We grow despondent at the irrational divisiveness in our country… how did it ever get so bad. We are bombarded with the pros and cons of abortion, affirmative action, mass killings, and the environment. We’re convinced that the anger around us is worse than ever. Sadly, it has been like this for most of our nation’s 250-year history.
Colonial America didn’t wake up one morning and decide to remove England’s colonial shackles. There were two million white colonists living along the Atlantic seaboard in thirteen separate ‘societies’…each with a distinct culture, as discontent grew. Those who thought of themselves as ‘Patriots’ numbered less than 10% of the population, while ‘Loyalists’ represented 20% of the population. Most of the rest were fence-sitters, unhappy with the current situation, but not enough to rock the boat. After all, a war risked lucrative trade between the colonies and Mother country.
The populace needed to be convinced that fence-sitting had no future. Thomas Paine’s Common-Sense pamphlets swayed many, the Federalist papers convinced others. War came; many Royalists fled back to England. We became a new country, but we still weren’t united.
We argued over whether we wanted a weak or strong central government. We argued on whether we should evolve as an agrarian or industrial country. We argued on whether to have a national bank and where to locate the capital. We argued about how slaves would be counted.
And, in the subsequent fifty plus years we increasingly argued on the morality of one human being owning another. By 1860 America had grown…27 million white people and four and a half million black people, of whom most were slaves in the south. Finally, we hadn’t yet killed all the Indians. There were now less than one hundred thousand non-blacks, mostly Indian or Mexican.
The next year the Civil War erupted, and, for nearly four years, we fought, killing brothers and cousins as we laid waste to half our country. The war cured very little. Oh, it ended slavery, but creative minds introduced sharecropping, indentured servitude, Jim Crow, and a host of other practices to maintain white supremacy.
By the end of the 19th century, we continued our disagreements…open ranges vs. barbed wire, sheep vs. cattle, women’s rights, monopolies, and whether to go to war against Spain. By the time we turned the page to a new century, our testosterone levels were up and we were ready for another war.
We argued over our entry into World War I, which wasn’t a world war, but a European debacle. It ended in 1918 with our egos inflated and we fed on that for a decade. When the depression arrived, we argued over whether the government should intervene. Then we argued over immigration. As Europe ignited once more, we argued vehemently about whether Russia or Germany were the bad guys. Others argued over Germany’s violence against the Jews.
After the war we argued over the righteousness of dropping the Atom bomb on Japan, the support of the State of Israel, support for involvement in Korea and then Vietnam, intrusions into the Middle East, busing, Black Equality, and ad nauseum.
Individually most Americans are patriotic, caring individuals. As members of groups, we are pious, opinionated, and gullible. It makes the truth a casualty. It would be nice if we could return to a period of moderation and courteous political discourse. I won’t wait up! Instead, I’m going to take the pink AR-15 I bought for my pregnant 13-year-old, who can’t get an abortion, having gotten pregnant from her Negro transgender boyfriend…a lovely person with $100,000 of student loans