Have We Reached the End of America? | Opinion

Frank Sinatra famously sang a song that asks "What is America to me?" The son of immigrants, born into working-class poverty in Hoboken, New Jersey, Sinatra is an exemplar of the American Dream brought to life.

Like the rest of us, Sinatra had an answer of his own to that most musical of questions. He did it his way. That's what the Founders intended for us all, and that's the genius of America. Everyone is supposed to be free to take an individual approach to life, provided it doesn't materially disrupt their neighbors' ability to pursue theirs.

We have a lot to be grateful for. Even more to be proud of. It's never been easy. Even before we started as a country, the reality didn't match the rules we said we wanted to live by. Every person did not have the same opportunities to, as Thomas Jefferson put it, pursue happiness. Some were denied it by law, backed up by vigilantism.

Rather than accept that, we fought to change it many times. Sometimes people died, were dispossessed, and driven out of their towns and cities as the fight for equality and liberty raged.

Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of that. We also lost sight of the fact that no matter how our differences may divide us, we are all Americans and all entitled to aspire to that precious dream laid out before us almost two and a half centuries ago.

Now, we are divided again. Different factions seek political and moral advantages over their opponents wherever and whenever possible. President Joe Biden, who used his inaugural address to preach the virtues of consensus and unity, is instead trying to create a popular front to isolate those he refers to as "MAGA Republicans" and whom Hillary Rodham Clinton called "deplorables."

They have it in mind to write those people out of the American story. When you consider it, that is an awful lot of people on which to slap a label equivalent to "undesirable."

The GOP is not all that much better. Too many political and thought leaders who call themselves conservative advocate for a "culture war" in defense of traditional values that leaves little room for people who want to go another way.

We have reached a point where each side of every debate is dominated by powerful forces that want to tell those who dissent "it's our way or the highway for you." That's not the America I know and love.

We're a country that makes space for all kinds of people and all kinds of ideas, not just as a matter of convenience but because if we have anything close to a founding principle, it's freedom of thought. There are plenty of examples of how we missed that mark, but the target we keep aiming for is to live in a country where everyone could be the best they could be.

For the moment, that ideal appears to be on hold, largely because those who dominate the political and cultural life of the nation—and that includes the news—find more of what they perceive as success in the politics of division than in offering and building support for consensus solutions to real problems.

We need to reconsider what draws our focus. Being the loudest on social media doesn't equate to importance. As offensive as the idea may be to some, the nation's biggest problem is not "Drag Queen Story Hour."

Using the power of the state to ban them is a misuse of public power. Settle the matter through competition. What one group may do, others may also do. Why not start Bible story hours, hunting story hours, and traditional homemaker story hours to compete with the drag queens? Let them vie for the attention of children and parents and see which is the biggest draw instead of trying to ban the competition.

There's too much canceling and banning going on for it to do anyone any good. America is supposed to be the one place on the planet where people are free to express their ideas. The competition for ideological dominance between the red states and blue cities on issues that are mostly not the business of the state has turned what should be thoughtful conversations about rights and responsibilities into an incoherent shouting match.

We're better than that—and need to be seeking out a new generation of leaders who leave room for disagreement while building political coalitions that will restore the nation to its former greatness. In that environment, we can even make room for those who say America was never all that great to begin with.

Newsweek Contributing Editor Peter Roff has written about U.S. politics and policy for more than 20 years. He is now a fellow at several public policy organizations including the Trans-Atlantic Leadership Network. Email him at RoffColumns@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and TruthSocial @TheRoffDraft

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.