The Enemy Within

Yesterday the United States celebrated Independence Day once again proclaiming that this is the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”

It has tried to be that as immigrants swept over this land for centuries.

A nation of immigrants

This has forever been a land of immigrants. Even the folks we call “Native Americans” weren’t native here. They came across the Bering Strait and found their way to the tip of South America over about 30,000 years by best estimate.

They built civilizations that had cities of up to one million souls. Some of them befriended European interlopers. Even so, they were considered the enemy. They were slaughtered wholesale by illnesses they had no inherent ability to fend off. And by the military-based explorers the Spanish and Portuguese sent to search for gold and enslave them.

A new definition

Further north, the English sent pilgrims that considered other Christian sects the enemy. The people they called “Indians” befriended them even though they were considered “the enemy.”

From that time forward in what would become the USA there was a new definition of “the enemy.” That definition was instinctual. It came from eons of cultural bias. Even as the Romeo and Juliet effect sought to break it down, humanity clung to that idea that different equals “the enemy.” It is still with us.

But another idea swept through the land, that each of us were entitled to Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

Here are the words the founders proclaimed:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Declaration of Indepenence

All men are created equal

This idea of equality was initially restricted to men who held property. Women weren’t considered. Nor were slaves. Free men of any color, if they owned land, could be considered as equal if the fact were known as was the case for many Cherokee.

But always, different equaled enemy. And that human trait stayed the same as wave upon wave of immigrants came to these shores. In many cases they left ghettos in Europe only to be culturally shunted into ghettoes here.

Humanity is not “the enemy”

As each succeeding war was declared, “the enemy” was described as sub-human. The despots declared whole groups of people as “the problem” and attempted “final solutions.”

Hitler did it openly. Here it got just about as ugly:

• The bloodiest war we’ve ever fought was between the blue and the grey.

• The Cherokee walked the “Trail of Tears”

• Chinese were rounded up, taken to a dock, and told to get on the next ship that came and not to return.

• Former slaves were sent to Liberia

• Japanese Americans were interred during WWII.

Through all that, somehow the nation clung to the idea of equality.

Through all that men and women became friends across barriers of race, religion, class and culture.

Through all that they stood up for the principal that government must reflect this idea that humanity is not “the enemy.”

Today we are confronted with a government that, by its actions, says Muslims are “the enemy,” people born south of here are “the enemy,” and anyone that opposes the tyranny sought is “the enemy.”

For me there is only one conclusion, As the founders said: Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. 

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His consulting practice, founded in 1990, is known for Trust-based Brand development, Positioning and Business Development on and off-line.

Consulting: www.JerryFletcher.com
Speaking: www.NetworkingNinja.com