A wise man has said that a house divided cannot stand. Our country has never been more divided than it is today. A friend of mine disagreed and thought we were more divided at the time of the Civil War. I said no, because then we were divided only on two issues: states’ rights and slavery. Now we are divided on everything; and if that wise man is right, we need to focus on uniting our country while we still can.
I want to discuss 6 key, fundamental issues that are at the
root of this division. There could be
more. I just stopped looking when I got
to six, so I could write this article. But
by identifying the issues, we know where we need to focus our discussions. And discuss them we must.
The first issue is whether the United States is essentially
a good country, the freest country in the history of the world, a light on a hill,
an example to the nations, or whether our country is fatally flawed, inherently
racist and oppressive, founded on hatred for non-whites, and in serious need of
a major rewrite of our founding documents.
Another person, a wise woman, once said that democracy is
the worst form of government, except for all the others. And herein is the dilemma.
When you allow people enormous freedom, you are saying that
you trust people. You trust them to do what
is right. Our Founders believed in and believed
in teaching our children such things as the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule
(Do unto others as you would have other do unto you.), and the second greatest
commandment, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. All of these are from the Bible.
If our people actually cared for each other and wanted to do
what is right, they could enjoy the immense freedoms described to us in the Bill
of Rights, the first ten amendments to our Constitution.
Some will say that our country’s history of oppression and
discrimination against blacks and other minorities proves that we are not a good
country. But like the statement about
democracy, any person living here still has more freedom and opportunity than
anywhere else in the world. You can look
at instances of discrimination and feel oppressed, or you can look at the
opportunities and feel empowered. The
choice is yours.
The second issue is whether our country is inherently
religious or secular. By religious or
secular, I mean the structure of the country, not the people itself. That will follow.
The Declaration of Independence says that our rights are
inalienable and come from God. That
means that our rights precede and supersede government. Government did not give them and government
cannot take them away.
When we say that God gave us these rights, how did we know
that He did? And what God are we talking
about? Some religions don’t believe in a
right to life. Another major one does
not believe in a right to pursue happiness, as the Founders understood it. That’s why God, prayer, and the Bible were
part of our public education, public life, and policy making for almost 200 years
after our nation’s founding, until the court called supreme said we can’t do
that.
When we remove God from our public life and public education
and public policy, then rights are no longer inalienable. They are negotiable, contingent, limited. They also change in other ways.
Our founding rights were things that we could do without the
government’s permission, regulation, or interference. Now rights have become things to which we are
entitled. Rights are what is owed to us.
Which leads us to the third dividing issue: the role of government. The Declaration of Independence asserts that
governments exist to secure us our inalienable rights. Now that we have removed God from our public
life, education, and policy, government exists to take care of our people. People have rights to more and more things
that the government now must ensure that they have.
And as we are learning, there is not enough money in the
world to take care of the people who rely on government to provide for their
needs.
The last three issues have become the secular answer to the
Ten Commandments, though I don’t know what they call them. Are they commandments? Edicts? Goals?
And those are diversity, equity, and inclusion.
So the fourth issue dividing our country is diversity. We are told that diversity is our strength,
but we are not told how or why that is.
If life was about solving problems such that every different
possibility of looking at a problem was needed to reach the best solution,
then, yes, diversity is a strength. But
we would be hard pressed to think of an example where we need that.
In real life, people gather with those of common interests. Churches, clubs, organizations all have
common goals and activities that unite them.
Your friends are those you share things with.
America was founded around a common set of ideals: equality
and inalienable rights. Not equality in
that everybody must have the same standard of living, same incomes, same education,
but equality such that nobody has a divine or inherent right to rule over other
people, like they had in Europe at that time.
We have millions of people who come into our country to live
every year, legally and illegally. Do we
even care that they know the principles on which our country was built? How can we be united if we have a hundred
different ideas about what America is?
The fifth issue is equity.
Equity and diversity go together. We no longer think of our people as
Americans, but we are all part of smaller subsets of people, by race, color,
religion or lack of one, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, did I miss
one, all groups competing for a piece of a limited pie.
We are no longer on one team, America, but we are all on
different teams. As one team, America,
we sought out the best and brightest, but now we are more concerned that every
subgroup is proportionally represented rather than we have the best people for a
position.
Thankfully, we still have sports where people qualify
strictly on their abilities and not their membership in various subgroups.
The last issue is inclusion, where we will demand things of
everyone for the sake of a few. The
Chicago Public Schools, for example, no longer has male and female bathrooms. They are designated by the facilities provided
in each one: some have only stalls and some have urinals as well. Students are free to use whichever one they
want. This means that the vast majority
of the students may find themselves sharing a bathroom with people of the opposite
sex, which can make them feel uncomfortable and unsafe.
Is this a wise policy?
We didn’t explore these issues in depth. But we did identify them, and these are the
things we need to talk about, as families, in schools, and in our government
halls.
These are the issues that divide us, and we need to understand
them so we can resolve them, so we can heal as a nation.
