Trump should foster respect, not stoke divisions
President Trump’s imbroglios with the NBA and NFL, more than examples of incivility on both sides, illustrate the deep divisions within the nation and why it is so tough for any occupant of the Oval Office to get something done.
Presidents Reagan, Clinton and the two Bushes were able to work with their opposition parties — for example, the Gipper’s tax cuts passed through a Democratic House.
Nowadays, the liberal media encourage Democrats to oppose en bloc any White House proposal. Saddled with narrow majorities in Congress, Mr. Trump must navigate severe ideological divisions within the Republican Party.
Globalization has created two Americas — one with elite education, urban and equipped to compete — and the rest of America — in cities and rural communities that once relied on manufacturing and resource industries for prosperity.
The latter has been poorly served by left-wing-dominated, second-rate schools and universities that teach allegiance to identity politics as a substitute for impartial critical thinking and marketable skills.
Beyond churning out career-challenged, pseudo-educated graduates, the vast educational-industrial complex on one side, and similarly intolerant institutions on the right, fracture the nation beyond intelligent discussion of what is really wrong.
Economists have long observed that culture is as important as access to education, capital and technology for driving the progress of emerging nations. Talented young people can be sent abroad for training, and foreign companies can be attracted to bring money and know-how, but local governments and culture must encourage hard work and individual accountability, and eschew citizens from self-pity and self-destructive habits.
In a recent opinion piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Professors Amy Wax at the University of Pennsylvania and Larry Alexander at the University of San Diego School of Law argue the decline of the unifying “bourgeois culture” of the 1940s though 1960s — an emphasis on hard work, self-discipline, marriage, service to employers and community and respect for authority — and the rise of a single-parent, antisocial behavior, anti-assimilation values in many working-class white and minority communities contribute greatly to their high levels of unemployment, drug abuse and generally poor economic conditions.
This article was greeted by with a firestorm of attacks led by their deans, who never sought to address its premise or reasoning. Instead, left-wing invectives of racism and bigotry were levied.
Such hysterical divisions and intolerance abound in our society and are reflected in Congress.
I doubt Mr. Trump has fully considered how much his colleagues on the other end of Pennsylvania Ave. are clinging to false ideas, wrapped in platitudes about “competitiveness” or “fairness,” and how much the nation needs presidential leadership that lays bare the facts and moves the dialogue to a more constructive place.
Instead of engaging in tweets and exchanges that seem to further inflame controversial issues, the president should give some thought to engaging the nation in a fact-based dialogue of what is broken to improve mutual respect and understanding.
That’s the kind of leadership the president needs to provide to better unite and move the nation forward.