You want to know why America is so politically divided? Follow the science. I'm Scott out with Bill Whittle and Stephen Green in this episode of Right Angles brought to you by the members at Bill Whittle.com.

And gentlemen, I was listening to an interview on a public radio program called Think, which I listened to from time to time just to remind my brain to do so.

And I'm not saying the program

helps. I'm just saying that word occasionally sparked something. And they were interviewing a guy who

recently wrote a column in the Washington Post. His name is Joel Achenbach. And the column was under the

headline, Science is revealing why American politics are so intensely polarized.

And one of the things he said during the think interview was that back in the 1950s,

some academics were being, were expressing concern that the two parties in the United States

were so similar that as to be virtually identical

and that, you know, during the sort of Eisenhower years, they had become almost homogeneous

and there were no real differences. And so, you know, what kind of a democracy or republic do you have

when you don't really have any legitimate debate?

He said, now, you know, for good or ill, we've overcome that problem.

So, however, he said he doesn't think that primarily the problem between the parties is one of policy substance, but rather one of feeling.

And he brings in a lot of what, you know, the scientists call evolutionary psychology into it.

But here's a quote from a guy who's an expert so-called in this from Johns Hopkins

University who has written a paper about this. He said, it's polarization that's based on our

feelings for each other, not based on extremely divergent policy preferences. And basically, he's

saying evolutionary psychology developed due to the importance

of identifying rivals or competitors for resources. So I guess they're picturing us out there

wandering the planes trying to fight over scraps of meat. And we need to be able to quickly

identify who our friends are and who our foes are.

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