I thought this one was interesting:
"The political process was so polarized that democratic compromise was almost impossible. Is our politics less polarizing today? Not really," explains David Goldfield, author of a monumental new appraisal of the war, America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation (Bloomsbury Press). "Can we learn from this? I hope so."
A history professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Goldfield said two questions have hovered over his 30-year academic career: Why wasn't there a better way? How did we get to the point of solving disputes only by war? He found his answer and a fresh angle for his book in examining how evangelical Christianity drove a wedge between Southern and Northern interests.
"It intruded into the political process so that there was no middle ground. There was only good and evil," he says. "Self-righteousness doesn't make for good public policy. It poisons the process. That's the theme that frames my book, from the war's start to its aftermath."
I'm not too hot on evangelical Christians (or evangelical Muslims or anything, except perhaps evangelical Atheists), but this is a bit much.
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In the interests of Order and Method: My Schedule of Regular Posts
*Monday through Friday morning - schedules of President, VP and Secretary of State and her diplomats
*Monday through Friday afternoon - List of topics Limbaugh discussed on his program that day
*Monday through Friday througout the day - My posts on anything that I feel like talking about. At least one or two a day, sometimes more.
*Saturday through Sunday morning - An addition to my booklist of political books - covering Democrats, Republicans and other interested parties.
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