(originally published 1-23-2013)
President Obama has said that a “tribal attitude” surfaces in tough times.
I believe the President comes at the right concept from the wrong direction and, without meaning to, reveals the single biggest flaw in his assumption going into his second term, which will ultimately undo his entire agenda.
Just as it is possible to mistake personality for character, the election result putting President Obama back into the White House for four more years is only a keyhole narrow view of the overall electoral results of the past two cycles in 2012 and 2010.
Conservatives have been voted into local, municipal and state positions that are foundational for our future. Away from the spotlights of a liberal media not paying attention, the voting adjustments we the people have been quietly and consistently making are the real change that is going on under the surface.
What no one is taking into account is: The American Tribe.
My definition of the American Tribe is this: it is the only tribe you can join by simply wanting to.
This country comes with a book of instructions, called the Constitution and The Bill of Rights, and fealty towards these makes you a member of our Tribe. Simple, isn’t it?
I proudly belong to the American Tribe – and to puncture a hole in any “diversity”-style attack let me point out that my four grandparents were Irish, Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Russian-Jew. That makes me…an American. No hyphens.
You just have to want to be an American and you are one. No other requirements of race, gender, sexual preference apply. All are welcome. Ex Pluribus Unum. Look on a U.S. coin, it’s there. It’s Latin for “out of many, one” and that’s the entire point.
We used to have an allegory that described our country as “a melting pot” to explain to ourselves how immigrants came to join and blend into “America”, while still maintaining their original cultural identity. It was an attitude, an intention, a choice.
Today, we find ourselves burdened with an Administration that tries to divide us, sub-culture by sub-culture and attempts to pit the American Tribe against itself. This is known as “divide and conquer” and it works…but only if you let it. But what if we don’t?
It’s time to “snap out of it” and reassert our cultural confidence by reminding ourselves that it is the American Tribe that has been the most progressive catalyst for personal freedom that has ever existed on this planet.
President Obama’s attempt to re-cast our single American Tribe into a fractured, segmented, controllable population of specific interest groups – usually cultural but also agenda-driven – will fail.
We the People, the American Tribe, are culturally unconquerable.
We will demonstrate this election by election and, patiently over time, turn back any attempt to divide and conquer us.