For more than 200 years, a nation of immigrants from all parts of the world, all races, all cultures, all religions and all languages, have stood together as one people united only by a simple single set of principles and values that made them the most free, prosperous and powerful people on earth. No matter their backgrounds, their past, they chose a brighter future united in the common purpose of individual rights and rejected the chains of division.
Our Declaration of Independence and Constitution are blind to color, race, religious difference, economic status, family or national origin. Both documents set forth that ALL men without exception, are created equal, endowed by that Creator with certain unalienable rights as individuals. We established that the most diverse nation in earth’s history is one people, united by the simple but very powerful common purpose of personal freedom, E Pluribus Unum… Out of many, One.
United by those principles, America became the world super-power of freedom, individual liberty, economic strength and military might, all of which has been used generously to help other people held in bondage around the globe, find freedom and liberty in their own lands. We believe that freedom is an unalienable right of every human being and this is the basis upon which America was built, as well as the basis for its interaction with the world.
Devastating Change
230 years later, America is a nation perfectly divided down every line of division imaginable. American is pitted against American on the basis of skin color, national origin, religious beliefs, economic status, job description, which side of the tracks we come from, inner city versus rural, educated versus uneducated, secular against morally conscious, left versus right, meek versus mighty.
Freedom is a double edged sword that cuts both ways. Freedom can be used to prosper, or to fail. It can be used for good or for evil and it can unite or divide. Every tool of division available to mankind has been successfully employed in America for the sole purpose of conquering America from within and those able to be divided are none the wiser.
A Nation Perfectly Divided
There’s no better time to test the unity of a nation than in an election year and according to all available gauges, America is indeed perfectly divided.
Democrats are divided between the power of the people and the power of the national political party. They are divided between two candidates, each foolishly loved by some and equally hated by others.
As of this writing, national poll averages indicate that 45.6 percent of Democrats support Barack Obama and 42 percent support Hillary Clinton. Neither Democrat enjoys the support of even half of all Democrats. To make matters even worse, a majority of supporters in each camp say that they will never support the other candidate, even if the two are united on one ticket. It’s hard to get more divided than that, but Republicans have managed.
John McCain is already the presumed nominee of the Republican Party, but against the will of almost 70 percent of Republican voters. Even though only one candidate remains standing in the Republican nomination, that candidate stands at odds with most of his party and his party is divided heading into the November general election as a result.
Beyond party nominations, national poll averages say that in a match up between McCain and Clinton, McCain wins, but only 45.7 percent to 45 percent. In a match up between McCain and Obama, McCain loses, but only 45 percent to 44.5 percent. The nation couldn’t possibly be more perfectly divided.
Agents of Division
Agents of division exist everywhere today, but nowhere more than in political circles. Politics itself has become an agency of division in America and every political player without exception, is an agent of division, no matter what they call themselves on the campaign stump.
The reason is simple. The real fight in America is the fight between the power of the free people and the power of the greater good, the elected few, the government. In any nation where the people are united upon one simple common goal of individual freedom, the government, the elected few, have no real power. Their power is limited to only that allowed by the people they represent.
But in a nation divided, the elected few become the central governing power by which the divisions of the people will be “managed.” It becomes the function of the government to dole out “fairness” and “equality” on all issues, for the greater good of all concerned, or so they say.
Barack Obama promises a post-racism unity, but he has spent a lifetime studying and promoting racial division, even within his church. Hillary Clinton promises a pro-American unity, but every campaign speech is filled with attacks upon half of all Americans for benefit of the other half and there is no more polarizing figure in America today than Hillary Clinton.
Even John McCain has become a career political agent of negative change and division, beginning within his own party and transcending the political spectrum. He is less hated by the people at large than either Democrat candidate. But in large part because he attempts to walk an ideological tightrope, interweaving leftist ideals and policy stances with traditionally conservative sounding rhetoric in an overt effort to fool unsuspecting subjects into what still remains a quest for government power.
Not one of them will change the current environment of division because all of them prosper from it. Real change must come from the people.
What Kind of Change?
2008 seems to be the “agent of change” election cycle, wherein all candidates hope to be accepted by the majority of American voters as the “agent of change” and to be sure; all three have been agents of change in their political careers, but what kind of change?
Once the government becomes responsible for defining and doling out “equality” to a diverse nation of ideologically divided malcontents, the power of the people is transformed into the power of the central government. The process is complete. The will of the people and the rights of the individual have been replaced with the will of the government and the rights of the greater good, as the elected few so determine and dictate.
This is the kind of change every modern politician is engaged in at present and it is the worst kind of change for a free people once in full control of their own destiny. This is the battle and the people stand divided on one side of the battlefield as politicians of all political persuasions stand united on the other.
The methods and issues of division vary, but the common goal of division and ultimate central power places all modern politicians squarely on the same team.
Devastation in the Wake of Division
Simply put, a nation divided can not stand. While Americans squabble over issues of race, economic equality, the environment, military or national security strategies, energy interests, religious ideologies, the right to life versus the right to kill the most innocent of human beings, the central power gathers strength.
Left in the wake of these divisions is the completely dismantled and destroyed American Dream of individual freedom, liberty and the right to define and pursue personal happiness in a peaceful society wherein all citizens are equally entitled to determine their own future. Equal opportunity, freedom to pursue and justice, is the only ‘entitlement” offered by the American Dream.
As the central government gathers power, the people, all of them, lose theirs.
The Only Acceptable American Division
The only division that rightfully belongs in America is the division between those who seek personal freedom, individual liberty, equal justice and the right to define and pursue happiness, and those who seek to destroy these things.
On July 4,1776, by unanimous consent of the Founders, Congress and the original thirteen colonies of the United States of America, we established that “
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
United on this fundamental basis, the greatest nation ever known to mankind was built and for more than 200 years, that nation has enjoyed unparalleled peace, prosperity and happiness.
In the interest of preserving unparalleled peace, prosperity and happiness for all future American generations, the Founders also established that “
…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles…”
They set in stone a stern reminder, that “
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security;”
Destructive of These Ends
Nothing is more fatally detrimental of these ends than the destructive nature of politically motivated division, as only a nation united in the preservation of foundational principles can stand.
Agents of division, all of them, as well as the tools of division, no matter their source or motives, are truly destructive of these ends.
Before the people of America can stand united once again, they will have to cast off the chains of
division. The interests served at the root of those divisions do not outweigh the interests that we should forever hold in common. If we allow the issues, agendas and agents of division to prosper, they will prosper at the expense of every American, every freedom, and every liberty and divided, freedom will one day cease to exist in this nation.
Of course we are a diverse nation, built by peoples from all corners of the earth, all of us having come from somewhere else. In fact America is the most diverse nation on earth and while that is a reality worthy of celebration, we can not allow this reality to be used for purposes of division.
Barack Obama and his spiritual leader are just as wrong in their agency of division as white supremacists are in theirs. Hillary Clinton is just as evil in her class warfare agency of division as Joseph Stalin was in his. And John McCain is but an agent of self aggrandizement and self preservation. He has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to throw all American principles under the bus, so long as it serves his quest for personal political power.
Not one of these three candidates is the best that America can do. But so long as Americans allow themselves to be divided, career agents of division like these three politicians and many more like them in Washington DC, are the best that we will ever do.
Change is in order, but what kind of change?
To continue to debate which of the three candidates is the least dangerous to our future freedom and prosperity is to entirely avoid the real debate that should be raging in America and guarantee a perpetual division that will one day extinguish any possibility of the American Dream.
For those who seek to divide, and all those who allow it, as Thomas Jefferson stated so well, “
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”
Good or bad, America is what we make of her, nothing more and nothing less. Justice is always served in the end. I pray that Americans will soon awake to the evil done them through political divisions - and demand better.
America is one people united on one set of foundational principles and values or it is nothing at all. May God bless those true patriots still willing to risk life itself in the preservation of the greatest founding principles ever known to man.
But may God have no mercy on those who instead continue to choose a religion of division.
