A Fictional Calexit Scenario Offers a Real Warning

Conservative Writer David French Argues That if Americans Can’t Live by Pluralism, the Country Could Split Apart

It was gun violence that finally drove California to secede from the United States.

A series of mass shootings culminated in a savage, Columbine-style attack on a Sacramento-area school that killed 35 kids and two cops. The shooters used semi-automatic rifles and pistols with large-capacity magazines—weaponry that had been illegal in California until the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court threw out the state’s gun control laws. Californians raged that the justices—and the federal government—had effectively murdered their children.

That anger soon spiraled into a cold civil war, with California’s elected …

Your Vote Is More Polarized Than You Are | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Your Vote Is More Polarized Than You Are

American Politicians Are More Divided Than Ever. American People? Maybe Not

If you consider only the names on our ballots and the voices on cable news, answering the question posed by this Zócalo/UCLA Anderson School of Management event is easy. “Is …

Why Extreme Moderation Is the Vital Alternative to Political Polarization

Theorist Tzvetan Todorov's Passionate Pluralism Is More Relevant Now Than Ever

Last month, the Bulgarian-French intellectual Tzvetan Todorov died. A scholar on the history of thought, his writings influenced fields as disparate as anthropology, literary criticism, and history. His death was, …