Our Greatest Trait As A People May Prove To Be Our Undoing.
We as Americans have always been tremendous at compromise. Our government and system of laws is made for it. With the level of diversity and multiplicity of cultures and ideas in our country, compromise is absolutley essential.
But compromise on some issues is wrong. Compromising on slavery (the 3/5's laws, the Missouri Compromise, etc.) was wrong. It allowed generations of people to live in servitude and degraded an entire race of people. It also delayed an inevitable conflict that left half a million Americans dead upon their own soil. Compromise and appeasement towards the Germans and the Japanese in the 1930s allowed both nations to entrench themselves so deeply in their respective spheres, it required a World War and 100 million dead to remove them as world powers.
Searching for a middle ground means both sides move towards the center which is more to the left (or to the right) than where you were previously. When this involves something other than morality, this can be a good thing. It allows for growth and understanding and seeing things from a new perspective.
However, when it involves eternal truths, it can mean cultural suicide. The first time, you compromise in the name of tolerance and diversity. Then, the next time, when an even greater perversion is presented, we seek a compromise that moves us even further away from our original position and what we saw only years before as completely unthinkable has now become the established norm.
We are now battling on ground that we would never have ceded generations before but is now the status quo because of previous compromises. What we accept in our society today is what generations before would have considered heinous and perverse. And we are constantly compromising in one direction, moving inexhorably towards a destination that one side has already established as their end goal.
If we continue to compromise our road to hell, we will get there soon enough. We may never reach the inside because we will only go half way with each step, but eventually we will be close enough to be scorched by its flames.
But compromise on some issues is wrong. Compromising on slavery (the 3/5's laws, the Missouri Compromise, etc.) was wrong. It allowed generations of people to live in servitude and degraded an entire race of people. It also delayed an inevitable conflict that left half a million Americans dead upon their own soil. Compromise and appeasement towards the Germans and the Japanese in the 1930s allowed both nations to entrench themselves so deeply in their respective spheres, it required a World War and 100 million dead to remove them as world powers.
Searching for a middle ground means both sides move towards the center which is more to the left (or to the right) than where you were previously. When this involves something other than morality, this can be a good thing. It allows for growth and understanding and seeing things from a new perspective.
However, when it involves eternal truths, it can mean cultural suicide. The first time, you compromise in the name of tolerance and diversity. Then, the next time, when an even greater perversion is presented, we seek a compromise that moves us even further away from our original position and what we saw only years before as completely unthinkable has now become the established norm.
We are now battling on ground that we would never have ceded generations before but is now the status quo because of previous compromises. What we accept in our society today is what generations before would have considered heinous and perverse. And we are constantly compromising in one direction, moving inexhorably towards a destination that one side has already established as their end goal.
If we continue to compromise our road to hell, we will get there soon enough. We may never reach the inside because we will only go half way with each step, but eventually we will be close enough to be scorched by its flames.
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