Red and blue fallacy

The Red Barn in Demopolis, Alabama doesn't lie. The crimson clapboard structure hasn't changed much since its barn days, though it's now a restaurant; and it sits right at the heart of the South, deep in Red America.

Two friends and I set out over winter break in search of Red America, defined for us as the mysterious land between the coasts, full of guns, rebel flags, Wal-Marts and Bush voters.

Talking about a cultural divide between "Red America" and "Blue America" became common a few years ago. Pundits got the idea from election maps that showed states for Bush in red and states for Gore in blue. "We are a divided country," say Americans today, and this is the divide we are usually talking about - rural, heartland, religious and Republican versus urban, coastal, secular and Democratic.

The whole idea seems so obvious, and has been repeated so often, that it's become accepted as a fact. But the red-blue divide is a dangerous myth. And it was at the Red Barn that cracks in the myth appeared.

After dinner we met a waitress named Jennifer at the bar. She lived up to the Red America stereotype at first. She said she was strongly pro-war and anti-Kerry. But as the night wore on she told us that she was also independent, very much in favor of gay marriage, and wanted the next president to be a woman.

Jennifer was the first of many people in the South who taught us that when it came to the big stuff, the red-blue divide doesn't hold up.

Of course, differences exist. The Red Barn played Hank Williams, Jr. at top volume, and we could not order Samuel Adams Winter Lager there, for example. But those things reflect differences of taste, not a cultural chasm.

When it comes to the big issues, folks down South have an infinite range of views, just like folks up North. They are united only by their common affection and concern for America, which, in the end, unites us Northerners too.

The red-blue divide isn't even borne out by election results. In most of those red states, no more than 60 percent of people voted for Bush. When Robert J. Vandebei of Princeton plotted the results by county, shading each county on the red-blue spectrum, most of America looked purple.

Liberals should recognize that talking in terms of red and blue hurts our side tremendously. Conservatives dreamed up the myth in the first place - Tom DeLay got into office by railing against "the Eastern elite," for example.

The right knew they could not win if people voted on their economic self-interest alone. So consciously or not, they've made urban, coastal, secular and Democratic America into an enemy. The worst conservatives have told the heartland that not only do these people disagree with you, they're fundamentally different from you; distorting and exploiting the differences by convincing Middle America that liberals are the source of all their problems.

Democrats share the blame. Americans buy the divisive concept because Democrats have no big ideas that can inspire us to think about what unites us rather than what divides us.

What unites us in the end is a belief that we are a special nation, a pride that began in grade school when we read that America gave hope to millions of immigrants, overcame the Depression, helped save the world from Hitler, and gave civil rights to our people. America was once about big things.

If we abandon the two-culture myth and speak in those terms, without pandering and without apology, we can inspire people to believe in big ideas again - like national health care, free college education, and a living wage - not the small-minded culture war.

Our last day in the South was a Sunday. We went to a Baptist church in Riceville, Tennessee. The congregation wouldn't let us leave until we joined them for a Southern game dinner.

They led us down a narrow staircase to a big low-ceilinged room where unusual dishes were spread out on banquet tables. We cautiously helped ourselves to raccoon, barbecue rabbit, squirrel dumplings and possum pot pie.

As we gathered with the old folks and families of the church over these odd foods, the differences between us could not have been starker.

But as we talked about America together, I knew we can win their hearts -- if we stop letting the right exploit the two-culture myth and come up with ideas that transcend it.