American Divide is Deeper Than we Imagine

Please recall that Equal Rights Alliance and ERA Education are both non-partisan organizations focussed on getting YOU the gender-equal treatment under the US Constitution--the ERA--that WE ALL deserve. DOES AMERICAN JUSTICE DEMAND the biblical Thou Art Thy Brother's Keeper and equality, OR NOT? The following explains partially why ERA is anathema to one side that they won't even hold hearings on it in the 6 states that file ratification bills every single year for years!

A comment from a reader of the NYTimes, Paul Krugman's article says

KT

NYC

January 14th, 2011

1:53 am

Paul Krugman has gotten it exactly right. The exhortations of the past week to cool down the rhetoric has ignored, or for political reasons, sought to minimize, the differences between the political parties, as though these fundamental disagreements were really merely a matter of abusive language and hot tempers. The Republicans are playing this game to force compromises on issues such as health care, depicting criticism as abusive and divisive, while the Democrats are trying to marginalize those on the far right who refuse to compromise on any issue. The real question, however, is not whether we should agree, but how we should disagree. Threatening violence, either directly or implicitly, should be out of bounds. Placing bulls-eyes on Congressional districts, bringing guns to political rallies, and telling your followers, "Don't retreat; reload," is implicitly threatening violence. Such metaphors don't belong in political discourse in a nation that is ruled by law; not merely on principle, but also because such rhetoric feeds the fantasies of the violent and unstable.

Yet the two views of America are real, and derive from the two faces of capitalism. On the one hand, those who have money do not merely want to keep all of it, but view the rest of us as mere commodities. We don't get health care because, in the view of the capitalist, nobody owes anybody anything. You either win, or you're a slave. That's the capitalists moral code.

On the other hand, there are those -- not merely Marxists, but humanists and progressive liberals -- who see profits as belonging to the communities in which such profits are made. American political and economic freedoms permit the entrepreneur to prosper; hence that entrepreneur owes a debt to the community as a whole. Further, workers are human beings, part of the national community, not mere chips that can be played to further enrich the already wealthy.

Whatever side you're on, you have to be on the side of the rule of law. When our forefathers (and the foremothers whispering in their ears) began the constitution with "We, the people," they turned the whole world upside down. Before that day, hereditary rulers decided, arbitrarily, who did what to whom. After that day, power derived from the people and, by extension, from orderly processes of law.

Yes, the Second Amendment permits us to bear arms. But "we, the people" creates a nation of citizens, not warlords. We are going to fight out the moral conflict that Paul describes in his article; but we're going to do that with argument, not automatic rifles. That's the lesson that should have been learned this week, and we'll be very, very unfortunate if it wasn't.