America's Divisions at NMU

Politics and religion was the topic tonight during a speech at Northern Michigan University.

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, discussed topics from his book “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion.”

Haidt is a best selling author and an expert on human nature.

He discussed how people can use moral psychology to transcend the red-versus-blue culture wars of American politics.

He says that national elections like the one we’ve just had have always been bitter, but traditionally, the bitter campaign season was followed by a period of governance where we as a nation try to work together to address our common problems.

Haidt says this changed in the 1990s to, in essence,  a permanent campaign mode.

He says we, as a nation, need to put our national interest first and says that people of all political views need to be willing to compromise, regardless of how it may make certain groups look on certain issues.

Haidt also shared that some of the problems we have involve not acting quickly enough as a nation, saying that the time we wait to act on issues could dramatically raise the cost to fix them in the future.