Enamored With Division
The Left insists on fragmenting us into disparate identity groups. As our loyalties attach to these emphasized identities, — race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation — the fragmentation only increases. Hyper-focusing on race is so divisive; do we really want the unveiling and unfolding of smaller units of identity — tribalism and clannishness? My concern rests on the deep reality of how easily humankind can return to tribalism and ever-smaller units of mutual respect and “ease of life” because it is hard to “just all get along.”
Nationalism and globalism are losing fans, Trump and Biden notwithstanding, respectively. How much “country” can you keep together without a pride-building national narrative? How long can an American electoral system be respected when highly significant, intentional fraud has been widely afoot? To the powerfully placed, hasn’t the global village essentially been about more money for their oligarchies?
The oneness of the whole world requires a narrative greater than the promises and prospects of free trade, to be sure. Regionalism and localism currently play well to many hearts and seem so wonderfully retrogressive and reactionary, even panacean. But they both head in the direction of smaller units of identity — tribalism and clannishness. To say one is a tribalist will one day be more polarizing than saying one is a racist. Happy times are not ahead if we stay this course of fragmenting the nation by emphasizing and adulating our many differences as human beings. I too can easily feel and be energized by my clan’s history and new prospects of family/ethnic tribe. If those sentiments capture too many of us, who and what will pick up after the collapse of nations? The historical record and current world-wide milieu should not encourage you.
Answers lie about: the journalistic class must pursue truth wherever it leads and not merely reinforce preconceived notions and agendas; the state educational system must get over its disaffection for America — a flawed nation, but arguably the greatest political-economic system created in all of human history (yes, I’m thinking the greatest combination of liberty and justice the world has ever known); the Church must return to its Reformed roots — that God is not merely kindness and love, but “plays rough” when not pleased. How long will the path back to affectionate nationhood remain traceable?