OPINION:
Not since before the Civil War has polarization been as rampant in our nation as it is today.
Not only are political parties at loggerheads, but so, too, are factions within each party. During President Abraham Lincoln’s administration, the major issue dividing people was slavery. Today, it’s supply-side outsourcing. Both are major economic issues.
Matters have now deteriorated to such an extent that they require our federal representatives to review how statesmen of the past managed to preserve our democratic republic. No doubt this will mean coming to terms with the difference between self-service and public service. There is such a thing as loyal opposition.
Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address that “our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. … We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
LOUIS L. BOEHM
Orchard Park, New York
Please read our comment policy before commenting.