This. Is. Not. Normal.

We‘re going to hear a lot—heck, we‘ve already heard a lot—that 2026 is the 250th birthday of the United States. The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776–—hence, 250 years.

It’s more accurate to say, if you will, that the 13 colonies got pregnant in 1776; the actual birth didn’t occur until 1783. The Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3 of that year, officially ended hostilities when Great Britain formally recognized the United States as a sovereign, independent nation. That was America’s‘ birth certificate.

Richard Henry Lee’s June 7, 1776, resolution proposing independence was adopted by the Continental Congress on July 2, 1776, and the official Declaration of Independence was approved on July 4, 1776. Still, our actual national birth certificate didn’t appear for seven more years.

Nevertheless, the Declaration of Independence takes pride of place, even though it left us some ongoing ticking time bombs in our politics (see my July 2, 2024 column ). One of the biggest was and is the tension between the unum, our unity—our identity—as Americans, and the pluribus, our differences.

Our original set of major differences had to do with national vs. state-and-local identities.

Press coverage of the federal government tends to garner the most attention, but, in fact, the level of government that affects us most directly on a day-to-day basis, outside of questions of war and macroeconomic stability, is state and local government.

The states have what is called the police power— the power to enact laws to protect the health, welfare, safety, and morals of their population. By contrast with the federal government’s enumerated powers, the states under their police power may exercise any power not forbidden to them by the federal or state constitution.

Prior to the 14^th Amendment, it was generally the case that people were and considered themselves to be primarily citizens of a particular state and only secondarily citizens of the United States. That was certainly the case under the Articles of Confederation—the controversy was whether that held for the Constitution as well.

My educated guess—I must leave the details to historians—is that this is why southerners, when faced with a choice between their state and the nation, chose allegiance to their state. The citizenship clause of the 14^th Amendment (1868), beyond overturning the infamous Dred Scott decision (1857), created a national citizenship independent of state citizenship.

Our differences now so subject to conflict deal not with our state identities but with the identities of race, gender, and sexual orientation, and, ultimately, with who counts as a real American.

I dislike the terms “left” and “right” when applied to American politics but I must use them here for convenience. Central to the liberal tradition is the idea of neutrality—law and government were assumed to operate neutrally regarding specific policies. People on the left, however, always argued that neutrality was a façade, that everything was a matter of power and those with it used it to disadvantage and exploit those without it.

What we have in MAGA since its inception is a right-wing version of this rejection of neutrality. Indeed, after years of left-wing identity politics, we’re seeing in MAGA a version of right-wing identity politics. What goes around, comes around. We are suffering from the loss of a sense of ourselves as one united people with a common identity as American.

For example, per the New York Times, Vice President Vance recently said: “In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.” And he was concerned with not just racial identity, but religious identity as well: he added “that ‘by the grace of God we will always be a Christian nation.’” If you’re not white and Christian, are you truly American?

Politics is of course tough, but a functioning political system, and particularly a democratic one, rests upon a basic respect for people in general and particularly for one’s political opponents. In our political context, excluding certain people and groups as not truly American is a recipe for disaster.

This lack of respect starts in the White House. Consider the president’s Christmas message: “Merry Christmas to all, including the many Sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein, gave him bundles of money, went to his Island, attended his parties, and thought he was the greatest guy on earth.” In a separate message, he wrote, “Merry Christmas to all, including the Radical Left Scum that is doing everything possible to destroy our Country, but are failing badly.”

Happy Holidays indeed.

And then, of course we have the name-calling. Referring to Gov. Polis of Colorado, we have this headline: “Trump Tells ‘Scumbag’ Governor and ‘Disgusting’ ‘RINO’ to ‘Rot in Hell.’” At Thanksgiving, he referred to “The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz.”

Don’t forget the juvenile insults: Trump called New York Times reporter Katie Rogers “a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out” and CNN’s Katlin Collins “stupid and nasty.” “Scum,” “sleazebag,” and “nasty” seem to be particularly favorite terms of his.

This. Is. Not. Normal. And this is not a partisan complaint.

Geez, we try to teach even our pre-school children to be more respectful of others than this. The immaturity aside, the political problem is the loss of our common, respected identity as all equally American, wanting what’s best for the country, whatever our differences.

To borrow an old English phrase, a pox on all those that enable this—and there are many. They undermine the principles of the Declaration of Independence celebrated in this new year. Shame on them.

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