This month I have chosen to use this space to speak about an important aspect of recent events in the United States and I will not mention political parties, race, nationality or attempt to prove or disprove any theory or event, because it is too important to all of us that we get past that, to move forward from what has happened in our great country that caused division.
That is not to say that I do not have political views that would ‘pick a side’ on certain subjects, indeed I do and like everyone here in the United States, I have the right to them and on platforms, I manage the right to express them, but this isn’t about that, it is not about the ‘why’ of the divide or the ‘how’ of the divide but a call to see how it hurts us all in the long run.
Whether or not you buy into the severity of the current pandemic, whether or not you believe the news agencies from one side of the aisle or the other, people have died this year over this hatred of our own fellow countrymen, this much perhaps we can all agree on.
It does not matter if that number is one life, five lives, or hundreds of thousands, people who could or should be alive today are not, that is enough for me to stop the madness and realize that even if I cannot agree with everyone in this country on politics and policy, at least we all should be able to agree that the death of any person via political views is despicable and the very antithesis of American values.
A song by the aptly named band Brotherhood of Man had a popular song called United We Stand, which featured a phrase that went back to the days before this nation was even formed and included and was titled from the phrase: “United we stand, divided we fall,” and much like it’s first recorded appearance in another song entitled The Liberty Song in 1769, we need the phrase now more than ever.
Be you a member of either party, be your thoughts on the incoming administration of this nation to be an improvement or a major step backward, the phrase is powerful, foreign powers and enemies of democracy wait for moments like this to weaken a nation further, the division had also once created a civil war in this land, the inability to talk and have a civil debate to solve our differences leading to death, destruction, and war.
I now implore you not to forget them, not to let them slide, not to dismiss them and allow them to be unheard, but rather to think of the domino effects those words might carry, to think about the manners in which we express them and the consequences behind those actions or speech, to self regulate and temper our words and choices not into swords with which we fracture the binding fabric of the United States, its people, but into a standard bearing flame that illuminates and does not darken, lest our nation is weakened any more than we have already allowed.
I ask you to love the people of this country as they are your family in liberty, a symbiotic relationship in which through our differences we find freedom, because as much as there is no freedom with censorship, there is also no freedom without respecting and loving our fellow countrymen rather than denouncing and hating them.
