Heres your assignment. At the end of the week, be prepared to write a short essay of not more than 500 words explaining why the United States has avoided the long and bloody religious wars that were so common in every other place of this earth?
Phones rang. Classmates traded ideas. We searched the textbooks. Nothing!
The next Monday when class resumed, the professor raised the question again for discussion before we began to write the dreaded essay.
Well, Sarah, he asked What do you think?
Without a seconds hesitation, she responded, Friends in heaven! The United States had friends in heaven.
The professor had a puzzled look on his face but this didnt deter Sarah who went on to explain. When she finished, there wasnt time to write an essay.
Sarah got a well deserved Ain the course.
Though not exactly in these words, heres what Sarah had to say.
The United States, arguably the most religiously vibrant nation on the earth did not become so despite its separation of church and state but because of it.
At the outset of this country a number of states established their own official churches until 1833 when government support for the official churches began to decline.
Then came the Civil War resulting in a fundamental change in the relationship between the federal government and the states which found expression in the Fourteenth Amendment. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive to any person life, liberty, or property without due process of law: nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law. Thats the reason we have fights and not battles over prayer in school.
The second major influence came with immigration. In 1789, the population of the United States was 99 percent Protestant. Today it ranges just above 53 percent. Today, the United States is home to more Hindus than Unitarians, more Muslims than Congregationalists, and more Buddhists than Jews. The changes in demography changed the notion that the United States could any longer be conceived of a a Protestant or Even a Christian nation.
Meanwhile the relationship between conservative Protestants and Catholics improve. While early years created hard feelings over support of parochial schools, a more common sense of ecumenism has demanded less separation of church and state. This has eventually shifted to pro-religion forces who seek less separation between church and state and secular anti-religious groups demanding more separation through the courts all of which has morphed into what we now recognize as culture wars."
The courts wrestled with two conflicting points. The establishment clause allowing different points of view, and the free exercise which moved from thought to practice. People could believe, for example as good Mormons, but if polygamy were allowed, it could change the fabric of society. These were tough questions which required accommodation between belief and practice.
The Supreme Court has become the battleground for scores of difficult cases involving religious freedom. Both sides of any question can probably agree that the answers are never completely clear and always difficult. Christians may have to put away their Bibles in the school cafeteria, but they have total freedom in other parts of their live. Occasional misuse of government funds is balanced by good citizens crafting ways to help people of faith without distorting religion. Even religious minorities who experience discomfort over occasional imposition of Judeo-Christian rhetoric and ritual nonetheless live at a time and place where religious minorities enjoy more protection than ever.
Yes, put it all together and Sarah came up with the right answer. The reason why the United States, unlike others nations of the world, has been able to avoid pogroms, and bloody religious conflicts is actually quite simple.
The writer Alistair Cooke once observed: As always, the British especially shudder at the latest American vulgarity, and then they embrace it with enthusiasm two years later. That is a kind way of saying that the British are always a few years behind the Americans, emulating them and then pretending that we came up with whatever it is we are mimicking, or coming up with a uniquely British version of it.
For example, Britains allegedly evidence-based involvement in the Iraq war was largely as President George W Bush wrote in an internal memo months before military action a matter of it following the USs lead. So much of the special relationship between the two countries hinges on this keeping up of appearances, where the British political classes who like to maintain their nation is the superior of the two, the original superpower can admire and obey while holding on to the fiction that the UK is a more restrained country, less prone to the excesses of the other.
Margaret Thatcher hit both of these notes, fawning over the US president, Ronald Reagan, when she said that they both had almost identical beliefs even though they were from very different backgrounds. And on her first visit to the White House, she said that the two countries were inextricably entwined because George Washington himself was a British subject until well after his 40th birthday.
But then Donald Trump became president and upset this taut balance of adulation and snootiness. He publicly flaunted the influence over Britain that had always been wielded in secret, humiliated Theresa May, insulted London mayor Sadiq Khan, and took a swipe at the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. He flourished the power and vulgarity of the US without any of its refining rhetoric or protocol. And the country he presided over became not just one of inelegant indulgence but a darker place where white supremacists, backed by the White House itself, marched in the streets.
With that erosion of reputation, Trumps America has gained a new utility for the British: it is not a place that Britain secretly looks up to, but a place that Britain is unlike; a place that demonstrates why things over here are not to be compared with how bad it is over there. A country that is struggling with its demons, and which we observe from a safe distance while lamenting its decline.
Whether its the USs culture wars, its race crisis or its succumbing to far-right politics and white supremacy, these are things that do not map neatly on to Britains faultlines. Poor America, the country we no longer share beliefs or an inextricably entwined history with.
The distancing began in earnest in the summer of Black Lives Matter, but the storming of the Capitol was the final dividing line. Boris Johnson was appalled at the disgraceful scenes and unreservedly condemned Trumps incitement of the crowd, even though he had little to say when Trump was building momentum for the insurrection in the preceding weeks.
The prime ministers transition from spectating to actively condemning was in part because the scenes in Washington DC were simply too shocking to be silent on. But the more important factor is that Trump is on the way out. He can be repudiated with no risk of blowback or diplomatic crisis. Had the events at the Capitol happened in the middle of Trumps term in office, I would wager that much of the scrambling to denounce, from Twitter to Johnson, would have been absent.
And so again, circumstances help the UK to distance itself, pretend it was not complicit in Trumps ascendancy, that there was no aiding and abetting of the president and his extremist supporters (despite refusing to condemn his Muslim flight ban, and rolling out the reddest of red carpets for him). The scenes at the Capitol serve a useful purpose, which is to overshadow the path that led to the steps of the building: with images so vivid and rich, and with so many colourful characters, we become preoccupied with their detail and fail to see all the arteries that nourished them.
The insurrection was just one point on a continuum that involves not just Trump and the Republican party, but an entire hinterland of conservative politics. It includes those in Congress who didnt quite disavow Trump, and respectable conservative pundits who, even if they repudiated the presidents most extreme acts, still played on his themes, such as the conspiring leftwing elite who hate the real America. The connective tissue between Trump and the white supremacist on the street is much more fibrous than it serves many to admit.
In the UK we are prone to the same impulses of denial using the high-octane events of the past few weeks to claim that a difference in degree means all the difference in the world. The reality is that, even though our parliament wasnt stormed, British members of parliament were jostled and abused on their way to work by hardcore Brexit supporters. One of those MPs was assassinated by a far-right nationalist. Another almost was.
Britains culture war is so potent that we have our own mobs scuffling with the police, responding to the dog whistles of our own government. We have respectable sections in the media who pump out conspiratorial theories about the woke and the elite, and now preach against mask-wearing and lockdowns. When the far right spills out on to the streets, claiming lives and attacking democracies, its the result of a million compounded complicities and complacencies.
Like a jigsaw, when these details come together they create a larger image. Today that image is Donald Trump. When he is gone, the jigsaw will be broken up again and both the US and the UK will choose not to see what together those pieces can create.
MANY PRESIDENTS assume office in the grip of a crisis. Joe Biden faces at least four. Covid-19 is a public-health disaster: the disease has killed over 400,000 in America and continues to rage while a disorganised vaccination drive sputters. The virus has wreaked economic devastation: 10m fewer Americans are employed than before the pandemic; two-thirds of children cannot attend school in person; one in eight adults are skipping meals. Bitter divisions over racial justice fester. And a partisan rancour has poisoned Americans faith in their democracy.
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Mr Biden acknowledged this in his inaugural address on January 20th. He spoke to an America that feels perhaps more deeply divided than at any time since Abraham Lincoln delivered his second in 1865, when the Confederate rebellion was in its death throes. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right...let us strive on to finish the work we are in: to bind up the nations wounds, urged Lincoln. Two weeks after an insurrectionist mob hoisted the Confederate battle flag in the Capitolsomething Confederate soldiers had not done during the civil warMr Biden called for a moment of national healing. Without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.
During his campaign Mr Biden vowed to restore Americas soul. That is a daunting task. After Donald Trumps supporters vandalised the Capitol, an impeachment trial for the former president looms. At least 25,000 members of the armed forces were stationed in Washington, DCmore than are currently deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq combinedto secure the peaceful transition of power. For the first time in 150 years the outgoing president skipped the ceremony. More than 80% of Mr Trumps supporters believe his damaging lie that the election was stolen.
And yet Mr Biden looks well suited to the work at hand. He assumes the presidency after nearly half a century in government. He is a conciliatory elder statesman who may serve only one term, not a culture warrior hellbent on securing re-election. His cadre of experienced appointees (see graphic) will immediately wield the tools of the administrative state to undo much of the damage of the Trump era. Harsh immigration policies will be lifted. The drive to weaken environmental protections will be reversed. European allies jittery about Americas commitment to mutual defence and combating climate change will be reassured.
More lasting change will require legislation. Both chambers of Congress are under Democratic control, albeit by the narrowest of margins. The Democrats hold the House of Representatives by just four seats. They will retain control of the Senatewhich is split equally between the two partiesthanks only to the deciding vote of Kamala Harris, the vice-president.
Marshalling enough support to pass serious reforms will be possible, but will require bipartisan negotiations and a ruthless mastery of the Senate last demonstrated by Lyndon Johnson. Any lone dissident Democratic senator, of left-leaning or conservative convictions, or a sufficiently large bloc of Democrats in the House (a squad of six, say) will be able to scuttle Mr Bidens proposals in the face of unified Republican opposition. The filibuster, a procedure which allows an obstreperous minority to block most laws unless 60 of the 100 senators vote otherwise, will almost certainly remain in place.
As a result, those on the left of the new presidents party are destined to be disappointed. During the Democratic primary Mr Biden rejected their most contentious proposals, including Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and defunding the police. Other sweeping ideas such as packing the Supreme Court with new justices or ditching the electoral college look impossible.
And yet Mr Bidens opposition to his partys most radical ideas has obscured the fact that he hopes to govern well to the left of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. His New Deal-esque agenda will retain populist economic ideas, such as minimum-wage increases, industrial policy and substantial government spending.
The early days of the administration will be dominated by legislation to contain covid-19 and further cushioning its economic fallout. The logic is clear. The proposals to build back better, as the new presidents team calls it, will address Americas most urgent crises. They may also attract Republican votes and should conserve Mr Bidens political capital for more fraught matters later on. That does not mean that they will be modest.
The first order of business, which Mr Biden outlined in a speech on January 14th, will be another covid-19 relief bill, costing $1.9trn. It would provide $160bn to pay for a national vaccine programme, expanded testing and contact-tracers. It would shovel more cash to Americans via cheques of $1,400 per person, increases in unemployment benefits and a temporarily enhanced child tax credit (a policy which would, almost on its own, halve poverty among children). Republicans may balk at the costtheir worries about the deficit and debt are noticeably more acute under Democratic presidentsor some of its provisions, such as increasing the national minimum wage to $15 an hour. But the proposal cannot be accused, as some of Mr Obamas were, of pre-emptive compromise.
Mr Bidens economic team has dubbed this bill a rescue measure. Hard on its heels will come a recovery bill, the details of which are yet to be unveiled. If the first foray into policymaking is any indication, it too will probably be a juggernaut. The recovery bill will propose massive infrastructure spending, perhaps the $2trn pledged in the campaign. It would also be the primary vehicle for some of Mr Bidens most ambitious climate-change pledges. Mr Biden has promised to ensure universal broadband access, spend $400bn on energy and climate research and create 10m new clean-energy jobs on the way to decarbonising the electricity sector by 2035 and the economy as a whole by 2050. The trillions proposed will also channel Mr Bidens neo-Rooseveltian instincts: he nostalgically aims for a domestic manufacturing renaissance powered by unionised workers.
These are opening, maximalist positions. They give a sense of the scale of Mr Bidens ambitions to exploit the crises he facesand the fractious state of Republicans fighting over the legacy of Trumpismto remake the American economy. They hint at his strategy for placating the left-wing gadflies of his party (who are also grudgingly thrilled at the diversity of his otherwise conventionally centrist appointees). Mr Biden seems to have grasped that unified control of government is a necessary but not sufficient condition for passing major legislation. Mr Clinton in 1993, Mr Obama in 2009 and Mr Trump in 2017 all came to Washington with the gift of an agreeable Congress. They squandered much of their political capital on trying to push through health-care legislation. Only Mr Obama succeeded.
One clich of American politics is that such legislative overreach produces the swing back to the opposition party typically seen during a presidents first mid-term elections. The last five presidents have lost on average 31 seats in the House of Representatives during these elections (and two in the Senate). For Mr Biden, that would spell the loss of both chambers, probably dooming the chances of any serious lawmaking for the final two years of his term.
Democrats have learned from the drubbing Mr Obama received in 2010. The issues that provoke deep partisan divisions and sap political capitalsuch as sweeping reforms of the immigration systemmay be introduced for debate in Congress but any serious action will probably have to wait.
Even with such caution and concerted whipping from party leaders, Mr Biden will have to work hard. He has two routes to success. The first would be to attract enough Republican supportten senators under the current configurationto neuter the threat of a filibuster. Some who remember the obstinacy of Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate under Mr Obama, think it is foolish to expect any differently of him or his caucus. But Mr Biden and his allies maintain a starry-eyed optimism for bipartisan dealmaking. If the Republicans will recognise this as a watershed moment for them, their party and our country, I think theres nothing we cant do together, says Chris Coons, a Democratic senator from Delaware.
Mr Trumps debasement of his party might be the deciding factor. A few moderate Republican senators most disaffected with Trumpismsuch as Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romneycould band with conservative Democrats to become the crucial negotiating bloc for all major legislation.
The alternative is reconciliation, a special procedure for passing an annual budget which cannot be filibustered and so could squeeze through with Democratic votes alone. But it has its limits. The rules for such bills are fiendishly complicated. Most importantly policy changes must be principallynot incidentallybudgetary, and cannot add to the deficit over the long run (usually ten years). Those restrictions create fiscal cliffs and lead to huge swings in future tax and spending. They also demand kludgey redrafting to ensure that they are mainly budgetary, says Molly Reynolds of the Brookings Institution.
Much of Mr Bidens agendathe parts related to taxation and spendingcould be passed through reconciliation. The covid-relief cheques, the clean-energy investment plan, enhanced unemployment insurance and child tax credits look achievable. So does the promised repeal of many of Mr Trumps tax cuts. But other ambitious ideas may fall victim to internecine Democratic squabbles, including a carbon tax, lowering the Medicare eligibility age, expanding subsidies for child care, and some student-loan forgiveness.
Reconciliation is less useful for ideas that are principally regulatorysuch as a national minimum-wage rise or an ambitious clean-energy standard. It could not be used for other priorities of the left, such as immigration reform or new voting- and civil-rights legislation. In theory reconciliation can be used only for the annual budget. But since Republicans did not pass a budget resolution for the current fiscal year, the Biden administration will have two opportunities in quick succession to employ the procedure. One could be devoted to the rescue package and the other to the recovery package. If both become law, they could be the start of an unusually successful presidencyunmarred by the gridlock and frustration of the Obama era.
Mr Biden departs from Mr Obamas cerebral approach to legislating but he shares his view of the expansive powers of the administrative state. Within hours of his inauguration he signed a slew of executive orders signalling the end of the Trump era. The ban on travel from certain Muslim countries was rescinded. America will swiftly rejoin the Paris climate accord and World Health Organisation. The administration will organise a global climate-change summit. The drawn-out process of reversing Mr Trumps deregulations on emissions will begin, though these will probably be tied up in the courts for years.
Federal regulators will perk up. Under the former president, the Environmental Protection Agency was slow to enforce rules. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was effectively neutered. Both will pursue their mandates with new vigour. The broad powers already afforded to the Department of Justice to investigate police departments and civil-rights violations could provide a solid start to the current rather nebulous racial-justice agenda.
These domestic concerns will almost certainly dominate at least the first year of Mr Bidens presidency. Though he has taken a keen interest in foreign policy throughout his long career, it will take a back seatfor now at least. To be an effective global power, you have to be stable at home, says Nicholas Burns, a professor of diplomacy at Harvard. Mr Biden will not be able to ignore the demands of the rest of the world entirely. Most pressing will be restoring relations with allies in NATO and elsewhere after a frosty four years. An arms-control treaty with Russia expiring in February will force hasty negotiations. Plans will have to be made to fulfil Mr Bidens pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the biggest foreign-policy matter to loom over the Biden administration will be managing great-power competition with China. It worries me that weve got these two giant superpowers moving as if by remote control towards conflict, says Angus King, an independent senator from Maine who caucuses with the Democrats. Mr King believes that a stable, bipartisan consensus on the subject is within reach. This is a place where President Trumps instincts were correct. His implementation was wrong. The fact that China needed to be confronted, I think, was absolutely correct. Indeed, there is no indication when or even if Mr Biden would lift the tariffs put in place on Chinese goods. Unlike Mr Trumps fixation on bilateral trade deficits, these will instead be justified on grounds of human-rights abuse, theft of intellectual property and climate change.
The spectre of Mr Trump will linger. The new administration may have to get through his impeachment trialwhich would be the first to be held after a president has left office. Mr Biden, who has tried to stay above the partisan fray on the efforts, worries that a Senate engrossed in evidence against his predecessor for alleged high crimes will dally in confirming his nominees and debating his covid-relief package. Others disagree. I happen to think we can do two things at once, says Mr King, the senator from Maine. We can have, for example, hearings on nominations in the mornings and the trial in the afternoon. I dont think the trial is going to take as long as the prior one did. In fact, the jury in this case were all witnesses.
Whether or not Mr Trump is convicted, the damage done by his presidency is deep. Nearly 70% of American voters think members of the other party are a threat to the United States and its people; 50% conclude that they are downright evil. Such feelings predate Mr Trump and indeed created the conditions for his ascent. His innovation was to emphasise white grievance and add a dangerous strain of disbelief in the legitimacy of elections. Having shattered norms like the belief in democracy and the non-violent transition of power, Mr Trump cannot be counted on to adhere to the lesser professional courtesy of refraining from criticising his successor. He did not shy away from inflaming racial animus or culture wars while in office. It would be naive to expect more dignity having left it, as he eyes a comeback in 2024.
In his first inaugural address, as the Union fractured, Lincoln appealed to the better angels of Americans nature. His pleas could not prevent the worst conflict in American history. There are echoes of other moments of crisis in this transitionthe recession presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Mr Obama; the pandemic ignored by Woodrow Wilson; the racial strife under Dwight Eisenhower and Johnson. For a president to navigate any one of these crises would be gruelling. To navigate them all at once will be a formidable job. Yet that is Mr Bidens charge.
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This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline "Good luck, Joe"
An episode in the Wests culture wars reverberates loudly in Bulgaria.
The tale of two British prime ministers and their Bulgarian connections illustrates the paradoxes of history and how Western preoccupations echo in the Balkans, fueled by events such as Brexit, the killing of George Floyd, and the storming of Washingtons Capitol Hill.
William Gladstone and Winston Churchill lived in different times and occupied different parts of the ideological spectrum. Their legacies, however, met similar fates as the Black LivesMatter movement ramped up. Gladstone and Churchill each left deep traces in Bulgarian hearts and minds if on opposite ends of the emotional rainbow.
For Bulgarians, Gladstone was their friend. The 19th-century statesman defended them after the bloody quenching of the 1876 uprising against the Ottoman Empire, known as the Bulgarian Horrors. A street in downtown Sofia bears his name.
No such treat for Churchill was ever envisaged. The rumor goes that he blamed Bulgaria for the failed Gallipoli landing during World War I. If Bulgaria had not sided with Germany and Turkey, the then First Lord of the Admiralty would have been spared his worst military defeat and personal humiliation. He later uttered some unflattering words about Bulgarians, who happened to be on the opposite side in the second World War, too. In the Balkans, people have long memories for insult, as for praise.
Until recently, it seemed that history had given these two personalities equal, positive treatment, honoring Gladstone as a beacon of democracy, Churchill as the greatest Briton. Enter 2020. Watchful historians reminded us that Churchill had made racist remarks, while the youthful Gladstone, a slave owners son, demanded compensation for former slavers. This was enough for activist groups to demand the removal of their monuments.
Few Bulgarians bothered about Churchills memory. Gladstone was another matter.
Marin Raykov, Bulgarias ambassador to the United Kingdom and a former prime minister, wrote the University of Liverpool (where a student dorm bore Gladstones name), explaining the statesmans importance to Bulgaria. Bulgarian students in Britain wrote angry letters. The idea was floated of shipping statues of Gladstoneto Bulgaria if they were taken down. Journalist Velislava Dareva wrote to every British institution connected to Gladstones memory, until she extracted promises the statues would stay.
Gladstones Bulgarian defenders claimed his merits outshine his background and noted that the famous son of Liverpool radically changed his views on slavery after the infamous compensation speech. Nobody expected such a defense of a historical personality from such an unexpected direction.
I brought this up with the new British ambassador in Sofia, Rob Dixon, who studied history at university. I see [in this case] that history is not zero sum but it is possible for us to have multiple interpretations of historical figures and events, he answered. I grew up understanding Gladstone as a great 19th-century liberal statesman, who campaigned for home rule in Ireland and extended our democratic system in the UK. But it is only recently, when I prepared for Bulgaria, I discovered the Bulgarian perspective: he campaigned for rights and freedoms of Bulgarians. And there is another perspective which developed in recent times, Dixon continued. His father was a major slave owner in the Americas. Gladstone himself campaigned for compensation of slave owners after the abolition of slavery. These are things which we, quite rightly, find abhorrent today.
Bulgarians know how perspectives vary with time. In 1999, I spoke to liberal Europhile politician, Oxford chancellor, former EU Commission president, and noted historian Roy Jenkins. He had written a biography of Churchill and come to Sofia to give a lecture on Gladstone. The context was entirely different. Tony Blairs government was part of the NATO air war against Yugoslavia over the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo. Bulgaria supported the allies and enjoyed a rare moment in its history of excellent relations with the United Kingdom. Britain was later instrumental in bringing Bulgaria into the European Union. In 1999 Lord Jenkins even calculated the time quite accurately, based on his experience with Spain and Portugal: eight or nine years. Bulgaria joined in 2007.
The parallel is again paradoxical. Gladstone, a devout Christian, supported Bulgarian Christians against Muslim oppressors. Blair, a devoted internationalist, supported Bulgarians in the context of Christians oppressing Muslims. Today, the UK has just left the EU, which it helped Bulgaria get into.
Jenkins could not have predicted that. He told me that even the UK could join the euro after a referendum with a bi-partisan consensus: We will win like we won in 1975, he said, referencing the referendum on joining the EU.In the Balkans, you have a safer bet. History is shifting sands, optimism seldom prevails and, amid changing perspectives, it is always well to remember who has been good to you, even when everyone has forgotten why.
Boyko Vassilevis a moderator and producer of the weekly Panorama news talk show on Bulgarian National Television.
The legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. carries special meaning today as our nation wrestles with the unthinkable acts carried about by a violent, conspiratorial mob opposed to foundational elements of our democracy. Dr. King understood that, in spite of the challenges America faces, the most patriotic thing we can do is one day rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.
Dr. King recognized that Americas founding principles are so profound that, if you look at every great cause in our history abolition, womens suffrage, the Civil Rights movement he led, and beyond you see that each great stride toward justice came from an appeal to those ideals.
Governance in this country must be aimed at realizing these principles. As legislators, we are tasked with carrying forward Dr. Kings work and doing just that securing justice, bringing about the common good and, in particular, preserving the essential dignity of the human soul. That dignity rests on three elements: access to a loving family and rich community; a nourishing faith that keeps us connected with God; and economic opportunity to provide for ourselves and others through safe, decent work.
At this moment, those ideals may seem quaint and even naive, but we cannot allow the most insidious actors white supremacists, armed militia groups, and dangerous, conspiracy-driven groups like QAnon to determine Americas future. Instead, that task falls to those of us who share Dr. Kings vision and pursuit of what he called the Beloved Community.
The success of our shared future depends, in large part, on American children growing up in stable, two-parent households, with flourishing neighborhoods waiting for them just outside their doorstep. This must not be limited by race or zip code.
Human dignity is also predicated on our freedom to practice our faiths as dictated by our conscience. As a Baptist minister, Dr. King understood the greater Christian context in which his work took place, which, when properly acted out, eagerly seeks to overturn injustice. All men and women are equal as children of God born with rights endowed to them by their creator, not their politicians and America as a nation must reflect that.
And to do so, we must also recognize the importance of maintaining our connection with the almighty and our freedom of religion for Americans of all spiritual backgrounds. Runaway secularism leaves us adrift, deprived of guiding values and vital notions of forgiveness or mercy in our disputes. The gnashing of our culture wars grows all the more frenzied, our political fights uglier. To invoke Dr. King, (t)he old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding. ... It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible.
And, in particular, policymakers must recognize that human dignity today is contingent on opportunity, especially when it comes to work. As Dr. King repeatedly noted, all forms of labor have dignity. That dignity cannot be reserved for those on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley. Fair wages, strong benefits, and general stability must be available to sanitation workers and metalworkers, teachers and cashiers alike.
For far too long, too many in our government ignored that fundamental truth. Recognizing this mistake, we should strive to preserve and extend that dignity to those who have suffered from reduced economic opportunity through short-term decision-making. As political and corporate elites chose to hollow out and offshore Americas industrial base to China, millions of Americans were left stripped of their vocation and ability to provide as a result.
That process of deindustrialization has affected Americans all across the country. But as factories shut down in places like Chicago, Baltimore and Detroit, neighborhoods of color were among the hardest hit hard right as they were beginning to feel the economic gains of the Civil Rights era. Realizing Dr. Kings vision of the Beloved Community will require recognizing the challenges facing Americas families, places of worship, and workers today and committing to substantive action to fix them.
Ultimately, we must remember that America is not a government, or a president, or a Congress. America is something much larger something much more tangible and intimate. It is your family, your congregation, and your community. And this is what Dr. King understood so well: that our pursuit of a more perfect Union requires unity and recognizing the inherent dignity in all Americans in that endeavor.
Marco Rubio, a Republican, is the senior U.S. senator from Florida.