Some readers of my commentaries know that my wife Sue and I became grandparents on September 20, which was also our 50th wedding anniversary. Our Grandbaby’s parents are both public school teachers in Clark County (Las Vegas) Nevada. So, we have been spending much of recent weeks down there.
While my life has taken me to about 36 countries, and I am minimally familiar with that many countries and cultures, I have recently been emersed in the great “melting pot “of humanity that is Las Vegas. Some Montanans may know that Clark County is named after Montana “Copper King” William Andrews Clark who built a rail line from there to haul his mostly Butte Copper to Los Angeles where the wire from the copper was used to conduct the electricity that began the process of providing the power to what soon became the largest and fastest growing megalopolis on America’s West Coast, and literally cemented our nation’s “manifest destiny” from “sea to shining sea.”
Now the Colorado River is becoming incapable of supplying sufficient water for Southern California and much of the Southwest as far north as the state of Colorado. While the story of humankind’s management of the resources necessary to sustain us might be North America’s greatest survival story ever to be told, the primary focus of what follows is the one of how we manage not the flow of water, but the flow of people across our borders.
I probably didn’t need much convincing, but since my recent sojourn to the Southwest, I am more persuaded than ever that people are people. I went to several large retail stores where I saw numerous young, brown-skinned families guided by their young mothers and joined in joy in the happiness in the holiday season.
A similar outing in Montana would demonstrate the same smiles, the same children’s voices, the same loving families. Most people would live in peace and understanding, I think, if not for the political haters and dividers who “lead” by angry diatribes, the provocative deployment of giant warships, to the end that the world’s most vulnerable literally die of hunger and disease, while the richest among us wallow in wealth.
We the people all have in common our humanity. We had no choice in where we were born or under what circumstances. We are all born equal. A system that loses sight of this common bond ultimately sews the seeds of its own destruction.
My New Year’s wish is that we all reflect on the many ways in which we have benefited from the wonderfully diverse heritages that shape our country and focus on the common humanity that unites us. We must demand an end to the hateful rhetoric which threatens to destroy us.
Bob Brown is the former Republican Montana Secretary of State and State Senate President.