Michael Lind

The debates over Kosovo blurred the old divisions between liberals and conservatives, but they did not rise above an even older split in American politics and foreign policy: the enduring divide between a hawkish South and a dovish North. Regional differences based on culture and values have made Greater New England the heartland of opposition to foreign wars and the U.S. military establishment since the 1700s; they have also made the South a bastion of interventionism. All too often, the regional divides over U.S. foreign policy have just been a reprise of the Civil War -- and they are a recipe for paralysis.

Seymour Martin Lipset explains why the United States is exceptional. Michael J. Sandel blames its individualistic tradition for the country's ills and says America should return to the New England town square. But it isn't exceptional, and it shouldn't return.