Politically, culturally,racially, we seem ever ready to go for each others’ throats.
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Flying home from London, where the subject of formal debate on the70th anniversary of World War II had been whether Winston Churchill wasa liability or asset to the Free World, one arrives in the middle of afar more acrimonious national debate right here in the United States.
At issue: Should Barack Obama be allowed to address tens of millionsof American children, inside their classrooms, during school hours?
Conservative talk-show hosts saw a White House scheme to turn publicschools into indoctrination centers where the socialist ideology ofObama would be spoon-fed to captive audiences of children forced tolisten to Big Brother — and then do assignments on his sermon.
The liberal commentariat raged about right-wing paranoia.
Yet Byron York of The Washington Examiner dug back to 1991 todiscover that, when George H.W. Bush went to Alice Deal Junior High tospeak to America’s school kids, the left lost it.
“The White House turned a Northwest Washington junior high classroominto a television studio and its students into props,” railed TheWashington Post. Education Secretary Lamar Alexander was called beforea House committee. The National Education Association denounced Bush.And Congress ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate.
Obama’s actual speech proved about as controversial as a Nancy Reagan appeal to eighth-graders to “Just say no!” to drugs.
Yet, the episode reveals the poisoned character of our politics.
We saw it earlier on display in August, when the crowds that cameout for town hall meetings to oppose Obama’s health care plans werecalled “thugs,” “fascists,” “racists” and “evil-mongers” by nationalDemocrats.
We see it as Rep. Joe Wilson shouts, “You lie!” at the president during his address to a joint session of Congress.
We seem not only to disagree with each other more than ever, but tohave 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 amillion unborn. The other half regards the right-to-life movement astyrannical and sexist.
Proponents of gay marriage see its adversaries as homophobic bigots.Opponents see its champions as seeking to elevate unnatural and immoralrelationships to the sacred state of traditional marriage.
The question invites itself. In what sense are we one nation and onepeople anymore? For what is a nation if not a people of a commonancestry, faith, culture and language, who worship the same God, reverethe same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays,and share the same music, poetry, art and literature?
Yet, today, Mexican-Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a skirmish ina French-Mexican war about which most Americans know nothing, whichtook place the same year as two of the bloodiest battles of our ownCivil War: Antietam and Fredericksburg.
Christmas and Easter, the great holidays of Christendom, once unitedAmericans in joy. Now we fight over whether they should even bementioned, let alone celebrated, in our public schools.
Where we used to have classical, pop, country & Western and jazzmusic, now we have varieties tailored to specific generations, racesand ethnic groups. Even our music seems designed to subdivide us.
One part of America loves her history, another reviles it as racist,imperialist and genocidal. Old heroes like Columbus, Stonewall Jacksonand Robert E. Lee are replaced by Dr. King and Cesar Chavez.
But the old holidays, heroes and icons endure, as the new have yet to put down roots in a recalcitrant Middle America.
We are not only more divided than ever on politics, faith andmorality, but along the lines of class and ethnicity. Those who opposedSonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court and stood by Sgt. Crowley in theface-off with Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates were called racists. But thistime they did not back down. They threw the same vile word right backin the face of their accusers, and Barack Obama.
Consider but a few issues on which Americans have lately beenbitterly divided: school prayer, the Ten Commandments, evolution, thedeath penalty, abortion, homosexuality, assisted suicide, affirmativeaction, busing, the Confederate battle flag, the Duke rape case, TerriSchiavo, Iraq, amnesty, torture.
Now it is death panels, global warming, “birthers” and socialism. Ifa married couple disagreed as broadly and deeply as Americans do onsuch basic issues, they would have divorced and gone their separateways long ago. What is it that still holds us together?
The European-Christian core of the country that once defined us isshrinking, as Christianity fades, the birth rate falls and Third Worldimmigration surges. Globalism dissolves the economic bonds, while thecacophony of multiculturalism displaces the old American culture.
“E pluribus unum” — out of many, one — was the national motto themen 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?