Feed your head. (Jefferson Airplane, White Rabbit)

[Sweeney]

88. The problem my friend

lies in the practice of the Romans: Devide et Empera. We are not alone in this world, and we are in the ring with heavyweights. It does not help us to be divided into two munchkins. We need our unity, and clearly we have bought unity in the past with injustice, as when this country allowed slavery. But we have had it since. I would recommend Santayana on America.

In one essay, on English Liberty in America, he notes the long period of time when government was carried on by people in relative obscurity. First, in talking about the free, individual, co-operation of the English, he said: "The omnipresence in America of this spirit of cooperation, responsibility, and growth is very remarkable." so he notes in this land a common spirit, coming unchanged from England and undiluted by all foreign nations here. A few lines later he says: "Where individuality is so free, cooperation when it is justified, can be all the more quick and hearty. Everywhere co-operation is taken for granted, as something no one would be so mean or short-sighted as to refuse. Together with the will to work and prosper, it is of the essence of Americanism, and it is accepted as such by all unkempt polyglot peoples that turn to the new world with the pathetic but manly purpose of beginning life on a new principal."

After talking at length of the way people work together in emergency, and saying every Every political body, every public meeting, every club or college or athletic team is full of this spirit of cooperation. He says: "All meet in a genuine spirit of consultation, eager to persuade, but ready to be persuaded with a cheery confidence in their average ability, when the point comes up and is clearly put before them, to decide it for the time being, and to move on. It is implicitly agreed, in every case, that disputed questions shall be put to the vote, and that the minority will acquiesce in the decision of the majority and build hens forth upon it without thought of ever retracting it."

Now, I trust that is not the America you see around you. And even if we can agree that going along to get along is not the answer, we have a problem. What if we must suddenly learn to get along for our very survival? Because it appears we do not share that principal of cooperation. People are finding more and more over a lot of issues that they have given all they can give and it has gotten them no where. We are no willow. We are a glass. Our countrymen can see through us, but they cannot walk through us. We are left and right the same, and either we will learn to relate through a new form of society or we will be broken by some outside force or against each other. We are brittle. The give has gone out of us just like it went out of Rome and Greece, and every modern society remade by revolution or destroyed by war. Santayana was writing for the most part less than one hundred years ago, and in that time frame we have reached our limit. Now, my friend; how do you see it?