Just about all candidates for president regularly announce their intent to unite Americans, to “bring us together.”
It’s a gimmick.
If they are sincere, they are profoundly naïve; if they are just muttering sweet nothings in order to seduce Americans to vote for them, they are manipulative.
In his acceptance speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, John Kerry, one of the most polarizing figures in modern American political history, said: “Maybe some just see us divided into those red states and blue states, but I see us as one America: red, white, and blue.”
And Barack Obama, who has disunited Americans — by race, class, and gender — perhaps more than any president since the beginning of the twentieth century, regularly campaigned on the theme of uniting Americans.
Thus, in his 2008 victory speech, President-elect Barack Obama said: “We have never been just a collection of . . . red states and blue states. We are, and always will be, the United States of America.”
Dividing Americans by race, gender, and class is how the Left views America and how Democrats seek to win elections.
In their current campaigns for president, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John Kasich regularly proclaim their intention to bring Americans together. He, one suspects, because he is naïve, and she because she will say pretzels come from Neptune if it will garner votes.
Bringing people together is actually the theme of John Kasich’s entire campaign.
Headline on the “Meet John” page on the John Kasich website: “bringing people together, lifting people up“ (caps in the original).
Senator Rob Portman, February 1, 2016: “I am endorsing John Kasich because I believe he is the person our country needs to bring Americans together.”
And Hillary Clinton, who, with the one exception of Donald Trump, has the highest negatives in the polling history of presidential candidates, also speaks repeatedly about her ability and desire to bring Americans together.
Top line on “Hillary Clinton for President Supporters” Facebook page: “We’re in the business of bringing people together.”
CNN, April 6, 2016: “Hillary Clinton — We need a president who can bring people together.”
Lanny Davis, the Hill, March 2, 2016: “Clinton wants to bring us together.”
And Bernie Sanders made this a major theme in one of his ads: “Our job is to bring people together.”
Even Donald Trump, who divides Republicans — not to mention other Americans — as no Republican ever has, uses this mantra.
The Hill, headline, January 12, 2016: “Trump: ‘I can really bring people together.’”
NJ.com headline, March 1, 2016: “Christie: Trump is ‘bringing the country together.’”
For the record, Ted Cruz speaks about uniting Republicans, but not often about uniting all Americans.
All calls for unity by Democrats are particularly fraudulent. Dividing Americans by race, gender, and class is how the Left views America and how Democrats seek to win elections.
#share#But calls for unity are meaningless no matter who makes them.
Because no one who calls for unity tells you what they really mean.
What they really mean is that they want to unite Americans around their values — and only around their values.
Would Mrs. Clinton be willing to unite all Americans around recognizing the human rights of the unborn? Would she be willing to unite all Americans around support for widespread gun ownership?
Of course not.
She is willing to unite Americans — providing they adopt her views.
Would Bernie Sanders like to “bring people together” in support of reducing corporate and individual income taxes in order to spur the economy?
Would John Kasich be in favor of “bringing Americans together” by having them all support increasing the size of government and of the national debt? One hopes not.
The gap between the Left and Right is unbridgeable. Their worldviews are mutually exclusive.
I first realized the dishonesty of just about all calls for unity during a ten-year period in which I engaged in weekly dialogues with clergy of all faiths. Protestant and Catholic clergy would routinely call for Christian unity. When I asked Protestants if they would be for such unity if it entailed Protestants adopting the sacraments of the Catholic Church and recognition of the pope as the “vicar of Christ” on earth, that ended the discussion. Likewise, when I asked Catholic priests if they would give up the sacraments and the papacy in order to achieve unity with Protestant Christians, unity talk ended. And, of course, the same would hold true for Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews who routinely call for Jewish unity.
Even more absurd are the calls of naïve Christians and Jews to have all the “children of Abraham” — Jews, Christians, and Muslims — unite.
The calls can even be dangerous. One would be hard-pressed to name a single free society that was ever united outside wartime. The only truly united countries are totalitarian states.
So why do candidates for the presidency repeat this nonsense every four years? Because Americans fall for it every four years.
But it’s time to grow up. The gap between the Left and Right is unbridgeable. Their worldviews are mutually exclusive.
— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, The Ten Commandments: Still the Best Moral Code, was published by Regnery. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com. © 2016 Creators.com