Ideal & Idea Diversity

On Diversity of American Ideas and Ideals

Making the Right Answers Happen for Humanity in a World of Terrorism

By Roy D. Follendore III

October 28, 2001

When one compares the United States to the rest of the world, America is a strange country. We have a diverse ethnic population that seems to boil over at times, yet more and more people from around this planet seem to want to come here to live and work. We are a kind of United Nations all balled up within diverse cities and States. Some American cities are more like states in that their population controls the vote for the states they are represented in. Because of our makeup it is very difficult for other countries to compete on the World economic market with us. The United States maintains far more business connections than any other country because at least some of our population is from every other country and we work together.

In a World where so many countries are established on ethnic and religious purity and fight over differences related to tribal and cultural diversity, the United States seems to thrive on diversity. This may be the reason why we Americans were attacked by radical religious terrorists. They simply don't like us because we do get along and somehow even though we argue, we somehow work together. The fact is that our enemies see the United States as their roadblock to world domination of their religion, their race, their sense of superiority. The split already exists and the terrorists are simply exploiting it. This is not about Islam, for Islam is not alone. We have all seen Christians who have shouted similar ideals. There are those within our own country that would change the Constitution of the United States to obtain their own gains and see their religious ideological ends met.

These different groups within and without our social establishment share a common goal of changing the status quo through the destruction of our society. We might not have thought that these diverse groups would ever get along. But that is exactly the problem, at some level they have communicated and can and do get along. Here is the overriding issue on which the balance of our destiny as a country rides. How can we stop the coalition of self righteous evil that pervades the societies of Earth without destroying the very ideals on which we base our values? How can we Americans organize and reinvent ourselves in such a way that the freedoms that we stand for are not lost in the dim recesses of autocratic controls which we are inducing to protect us? How does America defuse and defeat this crisis, with respect while untangling the threads that have come to be used to bind our fear and hate?

To fight this kind of 'war' brought to our country by a remote religious sect will require Americans to come to terms with a new kind of World presence. This is not a question of technology that we face and technology is not the solution. It is not a simple question of right or wrong. It is a question of essential morality and we must face up to it. Is our President willing to do what is necessary to stop the continuing terror that is inevitable? If millions of innocent are to be killed, will we be willing to make that sacrifice? If nothing else has been demonstrated, it is that the leadership of our enemy are fanatics willing to make the sacrifice in the name of their version of God. They are willing to use any number of people as sacrificial pawns to their own ends.

The ultimate test for America in this struggle is yet to come, and it will not take weeks or months or years. This battle will last for centuries. There will be tests that involve the concept of the right path, the moral path, and the moral right path. We can expect that false solutions will be thrust upon us and the only way we will know the best path at the the moment is to fully understand our objectives and the obligations we have to the American children of the future. We must not become short sighted. The answers that are best must involve those solutions that rise above the platitudes and petty coercions of our foreign enemies. To do what is right and just will be far more difficult than doing what is right 'or' just. Moreover, we Americans must always keep in mind that doing the right thing, is not always about doing justice. Sometimes a necessary act is just exactly what it is, nothing more.

One thing is certain. The enemies of America have already succeeded in changing us. Because we are many cultures we are adaptable. We must now succeed in changing them.

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