Reconsidering the Conflicts and Polarization in American Politics

A distinctive feature of contemporary American politics is usually called polarization. This in itself is not wrong. However, there is a much neglected precondition of this diagnosis. That is to say, conflict is not considered as something that should be eliminated by mainstream American or Western political thoughts. On the contrary, conflict is often deemed as positive or good. This point could be reflected by both American political institutional practices and the thoughts behind them. This being said, what we still need to know is, the positive effects of conflict have their own conditions, either the so-called “united public opinion” on the basis of a single homogenous national identity, or certain kinds of civil religion, or even some form of love for the community. Absent of these conditions, conflicts may as well evolve into partisan wars, or henceforth polarization.