Nor does our nagging sense of discord reflect any actually dramatic differences in our personal priorities. Americans of every age, gender, political party, and region overwhelmingly say that "family" is most important to them, far more so than religion, work, community, or politics. Interestingly, such devotion to family is actually 13 points higher in the "liberal" northeast than in the "heartland" Midwest.

Religion isn't the source of our division, either: 80 percent of Americans say religion is fairly or very important in their own lives, and almost 90 percent say they believe in God. In any case, a sizeable majority says it's "okay to be divided on religion" and still feel like a united country.

And it's not traditional social issues that are driving us apart, either. In many of the earlier eras we remember as more united, Americans fought pitched battles over so-called "alternative" lifestyles. Today, such lifestyles are anything but. According to the poll, large majorities of Americans now say that contraception, interracial marriage, sex education in schools, unmarried cohabitation, stem cell research, gambling, and divorce are morally acceptable. Even pre-marital sex and having children out of wedlock are morally acceptable to the majority of Americans under 65, and homosexuality is morally acceptable to the majority under 45. While marijuana is still about a draw (47 percent morally acceptable to 51 percent morally objectionable), for the most part what used to be "counterculture" is now, simply, culture.

For sure, we are still quite divided on abortion and guns, with 60 percent of us finding abortion morally objectionable versus 37 percent of us finding it morally acceptable, and 51 percent of Americans saying it is more important to protect gun owners' rights versus 47 percent who say it's more important to control gun ownership.

But most of the historically divisive social issues just don't rile us up like they used to. We've even reached a kind of unprecedented truce on the origin of life, with almost half of Americans -- including 58 percent of young people and majorities of people in the Northeast and Midwest -- saying they believe in a "combination" of creationism and evolution. Perhaps just as strikingly, only nine percent of Americans say they don't believe in climate change.

The source of our sense of disunity, it seems, is not so much the way we live, but the way our leaders do. When asked which figures in America do the most to divide our nation, every group in America, across age, gender, political party, and region said "politicians," choosing them at a rate of more than five to one over media figures, corporations, religious leaders, and others. Americans particularly blame "money in politics" and "Congressional gridlock" for driving us apart.