We’re Better United Than Divided
We’ve had it both ways. Coming together, usually in response to an external threat. And splitting apart, when the only ones we have to fight are ourselves.
The gentle man who as a 5th-grader integrated the white elementary school in Edgefield, S.C., back in 1965 puts things in perspective: “People think this is the worst of times. I went through the 1960’s. A president being assassinated, a senator being assassinated, civil rights leaders being assassinated, cities burning down, bombings in church, governors standing in the doorways of admissions offices. You don’t see any of that now.”
He goes on to observe that as ugly as those days were, even they don’t hold a candle to the carnage of the Civil War and the subsequent violence during Reconstruction.
Nor is the divisiveness we have experienced only about racial strife. The same decade of the 1960s also pitted American against American over the Vietnam War.
Bettis in Edgefield: You talk about divided, my God!, as a student at Harvard I watched the Boston tactical police marching down the street. People were throwing rocks at them, one policeman I saw had a rock thrown square at him that split his whole face open. It was a sad, sad day.
We’re Better United Than Divided is the first of “10 principles to unite America” that look both to the past and to the future, reminding us of what we hold dear as Americans and at the same time challenging us to do better. They stand out as common purpose for our nation.
Based on four very different locales
In far simpler days, the Founding Fathers intended that pockets of self-interest they called factions would balance themselves out one against the other so that none held the upper hand. But as astute as they were, the founders never could have imagined the diversity of race and ethnicities, religions, regional interests and individual persuasions that have developed over the past 230 years. The challenge of coming together becomes ever more difficult in an increasingly pluralistic society.
And yet our proudest moments as a nation have come when we put aside those differences to unite against a common foe. World War II is Exhibit A for coming together but it is not the only case. Sputnik, the Cuban missile crisis and 9/11 each had all of us aligned and facing in the same direction. Challenges such as these brought us together, inspired us, made us stronger.
If only this amity could be extended into peacetime.
Josie in Ajo: We’re still in the same boat. We’re all in this together, regardless of our differences. We all want what’s best.
Greg in Edgefield: If we got everybody moving in the same direction, in unity, then we would come up with the answers quicker to all the problems that we have. I think that’s pretty obvious.
The COVID-19 pandemic that befell us in 2020 would seem to have been the perfect opportunity. A unified call to action might have minimized the squabbling and eased the suffering. Instead, as with so many other things, elected officials bickered, worked at cross purposes, and maneuvered for political gain. The helter-skelter and divided response left the general populace to wonder if we were supposed to come together or split apart. Without that leadership, we split apart.
Nonetheless, for many months the evening news was full of stories of compassion and generosity, duty and sacrifice, and above all else courage by first responders, medical personnel and grocery store workers. These acts of looking out for each other are triumphs of the human spirit, and the American way.
There’s a lot of the same spirit in many comments provided by those who have participated in the Our Common Purpose public opinion surveys. Given all the possible topics for comment, unity attracted a lot of energy.
We need to unite as one.
— Republican from Zanesville, Ohio
We need to be one nation.
— Democrat from Somerset, PA
We need to stand as one!
— Republican from Mandeville, LA
Having common purpose would help us get there.
While history records some tumultuously divided times, I believe the discord and divisiveness in America is greater than any time in my life. Listening to Public Radio yesterday, a person representing a 2nd Amendment gun rights group out of Iowa, indicated one of their principles was “no compromise.” While this may be a radical opinion, unless we, and our state and national legislative bodies, can learn to cooperate, reach conciliation or find a middle ground, our democracy is doomed. The atmosphere among politicians and laypeople seems to be getting worse, not better. I hope we don’t need another December 7th or September 11 to bring us to a united position.