I’ve been wondering since January how long this nation could survive the Presidency of Barack Obama.
I had really high hopes on November 5th. I really did. Knowing full well that the fabric that holds this nation together was fraying under the pressure of an electorate choosing to expand their hearts and minds in spite of a bruising primary on both sides of the aisle, 52% of the people in this country, and many more who for a variety of reasons couldn’t even get to the polls, took a step of faith.
I wondered how long it would hold. This week, I got my answer.
Six Months. Six months it took before the seams came apart. And the tears are deep and the fabric is shredding by the second! In any conflict you reach a point where everyone realizes that perhaps we’ve gone too far – TODAY, WE ARE AT THAT POINT!
This week alone, as elected officials fanned out over the country to fulfill their elected duty of meeting with their respective constituencies and hearing what’s on their mind regarding how to FINALLY enact a healthcare system in this country that works for ALL of its citizens, we’ve seen: Violence, threats of all out civil war, casually throwing around the act of "lynching", pictures of elected officials hung in effigy, townhalls cancelled because of death threats, and a fully coordinated, public effort to stifle true political discourse. But make no mistake, the chaos and hysteria on display has very little to do with healthcare reform. Oh I hear their words, and see their signs, put their eyes tell a different story. This is about them losing a grip on a well-orchestrated system that has served them well.
Pre-Civil War vs. Today
If you dig a little bit into the history immediately preceding the civil war, sentiments in the country are eerily similar to where we find ourselves today. Southern sentiment prior to the civil war looked at the right to preserve slavery as an institution not as a moral issue, but as a fundamental right afforded to them by the very constitution of the Republic.
Listen to the voice of Confederate Major General John B. Gordon:
We must, therefore, look beyond the institution of slavery for the fundamental issues which dominated and inspired all classes of the contending sections. It is not difficult to find them. The "Old Man Eloquent," William E. Gladstone, who was perhaps England's foremost statesman of the century, believed that the Government formed by our fathers was the noblest political fabric ever devised by the brain of man. This undoubtedly is true; and yet before these inspired builders were dead, controversy arose as to the nature and powers of their free constitutional government. Indeed, in the very convention that framed the Constitution the clashing theories and bristling arguments of 1787 presaged the glistening bayonets of 1861. In the cabinet of the first President, the contests between Hamilton and Jefferson, representatives of conflicting constitutional constructions, were so persistent and fierce as to disturb the harmony of executive councils and tax the patience of Washington. The disciples of each of these political prophets numbered in their respective ranks the greatest statesmen and purest patriots. The followers of each continuously battled for these conflicting theories with a power and earnestness worthy of the founders of the Republic. Generation after generation, in Congress, on the hustings, and through the press, these irreconcilable doctrines were urged by constitutional expounders, until their arguments became ingrained into the very fibre of the brain and conscience of the sections. The long war of words between the leaders waxed at last into a war of guns between their followers.
(emphasis mine)
http://www.civilwarhome.com/...
Sound familiar anyone? This is where we are folks! I’m not sure we really get that yet. I don’t think our elected officials get this yet. And it’s for dang sure that the media doesn’t get it yet as it continues to be complicit in fanning the flames by parroting outright lies and half-truths day in and day out.
Not convinced we’re in a pre-war stance? Here’s another bit from Major General Gordon:
Thus the opposing arguments drawn from current opinions and from the actions and opinions of the Fathers were piled mountain high on both sides. Thus the mighty athletes of debate wrestled in the political arena, each profoundly convinced of the righteousness of his position; hurling at each other their ponderous arguments, which reverberated like angry thunderbolts through legislative halls, until the whole political atmosphere resounded with the tumult. Long before a single gun was fired public sentiment North and South had been lashed into a foaming sea of passion; and every timber in the framework of the Government was bending and ready to break from "the heaving ground-swell of the tremendous agitation." Gradually and naturally in this furnace of sectional debate, sectional ballots were crystallized into sectional bullets; and both sides came at last to the position formerly held by the great Troup of Georgia: "The argument is exhausted; we stand to our guns." -
http://www.civilwarhome.com/...
But it doesn’t have to go down like this. WE HAVE THE CHANCE TO BE BETTER THAN OUR FOREFATHERS! Who will stand up, stand athwart our bloody history, and say NOT THIS TIME?!
We need our progressive leaders to quit just shaking their heads and saying "what a shame, what a shame" and begin a full, coordinated, national campaign AGAINST HATE SPEECH IN THIS COUNTRY.
We need the NAACP, The National Urban League, The SCLC, The National Action Network, Operation Push, and every other Civil Rights group in the land to get mobilized! This is not a drill!!!
We need Churches, Synogogues, and Temples who care about the overarching principle that love cancels out fear to join this mission.
As a nation, we stand on the precipice of history – which way will we go?