A Nation Divided
Americans are divided on just about everything. We disagree over the need for affirmative action, the legitimacy of gay marriage, to right to have an abortion, and if the notion of God should be acknowledged by government.
We differ over the proper way for government to help its citizens, how best to improve academic performance, the proper form of protest, and if we should nationalize health care.
We cannot agree over the legitimacy of some religions, under what conditions we should be involved in military action overseas, and the best way to insure national security.
We are at odds over how to reduce the money in politics, how to balance the budget, how to fix our broken immigration system, how we should punish criminals, what to do about the problem prison population, if we should make English our official language, and so on.
That our nation is divided on just about everything should not be surprising in itself. After all, people with different ideas will naturally disagree. However, that we agree and disagree along ideological lines indicates something other than a difference of opinion is at work. This realization may not seem important at first, but the implications are enormous.
Imagine a group of graduate students traveling on a bus across America. If given a choice between two activities at every stop, we can guess that the men might tend to be interested in certain things, just as the women will tend to prefer others. Yet we would expect some crossing over as they sign up for the various activities. In fact, it is more likely than not that no two events will have the same set of students at them.
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Similarly, we would expect the same results from those on the political left and those on the political right. Although it is not surprising that they disagree on most issues, they should surely be in agreement on some. In addition, if no other factor but opinion were at play, we would expect those on the political left and those on the political right to cross over and agree with the other side. Yet, for the most part, such is not the case.
The evidence is peculiar and tells us that some underlying influence other than "opinion" is at play. We can best illustrate with an analogy.
The following analogy is a bit elaborate, but the point is profound and important enough to warrant the extra time and effort.
Imagine that a school principle asks to meet with the 8th grade math teacher outside of her classroom. To keep her students occupied, the teacher fabricates an impromptu quiz. She draws a series of triangles on the chalkboard, each with a 90º angle. She indicates the lengths of just two sides on each triangle. She instructs her students to work together and calculate the length of the missing side in each triangle using the "Pythagorean theorem."
Upon stepping into the hall and closing the door behind her, the class begins to work. They soon discover they are divided over the formula. Some say the "Pythagorean Theorem" is "C² = A² + B²". The rest of the students believe the formula is "C×2 = A² + B²". At odds and with no resolution in sight, the students decide to divide into two groups, each working with the formula they believe to be correct.
Both groups of students complete the last problem just as the teacher opens the door. She asks to see the answers. Being handed two sets of answers, she says, "Great! Let's see which group won."
She immediately notices the answers on the papers are different for every problem. At first, she wonders how both groups didn't agree on any answer. Then it occurs to her what happened. To confirm her suspicions, she checks the answers. Not surprisingly, one group answered all the problems correctly; the other group missed every answer.
In consideration of the evidence, the only possible explanation is that the groups were working from different formulas. One was correct; the other was wrong.
Solving social problems is not dissimilar to doing math. To every problem we apply a formula. In doing the math, we arrive at what we believe to be the best solution. As it turns out, left view thinkers and right view thinkers tend to be united on every issue only because they are working from different formulas.
This is an exciting discovery. It explains how so many smart and caring people can disagree uniformily. In fact, it is the only explanation for the division in America. Generally speaking, people on the left and right are not evil or crazy, they are merely working with different formulas when searching for solutions.
To unite the country, we need only to identify the opposing formulas being applied by the respective sides. Once the formulas are identified, we only need to evaluate them to conclude which formula is correct.
The Patriot Party was formed specifically to identify the opposing formulas, reveal which one is correct, inform the media, and then together educate the public.
