Washington • The searing political and social divides in our country encourage a search for the magic key. We want a Big Idea that will explain why we disagree so passionately — on gun control, abortion, taxes and lots of other things — and also why we seem to loathe those whose beliefs diverge from our own.
A few weeks ago, Robert Leonard, a radio news director in Knoxville, Iowa, took a thoughtful crack at exploring why Americans in rural areas so often differ with their urban fellow citizens on gun control. Writing in The New York Times, Leonard argued that their differences came down to radically opposed understandings of human nature, about as sweeping an explanation as you’ll get.