Federal Judge Richard Posner, of Chicago’s Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, explains to “Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer why he thinks the country has become increasingly politically polarized and why a “rigorous fringe” seems dominant.
“I think it’s due primarily to the crash of 2008 and the ensuing decline in economic confidence. Because in the ’30s we saw a lot of radical movements. Communists had a lot of support, and there were the extreme right-wingers,” Posner notes. “Another factor … which is operating, which is not limited to the economic situation at all, is that the growth of the electronic media has fostered extremism of all sorts because the problem is that people who used to have really extreme views on anything, they didn’t realize — they didn’t think these views were widely shared.”
To see more of Spitzer’s interview with Posner, click here.
