Commentary
On June 16, 1858, addressing Republicans who had that day chosen him to run for Senate, Abraham Lincoln gave his famous “house divided” speech. His audience would have recognized at once the source of his thematic sentence, “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” as it appears in all three synoptic gospels of the New Testament. Lincoln immediately followed that statement with this opinion, “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half-slave and half-free.”Lincoln’s words proved prophetic. Less than three years later, the divided house of the United States fell apart, and for four years Americans fought Americans in the bloodiest war of our history. Historians still debate the causes of that war, but few would disagree that fiery rhetoric and sometimes violent acts in both North and South sparked and fueled this horrible conflagration.
Today our country is also deeply divided—not by slavery, not by regionalism, but by ideologies. The most glaring evidence of that toxic division came on July 13, when former President Donald Trump literally came within an inch of assassination by a sniper.
Those bullets fired on Saturday evening left two dead, including the shooter, and critically wounded two others in the crowd. That attack also inflicted yet another wound on a nation already bloodied by hatred and discord.
From that shooting came a photograph of a wounded Mr. Trump, one arm raised in a fist-pump of defiance, surrounded by four Secret Service agents. Above them flies an American flag. Just for a moment, let’s focus on that flag.
One nation. Indivisible. Twice that single sentence reminds us that Americans are one people, one country.
Those shots fired on July 13 should be a wakeup call to all Americans of good will that we are approaching the edge of a dark abyss that, if we continue on our present course, will swallow up our way of life.
The clock is ticking, and the time has come for all of us—left, right, and center—to remind ourselves that we are first and foremost Americans, that we are people whose true and common allegiance is to one flag and the republic for which it stands. It’s a great big flag, and there’s plenty of room beneath that banner for all races, all classes, and all sorts of ideas how to make our country better. Only those who hate their fellow Americans, those who are driven by ignoble ideology rather than by love of country, have no place beneath those stars and stripes. They never have and they never will.
For the rest of us, the time for listening to one another, for better understanding, and for reconciliation is now. We took a long time getting to this point of disunity, and healing that wound will in turn take a long time. Our politicians can begin this recovery by putting aside partisan issues and asking instead, “What is in the best interest of the American people?” We can do the same, applying common sense and love of country rather than dogma to the consideration of our nation’s problems.
Even better, we can begin to look at those with whom we disagree on some of these issues as fellow Americans rather than as bitter enemies. We may regard them as wrong in their opinions and positions, even deluded, but we must work to change their minds by persuasion. This attempted assassination of former President Trump should serve as a bugle call to bridge-building.
In his First Inaugural Address, Lincoln said, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
In the wake of this latest conflict between Americans, let us call on those better angels of our nature and set out to restore the health and unity of our country.
