Manipulating identity to feed mob politics

In America, establishing one's identity through some real or imagined genealogy creates a false politics based on perceived physical lineage rather than cleaving to the identity of freedom upon which this nation was founded. It goes beyond individuals’ physical attributes (membership in or identifying with a minority, boiling down to an impression that less melanin equals no identifiable culture) that fueled the recent Ferguson and Ferguson-sympathy riots to understand where this kind of thinking is really leading… disassembling the nation through mob politics.

The sham correlation of identity with – choose one – color, ethnicity, economic status, religion or faith has superseded the identity as American, pitting minorities against each other, atheists against Christians (and, thus, the rule of freedom) and Muslims against the world. Note that atheists don’t appear to target faiths other than Christianity because that is the only one perceived as a threat to their own religion of nothingness. Orthodoxy of physical trait or ideological identity undermines the orthodoxy of Liberty that established America. As much as rabble-rousers like Al Sharpton and, unfortunately, our own president spearhead the charge that skin color empowers political position, they are operating on a phony (to use one of Obama’s favorite adjectives) premise that slavery tainted the founding of this nation. In fact, before the Constitution was ever ratified slavery was designated for termination within 20 years. Freeloading on tragedy (the Michael Brown and Eric Garner affairs), President Obama skewered his own lawlessness when he said, “I’m absolutely committed, as president of the United States, to making sure that we have a country in which everybody believes in the core principle that we are equal under the law… [there are] too many instances where people just do not have confidence that folks are being treated fairly.” All spoken in contradiction to his going over Congress’ head with a misguided, unconstitutional executive order that attempts to create “fairness” out of preferential treatment for illegal immigrants. The oft quoted “united we stand, divided we fall” is an adage that holds such basic truth it rolls off the tongue without a second thought. But visualize the invincible cohort of Roman soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder, shields locked together against the enemy’s projectiles, a united front deflecting arrows and spears. Put just inches of space between them, wedging them apart by ethnicity or creed, and the line crumbles, lacking the superior strength of stable unity. This is a picture of the dissolving freedom America is, and has been, undergoing. The more each citizen defines personal value by membership in a club, whether a Black caucus, Hispanic student union or a mosque, the more we lose our overall cohesiveness as one America, a society of individuals cemented together by the culture of Freedom.

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This is where our history has been intentionally rewritten over decades of incorrect education in most of our schools. The average person in the United States under the age of 50 has been taught to believe that America has no culture. The reason is that the only cultures multiculturalism acknowledges are those based on skin color, ethnic origin, or singular folk and ceremonial traditions. These criteria blind modern educators from recognizing the one uniting factor in America’s founding. They have been coached to overlook the one, most important characteristic of our culture, which is not tied to ancient rites or rituals, garb, dance, song, festivals or cuisine, all the physical identifiers of “culture.” It is the unique concept of individual Liberty as has never existed in any nation on earth. Why the younger generations can’t seem to wrap their heads around this cultural idea is the training they received to only view culture as something visible, flavorful and audible – vibrant skirts flying in Folklorico or Gypsy (Romani, these politically correct days) dances; # curry or kun pao dishes; lilting Viennese waltzes or heart-rending uilleann pipes. It takes reading our founding documents to understand what established the cornerstone of American culture, that it was severing ourselves from an oppressive monarch’s rule to become free sovereign citizens in our own right; no person or group dictating with whom or what an individual must be identified. That cornerstone and culture is Liberty, pure and simple. However much identifiers like atheists and Muslims deny the fact, it was the individual freeing agent of Christ, through whom all that believe become joint heirs, that inspired the formation of this nation. One can take confidence only in this individual liberty, not in any shared or wannabe physical trait, or even ideological cause or religious creed. Subsidiary identities then supplant the greater identity of free Americans, confining individuals in bondage to trivial separation politics. The divisiveness of diversity leads to destruction of the individual and ultimately the country as a whole, torn apart by distracted, angry mobs. Given a choice, what would you rather identify with, some physical characteristic, a pet peeve? Or the knowledge we are family in Liberty’s culture.