America has always relied heavily on the concept of union.
It is literally what holds us together.
The colonies would not have defeated the British if it was just Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and Virginia facing off individually. We would have been swarmed under the red-coated army of the 18th century superpower and crushed. Holding hands with our neighbors kept America from being smothered in its cradle.
The concept is our first name. When we created the United States of America, we put the fact that we were in this together up front. Yes, we are states. Yes, we are America. But more than anything else, we are united.
When the unthinkable happened and we turned against each other in the Civil War, the states that stayed together were not identified as America. The North, in blue uniforms, was the Union. Even at our most divided, there was emphasis on that togetherness.
So what about now?
Over the last 30 years or so, Americans have pulled further from “We the People” and more toward the clustered cliques and pointing fingers of “us” and “them.” With each election, it becomes more difficult to see the choices as being about who leads us for a period of a few years. Instead, it’s an existential battle for the future.
When everything becomes good versus evil instead of a disagreement on priorities, it is harder to see a way to come back together when the campaign signs are pulled up and the voting booths put away.
The easiest thing to do is blame the people on the ticket and the campaigns that surround them for the shift in tone, but that’s disingenuous. It’s like blaming a hood ornament for a car crash.
Instead, we have to take responsibility for our own part. We are behind the wheels of our own actions. We all — all — have to decide to find unity again.
That doesn’t mean we give up on our beliefs. It doesn’t mean we accept things like racism or sexism.
What it means is that Benjamin Franklin was right when the Declaration of Independence was signed, saying, “We must, indeed, all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
For decades, we have appeared to forget that being a union is what gave America power. We have always had individual priorities as both people and states, but coming together has helped us grow and has built our strength.
That meant finding ways to work for what we believed was important when the other side was in power. It also meant sharing power even within our parties to make room for new ideas and younger voices.
It is critical now for these things to happen again.
America has never been homogeneous. It has never been one party, one thought, one direction. We were built of pioneers, rich men, slaves, natives, immigrants, industrialists and idealists. Like our flag, we are stitched out of pieces radically different from one another.
What makes America work is a celebration of what is different working together in unison.