Is America 'a house divided against itself'?

 

Gordon L. Weil

The other day, as I was leaving Lowe’s, a store that offers a veteran’s discount that I use, the checkout person called after me, “I love my veterans.”

She didn’t know if I was a Republican or Democrat or where I stood in the great political divide. I simply belong to a group of people who had given up some time and effort to their country. That group of people have a sense of belonging.  It’s real; fellow veterans share it.

A recent essay in the New York Times focuses on belonging as one of the essential benefits of religious affiliation.  The author states: “People need to be in strong communities to flourish, defined as being in a state where all aspects of their lives are good.” 

Another essay, this time in the Washington Post, pays tribute to the practice of ICE personnel saying, “Welcome home,” to citizens returning from travel abroad.  That welcome extends to anybody with a U.S. passport, regardless of their political affiliation or membership in any ethnic group.  The author found no other country where people get that greeting.

The author writes that this greeting is about “what makes America distinctive in the first place.

“America is the rare nation that is built on an idea rather than blood or soil. Our belonging, as Americans, isn’t predetermined by ancestry but secured through a commitment to certain universal principles — freedom, equality and the radical notion that citizens create their own government rather than the other way around.”

The sense of belonging matters to most, if not all, people.

And what matters about belonging is its emphasis on what people share, no matter how much they may differ on issues, even important issues.  Differences, which are inevitable, should not be allowed to go so far that they destroy the common sense of belonging.

But sometimes they do.  Some people use their power, a feature of life that is inevitably temporary, to force others to adhere to their views and demands.  They would simply override that common sense of belonging.

The alternative is not simply to let each person pursue their own beliefs and values.  To libertarians, that may seem to be all right so long as you don’t tread on someone else’s values. Increasingly, people try to impose their personal beliefs on others.  In the end, everybody lives in the same house, so nobody should be allowed to go so far as to destroy the house.  

The problem in modern American politics is the attempt of any one group to dominate. It is embodied in the famous football quote, mistakenly attributed to Vince Lombardi: “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.”

Winning is neither everything nor the only thing.  Not for everybody.

With his prompt acceptance of a Supreme Court decision that he did not win the presidency in 2000, Al Gore placed his belonging to the country ahead of himself.  With his dogged refusal to accept that he did not win the presidency in 2020, Donald Trump placed himself ahead of belonging to the country.

This column may sound like a sermon, but it’s meant as a political observation.  If we continue to act as if implacable divisiveness is inevitable, allowing it to prevent compromise and to overwhelm our common sense of belonging, the U.S. again becomes, as Lincoln saw it, “a house divided against itself.”  He warned that such a house “cannot stand.”