Lakhota
Diamond Member
By John Aloysius Farrell
Our polarized Congress is starting to look more and more like a parliament at odds with the nations constitutional system.
Not too long ago, it occurred to Nelson Polsby, a notable scholar of Congress, to explore why the institution had become so polarized. The University of California (Berkeley) professor, now deceased, took the long walk back through American political history, and he ended on the doorstep of Willis Haviland Carrier.
In 1902, freshly graduated from Cornell University, Carrier was in a fog-cloaked station, waiting for a train. The gloom spurred him to contemplate the properties of temperature and moisture. By the time his train arrived, the young engineer had invented air conditioning. The physics of cooling had been understood since ancient Romans piped water through their villa walls, but it was Carriers 1906 patent for an Apparatus for Treating Air that led to todays near-ubiquitous climate-control systems, earning him the sobriquet, the Father of Cool.
Carriers invention, Polsby concluded, is the footing for the nations current political polarization. By stoking the historic migration of Republican voters from Rust Belt cities to Sun Belt refuges such as Scottsdale, Ariz., and St. Petersburg, Fla., air conditioning caused the population of the Southern states to change, he wrote in his 2002 essay, How Congress Evolves. That change in the population of the South changed the political parties of the South, he argued, and ultimately transformed Congress into an arena of sharp partisanship.
So dont blame the super PACs, or Fox News, or congressional redistricting (although they all play a role). Dont blame Grover Norquist or Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (although they do, too).
Blame Carrier. Its his fault.
And things are not getting any better.
Much More (not about air conditioning): Divided We Stand - John Aloysius Farrell - NationalJournal.com
NOTE: There is a lot of information in this very long article.