Not only could the vicious crime in Norway have happened here, I am surprised that it did not. We’ve been pushing the envelope in our discourse to that end.
Look at this statement about the Norway shooting and bombing suspect from an article in Sunday morning’s San Antonio Express News: “He’d been a member of the right-wing Progress Party which began as an anti-tax protest and has been stridently anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim.” Sound familiar?
The newspaper added that he “quit the party in 2006, apparently disappointed by the party’s move toward center.” We see this kind of intolerance toward any proposed compromises in our current poltiical and economic situation from some. And from others, we hear hate speech and negativity–the language that fuels people like Anders Behring Breivik in Norway.
Look back on America’s history. Every great success of this country has come when we have presented a united front. When we abandon the ideology the requires us to focus on our differences and turn instead to seeking our commonalities. Only then can we pull together in the face of a common enemy. Yes, there will always be dissenters and that is a good part of our heritage; but the majority must be walking together toward overcoming the situation that threatens to destroy us.
Surveys show that our current battle with the economy has united most Americans–73% want our politicians to come together and reach a compromise. Our elected representatves have chosen instead to play politics with our future, to honor commitments to lobbyists, to gamble with the best interests of our country to make feeble points.
It is time for our representatives and Senators to follow the willl of the people and listen to the words coined by Aesop and repeated by Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln: “United we stand, divided we fall.”