Stop the presses, go viral on Facebook, crash the Twitter feed, America is a divided nation. Okay, forgive my GOP style faux outrage but listening to the news and surveys you would think this is news. Guess what it is not. The question should be when we became a divided nation, or better yet when were we not.
For my children’s generation it may be when we invaded Iraq and found no WMD’s. For my generation it may be over Viet Nam. My parent’s generation was divided over civil rights for blacks. Grandparents of baby boomers were divided over prohibition. Great grand-parents might say it was the Civil War. The truth is we were divided since before there even was a United States of America.
Think about it, America attracted people seeking religious freedom. We had Puritans in New England, Quakers in New York, Catholics Maryland and in Virginia they were primarily Anglican. So we were divided over religion even as we tried to establish religious freedom.
Recently there was a story in the news questioning whether the South still views the Civil War differently than people in the North. The story entitled “The South still lies about the Civil War” appeared on Salon.com (http://www.salon.com/...). It sparked a back and forth between me and a friend who believes that the Civil War was a war of aggression started by the North. No this person is not a quack. She pointed out that for many in the South slavery was something others engaged in but they did not. Think about the movie “Shenandoah” starring James Stewart. The Stewart character was one of those Southerners. They saw it as the North invading their lands.
But for the North it was about slavery, it was about were we going to allow slavery in the states that were coming. For the North it was about Southern forces firing on Ft. Sumter. It was about secession and whether states should be allowed to withdraw from the union over this or any other issue. Thus the divided house Lincoln spoke so eloquently about.
Following the Civil War we actually began going down the road towards prohibition. The end of the Civil War saw the industrial revolution shift into high gear. Business wanted laws that favored their capitalist interests. What resulted was the Gilded Age and conservatives felt alcohol was affecting their bottom lines and therefor needed to be outlawed. The end result was the Great Depression and Prohibition.
Today we hear people say well schools would be better if prayer was still allowed in school. They say that students should have to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day and it is wrong to consider it a prayer. Well prior to 1954 it wasn’t a prayer. It became a prayer when McCarthy backers forced the addition of the words “Under God” to the Pledge. Furthermore in most school systems I’ve heard parents talk about their schools students do still say the pledge. What they don’t do is recite the Lord’s Prayer or read from the bible, something that did go on in schools prior to 1962.
Of course the civil rights movement changed America in many ways including a sea change in Southern politics. Prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 the South was primarily a Democratic strong hold as was the Midwest. Southern Democrats sometimes called Dixiecrats who fought hard against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 flocked to the then liberal Republican Party.
Republicans are accurate when they say they are responsible for passage of these laws. What they refuse to acknowledge is that afterwards racists Dixiecrats fled the Democratic Party and took over the GOP. By 1968 and the Nixon election the GOP had become the party of law enforcement. Why you ask. Probably because Southerners new to the GOP knew you can’t commit an act of civil disobedience without breaking the law. And we ain’t gonna have any of that here in Southern America, so if you don’t like it leave. Thus began the printing of those famous “America Love It or Leave It” bumper stickers.
For me and my contemporaries the war in Viet Nam was where we divided from our parents. Many of our fathers had fought in WWII and if they didn’t enlist they were drafted. Many mothers served as well as WAACs and WAVES. Winning WWII was and is the most important thing they ever accomplished. So the thought of their child refusing to answer the call to arms was outrageous.
For us it was just the opposite it wasn’t a 'call to service" it was a call to murder. Mom & Dad had “America Love It or Leave It,” we had “No Vietnamese Fought in Our Civil War.” Or my personal favorite was the simple “Impeach Nixon.” And once again America was highly divided over the loss of life in a war not of our making. Those of my parent’s generation that opposed WWII did so for the exact same reason.
Back then we often looked forward to the day when we were the adults and could change things. Now my generation is scurrying around from one faux scandal to the next. We are electing Tea Party candidates that haven’t a clue what our founding fathers’ were all about. We’re screaming for prayer in school, stronger penalties for drug use, we allow wholesale reading of our e-mails to protect our freedom (yea let me know how that works), some claim the president isn’t even an American, some think that the IRS is unconstitutional. Oh yea we are divided.
This morning I heard Robert Gates, former Defense Secretary speaking about how we used to be governed by those who were either center left or center right and that allowed for debate which leads to compromise. Now we have two parties so interested in retaining power they refuse to compromise, which means they refuse to govern.
So you’ve been reading awhile (or I hope so) and you might be asking what solutions for this I might have to offer. Sorry to disappoint but I’m not that smart. I am one of those who are left not center left. I believe we should remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance and “in God we trust” from our money because these were out growths of the McCarthy Era.
I believe we should completely legalize all drugs because when we ended prohibition we said as a nation that it is okay to get loaded, high, stoned zonked whatever you prefer. The law may have been about booze but the backlash that ended it was about the crime prohibition visited on this nation.
I believe the GOP has been taken over by capitalists whose only interest is their personal wealth. They forget when “What’s good for GM is good for America” was the economic philosophy GM was a union house. Now the GOP is waging war on our unions.
We need to wage a “War On ___” Well in my life time we’ve tried that. We’ve had a “War on Poverty.” I don’t know about you but I think we can agree that one failed. The “War on Drugs” – failed. And now the “War On Terrorism” is failing.
Let’s take the last two first. The “War On Drugs” failed because man has been altering his /her perception for as long as we know. You may as well attempt to outlaw sex, oh wait they do that too.
The “War On Terrorism” is failing because terrorism is a tactic, and how do you end a tactic. It is not by invading their countries. Most people in these countries want nothing more than to live peacefully in their homeland. Those on the right say they understand our founding fathers yet they refuse to acknowledge that our founding fathers were by today’s definitions – terrorists.
And the one “War On …” that could have actually accomplished something the “War On Poverty,” well that has been replaced with Citizens United’s concept that corporations are people. The reality is that the “War On Poverty,” could have had a major effect on the other two.
If we had stemmed the tide of poverty research suggests that fewer people would turn to drugs if they weren’t caught in systemic poverty. If we had stemmed the spread of poverty due to unchecked capitalism maybe the Muslims in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and throughout the Middle East would not have been caught up in their own poverty. Poverty caused by American capitalists funneling money into the pockets of the people who actually are repressing them.
America is divided on this I think we can actually agree. What we may never agree on is how to change that. I believe we don’t. I believe that the diversity that is at the root of our divisions should also be the root of our solutions. What is unclear is can find our way back to the spirit that that led to the Massachusetts Compromise which led to the adoption of our Bill of Rights and the ratification of our constitution. I don’t know but right now that’s a glimmer of light at the end of a very long tunnel. I can be certain of one thing we don’t get there by sitting on our ass and not voting. You want to know what our forefathers were about – voting. "One man, one vote" and "no taxation without representation" they were the rallying cries of those that started a great nation. Voting started a great nation and can now save it.