“Experts” and the radical left want you to think that on these hot-button issues, Americans are split down the middle—polarized. They want you to think that at least half of your fellow citizens hold views that only yesterday everyone considered crazy. And they want to make you afraid of not being on the “enlightened” side.

But it turns out that this polarization is a myth.

With clarity and optimism, Jonathan Butcher dismantles the myth of a fractured nation, showing how our underlying agreement on character, virtue, and our shared sense of national identity can guide lawmakers and communities toward policies that help everyone have a chance at the good life and the American Dream. 

In a time when headlines scream of division and mutual antagonism, The Polarization Myth offers a refreshing perspective: Americans are more united than you think. Drawing from a survey of over 2,000 citizens along with robust research, Butcher uncovers a surprising consensus on today’s most contentious issues—from education and civics to race and gender.

Americans are certainly divided about some important political issues. But as Jonathan Butcher shows in this powerful and illuminating book, some of the most heated and familiar controversies of our time don’t actually divide the public; they just divide a sliver of progressive elites from a broad and bipartisan public consensus. This is an essential read for understanding the dynamics of our politics.

—Yuval Levin, author of American Covenant

Before we Americans talk ourselves into a national nervous breakdown, brought on by a fear that our divisions are pushing us toward social breakdown and an inevitable civil war, we should stop, take a deep breath or two, and then take up Jonathan Butcher’s clear, crisp, and encouraging book. It offers a powerful case, making careful and intelligent use of survey data, that we are not nearly so polarized as our anointed experts and professional activists keep trying to convince us that we are.

—Wilfred M. McClay, Victor Davis Hanson Chair in Classical History, Hillsdale College

Jonathan Butcher is the Will Skillman Fellow in Education at The Heritage Foundation. He is the author of Splintered: Critical Race Theory and the Progressive War on Truth (Post Hill/Bombardier Books, April 2022). He co-edited and wrote chapters in The Critical Classroom (The Heritage Foundation, 2022), discussing the racial prejudice that comes from the application of critical race theory in K-12 schools. Jonathan co-edited and wrote chapters in the book The Not-So-Great Society (Heritage Foundation, 2019), which provides conservative solutions to the problems created by the ever-expanding federal footprint in preschool, K-12, and higher education. In 2021, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster nominated Jonathan to serve on the board of the South Carolina Public Charter School District, a statewide charter school authorizer.