Values under Assault?

I was having a conversation with a fellow traveler in the airport recently and he reminded me of a lot of things I hear almost daily.  The conversation opened with the recent passage of the $15 minimum wage in the City of Seattle and he wondered what my thoughts were since I live in the Seattle area.  I explained that I didn’t think much would change because presumably all of the workers who are now working are working because there is a job that needs to be done and the same is true for workers who are looking for a job.  No employer will leave a job unfilled if there is a profit to be made.  Then, he told me that he felt like his values were under assault and started to explain just before the TSA guy sent him down one line and me down another, ending our conversation.

I often hear people complaining about how their beliefs oppose a particular behavior they are seeing in our American society and on occasion they even say that the behavior is in opposition to our Constitution.

Most recently, the newspapers are filled with articles from all around the country on the subject of same sex marriage.  One side says that “marriage” is between one man and one woman while the other side reminds us of our core value of equality for all.  Some of the opponents have a long history of attempts to convert others to their way of thinking while the other side understands that sexuality is a matter of birth right and not a “lifestyle” that can be changed at will.  If we are who we are, should that be grounds for society to treat us differently?  We are born into different homes with different parents and we experience different things which influence our thinking on everything we encounter, but our American ideals tell us that we are all equal just the same.

As Americans, we are born with the right to disagree on any subject we choose, but we are not born with the right to impose our beliefs on others.  Our first amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Our Founding Fathers labored over those words and we have to know there was disagreement in the room.  Surely there were some who wanted their ideals to be the national ideals when it came to religion and religious beliefs.  Since they hadn’t yet taken a census of the American people, we can only know anecdotally that pretty much all the religious beliefs of the world were already on these shores when the Constitution was being written.  When I wrote my book, A Broken Sausage Grinder; Is Our Government Fundamentally Flawed? , I came up with a phrase that fits in nicely here – “… in the absence of preference for their religious beliefs, the government should show preference to none of them.”[1]

Allow me to use that concept more generally here with respect to other social ideals of today.  Whether we are discussing same sex marriage, women’s health, religion, or guns in America the principle of the argument is the same, in the absence of preference for one set of beliefs, the government should show preference to none of them.

You might take the stance that there is nothing new here, but if that is the case why are we still trying to impose our beliefs on others?  Why would the gentleman I met in the airport have felt that his values were under assault when he has every right to believe the way he chooses?  The only answer I can offer is that our political system thrives on issues that can divide us.  The political factions benefit greatly when we take sides against each other.

Our elected officials need our votes to get into office and then they take the money of the special interest factions and work to divide us against each other for the benefit of those special interests.  I am reminded of the phrase, “United we stand, divided we fall.”  When I tried to find its origin I found that Aesop is the first with credit for using it, but Patrick Henry is a more recent source from his speech on March 4^th, 1799 as a candidate for the Virginia Legislature when he said, “United we stand, divided we fall.  Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.”[2]  It is the factions and our elected official’s allegiance to them that is at the root of our troubles.

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