EJ Dionne, a columnist for the Washington Post, gave the annual Manatt-Phelps Lecture in Political Science, on Wednesday, April 13. (Connor, 2016) Dionne expressed his opinions on why this particular president election has been so greatly divided. (Connor, 2016) Dionne’s lecture, “Our Divided Politics,” discussed two of the disagreements in modern politics, individualism vs. community. (Connor, 2016) Dionne never gives a definitive answer to this question, because there isn’t one, this divide has been going on since early America.
Dionne began his discussion of individualism vs. community with a joke. He said that a speaker could speak to a group of Texans about how every one of them got to where they are by themselves, no one gave them free handouts, they had to work for everything that they had; the crowd would clap and agree with this speech. The speaker could then give a new speech to the same group about how they are a close-knit community and have relied on each other from the very beginning. When settlers game in covered wagons, people took shifts to watch over their camps at night, you would give your neighbor the shirt off of your back, because that is just the kind of people that we are; the crowd would again clap and agree with …show more content…
During the Gilded age, many people adapted the idea of Social Darwinism. William Graham said in the course reading, William Graham Sumner on Social Darwinism (ca. 1880), “According to Social Darwinists, evolution was as natural a process in human society as in nature, and government must not interfere.” People believed that it was every man for himself, a very individualist society. In the same time-period, we see a rise of unions, through sources such as the course reading, “Unionist Samuel Gompers Asks, ‘What Does the Working Man Want?’ 1890. Unions were a form of coming together for the greater wellbeing of the people, a very communal viewpoint of
Dionne began his discussion of individualism vs. community with a joke. He said that a speaker could speak to a group of Texans about how every one of them got to where they are by themselves, no one gave them free handouts, they had to work for everything that they had; the crowd would clap and agree with this speech. The speaker could then give a new speech to the same group about how they are a close-knit community and have relied on each other from the very beginning. When settlers game in covered wagons, people took shifts to watch over their camps at night, you would give your neighbor the shirt off of your back, because that is just the kind of people that we are; the crowd would again clap and agree with …show more content…
During the Gilded age, many people adapted the idea of Social Darwinism. William Graham said in the course reading, William Graham Sumner on Social Darwinism (ca. 1880), “According to Social Darwinists, evolution was as natural a process in human society as in nature, and government must not interfere.” People believed that it was every man for himself, a very individualist society. In the same time-period, we see a rise of unions, through sources such as the course reading, “Unionist Samuel Gompers Asks, ‘What Does the Working Man Want?’ 1890. Unions were a form of coming together for the greater wellbeing of the people, a very communal viewpoint of