Our Vanishing Common Ground

To the delight of the mainstream media and the Democratic Party, President Obama re-emerged on the national political stage last week, first by speaking at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and then by delivering a speech in Anaheim, California.  During his speech at the University of Illinois, President Obama emphasized the importance of finding “common ground” while simultaneously trashing President Trump and Republicans as racist.

Divisions have always existed within the country, going back to the very beginning of the country; when the United States of America consisted of a mere thirteen states.  Northern and southern states obviously had differing views on slavery that would later culminate in the Civil War.  Small and large states had differing views of representation in Congress, with larger states favoring apportionment based on population and smaller states preferring that every state have equal representation. The founding fathers solved that particular problem by creating a bicameral legislature, with a Senate containing two Senators from each state and a House of Representatives with apportionment based on population.

 

In spite of these differences, all thirteen states came together to form the United States of America; finding “common ground” in the idea of government by the people and for the people, as opposed to the “taxation without representation,” “The Intolerable Acts,” The Proclamation Line of 1763 and other freedom-constraining aspects of overseas British rule that they had found themselves subject to prior to the American Revolution.
 

Over the years, the number of states grew from thirteen to fifty; and the American population exploded thanks to an arrival of Protestant as well as non-Protestant immigrants from European countries other than England. In spite of the religious diversity of the pre-1965 immigrants, Americans still agreed that the formula for happiness required abiding by a Judeo-Christian philosophy that served as the basis of many laws and customs that define the United States.  That “common ground” began falling apart in the 1960s, when the judicial branch began ruling in favor of those seeking to scrub all references to a higher power from schools and the public square.  In Engel v. Vitale, the Supreme Court ruled school prayer unconstitutional. In McCreary County vs. ACLU, the Supreme Court ruled that Ten Commandments displays at courthouses in McCreary County, Kentucky and Pulaski County, Kentucky unconstitutional because they dared to include the displays as part of a “Foundations of American law” exhibit alongside the Declaration of Independence and the lyrics of the Star Spangled Banner, and six other documents of historical significance.   

More recently, the American Atheists sought to remove a bench with the quote “Men who aren’t governed by God will be governed by tyrants” from a public park in Oil City, Pennsylvania, a place most Americans could not even find on a map.  The city complied with the atheists’ demands because they did not want to have to deal with the litigation.  The obsession over the park bench in Oil City comes not long after atheist student Jessica Ahlquist, who has since achieved quite a bit of fame as a public speaker and progressive activist, demanded the removal of a prayer banner at Cranston West High School in my home state of Rhode Island. It looks like God really poses a threat to the progressive agenda, which has done a great job eating away at America’s “common ground” like Pac-Man.   

While doing everything they can to scrub all references to a religion a large majority of Americans actually practice (Christianity), the far left has decided instead to erect monuments dedicated to fringe religions (Satanism).  The far left hates Christianity, which it sees as just another patriarchy in need of deconstruction. 


Even as a substantial proportion of Americans began to see abortion as a “Constitutional right,” most Americans did not romanticize the procedure.  Even Hillary Clinton described it as a “hard choice” in her 2014 memoir, Hard Choices.  Those days have come and gone.  Lena Dunham talked about how she wishes she had an abortion while Michelle Wolf did a “salute to abortion” on her Netflix show where she dressed up in red, white, and blue and suggested that abortion “should be on the dollar menu” at McDonald’s before closing her skit with the line “God bless abortions and God bless America!”  This particular episode of “The Break With Michelle Wolf” aired just after Independence Day; she apparently sees abortion as American as apple pie.  

In recent years, it seems that very little unifies us as Americans. Politicians at least gave lip service the idea of unifying our large country of more than 300 million people.  After declaring victory over Al Gore five weeks after Election Day 2000, President George W. Bush declared “Republicans want the best for our nation. And so do Democrats.” President Obama once said “there are no red states or blue states, just the United States.”  Even as the media attempts to portray him as the most divisive President in United States history, President Trump would like to see a unified country as well, frequently declaring at his rallies: “Whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots.”

Even as Americans of different political parties fought over nearly every issue, they could at least find “common ground” when it came to the American flag.  The American flag became a symbol of national unity after the 9/11 terror attacks that happened seventeen years ago this week. For the first sixteen anniversaries of 9/11, Americans of all political persuasions would come together, at least for a moment of silence, to commemorate the deaths of the more than 3,000 people who lost their lives at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and on Flight 93.  Well, Americans not even enjoy any “common ground” when it came to memorializing 9/11 this year.  MSNBC host Joe Scarborough wrote an op-ed just in time for “Patriots Day” saying that President Trump is “damaging the dream of America more than any terrorist attack ever could.”  Perhaps the American Conservative Union can look into revoking his 95 percent lifetime rating.  He appears to have thrown away most, if not all of his conservative principles in favor of a cable TV gig and a fairy-tale romance with his liberal co-host Mika Brzezinski.  

 

Scarborough’s ill-timed op-ed comes not long after Illinois Congressional Candidate Sean Casten and failed Virginia Congressional Candidate Dan Helmer compared President Trump to Osama Bin Laden.  This rhetoric directed at political opponents has become commonplace as the “common ground” that held Americans together continues to vanish into thin air.  The logical result of this rhetoric became perfectly clear when an angry leftist started screaming expletives at Rudy Peters, a Republican running for Congress in Silicon Valley. The angry leftist proceeded to throw a coffee cup at Peters before the Congressional candidate tackled him to the ground.  The leftist, who finds himself in the political majority in Silicon Valley, pulled out a switchblade and threatened to kill Peters but perhaps due to divine intervention, he found himself unable to open the switchblade.  Not long after the Rudy Peters incident, an anonymous Twitter user promised to show up at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. with a gun and indicated his desire to “get numerous blood stained MAGA hats as trophies.”  While not all liberals resort to violence, it certainly does not help when Botox-injected Broadway stars fantasize about the resurrection of John Wilkes Booth, the actor who shot Abraham Lincoln.  People only resort to political hatred and violence when they see absolutely no “common ground” with people of different political persuasions.

      

Americans of all political persuasions attending sports events stood for the national anthem, which served as one of the last forces of unity in the increasingly divided country.  The same norm applied to athletes themselves in addition to the sports fans. Former football player Colin Kaepernick effectively ended that when he began taking a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality against African-Americans.  After President Trump expressed his disapproval of Kaepernick’s behavior,  several other football players began kneeling during the national anthem to show solidarity with the now-unemployed social justice warrior Kaepernick.  Many politicians, including Texas Senate Candidate Beto O’Rourke, have spoken out in favor of the anthem protests while Hillary Clinton used her Twitter account to praise a girl for refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. 

 

As opposed to emphasizing what Americans have in common, many politicians have decided instead to highlight by chanting the new national motto, “Diversity is our strength.” Many minority students on college campuses have asked to hold separate graduation ceremonies exclusively for students with the same skin color and ethnic background.  At Harvard, supposedly a cross-section of the best and brightest of the next generation, a “black only graduation” took place. These children apparently learned absolutely nothing about the Civil Rights Movement, which aimed to end segregation.  Now, it looks like some on the left want to sell “Make Segregation Great Again” hats.  And the left still claims that Republicans want “to turn back the clock” as they warn of a “Handsmaid’s Tale” style dystopia if Brett Kavanaugh ends up on the Supreme Court. 

 

Questioning the new national motto of “Diversity is a Strength,” Fox News’s Tucker Carlson asked “Can you think, for example, of other institutions, such as, I don’t know, marriage or military units, in which the less people have in common, the more cohesive they are?  Do you get along with your neighbors or co-workers if you can’t understand each other or share the same common values?”  Carlson would not have needed to ask this question if our immigration policy hadn’t abandoned the long-standing practice of encouraging a “melting pot” in favor of a more politically correct “salad bowl” where immigrants do not assimilate. The “salad bowl” approach to immigration emphasizing the very “tribalism” that President Obama railed against at his University of Illinois speech has allowed the profitable business of identity politics to flourish while doing little to preserve the “common ground” that prevented another Civil War from breaking out. 

 

So the next time President Obama gives a lecture on the importance of “finding common ground,” keep in mind that he and his party have done more to undermine the “common ground” that served as the glue holding the country together than anything President Trump and the Republicans could have ever done.