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Unity in Diversity
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13481 |
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Section : |
SPECIAL SECTION
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1987 |
4,182 Words |
| Author
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Francis Canavan, S.J.
Francis Canavan, S.J., is professor of political science at
Fordham University. |
E pluribus unum - out of many, one - is the motto of the United States, and it describes our country well. We are a unity in diversity, a nation composed now of fifty states with a bewildering variety of regional, occupational, ethnic, and religious groups. That we have remained one despite our diversity and that, with the vast exception of the Civil War, we have managed it without resort to military force is an amazing accomplishment.
The accomplishment, however, raises some questions that have concerned us throughout our history: How much unity do we need? How much diversity can we stand? There is no answer to these questions to which we can expect all Americans to agree. Yet the questions are vital and it is appropriate at the bicentennial of the Constitution that we should reflect on them.
A colleague once assured me that the only bond of unity holding the American people together was an agreement on procedures. We agree to settle disputes that arise among us by following constitutionally and legally defined procedures and to abide by the results.
That is democracy as we understand it, and we need no other unity than agreement on the procedures of democracy.
That agreement may be, in fact, the only unity we can have as our cultural and moral pluralism spreads and grows deeper. A people who increasingly disagree on basic moral principles may be able to agree only on procedures. The May issue to Time magazine, reported with some alarm on the depths of such moral division in a series entitled, "Whatever Happened to Ethics?" Time was disturbed by a recent spate of revelations about law violations by officers of the government, treasonous conduct by Marines, insider trading on Wall Street, and womanizing by a presidential candidate and a TV evangelist. More shocking than the conduct, however, was the apparent lack of communal agreement on the moral standards by which to judge the conduct.
Time quoted some authorities as putting part of the blame for the disappearance of common moral standards on public education. U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett describes many public schools as "languishing for lack of moral nutrition." Robert Coles, a psychiatrist at Harvard, agrees that moral values should be a "topic in all aspects of a student's life." But Murray Nelson, an associate professor of education at Penn State, asks, "Who is to decide what are the 'right' values?" If we take that question as the clincher that
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