Lately, I've been pushing around this idea in my head and I want to offer it to this class that maybe someone can enlighten me if I am dead wrong, or take it and run with it. I keep thinking about the idea of a divided country, more specifically where our founding father's heads were when deciding to create a multi-party democracy. I understand that historically Great Britain had their fingers in American affairs and this left a monarchal sour taste in American colonist's mouths, thus pushing American founding fathers to create a policy to restrict the building blocks of their new country from being owned by a singular ruler. By creating limited power, and a divide between the two main parties the power disbursement teeters as normality from presidential term to presidential term. What I want to talk about is that teetering of power. What if long ago when the founding fathers created this divide in our country it was not as much to divide the country but so that by creating a divide, creating division, it would create conflict and through this conflict would be solutions. These solutions would in turn flesh out our countries conflict for all men and women of our nation to be unified. They created this divide so long ago so that one-day hundreds of years in the future, and perhaps hundreds of years further in our future the country could come together, and write the reform that will truly make us the United States of America a truly great nation that is light years ahead of any other. Because our country seems in such shambles, I notice it becoming harder and harder to feel like a proud American, especially while I stand before the flag every morning before my substitute teaching day starts. Perhaps my thoughts are not factual and the country will always and forever be divided and at each other's throats, but I have hope and hope makes us different from other creatures, its unfair that sometimes it's all we have.
"...by creating a divide, creating division, it would create conflict and through this conflict would be solutions" -- so, the founders were Hegelians before their time?
ReplyDeleteI imagine they were simply cognizant of division as a given in human affairs, and were eager to harness it via checks and balances etc. Solutions, they knew, are always provisional and temporary. But a strong nation will internalize its formal commitment to transcending division and difference, and will expect all politicians and citizens to support the Constitution that codifies that commitment.
I'll bet the founders would prefer that we pledge allegiance to one another, and to a nation strong enough to brook division, than to an abstraction like a flag.