America must be a colorblind nation, one that does not obsess about skin color or use it as the measure for judging a person. Only in that way can we survive as a unified people. Unfortunately, after fifty years of elevating a colorblind nation, Democrats are again insisting that we must judge people solely by their skin color. Even worse, many now believe that hatred and violence are warranted against others based on color differences. This trend is extremely dangerous to our future.

Aside from race hustlers at home, America’s enemies – e.g., China, Iran, and Russia – are the only ones benefiting from this new “tribalism.” If Americans are fighting each other, they have little time, energy, and effort to fight against geopolitical foes. We must hope that the left’s identity politics do not prove that both Lincoln and Khrushchev were correct when each predicted that, if America were to fall, it would fall from within.

After World War II, people of faith, the same people who had once been on the abolition frontlines, refocused their energy on the sin of racism. Dr. Billy Graham preached that racism is a sin against God. For him, segregation was antithetical in God’s church. Famously, in 1952, while in Jackson, Mississippi, he pulled down the ropes himself that separated the White Christians from the Black Christians at his revival.

Beginning in the 1960s, and with a powerful effect, Dr. Martin Luther King famously used his faith as both sword and shield as he fought against racial injustice. As did Dr. Graham, he understood that judging people by race is a sin against both God and man. He did not want to be treated better or give more rights, just equal rights. His famous dream that his children should “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” became the clarion call for a color-blind society in America.

Both King and Graham were guided by Revelations 5:9, which states that Christ came for people “from every tribe and language and people and nation.” The message from these men affected Americans more than fifty years ago and, since that time – and. indeed, until quite recently -- Americans have been guided by that message, and have constantly worked to judge people by their words and actions, not their skin color.

Today, though, when Dr. King’s words calling for a color-blind America are considered racist, we have surely lost our way. This is both frightening and destructive.

The Democrats’ divisions, of course, go deeper than race, with people divided by sex, sexuality, and disability, among other things. This too is dangerous. Over one hundred years ago, in 1915, Teddy Roosevelt stated that America cannot become a hyphenated nation: “There is no room in this country for a hyphenated Americanism.”

While Roosevelt was speaking then of those claiming to be Irish-American, Italian-American, or Catholic-American, he saw how dangerous it was for Americans to categorize themselves by race, ethnicity, religion, and color. Add in gender and sexuality and the divisions begin to run very deep.

Many in America recognize the dangers attendant on having American’s first sense of identification hewing to ethnicity, race, color, religion, or language, rather than country. Indeed, the country in which they live almost becomes an after-thought to those other external factors.

Yugoslavia was once an apparently unified country under the Communist dictator Josip Tito. After Tito’s death, when his iron fist was removed, Yugoslavia violently separated itself by skin color, ethnicity, language, and religion, with ethnic cleansing, genocide and, predictably, millions of deaths. Eventually, peace came in the form of six little countries. Other than oppression, the people had no common denominator, no common cause, no common value system. Thus, the term “Balkanization.”

Looking at where the left is taking this country, many Americans rightly fear Balkanization here. The call for one culture, one flag, one country is being drowned out or aggressively silenced as leftists demand separate identities, pigmentations, and people. Moreover, in true totalitarian fashion, leftists encourage those in thrall to them to engage in violent retribution and to demand reparations.

The following list sets out ideas, values, beliefs, and facts about America that can all simultaneously be true. They speak to our greatness and our errors, but most importantly to our shared values, values the left despises:

• America is an exceptional country.
• America is the best country that has ever existed on earth. Ever.
• America is not a perfect country.
• America has made big mistakes and errors in her past.
• America was founded according to the Bible’s Judeo-Christian value system.
• America has not always lived up to those Biblical values.
• The Founding Fathers were exceptional men who did great and noble things.
• The Founding Fathers were imperfect men and made serious mistakes.
• Slaves arrived in the New World in 1619, but America did not begin as an independent country until 1776. America began in 1776, not 1619.
• At one time, America accepted the tyranny of slavery within her borders.
• America has often used her might to save millions of people throughout the world -- and at home -- from tyranny and slavery.
• Before the 1960s, when Americans viewed skin color as an actual value that defined people’s worth, that was very, very wrong.
• Now, in 2020, when Americans view skin color as an actual value that defines people’s worth, it is still very, very wrong.

Those who trade in race-baiting and who profit from America’s newfound “tribalism” are leading us down a very dangerous path. As all revolutionaries have discovered, events quickly spin out of control and revolutions have a habit of “eating their own.

If we go in the opposite direction of a revolution -- if we pull together as one -- we can accomplish so much. The leftists’ foolish divide and conquer strategy means we are almost certainly destined for the ash heap of history.

We must not let Lincoln’s warning or Khrushchev’s boast prove correct. While some Americans may be Lenin’s famous “useful idiots,” our enemies are no fools. They profit from, and therefore help foment, our dissension. A divided nation falls more easily than a unified one and a democracy must die when it breaks into fighting tribal factions. Our enemies know this. Meanwhile...Dr. King and Dr. Graham weep.

IMAGE: Martin Luther King, 1963. National Archives; public domain.

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