Political divide Essay Example for Free

policy-making divide EssayIf we look at the issue of political divisiveness in the United States with the idea in mind that all politics are local, Mike Gates is probably correct in his judgement that the issue is ignorance and state who are too aware of their own opinions. Former arbitrary Court arbiter Sandra Day OConnor might agree. Gates is a city council member in the small fellowship of West Linn, Oregon, who did not run for re-election beca aim of what he views as a a growing divide inwardly his own community (2008). His reason, he said, is simple. There are just too many people amiable in pure political fantasy.They have accumulated to a point where no one could perchance respond to all the nonsense, (Gates 2008). In the West Linn case, the issue is one of the governments ability to offer up all the desired services that the city residents are demanding and how exactly the government should fund these services (2008). On a larger scale, this is the same debate that faces the nation as a whole. Many people trust that the United States government should solve all the countrys ills, from global warming and poor sparing to the lack of health care.Those who weigh that it is the governments responsibility to assure that all men breathe equal and therefore have exactly the same things also believe that to make sure everyone has their inevitably met, we should take from the rich and give to the poor. On the extreme other side of the coin, we have Americans who believe that a person should take individual responsibility for their own needs and not rely on the government. These people oppose higher taxes to pay for anything. It is a fundamental difference of opinion that has lead to a deep divided country.This is the divide Gates observes within his community. The people want West Linn to provide more services, save do not want higher property taxes to pay for those services. Complicating the issue is the question of religious granting immun ity versus freedom from religion, as observed by former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Sandra Day OConnor. In a case regarding the inclusion of the word God in the Pledge of Allegiance, OConnor asked whether the schools betroth policy sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community.And, in concluding that it does not, OConnor exclamatory that the pledge has been employed pervasively without engendering significant controversy and caused no political divisiveness prior to the filing of this lawsuit. (Garnett 2004). The Supreme Court justice tried to deliberate that a middle of the road approach, where those who disagreed with something simply chose not to participate, was appropriate. Unfortunately, this go for approach was rejected by people on both sides of the issue.Instead of being happy with a compromise solution, it seems that people are more insistent on getting things their way. More and more, our law seems w ary of those divisions that our Constitution actually protectsthat is, the divisions that result when free people contend over difficult questions that matteryet indifferent to the psychic trauma done to religious freedom by demands for the privatization of faith and its segregation from civic life (Garnett 2004).In this case, the reference argued that removing God from the pledge was an imposition on the rights of the religious and the case had clearly claimed that the pledges use of God was an imposition on the rights of those with other or non-existent religious beliefs. Garnett and others seem more than willing to argue that the middle ground is not sufficient. All sides of an argument now claim moral superiority and believe that they must be given their way. This unfortunately contributes to a devisiveness from which the country cannot hope to recover.