BackInTex wrote:BTW, I no longer consider our country one nation. We are not aligned. We are fragmented. Gone are the days when the majority of Americans want to be American (Red White and Blue). Most seem to value and take pride in their individualism. Most are not willing to sacrifice for others for the benefit of the country. Most want others to rule over them. Most don't understand the word 'nation'.
I'm just curious.
(a) Most conservatives I've spoken to look upon individualism (aka 'rugged individualism') as a conservative -- and very, very American -- value. You seem to be running counter to that.
(b) What previous period are you talking about when this nation was aligned and unfragmented?
Certainly not the earliest years: many of the Founding Fathers did not consider this one nation, but a confederation of independent states; they identified more with their states than with a nation.
And the US had not been around for even a decade before violent disagreements about the course of the nation led to the formation of political parties, despite the fact that Washington so urgently warned against faction.
Certainly not the period leading up to the Civil War, when disunion grew to such a pitch that certain states did not 'want to be Americans' to such a degree that they tried to secede, and were quite willing to fire at the 'Red White and Blue'.
We certainly were 'fragmented' during the period when any group of Americans enjoyed rights that others did not. (I'm talking here about legal rights on the books in many states.) You cannot possibly be claiming that the time of Jim Crow was a time of perfect unity for all Americans. I doubt that too many people who were on the
short end of that stick felt that way.
When was this time when there was no fragmentation?
I have a lot of faith in this country. Despite some dark passages in our history, I think we've done a very good job of constantly striving to maintain the ideals expressed in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. But I'm skeptical about the idea that, at some utopian time in our past, we were somehow more 'united' or more of a 'nation' than we are today.
And there are still plenty of people who want to be Americans just as much as my grandparents did when they came here. If there weren't, we wouldn't be having debates about immigration policy.
