United we stand, divided we fall
By Manny Casillas | Editorial Assistant
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
So were the words of our sixteenth commander-in-chief Abraham Lincoln, speaking in his ‘House Divided Speech’ in Springfield, Ill. on June 16, 1858. It was a speech delivered to express his acceptance of his nomination as Illinois state senator.
Though he was referring to the horrendous division of America in terms of slaves and slave-owners, President Lincoln’s words are more precedent than ever in this age of liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, elitist and non-elitist, rural America and urban America, patriotic and unpatriotic and real America and unreal America.
As Sarah Palin said in a fundraiser in North Carolina on Oct. 16:
“We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America. Being here with all you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-American areas of this great nation.”
There you have it. All we city slickers don’t have a clue. Small towns are where real America exists, where real Americans thrive.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, the very next day after Palin’s skewering of urban America, Congresswoman Michele Bachman appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball and dropped this bombshell.
“I wish the American media would take a look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America. I think people would love to see an exposé like that”
How quaint; a government official who longs for the days of McCarthy witch-hunting. Though she has apparently retracted this statement, she recently stated that the current crisis on Wall Street is the fault of poor black people.
Finally there was McCain spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer, appearing on MSNBC to discuss the campaign happenings in Virginia.
“I can tell you that the Democrats have just come in from the District of Colombia and moved into northern Virginia…but the rest of the state, ‘real Virginia’ if you will, I think will be very responsive to our message.”
In other words: if you agree with the McCain campaign, you are a part of real America, and if you don’t you are an out-of-touch elitist.
These same divisive people expressing this atrocious rhetoric are the same people continuously accusing Sen. Obama of being anti-American, perpetually calling into question his patriotism over things as frivolous as a flag pin, or a supposed relationship with a ‘washed-up old terrorist.’
It is not enough that the two candidates should simply disagree on fundamental issues, but that one must be American or not. It’s an age-old Republican strategy. You are either with us or with the terrorists, or the enemy, or the evildoers, or the socialists, or the French or whoever it is on any given week.
While the things that are shouted at McCain-Palin rallies disturb me, I do not feel that all small-town Americans are racist, hateful or un-American. I may not agree with McCain and Palin on a number of things, but I do not consider them to be anti-American.
It’s what Palin and McCain’s surrogates and talking heads are doing that is un-American; dividing our country and citizens into non-existent factions for the benefit of the party.
We are the United States of America, being American is being pro-America. Patriotism is not measured by where you are located on the map, by the number of flags on your porch, or the ‘Support The Troops’ magnets on your car or the flag pin on your lapel.
We are all Americans, from Kokomo, Ind. to Los Angeles, Cal., from Scranton, Penn. to Boston, Mass. We will continue to be so, whether McCain’s our new commander-in-chief, or if Obama is. We are the microcosm of democracy and diversity.
We, the American people, are in this together. We cannot afford to divide ourselves in any way. I leave you now with the poignant words spoken by Ma Joad in John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’:
‘We’re the people, we’ll go on forever.’
