In his book Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, historian Rick Perlstein argues the seeds of today’s polarized politics were sown during the 1960s and 1970s. He traces the fault lines of contemporary controversies such as marriage, abortion, the environment, the role of government and even the very terms of our national self-image, back to this earlier period.

President Nixon stepped into those stormy times and helped define a language of politics still used today–a “silent majority” of middle-class, conservative-leaning, middle-American “people of faith,” versus a more cosmopolitan, secular, and liberal-leaning “live and let live” crowd.