The great division: Part I
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In My Humble Opinion
Jodi McDade
I started this column at least four times using two different topics, but just couldn’t stay on track. There is SO much going on in our country right now that is leading us far, far away from where we are meant to be. Of course, “meant to be” can have different meanings to different people, and that is part of the problem.
We have and always will have differing opinions of things, but somehow the division in our country is so much worse than it’s ever been. And I think even worse than at the time of the American Revolution and the Civil War. Those conflicts were over very specific issues facing the country, but what we face now are the differing opinions of political parties over many different issues. Where did we lose our way and take such diverse turns?
Since history is being dismantled it’s beginning to be exceedingly difficult to know how we got where we are today. I can pin some of it down to starting in 1913 with President Woodrow Wilson’s involvement in the Klu Klux Klan and the Progressive movement. This was at the time that we were recovering from the Civil War and would soon be going into World War I.
Since then there have been major changes in our government as it has taken over the role of “master” of all of us. We have lost so many of the freedoms and liberties that were guaranteed under our Constitution; we have lost the ability to make decisions for ourselves at the local level and allowed the federal government to make all types of decisions that they should NEVER be involved with.
The limited scope of federal government that was described in our Constitution has been flipped to limit the scope of what our state and local governments can oversee. The best government is the one closest to the voters, but that is not how we operate now.
We do still elect our representatives, but are they people we know personally or who we can call on directly? Are we getting the representation at ANY level that we are entitled to or deserve? Unfortunately, we have allowed our rights and freedoms to be taken from us by sitting silently on the sidelines and not paying attention because we are now concentrating on our own individual lives. We “assume” (which means makes “an ass out of you and me”) the people we have elected are honest and dedicated to looking out for us. We have allowed big business, labor unions, political action committees, etc. to do the vetting for us and to contribute to campaigns in outlandish ways. They now determine in many ways who is eventually elected.
Instead of being able to trust our news media – television/radio, print, digital, social media – like we could when they actually reported the NEWS and not their opinion, we now have no idea if we are receiving facts or propaganda. Instead of our children being taught the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic first, they are being pushed into technology. They are being taught “to the test” instead of the meat of the subject.
Many companies are making fortunes on the continued testing so the idea has become that the more children fail their tests the more tests they can sell. Our children are not learning how to write because everything is done online – most cannot even sign their name. They are not learning cursive writing so they will never be able to read the original founding documents of our country and will have to accept what they are told they say.
The fundamental laws of our country are being ignored in the areas of law and order, immigration, criminal justice, and individual liberties. Citizens of our country have been brainwashed to believe we need to do away with our police departments, send unarmed social workers out to confront criminals and allow illegal immigrants to infiltrate our country to receive benefits even our own American citizens are not allowed. We have homeless American veterans sleeping on the streets while some illegal immigrants are housed in hotels being paid for by the government.
Under the increasing Progressive movement, we have allowed our families to be destroyed and become dependent on the federal government. Starting in 1965 fathers were basically removed from participating with their families so that family units became single parent units. And this has continued to be the case since then because women were provided increased benefits as long as there were no adult men in the household.
Housing that was once single-family housing became single-parent housing and was provided entirely or to some extent by the government. Food stamps became the norm to feed these one-parent families, and the amount was increased by each additional child born into the family. It still exists today, and research has shown that most crimes committed are by males who have grown up without a father in the home.
See the continuation of McDade’s “In my Humble Opinion” column in next week’s edition for part two of “The great division.”
