Bradley Campbell

Cold Civil War

Ethics, Culture & Social Issues

“As American politics becomes more polarized and as more areas of life become politicized, it starts to feel like there's no escape. But if there's a way out of this situation—where politics is increasingly extremist, defamatory, and conspiratorial—surely it's not going to come by just picking a side in the culture wars and trying to impose our own political and moral vision. Surely we need to better understand where we've all gone wrong. For anyone hoping for a way out of the current political mess, Jim Belcher's Cold Civil War is a must-read, and it's clearly the product of the author's many years of curiosity about and careful consideration of diverse moral and political views. Belcher offers a new way of classifying political orientations. He argues that the four main political orientations act as countervailing forces that strengthen the country when in their more centrist forms but tear the country apart in their more extreme forms. The way forward isn't to abandon our ideologies entirely or for us all to agree with one another, but the country does need to move toward the 'vital center.' And Belcher offers a vision of how to do so.”