In his book Moral Tribes, Joshua Greene talks about the Tragedy of the Commons and what he calls the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality. The former puts "we" above "I" to solve societal problems. The latter pits "we" against "them," creating societal problems. This is both the blessing and curse of tribalism.
I've argued before that we are good at naturally sorting ourselves into communities of like-minded thinkers (although the "community" aspect has been dying in the absence of religion and civic engagement). However, we are terrible at dealing with other tribes.
I believe that we might have a government system able to solve this problem. Our sovereign states and localities should be able to operate as different like-minded moral communities, with little overreach from the federal government. Government's role should be to address what we are not naturally good at: communicating between moral communities.
Let's take the multicultural metaphor of a salad. Instead of a melting pot, people are expected to stay a tomato, onion, or whatever belief or race they represent. But this only works if they are tossed in the same dressing. But what is this dressing that binds all these different beliefs, cultures, and tribes to America? This is the problem we can't solve on our own. It might take intervention from the federal government.
