“We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.” At the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Founders, the signers, the revolutionaries, not surprisingly seen as traitors by the British Crown, George III, would all be hung by the neck until dead, unless they hung together, somehow managing to rally this tiny, new country sufficiently to defeat the mightiest military power on earth. The mightiest ever seen. The odds against them were staggering, but the deep-seated yearning for freedom motivated them to step up, and, by signing the Declaration, put their, “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” on the line for America. And us. Yes, you and me. We are the descendants who inherited the freedoms they all risked all to attain.

And it was far from easy. The Declaration of Independence had to be debated for days, starting out with most who were  in attendance either against it, or understandably nervous and skeptical. In the end, it was unanimous. They all lined up to sign. They found a way to come together--enthusiastically. Each member proudly stepping up to affix his signature, pledging his, “life, fortune and sacred honor.” And if you look back on the history of the Revolutionary War, in summary: We lost, we lost, we lost, we lost...and then we won. And they never gave up.

Our country has a history of coming together. Lincoln famously put together a Cabinet of disparate individuals known as a Team of Rivals. And it took the best these highly different individuals had to offer to win the Civil War--a war that had to be won. Imagine a divided country, where slavery was still legal in almost half of it. Less famously, but just as importantly, FDR put together another team of Rivals during WWII. Once again, it was the different strengths of these oh-so-very different people that added greatly to the strength of the team. Were those teams messier that than teams where the members are more like minded? Of course. Is the team of rivals approach better--does it produce better results? Absolutely.

As Americans, we face threats--existential threats as serious as those posed by the British in the 1770s, and the slaveholding states that wanted to break way in the 1860s.

In a sense, the Revolutionary War was us against us, all being British citizens, and the Civil War was indeed us against us, sometimes literally brother against brother. Yes, the conflict was geographically defined, but if you look a political map of the US today, you will see similarly clearly geographically drawn political dividing lines. And we are greatly divided.

Abraham Lincoln taught us that any existential threat must come from inside. “From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia...could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

More colloquially, but just as powerfully, comes the observation from Pogo, a Swamp Possum in the eponymous cartoon drawn by the late, brilliant Walt Kelly, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Exactly the same sentiment; if we the world’s oldest democracy and the most powerful country economically and militarily the world has ever seen, are to be done in,  brought down, or even simply made less than we are today, it will be by our own hands. And if we, you and I do nothing, we are just a responsible.

What is it that could bring us down? Tribalism, sort of. Identity politics, well, again, sort of. “I’m right because I’m me, and you’re wrong because you are not me.” That is the core of it. We, individually and as a society,