Do we Americans really share a coherent, unifying cultural or idealistic value system anymore?

At The Federalist David Harsanyi wonders if Americans don’t really share any coherent, unifying cultural or idealistic values anymore.

...Barack Obama promised American unification but, in the end, demanded conformity. His attempts—first at changing American ideals and then reimagining the ones we had to comport with his progressive positions—in turn fueled the rise of an idealistic Constitutional movement in the Tea Party.

The two movements were irreconcilable, and an age of gridlock ensued. By the time we finally eliminated Osama bin Laden, American politics hadn’t just reverted to fighting over the same old fissures in ideology and culture: they had been exacerbated in dramatic ways. Whereas Bush would place a terror state like Iran in an Axis of Evil, we were now sending them pallets of cash.

...People tend to retrofit their memories to comport with the most helpful telling of a story. Perhaps I’m prone to the same revisionism. But as I remember it, everything having to do with politics pre-9/11 would instantaneously become frivolous once the Twin Towers came down. The day after 9/11, and many days after that, I was unable to commute into my office in Manhattan. The local train station was littered with the cars of those who I assumed would never come home. So I sat in front of my TV staring at cable news most hours of the coming days. For those few weeks, I don’t remember anyone ever using the event to bludgeon their political opponents.

So here’s a depressing thought on the anniversary of 9/11: What if those two or three weeks of harmony 16 years ago will be the last we experience for a very long time? Considering our trajectory, this seems more likely than not. After all, surveying the coverage of the anniversary of 9/11 this morning, it’s difficult not to notice that Americans don’t really share a coherent, unifying cultural or idealistic value system anymore.

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