<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">The American Exception</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Wednesday, March 24, 2021, noon – 1 p.m. by <a href="https://bit.ly/319eHXD">Zoom</a> </span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">In anticipation of the next Ethics Institute colloquy, Henry Milner shares the following observation; </span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><i>When I was a graduate student in political science way back when, we learned that, unlike elsewhere among modern democracies where political parties split along ideological lines, the U.S. was exceptional in that its (two) parties hewed to the center, the liberal Democrats constrained by the party’s Dixiecrat wing, and the conservative Republicans by their Rockefeller-Lindsay-Romney wing. </i></span></p><i><br></i><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><i>Starting in the latter 1970s, polarization mounted in the U.S. as these two wings were being cut off. Elsewhere, the opposite was happening as the more radical parties on the left especially were moving toward the center, accelerated by the disintegration of the Communist bloc. </i></span></p><i><br></i><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><i>In the past decades, due especially to the takeover of the Republicans by Newt Gingrich, the Tea Party, and the Trumpists, the U.S. party system has again become exceptional, except in the opposite sense, i.e., more rather than less polarized than in other Western democracies. While there is much talk about the rise of populist parties in Western Europe, it is in fact only in the U.S., with its unique political institutions, that such populists are in a position to actually take power. Why is this the case?</i></span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">For further information about colloquies at the Ethics Institute, contact Dr. Jonathan Slater, director, at </span><a href="mailto:slaterjr@plattsburgh.edu" target="_blank" style="text-decoration-line:none"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;text-decoration-line:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">slaterjr@plattsburgh.edu</span></a><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-variant-numeric:normal;font-variant-east-asian:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">. The Institute for Ethics in Public Life is generously supported by gifts to the Plattsburgh College Foundation. Institute colloquies are open to all members of the SUNY Plattsburgh community.</span></p></div></div>