In an ever touching and so moving thought piece, Pat Buchanan wonders why oh why has our political discourse become so rancorous and divisive.
He worries deeply that as the European-Christian core that once defined us is shrinking, multi-cultural "others" bring all this divisive diversity into the culture, striking concern in the hearts of a recalcitrant Middle America.
Oh why do "they" seek to divide "us"
No, this is not snark. Highlight from PB below, full except available at the great forum for tolerance and balance, the unbelievable WND:
Pat cries crocodile tears
We seem not only to disagree with each other more than ever, but to have come almost to detest one another. Politically, culturally, racially, we seem ever ready to go for each others' throats. One half of America sees abortion as the annual slaughter of a million unborn. The other half regards the right-to-life movement as tyrannical and sexist.
Proponents of gay marriage see its adversaries as homophobic bigots. Opponents see its champions as seeking to elevate unnatural and immoral relationships to the sacred state of traditional marriage.
The question invites itself. In what sense are we one nation and one people anymore? For what is a nation if not a people of a common ancestry, faith, culture and language, who worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays and share the same music, poetry, art and literature? [Emphasis added]
Yet, today, Mexican-Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a skirmish in a French-Mexican war about which most Americans know nothing, which took place the same year as two of the bloodiest battles of our own Civil War: Antietam and Fredericksburg......
The European-Christian core of the country that once defined us is shrinking, as Christianity fades, the birth rate falls and Third World immigration surges. Globalism dissolves the economic bonds, while the cacophony of multiculturalism displaces the old American culture.
"E pluribus unum" – out of many, one - was the national motto the men of '76 settled upon. One sees the pluribus. But where is the unum? One sees the diversity. But where is the unity?
Is America, too, breaking up?
I have to give credit to PB for being an excellent rhetorician. He recognizes both sides of controversial divides without explicitly taking sides (in this specific analysis that is) and hence seems to be an objective calm voice. Of course, the idea that a nation must be one people, of one faith, of cultural tradition, and of one set of values tacitly skews the point in the direction of the teabagger, birther, deather, ten percenter, reactionary faction.
Funny, that PB never complained about divisiveness during the baby Bush administration where broad segments of the populace were angered over that administrations coming to power through a Supreme court fiat, leading the nation into an unnecessary war, trampling on the bill of the rights and more malfeasance than can be mentioned here.
Could unity really mean = right wingers are in control?