One Nation...Indivisible

In a provocative but undisciplined work, Chapman, former president of The Sage Colleges and visiting resident scholar at Harvard, and Colby, former academic dean of Russell Sage College, cover much ground without achieving much depth. Alarmed by the ""uncompromising moral zealotry"" of Newt Gingrich and his followers, the authors explore the dangers of excessive partisanship. They first look to the Founders for guidance and discover that there has always been conflict. Like modern conservatives, anti-Federalists feared the national government and sought to keep power in state and local hands. But the majority of our forefathers understood the proper role of a central authority, Chapman and Colby say, andn they insist that the welfare of the nation still depends upon the effective functioning of federal government. Apparently, the real problem is not partisanship so much as which side is winning. Next, the authors argue that an overemphasis on economic goals has distorted foreign policy decision making ""and foreign relations are being driven off course by Rightist antigovernmentalism,"" yet economic interest in foreign policy is hardly unique to conservatives. With regard to immigration policy, Chapman and Colby find that fragmented efforts across states and ideological divisions within the federal government have produced incoherence. Unfortunately, the economic interests that surely drive much of the politics surrounding immigration have now largely disappeared from the authors' analysis. Readers will be impressed by the authors' sincere concern regarding the current state of American politics, but this volume is more a loose catalogue of worries than a rigorous foundation for action. (Feb.)