For much of the 20^th century, Americans typically identified as either liberal or conservative. Conservatives, who ultimately gravitated to the Republican Party, supposedly wanted less interventionist and more decentralized government, balanced budgets and lower taxes, and public policies shaped by traditional values. Liberals, who ultimately gravitated to the Democratic Party, ostensibly wanted muscular government intervention to correct problems they saw in society: racial and gender prejudice, poverty, and other inequalities.
 

In truth, the divisions between the two sides weren’t so clear. Democrat John Kennedy cut taxes and wanted to deregulate much of the American economy; fellow Democrat Jimmy Carter assumed the deregulatory cause more than a decade later. Republican Richard Nixon launched an unprecedented expansion of government power with his creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. He also imposed wage and price controls in August 1971, arguably the closest the United States has come to state socialism. Democrat Bill Clinton slowed government spending, signed welfare reform legislation, and balanced the budget while keeping taxes at reasonable levels. Republican George W. Bush enacted the largest expansion in federal entitlements in a generation.
 

The lines between American liberalism and conservatism are blurred because those labels don’t fit U.S. politics as well as they do other parts of the world, especially in Europe. Conservatism denotes adherence to old traditions and social structures, while liberalism rejects those in favor of liberty. But the United States’ very founding was a rejection of the old: British monarchy. It was replaced by a decentralized and limited government subservient to a constitutional representative democracy in what was even then a highly diverse country.
 

Heavily influenced by the English and Scottish Enlightenment, the Founders believed in the power of private interaction to satisfy people’s desires and solve human problems. As Margaret Thatcher observed, "Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy."
 

The Founding’s political philosophy was thus both conservative and liberal: the “conservative” American tradition was the “liberal” new ideas of the Enlightenment. As a result, subsequent American political fights usually weren’t about what should be the country’s core principles, but rather how those principles should be realized. Who, exactly, has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? What steps should government take to secure those rights? What happens when one person’s liberty infringes on another’s pursuit of happiness?
 

By the latter part of the 20^th century, the nation seemingly had reached general agreement on many of those disputes.[1] Americans, by nature of their very humanity, would have a wide range of individual rights regardless of their religion, race or gender. The United States would have a strong military, but would employ that power judiciously. The economy would largely be left to private interactions with limited government intervention. Freedom of religion, speech, assembly, and the press would be robust, and the nation’s marketplace of ideas would be highly competitive. Government would provide a social safety net, but it would be limited. Though Americans would vehemently disagree on the specifics of politics, there was a remarkably broad consensus on the generalities.
 

This bore the fruit of the last two decades of the 20^th century. The 1970s’ double-digit inflation and unemployment ended, the information age dawned, the United States won the Cold War, unemployment fell below 2 percent, and the federal budget was balanced. Even the dot-com bust did little to harm the nation’s peace and prosperity.
 

Then the 21^st century dawned, followed by three calamities: the 9/11 terrorist attacks, two wars in the Middle East, and the housing bust and subsequent financial crisis and recession. None of those were the fault of the late 20^th century consensus, but it shattered nonetheless. Now it is being replaced on both the political left and right by a movement that is wholly at odds with the Founding philosophy.
 

Instead of the conservative and liberal American ideals of individual freedom and political consensus-building, this movement favors using government to benefit specific social groups and harm others. For the “out groups,” free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, property rights, economic freedom, and equal protection under the law are all to be constrained, so as not to impose on the “in group.” This movement exists in both the Republican Party and Democratic Party, differing only on which social groups are deemed “in” and “out.” Hence the problem: sooner or later, each “in” group will be turned out, and subjugated by a new “in” group wielding the powers of government. Call this movement “the new tribalism.”
 

Americans who remain committed to the Founding philosophy need to recognize the nation’s current political divide isn’t between conservatives and liberals, or between Democrats and Republicans. It’s between themselves on one side and the tribalists on the other. The true conservatives and liberals must not let themselves be lured into joining the tribalists by claims of loyalty to the party, or “real Americans,” or the “working people.” It’s time to put such tribalism aside in favor of commitment to the American ideal.
 

Americans with that commitment—whether Democrat or Republican, avowed conservative or liberal—must learn to hang together. Otherwise, the new tribalists will hang us all separately.