In a transient, mobile, pseudo-egalitarian society such as modern America, it makes sense that the population would self-segregate by interest and familiarity to some degree. It’s not wrong. It’s human nature.

Back during the Industrial Revolution, cities filled up with country folk who needed to move there for employment, whether they actually liked the city or not, and it seems to have stayed that way for a few generations. Similarly, rural life was only for those who could stand not to have access to city food, city shopping, city amusements and amenities. Those who stayed in the countryside once the city was a viable option were making a statement of sorts about what they valued.

Then, half a century ago — even as Americans recognized that forced segregation by race is wrong and even as the Supreme Court struck down a major part of forced segregation with Brown v. Board of Education — unforced segregation found a new, er, vehicle. With the advent of the affordable automobile and the building of the nation’s highways, suburbs sprang up around every city. While people still worked in the cities, they gained a much greater freedom to choose whether or not to live there, raise their children there, and send them to public schools there. The phenomenon known as “White Flight” took hold, partly fueled by a desire to self-segregate by race… or possibly more by culture. By familiarity. After all, it’s not actually skin color that fuels racism, but a sense of unfamiliarity and uncomfortableness. This is why people of different races can easily be comfortable with one another when sharing common interests – sports, wealth, music, etc. What do we really have in common with people who share our skin color but not our socioeconomic status, our vernacular, our pastimes? In short, don’t we generally prefer to spend time with people who share our values?

Recently, columnist/author Bill Bishop published The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart (available), in which he notes that America today is not so much black-white segregated, but red-blue. We segregate ourselves, he asserts, according to politics. By the very title Bishop asserts that this is a bad thing. But is it?

(I should note that I have not yet read the book, but I don’t think that should stop me from discussing the general issue it addresses.)

Bishop was a guest last week on the Daily Show, where Jon Stewart asked him if our modern cultural segregation is bad because it heralds some kind of “lifestyle civil war” looming in America. (Stewart jokes, “obviously the Reds would win; they have guns.”) Bishop doesn’t answer that question directly, but his concern is obvious. But like me, Stewart doesn’t seem worried. He hits the point exactly when he notes that this is simply a result of personal empowerment. Technology allows us to live thousands of miles from family and friends without losing touch. It allows us to watch, read, and listen to exactly what we wish. The cultural freedom of even the poorest Americans is unprecedented in all of history. Why should we then live in a state, a town, a neighborhood with people whom we don’t like?

As journalist Robert Samuelson notes, the trends of division aren’t as severe as we might think.

Consider two decades of polls from the Pew Research Center. On many questions, there was little change. One question asked whether “government should care for those who can’t care for themselves.” In 1987, 71 percent agreed; in 2007, 69 percent did. Or take immigration. In 1992, when the question was first asked, 76 percent of respondents favored tougher restrictions; in 2007, 75 percent did. On some cultural issues, opinions converged. In 2007, only 28 percent thought school boards should be able to “fire teachers who are known homosexuals,” down from 51 percent in 1987. In 1987, only 48 percent thought it was “all right for blacks and whites to date each other”; by 2007, 83 percent did.

It’s not that everyone agrees on everything (divisions remain strong on the Iraq War, abortion, gay marriage). But growing polarization predominates among political elites of both left and right. The “Big Sort” of residential segregation is still reshaping the political landscape, though more indirectly. With fewer competitive congressional districts, the real political struggles now often take place in primaries, where activists’ views count the most. Candidates appeal to them and are driven toward the extremes.

What Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called “the vital center” is being slowly disenfranchised. Party “bases” become more important than their numbers justify. Passionate partisans dislike compromise and consensus. They want to demolish the other side. Whether from left or right, the danger is a tyranny of true believers.

I agree. And yet, here is where I will expose myself as a true believer. I recognize that unforced segregation is a natural behavior of human beings, and that it is a bad thing primarily when it is enforced by government. This is why I am a true believer in the principles of libertarianism and federalism. The best purpose of government is to protect citizens. Our federal government was designed primarily to serve two purposes: To protect us from external conquerors, and to protect us from local tyrannies.

The federal government has done well — aided by two vast oceans — with the easy task of protecting us from external conquerors. And it has arguably done well in protecting us from local tyrannies. Sure, the Supreme Court occasionally fails to uphold the rights of the citizenry against state and local governments (see Dred Scott, Kelo v. New London, and Korematsu v. U.S. as obvious and egregious examples), but I think it can be argued that the federal government is generally successful in protecting individuals from onerous state and local laws.

But there is no reason to expect that most lifestyle and policy decisions are best made at the federal level. The more local the government is, the better it can reflect what the people actually want, and what the people want differs from state to state, county to county, neighborhood to neighborhood.

In transient, mobile, ever more egalitarian America, we’re already choosing to segregate by certain issues and values. With strict limits (such as those already laid out in the Constitution) to protect individuals from the local tyrannies, we should govern ourselves in the same way.

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