The Nation's Soul

Politics for the most part used to be pretty simple, who was likely to make our lives better was the better choice.

This was primarily measured in economic terms since for the most part we agreed on some fundamental social policies.  Not everyone, but the mainstream believed in most of the same values, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Not universally but enough that we didn't see those values questioned openly.

A number of years ago, theories that used to be associated with fringe groups started going mainstream.

This coincided with the advent of cable and the internet, which allowed many more avenues for these theories to be publicized.

Whether it was simply an internal expansion or one fueled by external enemies trying to disrupt our society is something for the historians, but we started to see an us vs them set of values.

In fact one side was quick to argue that our values were under attack by forces and that "true" Americans had to stand up to those who wanted to destroy religion, patriotism, and ultimately America.

Many incidents, either real or imagined were highlighted to show how school prayer, gun rights, the Flag, and innocent unborn were under attack by mysterious forces.

Villains were identified, the liberal elite, the illegal immigrants, socialists, progressives and all those who didn't "fit" into their image of an American.

Our national soul was put in question.  As a nation of immigrants we once celebrated out differences, at least some of us did.  Now we started taking sides.

We need to restore our values and our national soul, however it doesn't seem like an easy task.  The first step would be to reject anyone promoting hate and an us vs them agenda.

All Americans and all people should enjoy our American values, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  How they do that is not cookie cutter, its what they want.