 |
 |
 |
|||
Legal
|
A Fractured NationFractured By DivisionsWe are no longer a divided nation or even a splintered nation but rather a nation fractured into hundreds of ideological viewpoints. The glue of American unity appears to be too thin to hold us together, to unite us. We seek excuses to disagree, excuses to contradict, excuses to defeat and find intolerable any other view but our own. We have become a nation of self-interests with few uniting national interests. It doesn’t matter the subject: politics, religion, education, business, or any one of hundreds of other subjects. We seek not to find common ground but to win and not just to win but to defeat and destroy any opposing view. We are more interested in promoting our differences than in accentuating our sameness. We must learn to have differences without division, arguments without insults, debates without negativity, disagreements without hatred. We must seek to find tolerance in our dedication, reason in our rashness, and morality in our character. We must put the good of the nation above the good of the group, the party, or the individual while minimizing any infringement on our individual freedom. We as individuals must first find our own core values before those core values can be returned to this nation. We must not only become responsible for ourselves but also for those around us, not by controlling them but by assisting them. Most of us have adopted the attitude and reasoning that it’s someone else’s responsibility. We expect our government to do for us what we should do for ourselves. We demand rights without responsibilities, freedom without sacrifices, wealth without work, reward without punishment. We no longer seek a balance to life but, instead, insist on pleasure without pain, joy without sorrow, and life without death. We expect to receive without giving, success without effort, love without hate. We are a nation of doers but with too little conscience to keep our actions from doing more harm than good. Good is what we want or what we can sell to others as best; bad is what we can’t get - legally or otherwise. We expect morality without its teachings, honesty without morality, truthfulness without examples. We rely on religions to teach us and to improve us but by narrowing the teaching of morality to only religions, we demand and expect too little from ourselves. We are not taught personal accountability and responsibility as being human characteristics. Our schools refuse to teach morality and our religions tell us how horrible we are without their creeds. No wonder some people believe there is no evil, no right or wrong , that getting caught is OK but getting convicted is the only wrong. We must rediscover not only our humanity but also our humanness: our strengths and our weaknesses, our faults and our goodness. We are a mixture of all things; we must learn to be our best and rediscover our conscience. Author: Don Miller
|
2004 Articles |
|||