The Great Divide In Our Nation

When I hear the term 'great divide,' I immediately think of a Don Ellis piece that appeared on his Fillmore album (click here for a YouTube link to that piece). Ellis's piece in in 13 and is divided, and thus the name, into the following pattern: 3-3-2-3-2. It's an excellent piece of music that Ellis's band performed in and around 1970--he was way ahead of everyone back then when it came to odd musical time signatures.


But that is not the great divide I want to complain about today. The great divide we see today is practiced by all imaginable ideological sides. It is practiced by many who are political conservatives, political liberals, and leftists. The divide that exists for them are the political views views that exist between these groups and any other groups that might exist. Thus, we have many conservatives who believe that only conservatives have anything of value to say. And the same goes with many liberals and leftists. In the end, what Martin Luther King, Jr. says about the 'Western arrogance of feeling' also applies to many conservatives, liberals, and leftists (click here for a source for King's statement):

The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

So when we see conservatives, liberals, or leftists so strongly claiming to have a monopoly on truth while even trying harder to discredit all others, we could easily substitute the words 'conservative,' 'liberal,' or 'leftist' in for the word 'Western' in King's statement above.

That arrogance of feeling provides more than enough rationalization for either conservatives, liberals, or leftists to not want to share power with others. And then when we add the economic elites of the nation into the mix, we also see that many of them not only do not want to share power with others, they don't want to share wealth either.

That reluctance to share power and wealth with others is an ominous harbinger of things to come. For just as sharing power and wealth with others is the beginning of peace, so to is refusing to share power and wealth with others is the beginning of war.

This should lead us to the main point of this article. The great divide that exists is not the one that exists between conservatives, liberals, and leftists. The great divide that exists in our nation today is the one that exists between those who want to share and collaborate with others from those who don't. And here we have an easy litmus test to apply to see who is working to bring peace from those who are working to bring war whether that war is with foreign powers or domestic rivals.