I quote Lincoln often. He is one of my favorite Americans. He famously observed, “A house divided against itself cannot stand”. Lincoln knew a thing or two about divided houses. His election to the Presidency in 1860 was foreshadowed by a threatening secession movement among southern states desperate to retain slavery as an institution. By the time of his swearing in ceremony in April 1861, the confederacy had begun to coalesce and Lincoln was now the president of a country half the size it was on Election Day the previous November.

The war that followed bathed in blood the land that he called “the last best hope for man”. Lincoln surmised that the use of every tool at his disposal, including the suspension of certain constitutional guarantees if necessary, would be justified in holding the country from being torn asunder.

Shelby Foote, the late southern author said that before the civil war it was proper to say “the United States are” but afterward it had become clear that it was now only acceptable to say “the United States is…” “The war”, he said “had changed us from an ARE into an IS”.

The original text of the Pledge of Allegiance said rightly that the union was indissoluble. Prior to the inclusion of “under God” into the pledge after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the pledge was meant to say just that…

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”.

As a nation, we have been unified ever since; though as a people we are a dynamic and changing lot, roiling with opinion, ever adjusting and modifying our views. We are capable of great things and fearless in the pursuit of monumental undertakings; the Manhattan Project, Apollo, WWII, just to name a few.

We have also stumbled badly at times and had to search for our collective soul in some very dark places. Racism, gay rights, capital punishment, Vietnam, the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s and the current, seemingly endless, debate over abortion and stem cell research have caused us to choose sides in ways that occasion great enmity and even greater courage.

It seems inevitable that issues will always find champions and adherents as well as the passions to fuel them. Such is the national rhetorical exercise today about the war in Iraq. Republicans, and those who self-apply the term conservatives are among the most ardent supporters of the current occupation of Iraq; while those labeled as liberals, chiefly Democrats, are clamoring evermore loudly to end this intractable conflict. I identify myself with the latter; as readers of my occasional rants could hardly fail to have noticed. What may not be clear to most, however, is that I am really not trying to change any minds. I’m simply advocating that those of us who are now in the majority stand up and say we oppose this continued involvement in Iraq and insist that our Government instead expend our resources on efforts that are more likely to make us safer than we have been since this madness began. By taking a more public stand against this we are less likely to be marginalized and dismissed as unpatriotic “surrender monkeys”, as we have been occasionally described by those who favor this war.

But we cannot dissolve ourselves from those sacred bonds that Lincoln said joined us as Americans, even when we so deeply abhor the aspirations of those we oppose.

Agreement, when not possible, must inevitably give way to consensus; but at the end of the day, we are still bound together inextricably as the sons and daughters of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln.

As in the past, America again wrestles with it conscience. We’re not likely to be allowed the luxury of ignoring this debate given its intensity, the importance of the issues, and the ramifications of the outcome. But the process of finding our moral compass in a treacherous and dangerous world is far more important to our survival than the single answer to any of the problems we face. Because that process will not only teach us, but also our children and the world that now observes us, how a democracy that Jefferson once said must occasionally be refreshed with blood, can renew itself using instead of it’s fists, it’s ability to persuade others.