Do We Want To Have a Country?

Who are we as a people?

Do we want to live as individuals, grasping for power and wealth, unconcerned about anyone or anything unless it touches us directly?

Do we want to have a country?

The Several States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Join,_or_Die

Where is the melting pot?  We brought our troubles to these shores and, yearning to breathe free, we became Americans, of various origins and ethnicities, to be sure, but Americans above all.  The several states, founded by Quakers and Pilgrims and the Dutch and the English, agreed in 1776 to unite despite those differences.  Those were serious differences, you're going to Hell kind of differences, but the notion of a country was, ultimately, an idea worthy of preservation.

It wasn't an easy conversation.  Families were divided, friendships were ended. But the conversation itself, The Federalist Papers, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, was fascinating.

This is an important conversation, one that we need to have, as a nation, from time to time.  It takes a major stressor to engage us, something like Joseph McCarthy or Kent State or 9/11 or the election of Donald Trump.  It's painful and it's necessary and it seems to be inevitable.