American Character
Colin Woodard, American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good Viking Penguin, 2016 Penguin (paperback), 2017 After the 2020 election, in which the anticipated “blue wave” failed to materialize, David Brooks said that the lesson is that the country remains deeply divided and we’re going to have to learn to get along. That would not have been a surprise to anyone who has read Colin Woodard’s American Nations and American Character . In American Nations , Woodard posits the existence of eleven cultural units, or nations, in North America, nine of which significantly influence U.S. politics. In American Character , Woodard traces how they have participated in the fundamental tension between individual liberty and the common good throughout our history. This tension plays out all the time, sometimes in surprising ways. We have seen it in this plague year in the politicization of face masks; o...