National Problems Need Local Solutions

Spiritualizing political ideologies produces what we might call a "politics of abstraction" in which adherents join an ideological tribe and defend its tenets with an inflexibility that the tribe's members regard as virtuous. Members of factions experience a good deal of fortification from the "unanimity of sentiment" but they are then disproportionately "shocked and disturbed" when they encounter any opposition to their ideological views.