The Case Against Unity

Dan

Americans don't have to like each other. They don't have to understand each other or get along. New Englanders don't have to get the Midwest anymore than Texas has to get New York or Vermont, and no one in heaven or on earth wants to understand Florida. North and South and East and West can all roll their eyes at each other. As long as California keeps its politics to itself everyone can visit for the view and then return to their own problems in their own state. That's what's nice about being American.

What does or should unite us is the love of a free country, but even people who hate America are free to live here and talk about how miserable they think freedom is. And everyone who loves America is free to ignore them or tell them to shut it. But we don't have to get along. It's better if we don't. Collectivism never works out well for anyone. No man or woman ever elected will be able to make people like each other. That's a nonsense claim - It's American to not like everyone and everything, and unless it's trampling someone's God-given rights, say “it's none of my business.” Each state has its own problems it doesn't need another state dumping its garbage on it as well. Unity is code for “let me tell you how to do things.” We already annoy each other by means of geography; let's not make this arrangement more complicated by telling each other what to do. It's American to say you do your thing but stay out off my lawn. Unity is overrated.

We simply don't like each other and it's been this way since the the beginning. There has been, and will be, a time to agree to fight for our protection and aid each other in disaster. We are Americans after all and we have a bit of a soft spot for other Americans. Somehow there is still a kinship in the love and hate tug-of-war rooted in our pursuits of individuality. But when we insist on collectivism, when there is an insistence and intrusion on individual way of life, that is where the relationship is strained, and eventually breaks.