It’s basic bigotry. The other day a U.S. House of Representatives member addressed the House on why some countries fail. Republican Glenn Grothman from Wisconsin was talking about Canada. He said that Canada fails because of its language barriers within the country. It was Representative Grothman’s own version of the Sermon on the Mount. He was decrying the mote in the eye of other countries, while ignoring the beam in the eyes of Americans.
Being from Wisconsin, he might not know that about 40 million Americans have Spanish as their first language. And yet he was saying that this type of diversity is reason for failure.
What he needs to realize is that diversity can be a strength. It is like the multiple languages of Switzerland has helped make it one of the most stable countries in the world. Very conservative, but stable none the less.
And yet it has been people such as Grothman that hold America back. It was watching all those Halloween characters attacking the Capitol building in Washington last January 6, that showed where America had gone wrong. It was not so much as Trump had lead America down a pathway to failure, it was Americans’ who searched out and encouraged that despicable leadership.
It is division not diversity that holds back America. It is black versus white, northerner versus southerner, born-agains versus Catholics, Muslims and Jews, democrat versus republican, gun lover versus gun hater, Americans versus Mexicans, rich versus poor and any other difference is reason for distrust. It makes America difficult to govern, impedes justice, can nullify progress, fills prisons and makes city streets dangerous.
It seems strange that a country with so many heroes, can wallow in its divisions. From Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett to Ronald Regan and Martin Luther King Jr., Americans have built monuments and sung songs about politicians, warriors, parsons, actors, academics, scientists, hoodlums and baseball players. It seems that we all need to spend more time bringing people together instead of driving them apart.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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