"We Are All Americans"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“We Are All Americans”

February 11, 2023

 

“America was not built on fear. America was built on courage,

on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”

                                                                                                                                President Harry Truman

                                                                                                                                Message to Congress

                                                                                                                                January 8, 1947

 

Public debates, be they high school, college or Presidential, are aimed at diminishing one’s opponent and convincing the audience of one’s superior argument. It is rhetoric, the art of persuasion. Like political campaigns, its goal is to win. In contrast, debates in the classroom – at least in years past – and in legislative bodies – at least when no press is present – are to test one’s argument, to listen to one’s opponent. The purpose is to learn and to come to a consensus. When I was young, I argued with my father; only later did I realize I was trying to understand why he believed as he did. 

 

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In a polyglot society, such as the United States, individual identities are natural and differences in ideas are to be expected. The latter should be encouraged, for it is through respectful debate that common ground is found. On the other hand, the political exploitation of group identifications has caused a widening divide among an already fractionated people. Factionalism was a concern of the Founding Fathers. In “Federalist 10,” James Madison warned that it could lead to “…instability, injustice, and confusion…the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.”

 

Yet politicians today have found that splitting the electorate into manageable pieces makes it easier to campaign and win on specific issues. Thus, we have been divided into victims and assailants. This division makes the insulting assumption that certain races are incapable of competing on merit; so different standards are used for Asians, blacks, and whites in college admissions and jobs. We have been divided by cultural preferences, where gender is seen as a matter of choice, not biology. Dependency on government has come at the expense of individual responsibility and accountability; the concept of equal opportunity has been subordinated to a demand for equal outcomes, and the dignity of work seems an abandoned philosophy. Diversity and inclusion, the battle cry of the Woke, does not include diversity of ideas or the inclusion of those who dare challenge conventional thought.

 

The people of the United States represent most every nation on the planet. We speak hundreds of languages and dialects. We represent virtually every religion. In those senses, we are unique as a nation. We are born equal in our basic rights and before the law, but we are not born equal in mental abilities or physical attributes, nor do we all aspire to the same heights. No amount of political talk and promises can change that fact. We are of different economic classes, races, religions, and ethnicities. We must play the cards we were dealt. In his critically acclaimed novel, Trust, Hernan Diaz wrote: “Whatever the past may have handed us, it is up to each one of us to chisel our present out of the shapeless block of the future.” There is no question that a white child born in a suburb has a head start over a black child born in an inner city. Similarly, a black child born in suburbia has an easier start on life than a white one born dirt-poor in Appalachia. The promise of the United States is not the impossible gift of equity, but the real gift of opportunity – access to the social and economic ladder, the ascent of which is limited only by personal ambition and talent. Fundamental to climbing that ladder is education, which is why good schools are critical. 

 

We have reached an odd place – where our unique culture is at risk, where stories of deprivation and racism are not offset by stories of the success of men and women overcoming enormous odds, where values are muted or deemed relative, and where good and evil are not contrasted. It is not just politicians who have placed us in this spot. It is also the proliferation of a biased media. The news, whether on-line, TV or paper, has become little more than political propaganda. It is our universities where students are protected against “harmful” words and where truth has succumbed to ideology. It is social media, which has invaded our privacy with the tenacity of a four-year-old screaming for his popped balloon. Shared values become scarcer when individuals adopt the questionable memes of internet “influencers,” rather than the virtues gathered from classical literature, traditions, and customs.

 

What the people of the United States need are debates, not rhetorical flourishes designed for political campaign-style harangues; but debates with straight talk, to help citizens understand the problems we face and the opportunities we have. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are an example. No one wants to cut payments to retirees, or not provide healthcare to the needy. But we must face the fact that unless something is done money will run out. There are policies we could pursue: Raising retirement age, means-testing benefits, and/or increasing the minimum taxable wage from $160,000. I am sure there are other ideas. But to pretend that the problem does not exist, as was the message from both sides during last Tuesday’s State of the Union, insults the intelligence of the American people. 

 

The United States is fortunate. It is laden with natural resources and uniquely positioned geographically. We are fortunate to be citizens of a nation of laws not men, a nation without an aristocracy, a nation whose men and women comprise myriad ethnicities, races, religions, and sexual orientations – a nation where a black man and a black woman sit on the highest court. “Vive la différence,” is a well-known French expression, generally used to celebrate the differences between the sexes. We, too, should laud our differences. But we cannot let them smother what we have in common – “a government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

 

But democracy is work. Without attention, it collapses. As Jesus said, a house divided against itself cannot stand. We cannot let differences destroy the symmetry history has given us. In his recent book Leadership, Henry

Kissinger wrote that we cannot let sectarian passions overwhelm traditional structures.[1]It is a challenge that must be met, else society unravels. We must not forget that what we have in common is individual freedom: free to pray, to speak, and to assemble; free to use the special gifts God gave each of us, to succeed or fail. We are all Americans.