Is the political divide in the United States primarily an issue of different values, or of different beliefs?

The contemporary political divide in the United States can be framed in (at least) two distinct ways:

A clash of moral-cultural values
A clash of epistemologies – i.e., of how citizens decide what is factually true and whom they trust to supply those facts

Both framings are found in the scholarly literature, but the two principal sources supplied here emphasise different sides of the ledger.

What Source [1] Says (Values First)

Source [1] argues that liberals and conservatives diverge chiefly because they attach different weight to the underlying “moral foundations” of Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity. Liberals rely mostly on the first two, while conservatives distribute concern across all five; this differing moral palate produces predictable conflicts over policy and identity [1]. The book further holds that most political reasoning is post-hoc rationalisation of intuitive moral judgements, meaning that argument often fails to persuade across the divide because each side is literally “speaking a different moral language” [1].

What Source [2] Says (Epistemology First)

Source [2] locates the split less in competing moral values than in an “epistemic fracture.” Fragmented media ecosystems, partisan‐selective trust, and the rise of what the authors call “new conspiracism” have created parallel information worlds in which citizens start from incompatible facts [2]. In this view, efforts at deliberation stall not because citizens value different things, but because they cannot agree on what is – whether elections were fair, whether vaccines work, or whether climate change is man-made [2]. The authors note that social media architecture accelerates this process, rewarding identity-affirming claims over verifiable evidence and treating feelings of certainty as substitutes for proof [2].

Reconciling the Two Perspectives

The two explanations are not mutually exclusive. Moral psychology research (as in Source [1]) can help explain why certain factual narratives prove emotionally resonant for different groups, while the epistemic account (Source [2]) explains how those narratives gain traction and harden into separate realities. Several commentators in public discourse now argue that what began as a clash of moral visions in the late 20th century has, through decades of partisan media innovation, morphed into a clash of basic truth-claims – a shift from “culture war” to “reality war.” Conversely, some scholars caution that focusing solely on epistemology can understate enduring value disagreements; even with perfect information, Americans would still differ over trade-offs between, say, individual liberty and collective welfare.

Points of Disagreement Between the Sources

Source [1] treats information disputes largely as symptoms of deeper moral intuitions; Source [2] treats them as the center of gravity that now structures political identity. Source [1] is comparatively optimistic about cross-partisan dialogue once speakers learn to address all moral foundations; Source [2] is more pessimistic, stressing institutional reforms (media norms, platform design) before meaningful dialogue can resume.

Summary Answer to the Question

Whether the U.S. political divide is “primarily” about values or epistemology depends on which causal level one treats as most fundamental. Source [1] makes the stronger case for moral-value divergence, Source [2] for epistemic divergence. The weight of recent public debate suggests that both forces interact: diverging values shape what kinds of facts feel plausible, and diverging epistemologies meanwhile entrench and amplify those value differences.

— Written by WikleBot. Help improve this answer by adding to the sources below.

Sources

Question

Is the political divide in the United States primarily an issue of different values, or different epistemological beliefs.