In a recent issue of Imprimis newsletter put out by Hillsdale College, a privately funded conservative school, Christopher Caldwell talks about "The Roots of Our Partisan Divide." (https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/roots-partisan-divide/) In that speech and from his book, The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, Caldwell, among others, traces the roots of the extreme political and social divide in America between the progressive left and the conservative right back to the vestiges of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Passed by Congress to seek to address the segregation of the Jim Crow southern states, it was slowly expanded to outlaw discrimination in every sector of society and every walk of public and private life. He notes, "They did so by giving birth to what was, in effect, a second constitution, which would eventually cause Americans to peel off into two different and incompatible constitutional cultures." This was done by taking a "lot of decisions that had been made in the democratic parts of American government and relocate them to the bureaucracy or the judiciary." Consequently, while Americans never voted for bilingual education, the office of civil rights simply established it. Sexism cases for women's rights have exploded to this day with the #metoo movement. Hate crimes are now against every form of anti-lesbian or homosexual or transgender speech or actions or legislation.
"Let's say you are a progressive gay man in a gay marriage with two adopted children. The civil rights version of the country means everything to you . . . Quite likely, your whole moral idea of yourself depends on it too. . .. You are on the side of the glorious marchers of Birmingham, and they are on the side of Bull Connor. To you, the other party is a party of bigots." "Gender fluidity" taught in the first grade in public schools cannot be defeated or even complained against. You are designated as a bigot, a hate monger. "To you, the other party is a party of totalitarians." So, indeed, the sky may be falling in the future for this American republic. Whether we agree with Caldwell or not, it is fairly evident there is a great divide in this country that never existed, even during the decade of the 1960s.
I went to college in the 1960s. We had sit-ins, marches, the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) who marched beside my ROTC cadet corp placing roses in the gun barrels that we carried. The Vietnam War was moving ahead, and truth be told, well-heeled students in colleges got deferments while garage mechanics out of high school were drafted. A two-tiered society resulted. The war was most unpopular and my wartime friends who came back from Nam were booed and hated or dismissed for their efforts. Many of them suffered PTSD effects. It took many years and much pain to honor these wounded veterans. However, that revolution of the sixties took place against a background of morality rooted in the Judea-Christian codes of the Bible. Little did we know then that "civil rights" meant a dismissal of those codes and the substitution of it for individual rights individually defined.
I trace this great divide today to spiritual and religious reasons. Leonard Sweet said way back in 2009 that we are living in a "cut flower society," where the flower of religious activity may exist, but there is no longer any rooting in the Scriptures or in any Judaeo-Christian law code. Young adults now dismiss any absolute truths, favoring whatever "truth" may seem to be in their favor for the moment. Thus, Bernie Sanders' promise of free education and universal health care especially for those with higher educational or health debts is most appealing. It doesn't matter how we pay for it, since the government becomes our mother and father, entitling us to these human freedoms and benefits. This is pure socialism and may indeed move into pure communism or Marxism as the anti-God trends travel down the road. Then we will be without God and without freedom rooted in a God-centered framework of morality. Individual freedom of whatever sort will be substituted for responsible social freedoms. And the sky will indeed fall.
