Polarized America Book Report

Culture War: The Myth of a Polarized America was written by Morris Fiorina. Morris Fiorina is political science professor at Stanford University and focuses on American political in his various works. In his book, he explores the perception that the American public is polarized, and instead offers the argument that it is not the American public that has polarized but that their options for political figures are more polarized. He argues that Congressional members have become more polarized and because the public only has two options, it seems as if it is the mass public that is polarized.
Morris Fiorina advances his arguments by analyzing data that demonstrate that Congress is the segment of society that is polarizing the public. Several factors are given throughout the earlier chapters of the book to explain why the myth about polarization persists such as conflating political activists with the public and the media. Morris Fiorina also notes that most of the public is not proficient in political issues nor do they take the time to learn

For example, he delves into the topic of abortion in Chapter 5 to demonstrate that the public is in more agreement with each other than what is traditionally believed. The author takes his time to explain concepts that he wants to differentiate such as “closely divided” and “deeply divided”. By doing so, he strengthens his argument by increasing its clarity which makes his thesis more airtight and less susceptible to criticism because of his specificity. The author writes clearly and accessibly for his audience and even those who are not adept at understanding graphs will find little trouble with comprehending what the graphs portray. This book should be assigned for successive classes because it was a less dense read, as well as, an excellent exploration into a theory about polarization in