What Does the Ultrasound Say?

Perhaps the saddest thing about America today is the palpable divisiveness at virtually every level and in every realm of our national life.  Internationally, I’m not sure President Obama could make it any worse, even if he tried.  It seems it is all reaching a crescendo, a boiling point, a breaking point, an explosive eruption.  Jesus described a coming time of terrible distress “wars and rumors of wars” and that, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.  All these are the beginning of birth pains.”   It’s time for the world to enroll in a Lamaze class.

Domestically, it hasn’t seemed this bad since the tail-end of the civil-rights movement with its attendant urban riots.  That period included the Harlem Riot of 1964, Philadelphia 1964 riot, Watts Riots of 1965, and the 1966 Hough Riots in Cleveland.   I can vividly remember 1966, as a six-year old boy, visiting my Aunt and Uncle’s place in Ohio.   A throng of rioters were marching down their street.  The adults had my cousins and brothers all huddled in the attic, while my Dad and Uncle armed with a hunting rifle and a shotgun kept watch out of the attic window.   

The following year, 1967, over 100 US cities experienced widespread rioting, including in Newark, Plainfield, NJ , Detroit, MI  and Minneapolis-Saint Paul.   After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, extensive rioting again occurred in cities across the country, most notably in  Chicago,   Washington, D.C.  , Louisville,  and  Baltimore.   

The other movement I distinctly recall from my youth was the anti-war movement.  Hippies protesting the Vietnam War turned against the government, their parents, and virtually all authority. “Never trust anyone over 30” was their code.  The police became “pigs.”  And who can forget their recruiting slogan and raison d’être, “Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll.”  Virtually every mall had a “head-shop” and record stores that served as a reminder and promoter of their counter-culture practices. 

Although the civil-rights and anti-war movements were both against the status quo that the US government represented, they never really converged as completely as one might have thought.  Even though Martin Luther King, Jr. was against the Vietnam War, he didn’t trust the hippies enough to fully embrace them.  Dr. King expressed this sentiment in a 1967 lecture at Massey College in Canada, “The importance of the hippies is not in their unconventional behavior but in the fact that hundreds of thousands of young people, in turning to a flight from reality, are expressing a profoundly discrediting view on the society they emerge from.”

Tragically, or perhaps ironically, we now see the worst of these two movements merged in one man -- Barack Obama.  He’s not alone. Many modern leftists of similar temperament come to mind, e.g., John Kerry, Eric Holder, Bill de Blassio and Hillary are all comparable.  They’ve sworn to uphold and enforce the law but know that won’t produce the outcomes they desire – so they find themselves conflicted, occasionally defending and enforcing it, other times condoning or demonstrating outright lawlessness.   They are expected to ensure tranquility and the common defense, but loathe the police and military that are charged with trying to achieve it.  They dare not admit there’s a war on – not even on poverty -- let alone admit they are the very reason we are losing it.

Martin Luther King, Jr., in decrying the “white moderate,” describes the character of these modern leftists to a tee, “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the {African-American's} great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the {African-American} to wait for a ‘more convenient season’.”  

I agree with Dr. King, as long as these leftist/moderate whites are in charge, they’ll continue to paternalistically dole out government largesse, as if that’s the solution -- in the hopes of coming to a more convenient season or their next election, whichever’s first. 

The contractions have started.