Posted by
Roy Rolling on Saturday, September 20, 2008 7:27:23 AM
There are two Americas, and I'm not talking about North and South America nor red and blue America. The U.S. is city-America and country-America.
In the last 100 years America has been transformed from a primarily-agrarian society where most people lived on farms to an urban society where most of the population is in cities. That is where the line is drawn, not artificial divisions like red and blue. That is why immigration solutions for the city are hard to enforce in the country and gun control in the city is unnecessary in the country---they are two different sociological environments.
So if our fearless leaders want true bipartisanship they need to address this growing divide. So what is the common ground? Belief in a higher power---and giving the benefit of the doubt exactly what the name of that higher power is. Because we've failed to responsibly address this issue, both ends of the extreme get all the attention----radical Islam and atheism---the personification of those who believe God is whispering in their ear and the opposite, those who think their ears define everything there is to be heard.
Those in the middle who believe in a higher power and simultaneously respect the right of others to do the same, are the foundation of an America that can find common ground in both cities and non-metropolitan areas. Rules 100% applicable for the city may not be 100% applicable for the country---or desert. But they are the rules that can best allow multitudes of people to live in peace, or the rules that allow people to live not surrounded by multitudes.
America has learned to live in peace within its borders. If it follows the lesson of history's failed civilizations, it will un-learn it. And the lesson is one of no common ground between the ultra-wealthy shieks and the sand-poor nomads, between plantation owners and slaves, and between CEOs and the minimum-wage employee. In America, all citizens are guaranteed dignity in the eyes of a Supreme power.
That common ground between the rich and the poor has sustained us. If we abandon it, there are lessons in history of failed civilizations that peaked and declined when they did the same.