Debating Stephen Douglas over slavery, Abraham Lincoln said a house divided cannot stand. In 2018, we also are a house divided and must ask whether the terrible biblical saying Lincoln quoted applies to us. Can we endure as a united country?
We thought our politics couldn’t get any crazier, but the political divide and the breakdown in trust became even deeper after the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. When Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, we were permitted to disagree about who was telling the truth. No longer. This time you’re “complicit with evil” if you don’t believe his accusers and oppose Kavanaugh, said Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ).
Moral outrage has become the basic currency of political debate, with Hillary Clinton telling her supporters, “You cannot be civil,” and former Attorney General Eric Holder advising, “When they go low, we kick them.” So have we, as a story in The Washington Post says, hit rock bottom with no clear path up?
After Kavanaugh was confirmed, liberal columnist E.J. Dionne wrote that the Supreme Court’s legitimacy is in tatters. Kavanaugh was nominated by the president, as the Constitution requires, but many liberals think Trump an illegitimate president because more people voted for Clinton. As for the Senate, which confirmed Kavanaugh, it’s undemocratic because little North Dakota has the same number of senators as California. READ MORE
