WHATEVER HAPPENED TO E PLURIBUS UNUM?
Memorial Day weekends put me in a reflective mood. Having friends who serve, or have served, in our military I am always keenly aware of their extraordinary character. I am also deeply appreciative of their willingness to put their lives in jeopardy for the cause of our nation and its ideals. I contrast this nobility of purpose and character with what I see as the shredded fabric of our national identity and unity and ask myself in disbelief “How did we get here?”
Having been born and raised in a country where the stratification of people into narrow and rigid identity groups was quite common, there was something refreshingly liberating about moving to the United States. Sure, people get judged by superficial factors but these judgments can be overcome by the audacity of success. For, above all, America loves its success stories; especially the rags to riches kind or where a lonely heroic individual overcomes extraordinary odds.
However, times they are a changing.
These days, as I read social media postings or reader comments below news articles, or as I watch the news and listen to demagogic politicians, I am both saddened by how divided we seem to have become, and by the coarseness and close-mindedness of our public conversations. Every action or utterance seems to trigger some kind of grievance from some single-agenda group. Social media platforms serve as echo chambers for these grievances to reverberate throughout society.
I scan the political horizon, in vain, looking for a transformative leader to emerge who can reverse this trend towards the balkanization of our society, and to remind us that our individual freedom lies in our collective unity. A leader who can bring us together with the shared recognition that achieving the extraordinary ideals embedded in our Declaration of Independence require sustained and collaborative effort on all our part. As Dr. King so eloquently put it back in 1963:
“We cannot walk alone”
“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children ………..will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
I have highlighted certain words to emphasize Dr. King’s recognition of the greatness of our founding documents and of of the value of individual freedom, and his vision of us all to stand together as one nation (instead of an assembly of hyphenated Americans).
(E Pluribus Unum was our national motto until 1956. It means “out of many, one”)