For years, Republicans made hay by appealing to “family values.” Liberal Democrats were often at a disadvantage because many of them did not in fact adhere to such values, as Jonathan Haidt has made clear in The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (2011). Haidt (pronounced “hite”) is a liberal […]

Over the last few days ICE’s partners and board members had a very productive strategic planning retreat. Carter and I, together with Elizabeth Debold, Michael Zimmerman, John Mackey and Jeff Salzman, made good progress in our thinking about ICE’s polarization campaign. Among other things, we narrowed down the conception of our “synthesis platform.” Instead of […]

For many years, the idea of cultural evolution was very important to me. As a teenager, I watched on TV while civil rights workers were beaten beause they demanded equal rights for blacks in the American south and elsewhere. My understanding was that those stirring and dangerous efforts represented a change in how people thought […]