Our country
has never been more divided than it is today, and it is near the breaking
point.
The reason
it is so divided is that we now have 3 competing narratives about the nature of
our country, and there is no common ground with any of them. That means there is nowhere to compromise or
reach agreement.
The first
narrative has to do with the foundation of our nation.
The Founders
believed and the founding principle of our nation is that God gave unalienable
rights to human beings, rights that precede and supersede government. But those rights can only come from God,
because in a secular country, there is no higher authority than the government.
The court
called supreme said that our nation cannot aid or favor one religion over
another, so we end up with no religion at all in our public square, we cannot
mention God, so we cannot even talk about unalienable rights in our public
schools. Generations have grown up not even
knowing that we have unalienable rights.
But our
nation is a nation of rights, so without acknowledging God, the only rights
left are those given to us by the government or the consensus of the
people. While unalienable rights are
things that you can do without the government’s permission, regulation, or
interference, government-given rights are things that the government owes you,
things that you are entitled to.
Since our nation
changed its understanding on human rights, government spending has exploded,
such that there isn’t enough money in the whole country to meet all the demands
for it.
The second
narrative is about the character of our nation.
Actually there are two narratives here.
One, the first, is that our nation is the greatest nation in the history
of the world, a nation built on freedom, that has lifted more people out of poverty
and oppression than any other nation in history.
The other
narrative is that our nation is inherently and irreparably flawed and must be
dismantled and redone from the ground up.
The simplest
way to tell which narrative here is correct is by looking at our immigration
numbers.
No nation in the world has more
people who want to move here. Far
more. Not only that, but those who find
our country so reprehensible have no plans on leaving it to find a better
one. They can’t name one country that is
better. A few countries score higher in
public happiness or things like that, but there is no mad rush to go to any of
them.
So half our
country wants to make it better. The
other half wants to take it apart and start over.
The third
narrative is about the morals of our nation, that our country is inherently racist
and oppressive. Most recently, our
nation has been torn apart by weeks of violent riots and protests over these same
things.
There are
three problems though with all this commotion.
First, I
have been following all the news closely, and I see no concrete proposals to
deal with or to solve this racism and oppression. There is a proposal to defund the police,
which is interpreted to mean either a total disbanding of them or just a
reallocation of much of their funding to social services.
But that has
nothing to do with the ‘inherent’ racism and oppression.
The second
problem is that this isn’t really about racism and oppression.
Why do I say
this? The killing of George Floyd brought
worldwide protests and violence. Yet every
week, black communities in our big cities are battered by gun violence, killing
the smallest of our children, and the protests are small, short-lasting, and
peaceful.
Why the
difference?
Because the
major protests are organized by political groups with bigger agendas. They want to create as much dissatisfaction,
disgust, and disillusionment as possible with everything about our current system,
so they can use a crisis to make basic, major changes to that system.
If these
groups were really interested in black lives, they would have been protesting the
killings of our children years ago.
And the
third problem with all this commotion is that it is not meant to solve
anything.
Why do I say
that?
This
overlaps a little with the last point.
The people who have organized these protests don’t want to fix the system
but abolish it and make a new one.
But it’s
also about blaming ‘other’ people for all the problems. They cannot tell you what they want other people
to do to fix these problems. Some say they
want reparations. Money. So, say, we give everybody who wants it $50,000.
After they
buy that car, that flat screen tv, or maybe put a down payment on a house, what
will have changed? Will the system be fairer? Will everybody be happy now? Will everybody like everybody now?
Nothing will
have changed. The money will be spent,
and everybody and everything will be back where we started.
People
forget that our entire current welfare system started shortly after the passing
of our civil rights laws and was primarily meant to help those same people who had
marched for those rights.
When the problem
for everything is that other people aren’t doing enough for you, then there is
nothing you can do for yourself that will make a difference. And then people lose hope, and you’ve lost
everything.
Nobody is
giving any specific things that we can change.
And actually
a lot of people like it that way. Because
they want to take down the whole system.
Without giving specific proposals, they want to focus on the system
itself. That the whole thing is
wrong. Take the whole thing down and
start over.
Those people
who remember history know where this is leading. This was done before in Russia, China, Cuba,
Venezuela, and a few other places.
Those who
remember history remember that those were countries where people have been trying
for decades to leave. They built walls
to keep their people from escaping.
So what can
we do to get through all this?
For decades
now, our political leaders have pushed for diversity. They said that that was our strength. And they were wrong. It weakened us with everybody pulling in
different directions.
Instead of focusing
on what divides us, we need to have something that unites us.
We would
need political leaders to show the way. Actually
it doesn’t have to be a political leader, but somebody who can get the nation’s
attention. And right now, our nation is
being run by whoever can make the most noise.
Our founding
principle of unalienable rights given to us by God is what made our country the
freest and most prosperous in the world.
I believe that should be our starting point. That is why our Founders went to war to
create this new nation in the first place.
Yes, they had particular grievances with England, but those were merely
examples of how England was trampling on their unalienable rights.
The idea of
our nation being reprehensible should be rejected by the mere fact that
millions more people want to come here than actually can. Maybe in some people’s minds the nation is
inherently evil. When more people want
to leave here than come here, then maybe we can talk about that.
Is America
racist? Does that mean that not
everybody will like you for things you can’t change? By that definition, perhaps so. But if you think that you cannot achieve
better things for your life by living wisely, no amount of government programs
or government money is going to make any difference.
