If there is anything that I have learned in my years as a Professor of History is that we have only had a few times in our national story where the citizens were united. We weren’t united in our choice to rebel against England. We weren’t united in deciding on our early government. We weren’t united in our wars against England in 1812, Mexico in 1848 or Germany in 1917. The harder you look, the more it becomes obvious that our system has actually provided more opportunity for division than for unity.
James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, actually saw this coming. As he contributed to the political writing supporting the new Constitution, what we call The Federalist Papers, he wrote the 10th article in November of 1787 commenting on this very question. Not only did he argue that Democracy has “ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property;” but he saw a virtue in the Republic over a vast geographic size. In a country of that size, he proposed, the idea of division would strengthen the country. Madison saw that there would never be a time when everyone agreed with each other, at least not without some dictatorial power that would remove “the causes of faction. . .by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence.” But, in a government set up like our Republic, if you “take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens.”
In other words, certainly there will be division, but there will always be some equal counterweight that opposes that view. This principle in known as tensegrity (tension + integrity, often used in the world of architecture). Madison believed such would actually provide stability to the entire organization, much like a spider’s web finds its structure by pulling apart from itself.
Tensegrity was first understood by a sculptor, Kenneth Snelson, who then showed the idea and examples that he built to architect Buckminster Fuller. Fuller created the term “tensegrity” by first used the phrase “tensional integrity.” 
This allowed Fuller and others to start designing large architectural domes, though that is not the best way to construct very large domes.
This idea of tensegrity is also found in biology as new research in the past 10 years has discovered that cells have cytoskeletons that provide shape for the shell. But, unlike normal bones of a human, these cytoskeletons look like combination of connected strands, again something like a spider’s web.
In Madison’s opinion, the strength of the Republic would grow if enough tension existed between various factions or groups. However, if too much tension arises, the structure can break. Much like a spider’s web can be torn apart by very strong wind, political crisis can indeed push the structure to its collapse of integrity.
In our national history, over a typical period of about 80 years, there often emerges two concentrated sides of big issues. What happens is that the two sides that emerge in contest over the country become philosophically divided. The story is the same whether we are looking at the 1760s or the 2010 period. Pundits and citizens search for unity, wish for a leader to unite the country, yet the various supporters of “the issue” grow so determined, so passionate about their view, that compromise is impossible. Older people will longingly remember the years of the previous High, when everyone “pulled together,” but those years and that spirit is gone.
Today there is a growing philosophical divide between Americans, loosely drawn between “conservative” and “liberal” citizens. Madison said it better than I: “As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.” As the years take us further and further from the previous high, the willingness to listen diminishes and the willingness to fight grows. From the moment President Clinton ran into challenges of the moral kind, and the “Moral Majority” element of the conservative political right became strident, the rancor between the left and the right grew. Moveon.org came out in 1998 to support President Clinton and then led the charge against what they perceived as a stolen election in 2000. The Tea Party movement came out in 2009 against what they perceived as a President and Government who were determined to irreparably change the country.
Our history tells us that normal division of opinion on a variety of issues provides us with stability. That same history warns us what happens when the different sides decide to quit listening. Psychologists Jonathan Haidt warned in his TED talk, “as Edmund Burke said, “The restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights.” This was after the chaos of the French Revolution. So once you see this — once you see that liberals and conservatives both have something to contribute, that they form a balance on change versus stability.”
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