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Liberals And Conservatives Are Divided Dividing Essay

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The main purpose of the article by Matt Motyl titled, “Liberals and conservatives are (geographically) dividing” is that political parties’ affiliations are dividing the U.S. This can be seen through the locations many Americans live such as liberals going to more urban areas as opposed to the conservatives to go to less populated areas in rural states (Motyl, 2014). The author uses the Ideological Enclavement Theory to explain the division of people in the U.S through ideological-segregated enclaves (Motyl, 2014).
In this theory, there are two components which he states, “People have gut-level intuitions about the ideology of different enclaves, and when the ideology if a community matches people’s personal ideology, people infer that they would fit into that community. Second, when people have the opportunity to do so, they will selectively migrate into enclaves that share their ideology” (Motyl, 2014). He then further breaks down the theory to the consequences that emerge from this division in three categories which stem from the idea of belonging through the self such as migration, well-being and cognitive style and Intergroup through cooperation, Social capital trust but also hostility dehumanization and violence (Motyl, 2014). Through his research and others which he states he believes that people decide to stay or create groups based on their own ideologies and migrate away from communities where they believe they are unwelcome and not belong in the community. The

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