America, and Americans - what
do they have left in common? If that strikes you as an odd question to ask, you probably haven't taken a public position (as I've been doing in these
recent posts) on something like the
the 1st, or
2nd Amendments to our Constitution. Do that, and I think you'll quickly notice, as in these examples below, how divided we now are by the very ideas that once defined us:
-
On our college campus's, opposing views are increasingly being met not with the force of persuasion, but the persuasion of force:
"...A controversial conservative commentator was escorted by police from California State University, Los Angeles as angry demonstrators protested his presence on campus Thursday afternoon...."
- in the state of California, a State Senator has proposed infringing upon the freedom of speech, by proposing a bill, SB1424, to have the state approve which news is fit to print:
"...This bill would require any person who operates a social media, as defined, Internet Web site with a physical presence in California to develop a strategic plan to verify news stories shared on its Web site. The bill would require the plan to include, among other things, a plan to mitigate the spread of false information through news stories, the utilization of fact-checkers to verify news stories, providing outreach to social media users, and placing a warning on a news story containing false information...."
- Dana Loesch is a clear example of how exercising those rights that are protected under the 1st Amendment, in support of those protected by the 2nd Amendment, can result in not only a barrage of tweets and shouts for you to be raped and murdered (non-violently, of course), but it can also leave you in need of physical protection to escape those who'd physically like to harm you:
"..."I had to have a security detail to get out," she said of the Sunrise, Fla. event. "I wouldn't be able to exit that if I didn't have a private security detail. There were people rushing the stage and screaming burn her. And I came there to talk solutions and I still am going to continue that conversation on solutions as the NRA has been doing since before I was alive."..."
- Even the idea of Americans being 'United' is dividing us, as this 'think piece' that was endorsed by the CEO of Twitter as a "Great Read", which yearns for one party rule, the end of the GOP, while promoting California as the role model for a new 'peaceful' Civil War to banish 'The Right' from power, and from 'respectable' society. If you doubt that, just take note that part 4 of this 'great read', is subtitled:
"Why there’s no bipartisan way forward at this juncture in our history — one side must win"
These are not simply emotional outbursts that've been stirred up in public gatherings, they are the results of persistent, considered intellectual positions that have been percolating up from academia, and have been spilling out into our mainstream conversations for decades. Some recent examples can be found in last year's debates over whether it was ok to "
Punch a Nazi" (with the implication being that violence as political speech is ok, if you happen to think of the other side as being a Nazi, or in sympathy with them), or the New York Times' opinion piece calling to "
Repeal the 2nd Amendment", and of course we recently had a retired Supreme Court Justice writing an op-ed in that same 'newspaper of record',
calling to Repeal the 2nd Amendment, on the basis of public opinion - or at least that part of the public that agrees with him - rather than on the basis of those American ideals which the Constitution was written to preserve, protect and defend.
As I say, it's easy to see what divides us today - but how easy is it for Americans of today to see what it was that once united us, and how?
Back at the time of our founding, America was 13 colonies of people who then, as now, held often radically different views and interests, and were prone to dislike and distrust the people in those 'other' colonies. How were
they able to unite? Today, more than ever, that's a question worth re-asking.
Ideas, not positions, united us
When Thomas Jefferson took up the task of writing the
Declaration of Independence, he intended it to express ideas that were
common to the American mind,
"...Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, &c...."
