Depressingly, as the global coronavirus pandemic unfolded, President Trump took measures that helped it along: denying it existed; denying it was more serious than the seasonal flu; denying it was no longer contained; claiming it was a hoax perpetrated by his enemies in politics and the media. State and local leaders have been left on their own to decide what to do.
The result has been a macabre laboratory of federalism, where states decided whether or not to protect their citizens and economy from a clear and inevitable threat. The geography of the response has been sobering.
As I wrote in American Nations and further explored in its sequel, American Character, the fundamental philosophical divide between these regional cultures is over the question of how best to organize American society. Three large and important ones have cultures that see freedom’s path lying almost exclusively with individual liberty and personal sovereignty. Four other large ones prioritize the common good and the building of a free community, even if it requires sacrifices of individuals. Corona-19 proved a test of these values.
Over at Washington Monthly you can read the disturbing match of our centuries-old cultural geography to the geography of the pandemic response. Let me know what you think.
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.