Speaking from a secular viewpoint it's easy to see how the nation can be so divided at a time like this. For five years we have been bombarded by the federal government with messages about how unsafe the world is and how important it is for our safety to go on the offensive. And it has gone into the world and been as offensive as it can imagine, and more so than some of us can imagine.
In a normal self-governing society debate is healthy. Approached properly with everyone having equal access to the debate, it can help us overcome hurdles with the least imposition on citizens. But there are multiple factors that have distorted this process. We have ended up with a bipolar debate where only two sides have any real voice, and those two sides play tug-of-war with the nation's security. The resulting compromise weakens the approach of both sides so that in the end we have a hodge-podge solution that neither suits anybody nor has any positive effectiveness.
The first culprit could be considered our two-party system. That guarantees that just about every issue will be boiled down to two competing ideas, and only those ideas reach the public debate. Multiple times in recent elections the two parties have tried to make it appear that a sensible approach to governing has been denied us because some third-party candidate "split" the majority into two minorities so that the true minority ends up winning.
The two major parties do this by misusing the constitution's provisions in such a way that the true intent of its writers is not even considered when the matter is discussed. The constitution does not provide for the direct election of senators. The authors of the consitution, in what might be considered an elitist moment, felt that the general public couldn't be trusted to select truly honorable people to this august legislative body.
And they certainly had no intention of the direct election of the president. Their intent was that the people of each state would elect honorable persons who would then meet in a closed session and select, possibly from among themselves but usually from the general leadership of the country, a suitable person to be chief executive. Many candidates might be considered, and it was likely that someone who didn't really want to be president (such as George Washington) would be "drafted" by the electors.
Doing this, however, would dilute the power of the two accepted political parties, and they will never authorize a change back to the original intent. It has become apparent that for someone to become president they must be highly ambitious; indeed so ambitious that they enter the endeavor with compromised characters. Anyone who wants to be president badly enough to endure all that it takes to get there, is utterly disqualified for the office!
But that's only one of the divisive forces. Religion has become another. There was a time when religion was left out of public debate because America was so divided religiously. Among the early European immigrants to this land were a broad mix of religions. The Puritans came to Massachusetts Bay to escape the religious intolerance of the British government; only to set up an equally intolerant government of their own. Their hard-nosed approach roused the opposition of Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island, a haven of religious tolerance for years to come.
Maryland was founded by Catholics, who found little in common with the established Church of England. The Jamestown colony was an entirely secular enterprise that at one time imported a prison full of prostitutes so the colonists could reproduce and maintain the colony. It took an import of Poles to keep the colony afloat because most of the British males there considered physical labor "below" them.
Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, a Quaker. With such religious diversity it took strong language promising religious freedom for these colonies to agree to a common government. This was so important that it is preserved in the very first of the ten amendments that had to be attached to the constitution in order for it to be approved.
This went along fine until about the start of the 20th century. What had, at one time, been a small number of easily ignored people, became a noticable group; secularists. Most professed no religion at all, but some simply believed that worldly government is not a spiritual enterprise and should be run on strictly secular grounds. It is true that Charles Darwin's theories on the origin of species may have had some impact, but the rise of secularism would have happened without him.
As more and more people enbraced secularism, not only as an approach to government but as a way to live, the churches began to lose power. This should not have been an issue with them since the founder of their church, Christ himself, had told them not to attempt to accrue power to themselves. But the words of Christ seem to have little impact on people who know what they want and are determined to get/keep it. So the preachers began pushing back.
This has continued until today the preachers are frequently putting political issues into their sermons. They neglect the Word of God so they can feed their people fear of secular people. "They're out to get you," is the unspoken message. Any time secularists abuse power the event is recorded, taken out of context, and passed to the entire country so that preachers have an arsenal of "ridiculous" attemps to keep religion out of public debate with which to frighten the masses (and sell their tapes and books).
Meanwhile the secularists have taken every tack they can imagine to disparage religion in general. Most churches in American have made that very easy. They preach a God that is unimaginably cruel and tell the world this God "loves" them. "If that's love," the secularist thinks, "I can do without it."
Meanwhile the religionists have taken their distorted view of love and set out to "love" the nation. The antipathy between the two groups has grown and grown. I personally stand somewhere in the middle. I have committed my life to Christ and I believe his life, as recorded in the Gospels, should form the foundation for my character. But I don't think the approaches that leads me to take to the world's problems are necessarily the best policies to follow. So I generally stand in favor of secular government. I certainly oppose any religion, including my own, taking the reigns of government.
Which now brings us to the recent 5-year anniversary of the attacks on the United States. These were criminal attacks carried out by persons not affiliated with any government, but with a fanatical element of Islam. It can almost certainly be stated that the major wrong these people feel they are avenging with our blood is the establishment of the nation of Israel on "their" soil. And since it is the military and economic might of the United States that enables Israel to remain, the extremists have committed themselves to harrasing the US into withdrawing its support.
Now, five years later, it has become popular to blame those attacks on the approach of the Clinton administration, rather than on the inattention of the Bush administration. Conservatives are convinced that these attacks wouldn't have happened if Clinton had taken decisive military action after the first attack on the World Trade Center. They point out that the only time he took any military action whatever was to distract national attention away from his impeachment.
I'm not an apologist for philandering Bill, so don't expect me to mount a defense. Much of what they say may be true. But there is the incident in Somalia, rendered as entertainment in "Black Hawk Down." The pictures of people from that country displaying their hatred of us against the body of a soldier raised a veritable barrage of criticism on Clinton. Turns out that's where Osama bin Laden was at the time. This makes me doubt that Bill's critics really wanted bin Laden dead in those days.
The real difference between "liberal" and "conservative" in this debate goes to the effectiveness of military action. Clinton, and many others, even of those who did not support him, were sceptical about the possible outcomes of a major military incursion into the Middle East. The Republicans, under King George the Second, have concluded that our safety depends on such warmongering. Understanding that difference can negate many of the arguments made by both sides, because what they're really arguing about is whether this particular use of military force is accomplishing the stated goals of preventing future attacks of the sort we endured in 2001.
This time around the anniversary has come in very handy for Bush and his cronies. If Republicans were to lose control of even one house of the legislature Bush would be a very lame duck indeed. And current polls seem to indicate that just such a loss could happen. So Bush and his supporters have started a new offensive; reawaken the fear Americans felt five years ago and present the Republican Party as the only viable defense.
If you've read other things on my site then you know I'm among those who feel that military campaigns are often counterproductive and that this one has been more so than most. I believe I'm less safe from terrorist attack than I was five years ago, even though my chances of death or severe injury in a car accident far exceed my chances of the same from terrorist attack. Bush's actions in the Middle East have energized our enemy's recruiting campaigns.
But if we're going to take the military approach than we need to do so wholeheartedly. We needed to send the forces necessary not only to topple Saddam, but to maintain social order in the process. We needed to give those forces the best we had in both offensive and defensive equipment. And if we're going to rely on military force then we need to quit the U. N. and take out Tehran in a "strike them before they strike us" nuclear attack.
But because of our bipolar approach to governing we won't do that properly. The other approach would be to begin a campaign of good deeds in the Islamic world. Did Israel lock thousand of Palestinians away from their jobs? We provide them with income for as long as the locks are in place. Did Saddam destroy villages? We move in and rebuild them. Such an approach could do much to generate good will toward Americans in general and defuse the influence of extremists like bin Laden.
We have done some things like that in our rebuilding operations in Iraq, but not all commanders have followed through and made it work. And now the legislature has cut off fudning for that approach. We aren't doing that one effectively either. So our response has been largely ineffective. By not committing to one or the other plan we end up with mediocre government to match our mediocre schools, our mediocre health care system, and our mediocre churches.
By the way, where are the religionists in this bipolar debate? Since King George has taken steps of which they approve they feel obligated to support everything he does in the hope that a more conservative Supreme Court will give them the diamond they've craved for 34 years -- the reversal of Roe Vs. Wade. So they have come down on the side of a military approach. Never mind that Jesus refused to resort to violence, even when it cost him his life. Never mind that he taught us to turn the other cheek.
Which is why, when it comes to government and other public enterprises, I am a secularist. I do not believe life on this world evolved over millions or billions of years. I believe there IS a God and that Christ was that God come to earth. But I do not believe an effective government can operate on the principles Christ taught. Governments have to deal with the world as it is; Jesus said he was not of this world and that his believers would not be of this world.
If I were president I would govern very differently. I would see government as a check to the power of any organization composed of a large number of people, such as corporations, unions churches, etc. I would keep my personal religious beliefs out of it. But the chances of me making it to that office are closely related to the chances that life erupted on this earth entirely by evolution; billions and billions to one against!