Trust Regained.

There was a man, back in the day, by the name of John Dickinson, who in 1768 said this: "A people is traveling fast to destruction, when individuals consider their interests as distinct from those of the public. Such notions are fatal to their country, and themselves."

Hm. Sound somewhat familiar?

Now, we have established to some degree that there has been a drastic loss of community and public trust within the United States, and that, to a certain degree, the instigator of this loss of trust between people is a Grail-like figure of immense desire to many fashionable people these days. This Grail-figure is multiculturalism. Or diversity, or cultural pluralism, or any other name you wish to assign. We reach this new Sangreal through the quest of better, continuing, better funded education. Education. Are we supposed to believe that our current public education system is even remotely capable of conducting a reversal of racial, cultural, and ethnic avoidance when people can't even find where they live on a map of the United States? My mind is purely boggled.

Now, we certainly can't legislate this away (Congress has tried, in vain, in multiple ways) and the only result of forcing people to be around each-other is that the entire education system slowly topples, people start moving to where they do not have to be forcibly integrated (Boston, anyone?)

So we can't outlaw "not-trusting-each-other-because-of-x, we can't educate it away, and funnily enough, by promoting our differences as being the same, only different, as being equally valid and important and one is not better than the other &c, &c.... we make our problems worse!

Strewth.

So what can we do?

Well, my friends, I think we have a couple of options, that are, let me stress this, equally important. We must do them both, because if we skip or even skimp on one or the other, we lose. And we lose more than just being able to trust those we see. We lose the benefits of being a unified country, and all the possibilities within that framework.

So how can we regain that trust?

First we must stop teaching that diversity and pluralism are beneficial. We must stop believing that they are and that those ideas are what a truly "enlightened" civilization will hold most true. We need to teach ourselves and our children that we must bind together, as a community, as a country, as one people,  to truly be able to reach true liberty, equality, &c. We must bind together in support of a mutual goal, the betterment of ourselves and this world for our children and their children. We must purge our natural inclination to separate, and blend. We must melt together. We were able to do it once. My ancestry and my wife's and one of our good friend's is proof that it is possible and also good to do so. In the old days, before multiculturalism became cause célèbre, my ancestors were those dirty Irish who nobody would lend a hand unless it was to stick a knife in the back. The same goes for my Lithuanian wife, and our Italian friend deGiovanni. Nowadays, about the only way to tell us apart is I can lay claim to better beer, deGiovanni has better food, and my wife can do wonders with beets. Ahem.

The other side is that we must reform ourselves. Without wanting change, without changing, without reforming our ways from the very soul we lose everything. And I'm not just talking about political reformation here. There must be change in the very soul, in your very marrow, away from the vicissitudes of modern idealism. Now, politically speaking, I don't give a damn what changes you inside. It could be the Christ, it could be Allah (we'll talk about that later), it could be you want to be a Gardnerian and dance in woods nekkid. I believe that YHWH is the only, true way to that, but that, once again, is not necessarily  germane to the current political discussion.

So there you have it. To regain trust, and incidentally, to regain America, we need to become America-centric. Both in the outer sphere of politics, education, broad societal mannerisms and goals .... and internally. Without changing the external, we die as a culture now. The culture that has given the world the greatest things of all history save Jesus of Galilee, Shakespeare, and the Pax Romana will vanish away like grass in the sun. And without changing internally, all that happens is we postpone that dying. To flourish, we must reform. We must return to the ideas, manners, customs, &c, that brought America out into the world as a great good. Possibly the greatest secular good in millennia.