The Danville Area Community College Library kicked off their “That’s a Novel Idea” series Wednesday morning (Sept 17th) with Distinguished Professor of Political Science Dr. Charles Hantz talking about his textbook; “The Story of America’s Political System: Why Things Are the Way That They Are.”
Prior to his talk, Dr. Hantz told CIMG that he believes the intense, in the trenches partisanship in this country began around 2010. And if you ask him “are enough people aware of the cause that a change can be made”……..the answer right now is NO. Something has to happen first,, which is why he wrote the book.
AUDIO: (The textbook aims to) provide that analytical framework to understand why things are the way that they are. And it also suggests what has to happen for political tensions to decrease. From what I’ve seen on the news it’s probably not going to happen anytime soon. So I think political tensions will continue to be very high for the foreseeable future.
During his talk, Dr. Hantz explained that the protagonist in his textbook is our political system the way the Founding Fathers designed it to be. The antagonist, on the other hand, is the current environment keeping it from operating as it should. His hope is that someday there will be a “happily ever after” moment, once the conflict is resolved.
AUDIO: It’s based on ideology, and those beliefs are hard to change. So time will tell, but that’s the basis of the conflict, is an ideological conflict. That equation has to be solved first, before there can be any lessening of the tensions that we currently have witnessed.
Future “That’s a Novel Idea” events at the DACC Library will include Dr. Eric Simonson; Wednesday, October 22nd and 10 AM; and Dr. Jon Wade; Wednesday, November 5th at 11 AM.
