The Right Values to Unite America, by Rita Dunaway

It’s that time of the election cycle again. Candidates for national office are preaching their sweet-sounding message of “unity” to the American people. Each one believes him- or herself to be the man or woman for the job of healing our toxic politics and bringing us all together. Statements like this recent one from Senator Amy Klobuchar are typical: “Every single day where Donald Trump’s trying to divide our country, we should be one America.”

The question we need to be asking ourselves is: What are the values underlying the “one America” we’re being sold?

Unified — Around What?

Surely no one suffers from the delusion that all Americans share the exact same set of values or prioritize them the same way. And that’s okay. Neither did the Founding Fathers. A Constitutional Republic like ours doesn’t require perfect consensus to function properly. In fact, our system thrives on healthy, civil debate over competing policy ideas.

It does, however, require that we respect certain principles that are fundamental to our system’s operation. Those principles are the ones that should form the center for our efforts to be unified.

That’s why I worry when the current slate of Democratic candidates for president talk about unifying the nation. In the typical stump speech, not far behind the expression of that noble desire is some version of a vow to address “income inequality” or some other perceived injustice.

Read more at  stream.org/right-values-unite-america/