The latest political “hot potato”
is playing out according to the approved script. Attacks and counterattacks from each side,
vilification of the NRA or politicians who support private gun ownership, interviews
with experts who don’t know what they are talking about, “man on the street” interviews
with outraged and uninformed protesters, and children who believe they know
what is best to solve the issues of shooting murders in “gun free zones.” The media companies are effectively orchestrating
it for the good theater they so desire.
This is easy.
What isn’t easy is a public discussion
and finding solutions that challenge the political talking points of two
mainstream parties and their propaganda departments. It would never do to question what in society
has changed in the last forty to fifty years that has led us to a point where public
violence is now becoming rather common.
It is far better we stick to the approved script.
But for the sake of argument I
would like to lay out, in my opinion and in no particular order, what some of
the root causes just might be. I believe
the problems are not irreversible, but with an increasingly polarized
population it seems unlikely to be reversed.
Let’s start with a changed
perception of what it means to be an American.
We are inherently a nation of immigrants, who can trace that status back
to the land bridge from Asia. The latest
wave of immigration began with the establishment of St. Augustine in Florida (for
the Spanish), Cap-Rouge[1]
(for the French), Jamestown in Virginia (for the English) or Fort Nassau[2]
(for the Dutch), and has continued pretty much unabated since then. But the question really stems from the
Declaration of Independence when the 12 united English colonies became the
United States.
With the establishment of the
United States we began the process building a society unique to the world, based
on individual merit rather than family titles and status. In the process of that building we accepted
newcomers and they sought to integrate into the accepted norms. Clearly, the representatives of the people
and the general population as a whole, had exceptions on who could be full-fledged
members of the society. Those most
acceptable to the society that was established with our Declaration came from
Europe, while those coming from Africa, Asia and the sub-continent India have
historically had to fight for acceptance.
During the immigration waves of
the nineteenth century the Irish, Germans, Italians, Scandinavians and Poles all
came to America to escape oppression or make new lives for themselves. Each faced discrimination until they were
able to integrate into the society through a common language and common shared
values. They each brought with them
their sense of culture and social value that added to our cultural richness. At the same time, if you were not of European
origin you came to America and were exploited as labor whose status was often
considered by the average person as less than worthy of citizenship. Unfortunately, this cultural bigotry carries
forward to this day as immigrants from non-European countries continue and the
nation wrestles with how to accept them into the society and worries about what
changes to the greater society they will bring with them.
In today’s debates over
immigration we cite an inscription placed on the base of the Statue of Liberty,
yet we forget that poem was written as the nation wrestled with whether or not
to accept the immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. It was controversial at the time, and current
events have shown it remains so – as new immigrants arrive and the questions of
whether they will integrate or remain separate are still unanswered.
But I come back to the original idea
that made us a unique society, do we remain a society based on merit, or are we
becoming more like the societies that created us, where family titles and
political connections are more important than your ability as an individual? Where we have a ruling class and its social
elites, where everyone else is just so much fodder for the gist mill? Have we become a society where we teach our
next generation that merit has been replaced by entitlement and the purpose of
government is to manage those entitlements?
(To be continued)
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