COMMENTARY: Political leaders should focus on the common good. Floodwaters and rotting bridges don’t discriminate.
The Wall Street Journal
by James A. Baker III and Andrew Young
8/30/2017
Excerpt:
The two of us have seen this before: a critical point in U.S. history, when political, social and economic upheavals have left too many Americans battling one another rather than working together to build a better country. We lived through the Great Depression, when men armed with bats and clubs went to the streets in violent attempts to resolve labor differences. We also experienced the civil unrest of the 1960s, when inner cities burned with the heat of racial division and authorities killed innocent students peacefully protesting a war.
Somehow, the drumbeat of dissonance seems harsher today. America’s national ideal of “e pluribus unum”—out of many, one—threatens to become a hollow slogan. Jaded Americans are constantly confronted by a deluge of animus from their televisions and smartphones. The U.S. finds itself increasingly divided along lines of race, ethnicity, gender, religion and sexual identity. Countless demagogues stand ready to exploit those differences. When a sports reporter of Asian heritage is removed from his assignment because his name is close to that of a Confederate army general, political correctness has gone too far. Identity politics practiced by both major political parties is eroding a core principle that Americans are, first and foremost, Americans.
The divisions in society are real. So are national legacies of injustice. All can and must be addressed. Those who preach hatred should be called out for their odious beliefs. But even as extremism is condemned, Americans of good will need to keep up lines of civil, constructive conversation.
The country faces a stark choice. Its citizens can continue screaming at each other, sometimes over largely symbolic issues. Or they can again do what the citizens of this country have done best in the past—work together on the real problems that confront everyone.
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View the complete article at:
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/identity-politics-are-tearing-america-apart-1504132735