Why this Breakthrough Framework is important for understanding the Cold Civil War (Part 1 of 2)
This simple quadrant framework is the key to seeing how we lost the vital center, why polarization keeps growing, and how we can rediscover a new vital center before it is too late.
Has America ever been this divided or this on edge? Have we ever come this close to national separation, divorce, or civil war? Over the past two years, the polarization has accelerated at warp speed. We have divided over the lockdowns, masks, mandates, presidential politics, the border, the police, racial justice, impeachment, election integrity, and a dozen other topics. It feels like we are coming apart at the seams.
Amid this cold civil war, we have discovered that Americans can't agree on what our nation stands for or what it means to be a citizen. Once, many years ago, we shared a consensus or a vital center. Not any more. Will we ever get along? Can we ever find unity again, discover a new vital center to hold us together? Or is separation inevitable?
There are days I have doubts that we can ever find a common vision. The gulf between the two sides seems too great. There no longer appears to be a bridge that can unite the two sides.
But I still believe in unity on my more optimistic days, and I hope we can restore the bridge, enabling opposing sides to engage. But it is not going to be easy, and it is going to take some deep thinking and struggle to find the path back to unity.
In my book Cold Civil War, I contend that for national unity to be a reality once again, we need to understand three essential things, the three keys to national renewal. We need to grasp…
1. Why we lost the vital center
2. Who and what is making the polarization worse
3. How we can restore a new vital center
Understanding these three keys will not be easy and can't be done in a short article, a podcast, or a cable news show. It will take some deep thinking, and deep thought takes time and effort. But it must be done if we hope to restore the country.
I have developed a unique quadrant framework to understand these three keys—a shorthand to help us figure out the competing voices, a kind of mental map, a taxonomy of narratives. This quadrant framework helps us assess other points of view, understand them, and engage them.
I promise you that once you grasp this framework, it will change the way you see political division forever and give you the tools and the vision to be part of the solution, no matter what your calling in life is.
Polarization and Powerlessness
I am well aware that some of you reading this right now have felt the divisiveness gripping our country and have given up hope for any unity. You have lost friends over the last couple of years because of political polarization. You have witnessed family, friends, and colleagues divided over politics. You have seen it split churches.
Because you have witnessed it firsthand, I realize that many of you are deeply afraid to talk about your political views at work, at church, or with friends and family. You are fearful that it will cause an argument, lead to misunderstanding, hard feelings, and ruin relationships. Or worse, get you fired or canceled. If it can happen to famous journalists and social media influencers on the right and the left, it can happen to you, right? So you remain silent, unwilling, and unable to have civil conversations. But without civil dialogue, we have no chance of healing our divide, coming together or restoring what is best about America.
Yet while you stay silent, you are secretly frustrated and angry inside, confident you know who is ruining our country. But you feel powerless to stop it and thus can't do more than watch your favorite news program or listen to your preferred podcast, where you can at least find solace in your tribe, allied in your anger against the other corrupt tribe.
Look, I understand. It’s easy to feel this way. There is much to get angry about.
Politics is complex and confusing.
But along with feeling powerless in the face of polarization, you may also think that politics is complicated, confusing, and hard to sort out. Over the past two years, we have heard about Black Lives Matter, Antifa, the Proud Boys, the alt-right, Christian Nationalism, and Critical Race Theory. We have listened to concepts like white fragility, woke social justice, socialism, and crony capitalism. Finding definitions for these groups and movements is often challenging and highly contested. In the end, it all seems so complicated, so messy. So you throw up your hands and retreat to your tribe. It's just easier that way. And how can you dialogue with others when neither side has the correct definitions, which is why dialogue often ends in name-calling and ad hominem attacks. It’s easier to lob rhetorical bombs than to engage in thoughtful discussion, especially when it is so complicated to know who is telling the truth.
My Big Breakthrough
Over the years, as a pastor, professor, and president of a small liberal arts college, I have tried to help my congregation and students make sense of all the different ideas and voices in our public life. I would attempt to map the different views to make it easier. But the best way I knew how was to map them along the traditional left-right spectrum--with the left being about freedom from all tradition, authority, and religion, and the right favoring moral and religious order. Liberal and conservative. Democrat and Republican. But in reality, it never seemed to work well, as some groups and ideas didn't fit on the left-right spectrum.
For example, certain libertarians, usually on the right side of the spectrum, favor freedom from all moral and ethical and religious constraints and at times sound a lot like those on the left, particularly those who came out of the 60's counter-culture, who wanted nothing to do with religious or moral systems.
Then take political correctness, which is on the left and is about a new order--a code of acceptable thought and behavior (being woke), which often mimics the strictness of a new religion and wants others to adopt their views like a new religious order. See Columbia University Professor John McWhorter’s recent book for an incisive analysis of this new religion.
Thus, dividing everyone into two camps, freedom on one side and order on the other doesn't work. And as I tried to make sense of these contradictions within the left and the right, I would get frustrated and often give up, unable to effectively map the significant players and thinkers. And I, too, found it easier to fall into the tribes of the left-right spectrum.
That's when, a few years ago, I had a big breakthrough. What if, I asked myself, it isn't about a left-right spectrum at all? What if we can't divide the two sides along the freedom-order axis because, wait for it, they both have a freedom and order element in their tribes. That's when I reached for my drawing of the left-right spectrum, took out a pen, and drew a vertical, bisecting line, creating a quadrant graph. Now, the left had two quadrants (freedom left and order left), and the right had two quadrants (freedom right and order right). Once I did this, what was muddled became clear.
As I read the news or books on politics from that point on, I started placing the thinkers in one of the four quadrants based on their views. And for the first time in 25 years of mapping, it finally worked like a charm.
I was amazed at how easy it was and how helpful it was to map different thinkers and groups, fitting them into their proper place.
Just like that, I had a tool, a system, a framework to sort through all the different views and clashing views, not only for understanding the differences between the political left and right but also for comprehending the differences throughout American history. It was like a rosetta stone. And once I knew where each position or view landed on the quadrant graph, I could almost certainly predict where it would come down on most political, economic, or cultural issues.
Yet, while it proved to be an excellent tool for understanding the political, cultural, and economic landscape, the quadrant graph does something even more powerful—it unlocks the three keys to finding the new vital center.
In Part 2, I will lay out these three keys to healing the nation, which the breakthrough quadrant framework reveals. So stay tuned…
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Can I help you? If you lead a church, non-profit organization, or business and want me to help devise a program to train your leaders in the principles of the Cold Civil War and the new vital center, please reach out to me. I can teach them over Zoom or in person.