Despite ‘stateless nations,’ most Americans agree on key issues, author says
Colin Woodard, keynote speaker at Word Festival, still says Americans ‘are going to have to save the country’ in face of polarization
Journalist and author Colin Woodard, right, discusses American commonalities and polarization at the Word Festival on Oct. 25. Photo courtesy of the Word Festival.
By Steele Hays
BLUE HILL—The rule of law and the United States’ democratic system of government are threatened, and citizens can’t rely on political leaders to solve the problems, author Colin Woodard told World Festival attendees Oct. 25, adding, “the American people are going to have to save the country.”
“Many of the leaders are not doing a good job,” he said. “They’re cowardly about it. They’re afraid to do anything.”
Woodard has written six books, including “American Nations,” which contend that the key to understanding the country’s political polarization is realizing that the U.S. is really a collection of “stateless nations” made up of people who share common attitudes and beliefs that stem from the earliest days of the European settlement of North America. Those “nations” transcend state borders and have names like Yankeedom, New France, the Midlands, New Netherland and the Left Coast.
“Polarization is largely geographical,” he said. “The question is: How do you have a shared story that holds us together?”
The good news is that public opinion surveys done by a research organization Woodard heads show that “a substantial 60 to 70 percent of people agree even on many of the hot button issues like abortion, climate change and others,” Woodard said. In addition, he said, large majorities are committed to the ideals and values expressed in the Declaration of Independence, including the values of freedom, personal liberty, equality and human rights. Across every demographic, those values receive far more support in the Nationhood Lab’s surveys than ethno-nationalism, which contends that being American is defined by sharing a common language, a common faith, and a common ethnic ancestry.
Woodard is the director of the Nationhood Lab at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy in Newport, Rhode Island. He has a summer home in Stonington and lives in the Portland area.
His newest book, “Nations Apart,” will be released Nov. 4. The book “offers a blueprint for bridging the rifts that divide us,” according to the publisher’s news release.
Woodard, who worked previously as state and national affairs writer for the Portland Press Herald and the Maine Sunday Telegram, has received a George Polk Award for outstanding investigative journalism. He was named Maine Journalist of the Year in 2014, and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting.
At the Word Festival keynote event held at Blue Hill’s Congregational Church, Woodard appeared with another former Maine journalist, Alicia Anstead, a former Bangor Daily News reporter. She is now an instructor in the journalism and writing programs at Harvard University’s Extension School.
