The little statue was a gift to Margaret from our friend, Imbi Friedberg, an American immigrant from Estonia.
INTERNECINE CONFLICT IN AMERICAN CULTURE

internecine: Origin... Mid-17th century... in the sense deadly, characterized by great slaughter. from the Latin internecinus, inter, “among” + necare, “to kill.” Destructive to both sides in a conflict; Of or relating to conflict within a group.

“One for all and all for one” expressions of national unity and pride are woven into the very fabric of American culture. We are, after all, the United States of America. The Preamble to our Constitution begins with the idea of a perfect union.

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America."

I remember being required to memorize the Preamble to the Constitution when I was a child in Arkansas, a state which at the time didn’t allow “Negroes” and Whites to go to school together. I don’t remember anyone at school pointing out the contradiction: the reality didn’t match the language of the Preamble. Later in 1957, during my first year of high school teaching in a school in California, Orval Faubus, the governor of Arkansas, was making his famous stand against desegration of Little Rock public schools.

Every July we figuratively and literally stand together to demonstrate solidarity of purpose and to express loyalty to an ideal government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Presumably, today we believe the people in Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address refers to all Americans, regardless of ethnicity and national origin, religion, gender, age, or sexual identification. With our attention focused on the issue of slavery when we think of Lincoln’s short speech at Gettysburg, it is easy to forget that women were not allowed to vote or hold public office before or after the Civil War. It is obviously easy today to ignore the fact of discrimination in America that prohibits two men from marrying each other or two women from marrying in the majority of our united states. We say together, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and to the republic for which it stands: one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all,” but we don’t agree that all really means all.

“One nation indivisible” is the key phrase, yet internecine conflict is more the rule than the exception in American culture. Conflict within the culture is not a new phenomenon. Soon after the heady days following our War of Independence, while the ink was hardly dry on our famous documents of independence, internecine struggle began and has continued in one form or another. Although Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and the other framers of our constitution agreed that unity is the key to responsible government “of the people by the people and for the people,” they were unable to make it happen just by writing and saying the words. We are not able to make it happen just by requiring school children to say together the Pledge of Allegiance.

We continue to be a nation struggling against itself. In Congress Republicans are lined up solidly against the President’s health care proposal mainly because it is a proposal by a Democratic administration. Like separating spouses in a bitter divorce procedure, neither side can afford to admit that the other might be even partially right.

The clearest definition of culture is “the way we live.” In American politics, all culture wars are essentially political and all political conflicts are about future elections; so to be ultimately successful at the polls, each side must be willing to sell its soul if that is what is required to win the election looming ahead two or four or six years down the road. To be elected, candidates must stay on one side or the other of the political divide. We say we value unity, but unity is not an important part of our culture at home, at school, in our cities and states; nor is it an essential part of our national culture. We have the highest divorce rate in the world; schools across the nation are battlegrounds between teachers' unions, school boards, and sometimes citizens; and our cities and states are in extreme fiscal distress.

When do we get serious about another aphorism that we like to repeat to each other: “United we stand; divided we fall”?