Is America coming apart? by Pat Buchanan...interesting

[PocketProtector]

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=109478

EDIT (ChamberedRound) - Above link seems to be broken, here's a link to the article on Pat Buchanan's website:
http://buchanan.org/blog/is-america-coming-apart-2159

Is America coming apart?
Posted: September 10, 2009
7:53 pm Eastern

© 2009

Flying home from London, where the subject of formal debate on the 70th anniversary of World War II had been whether Winston Churchill was a liability or asset to the Free World, one arrives in the middle of a far more acrimonious national debate right here in the United States.

At issue: Should Barack Obama be allowed to address tens of millions of American children, inside their classrooms, during school hours?

Conservative talk-show hosts saw a White House scheme to turn public schools into indoctrination centers where the socialist ideology of Obama would be spoon-fed to captive audiences of children forced to listen 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 to discover that, when George H.W. Bush went to Alice Deal Junior High to speak to America's school kids, the left lost it.

"The White House turned a Northwest Washington junior high classroom into a television studio and its students into props," railed the Washington Post. Education Secretary Lamar Alexander was called before a 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 came out for town hall meetings to oppose Obama's health-care plans were called "thugs," "fascists," "racists" and "evil-mongers" by national Democrats.

We see it as Rep. Joe Wilson shouts, "You lie!" at the president during his address to a joint session of Congress.

"You Lie!" Get the bumper sticker that immortalizes American opposition to Obama

We seem not only to disagree with each other more than ever, but to have 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 a million unborn. The other half regards the right-to-life movement as tyrannical and sexist.

Proponents of gay marriage see its adversaries as homophobic bigots. Opponents see its champions as seeking to elevate unnatural and immoral relationships to the sacred state of traditional marriage.

The question invites itself. In what sense are we one nation and one people anymore? For what is a nation if not a people of a common ancestry, faith, culture and language, who worship the same God, revere the 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 in a French-Mexican war about which most Americans know nothing, which took place the same year as two of the bloodiest battles of our own Civil War: Antietam and Fredericksburg.

Christmas and Easter, the great holidays of Christendom, once united Americans in joy. Now we fight over whether they should even be mentioned, let alone celebrated, in our public schools.

Where we used to have classical, pop, country & Western and jazz music, now we have varieties tailored to specific generations, races and ethnic groups. Even our music seems designed to subdivide us.

(Column continues below)



One part of America loves her history, another reviles it as racist, imperialist and genocidal. Old heroes like Columbus, Stonewall Jackson and 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 and morality, but along the lines of class and ethnicity. Those who opposed Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court and stood by Sgt. Crowley in the face-off with Harvard's Henry Louis Gates were called racists. But this time they did not back down. They threw the same vile word right back in the face of their accusers, and Barack Obama.

Consider but a few issues on which Americans have lately been bitterly divided: school prayer, the Ten Commandments, evolution, the death penalty, abortion, homosexuality, assisted suicide, affirmative action, busing, the Confederate battle flag, the Duke rape case, Terri Schiavo, Iraq, amnesty, torture.

Now it is death panels, global warming, "birthers" and socialism. If a married couple disagreed as broadly and deeply as Americans do on such basic issues, they would have divorced and gone their separate ways long ago. What is it that still holds us together?

The European-Christian core of the country that once defined us is shrinking, as Christianity fades, the birth rate falls and Third World immigration surges. Globalism dissolves the economic bonds, while the cacophony of multiculturalism displaces the old American culture.

"E pluribus unum" – out of many, one - was the national motto the men 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?

[camper]

Yep...he's absolutely right.

camper

[PocketProtector]

Yep....not much common ground is there?

[camper]

Yep....not much common ground is there?

Nope. Especially something as polarizing as abortion. You can come to a relectant mutual agreement where both parties have to give on gay marriage, healthcare, gun rights and every other topic--but when it comes to abortion for instance there is actually very little room to discuss.

camper

[velkly]

It really makes you wonder where we are headed..

[PeaceAndLove]

Actually, abortion is not that polarizing.

I think most everyone can agree that fewer abortions would be better.

[cgbudde]

It really makes you wonder where we are headed..

Right down the crapper.

[Dannytheman]

I don't have a problem with everyone having an opinion.

Opinions are like assholes, everyone has them and most of them stink!

24 hour news is the source of all this hate!IMHO!

[Siobhra]

Consider but a few issues on which Americans have lately been bitterly divided: school prayer, the Ten Commandments, evolution, the death penalty, abortion, homosexuality, assisted suicide, affirmative action, busing, the Confederate battle flag, the Duke rape case, Terri Schiavo, Iraq, amnesty, torture.

Now it is death panels, global warming, "birthers" and socialism. If a married couple disagreed as broadly and deeply as Americans do on such basic issues, they would have divorced and gone their separate ways long ago. What is it that still holds us together?

Both the country and us as individuals.

A lot of us are torn on how we stand on a lot of those issues.

I am Gay and support Gay Marriage. Yet I am Pro-Life with the only "wiggle room" on abortion is maybe the first trimester.
I support Gun Rights, capitalism and Terri Schiavo's right to live.

I think things like the posting of the Ten Commandments is a good thing in schools, but only if they also post the laws of at least 5 or 6 other faiths. And show equal respect for ALL of the faiths. We need for the children to learn that there is God/Goddess/someone or something above all of us who will see to it that those who do ill to others will pay in the end. However I know that if allowed most schools will use it as a tool to recruit for only one religion and then use that religion to bash non-believers.

I worry about our use of so much of our natural resources. Not so much about what we do to Global Warming but how much money we ship over to the very people who wish to destroy us.

So as someone who supports some things on each side I find myself at war with myself a lot. I find that if I hang with my liberal friends I have to listen to my conservative beliefs being trashed. If I hang with my conservative friends I have to listen to my liberal beliefs being trashed.

I listen to my conservative friends say in word and sing in song about "The Land of the free" and how great it is to be in a free country while also saying "you can't have the same freedoms as us".

I listen to my liberal friends say and sing about the right to "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" yet also saying we have the right to kill our babies, take your guns and tax the hell out of you.

I also see this problem splitting life long friendships as the anger on both sides grows.

I am sure a lot of you also find yourself on both sides of the fence. So I put it to you that it is not just the country that is being torn apart but each of us as individuals.

I think the only thing holding us together (at least it is holding me together) is the belief that deep down in most of us is good. Maybe we lost it but it is there in the clutter. We need to just find it.

[PeaceAndLove]

So as someone who supports some things on each side I find myself at war with myself a lot. I find that if I hang with my liberal friends I have to listen to my conservative beliefs being trashed. If I hang with my conservative friends I have to listen to my liberal beliefs being trashed.

I empathize with you. However, you might feel better if you didn't identify with beliefs and feel bad. Just do what I do and go along with it. Assume they are talking about people who are more extreme than you or just adopt liberal and conservative beliefs without good reasons. Many people often arrive at a "reasonable" position (from the observer's point of view) for the wrong reasons, i.e. they are idealistic, they worship documents written by humans, or someone made them feel under attack.

I am a contrarian. That means I enjoy picking at everyone's smugness and confidence in their beliefs. There is too much in-group/out-group psychology going on. Over-reliance on use of categories for thinking and classifying the opposition. And I think the Internet has made it worse. You can't see the opposition, you are only arguing with your idea of what the opposition looks like. You can't see the other person and it's easy to denigrate people who are far away. A single conversation is distributed over a long period of time so there is tons of room to go off topic, attack a niggling point, misconstrue things, etc.

The great thing about this forum is that everyone here is mostly united on one topic (guns) but all over the place when it comes to everything else.

What annoys the hell out of me is sarcasm and cynicism. These only serve to reinforce existing beliefs. Instead of questioning, which should lead to clarity, if done responsibly.