persuade each other. The vibrancy of that public arena of contact between citizens had historically been at the center of the American concept of democracy.

Here is the painful dilemma. Expression of disagreement is the heart and soul of American democracy. Americans can openly and spiritedly disagree with the majority, with their government or with their neighbors on any matter that is important in their eyes. By exposure to opinions of others, each of us is challenged to respond, refining our own views in order to answer objections or adopt new perspectives. Exchange of ideas plays a key role in changing public attitudes and shaping public policy, and this free-for-all has been a major factor in the success of the United States as a democratic state.

The greatest danger of “the big sort” is that if so many of us live in counties where neighbors of opposing views are few and far between, we may never find nearby critics who might aid us refine and clarify our own views. We may think of ourselves as good liberal Democrats or conservative Republicans, but failing to test our ideas in the crucible of honest debate limits our ability as informed citizens to play a proper role in the democratic process. Landslide counties, then, may represent a disturbing threat to the American way of life.

Living in Israel, I ask myself how this might impact on American-Israeli relations. Some issues seem to transcend the polarized discussion that currently characterizes the American marketplace of ideas. For example, few Americans, whatever their views on Afghanistan or Iraq, disagree on the need to support U.S. troops. Support for Israel is also largely viewed as a shared American concern. Both the House and the Senate recently illustrated this enduring bipartisan support for Israel on a scale that is hard to ignore.

Still, polling data indicate a developing gap between the members of the two parties on this front. Very large numbers of both Democrats and Republicans support Israel. Yet, according to Gallup, 85% of Republicans and just 48% of Democrats express support for Israel over the Palestinians.

This finding should catch our attention. The worst thing that could happen for Israel, and for Americans who love her, is that support for the Jewish State shifts from a consensus view to an issue on which Americans divide along party—and lifestyle—lines, just like reproductive rights, gay marriage or health-care reform. We need to make sure that broad, bipartisan support for Israel does not become a victim of “the big sort.”

first published at http://bit.ly/1qvzwD7

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