Image by Chance Agrella, freerangestock.com
Growing up, I loved the Schoolhouse Rock educational shorts that ran on the Saturday mornings with the regular cartoon schedule. The catchy tunes helped me on more than one occasion through my educational pursuits. To this day, I can recite the Preamble to the United States Constitution because I learned the Schoolhouse Rock song for it.
One of the great songs from that time was about the Great American Melting Pot. I loved the song because it stressed how 'we' come from all corners of the world and here, in this great country, become one new, stronger people. We are built upon the principles our Founders and Framers instituted, with the freedom and encouragement to add the great spices of a plethora of viewpoints, religions, races, cultures and more into the mix. It is because we embrace this melting pot style that we are free.
Unlike multiculturalism, which is based in divisiveness and special treatment for special classes, the melting pot promotes unity and tolerance. Ever heard "United we stand; divided we fall"? The melting pot unites us and makes us strong.
When you look at the multicultural messes abroad you will see divisiveness, special classes and nations committing suicide by slowing killing themselves from within by going from being one nation to a mini united nations. They have essentially ceded their soil to many other nations and cultures -and not even a single shot was ever fired.
Under the melting pot framework, we learn to live together in relative, messy harmony not as a collection of different people, but as a group of one. What are Americans? We are Catholics, Jews and Hindus. We are white, black and brown. We are short, tall, skinny, fat, blonde, brunette, red-head and bald. We are young, old and middle-aged. We are male and female. We are as diverse as the planets in the universe but we are still one people. We are one family.
Like every family, we have the crazy uncle, the nagging aunt and the trouble maker cousin. We have our squabbles, but you mess with us and ours, as in 9/11, and you watch how fast we unite to help one another and kick yer butt!
This melting pot design demands we show true tolerance for one another. It requires us to learn to recognize other viewpoints than our own and to join our voices together into one harmonious choir of support for the preservation of our freedoms from those in power who would strip us of them. I read something from Glenn Beck that I think really says it nicely, “Let’s stop dividing ourselves and let’s start being intellectually curious and accepting the fact that other people are going to go in a different direction. And stop trying to win and start trying to understand each other.”
We don't have to think alike to be one nation. It is because we have so many different ideas that we can find and use the best. Its how in our short time as a nation we became a world leader and powerful force in the international front. If we all thought the same, if only one opinion was allowed, we wouldn't accomplish much at all. We'd die from the lack of progress and evolution as a people and as a nation.
We will never have the 'utopia' pictured in film, "The Giver", but as illustrated so well in the movie, that is not the kind of utopia most of us would wish for, any way. Messy and difficult as it is, our diversity and resulting freedoms are the key to our peace and our joy.
Most of us hate war, hate violence, hate crime and hate negativity in general. We want to see poverty end and we want all to get the care and assistance they need when ill or in special circumstances. Our differences come from what to do about those issues but that gets taken to a whole other-worldly level when politicos and talking heads amp it all up for their own gain. They divide us to use us for their own aims and gains. We can change that.
Our messy diversity is beautiful and it is liberty embodied. It is worth protecting and worth fighting for at town hall meetings, in letters to the editor, in messages to our elected and at the ballot box.
It is within our rainbow of colors, ideas, backgrounds and beliefs that we find our strength, our wisdom, our freedom and our peace. It is our greatest asset and the chink in our amour when others turn it against us.
Like this post? Stay tuned for more in Kara's upcoming book "Beautiful, Dangerous Liberty: The True Path to Peace."
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