American Nations
Talking with The New Yorker about the forces of U.S. disunity
Almost a decade ago I posited, in the epilogue of American Nations, that the United States is vulnerable to dissolution. We're an unwieldy federation of rival regional cultures, many of which disagree on the fundamentals: What does freedom mean? Are we committed to the civic national promises in the Declaration of Independence? What is the correct balance between church and state, between individual liberty and the common good? "Faced with a major crisis," I wrote, it was possible "the edition's leaders will betray their oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, the primary adhesive holding the union together. In the midst …
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COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author, historian and award-winning journalist. He is the author of seven books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at Maine's Portland Press Herald, he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.