WHO'S POLITICALLY SEGREGATED?

David Brooks opines that our "age of political segregation" is the result of higher education, a quest for self-validation, and geographical isolation:

To a large degree, polarization in America is a cultural consequence of the information age. This sort of economy demands and encourages education, and an educated electorate is a polarized electorate.
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Once you've joined a side, the information age makes it easier for you to surround yourself with people like yourself. And if there is one thing we have learned over the past generation, it's that we are really into self-validation.

We don't only want radio programs and Web sites from members of our side — we want to live near people like ourselves. Information age workers aren't tied down to a mine, a port or a factory. They have more opportunities to shop for a place to live, and they tend to cluster in places where people share their cultural aesthetic and, as it turns out, political values. So every place becomes more like itself, and the cultural divides between places become stark. The information age was supposed to make distance dead, but because of clustering, geography becomes more important.

The political result is that Republican places become more Republican and Democratic places become more Democratic.
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People lose touch with others in opposing, now distant, camps. And millions of kids are raised in what amount to political ghettoes.

Boy, David needs to get out more. Here I am, a lifelong progressive Democrat married to a reformed Republican (now a progressive Democrat), experiencing every day a work environment where, I'd estimate, the Republican-to-Democrat ratio is about 10 to 1, living in a gated community where I'd guess the same ratio is about 2 to 1, raising two Democratic sons, one independent daughter, and two Republican daughters. (The independent is the most highly educated -- our family is nothing if not free-thinking.) I listen to right-wing talk radio every morning and afternoon on my daily commute so I will better understand the opposition view, but I never watch Fox and am an obsessive CNN and MSNBC watcher (if there were an AirAmerica for TV, I'd opt for that, but my choices are limited). I read progressive blogs and foreign newspapers, but I keep up with conservative publications when I can.

Maybe David hasn't noticed, but Democrats tend to be much more open to bipartisanship than his Republican/conservative cronies. Maybe his circle clusters among like-minded people and aren't interested in opposing viewpoints, but my Democratic acquaintances are. We continue to expose ourselves throughout our lives to new and different ideas and experiences. That's education, too, not just four (or six or eight) years we spent in college in our youth. And maybe that's why research indicates that better-educated people vote Democrat.