I believe the loss of our culture is hurting America.
No one ever summarized this better than Theodore Roosevelt when he wrote:
In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American … There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag … We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language … and we have room for but one sole loyalty, and that is a loyalty to the American people.
This view has been completely abandoned by the Left, and for good reason. Only by ignoring patriotism and love of country can they fully implement their desire for a socialistic country. One of the unfortunate truths of this divide for America is that it fractures us along all lines: economic, political, racial, sex, etc.
These divides are then easy for people to grasp onto and claim that they are the causes of our dysfunction and not the result.
I postulate that the real divide in this country is one of culture and not of the overly simple talking points listed above. At the end of the day, it is the sameness of mind that allows a county to succeed. For America, this has always been our belief in the American Dream. This dream embodies not only a belief in the possibility of happiness (as defined by the individual), but the responsibility of that success via hard work, determination, and initiative, all of which fall upon the individual.
In our current climate, hating American values has become the chic thing to do. This applies to our underlying culture. In a government system where you can purchase votes through the redistribution of wealth, the first casualty would clearly be the belief in individual responsibilities. After all, if you can get welfare benefits through the state, it must be their responsibility. The government has no incentive to stymie these gifts stolen from actual taxpayers, for doing so will make them the focus of anger instead of the talking points.
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A great example of this is found in the ideology of making a living wage (economic attack). When I was growing up, working at a fast-food restaurant was supposed to be a cruddy job with minimal pay and benefits, long hours, and dealing with the most ignorant and derelict examples of the human race. Why? It was supposed to teach us hard work and appreciation for the value of money and our own self-worth. It was incumbent upon us, the youth, to take this experience along with education and move up the economic ranks. If we failed to do so, we were looked at negatively for our lack of drive.
Today, we are no longer allowed to have any stigmas attached to the failures of others. (Are we even allowed to say that people fail anymore?) This being the case, it is not the fault of the 35-year-old man or woman working behind the register who, by his or her own decisions, squandered all of the opportunities given to us in this great country of ours. Instead it becomes an issue of race, sex or economics.
To come directly back to the racial tensions in this country, let’s look at the case that was arguably the catalyst for much of the racial uproar currently — the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. No one disputes the fact that minutes before the fatal shooting with officer Wilson, Brown and a friend had stolen some merchandise from a local convenience store. In fact, when Brown was leaving, the clerk can be seen on surveillance video approaching Brown, seemingly to confront him about the merchandise, when he was assaulted.
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Minutes later, Brown was walking in the middle of the street when a police officer told him to get on the sidewalk. Brown either ignored the officer or started yelling at him, depending on who is telling the story. However, in either case, Brown ignored the officer’s directions, which were in keeping with the officer’s statutory authority. When the officer attempted to get out of his car, Brown shut the door on the officer, and a fight ensued. Brown outweighed Wilson by 80 pounds, and this is an important fact to recognize.
As someone who loved combative sports and was an avid practitioner of modern army combative (MMA for the Army), I know weight is a considerable factor in who wins a fight. There is a reason all sanctioned fights have very rigid standards for the size difference of opponents. Officer Wilson would have been equally aware of this fact, so the narrative that he would intentionally attempt to provoke a hand-to-hand encounter with Brown is incredulous at best.
In fact, the case, which was presented to the grand jury, laid out a mountain of physical evidence that completely supported Wilson’s story. Yet the media refused to allow this to be the case of a thug who got shot because of his own stupid actions. Instead, they turned this into the story of police brutality. Instead of focusing on the things that Brown did to put himself into the situation, they convicted the officer and department up to and even beyond the point where the facts were laid out.
Culturally, we have slipped into a place where we can ignore the facts of a case and convict those with whom we disagree, especially if they are considered to be in a position of power.
That didn’t stop slate.com from publishing an article by Jamelle Bouie that is deep in racial divisiveness and racist overtones against the police:
This account, given one month after the shooting, fits the facts of the case. It’s consistent with forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony, and it was credible enough for a grand jury to defer to police discretion and decline charges. But the fact that it’s possible doesn’t make it believable, and looking at the story, I think it’s ludicrous … More troubling is Wilson’s physical description of Brown, which sits flush with a century of stereotypes and a bundle of recent research on implicit bias and racial perceptions of pain. In so many words, Wilson describes the “black brute,” a stock figure of white supremacist rhetoric in the lynching era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The southern press was rife with articles attacking the “Negro Beast” and the “Big Black Brute,” notes Philip Dray in “At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America.” To the white public, the “black brute” was a menacing, powerful creature who could withstand the worst punishment … The idea that Brown could resist bullets is also familiar. “Perhaps people assume that blacks possess extra (i.e., superhuman) strength which enables them to endure violence more easily than other humans.” — Jamelle Bouie
So first, Jamelle agrees that the evidence validates the police officer’s story but then explains how it makes more sense that the officer was simply a racist out for blood. That makes sense? It makes as much sense as saying that Wilson is lying about Brown not going down after being shot. In a nation that has been at war for over a decade now, there is a wealth of veterans who can attest directly to the amount of devastation the human body can endure and still continue to fight.
Culturally, we have slipped into a place where we can ignore the facts of a case and convict those with whom we disagree, especially if they are considered to be in a position of power. While clearly the most famous, this is far and away not the only case. In 2009, after hearing that a friend — Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. — had been arrested, Barack Obama made the following comment: “I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played … But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and number three … that there’s a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.”
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So again, without knowing the facts and without allowing for any personal responsibility to fall upon his friend, the then-president of the United States weighed in on racially polarizing rhetoric of blaming the police for being white supremacists.
I am not saying that there is not room for improvement with race relations in our country. Nor am I saying that race never plays a part in the biased decisions of people. What I am saying is that this mantra has become an end run around individual responsibility for one’s actions — something that is absolutely essential in being able to have a unified country and live the American Dream.
Matthew Wadler is a U.S. Army veteran and a senior OpsLens contributor. He served in the Army for 20 years as both enlisted and officer before retiring; his service includes time as military police, field artillery, adjutant general, and recruiter. He holds a master’s degree in HR Management and is a strong supporter of the Constitution and an advocate for military and veteran communities. This OpsLens article is used by permission.
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