Losing Our Souls at the Border

We mortals can’t have government without politics, and I’m not sure we’d want to.

Politics brings partisanship, which in small doses is healthy and in large doses is toxic. When partisanship takes command of our minds, hearts, discourse, and policy, things get very ugly. Look around.

Lately, I wonder if we still have a political soul.

I’ve watched politics and government for decades. I don’t remember things being as toxic as they are now — not even in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I’m not saying we’re on the verge of civil war, or that things are as bad as when our nation was in one. But we’re now routinely forgetting that some problems are real, not just political. Among other things, this insures that we’ll make them worse.

As you’ve probably heard, children are spilling over our southern border in astonishing numbers. Many of them are unaccompanied by a parent. It’s not a new problem; it’s at least two years old. But the news of it is newer than that.