People today seem to think divisiveness is always bad. Some oppose making English the official language of the United States of America because they feel it would be divisive. Did these same people oppose the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s because they feared it would be divisive? Have they not heard of the “divide and conquer” strategy?

The civil rights movement was extremely divisive initially but eventually resulted in more unity than existed before the movement. I believe that encouraging immigrants to learn English would result in less divisiveness in the long term, and improve the ability of the immigrants to thrive in this country.

Our system of government pretty much guarantees that any action taken by Congress is going to be divisive, at least in the short term. Some will like it and some won’t. It will help some and hurt others. The government itself is divided by design. You won’t total unity? Move to Zimbabwe.

That some action will be divisive is not a valid argument for or against the action. It’s certainly not a sufficient argument against it. A proposed action should be judged on its expected final results more than its potential inconveniences during implementation.

If you were holding a local event would you want it sanctioned by a higher authority or not? Before answering this question let’s look at the Florida and Michigan primary elections as an example. The following block quotes are taken from a CBS News description of the dilemma that the Democrat Party now faces over its treatment of those primaries (emphasis mine):

The Democratic National Committee sanctioned Michigan and Florida for moving up their nominating contests in violation of party rules; it declared their primaries unofficial and denied them the right to seat their delegations in Denver.

The DNC indicated its disapproval of the state’s actions and punished them. So being sanctioned is a bad thing, right? Well, maybe not.

Clinton won both Michigan and Florida handily. She won Michigan in part because Obama and other Democrats took their names off the ballot in solidarity with the DNC and as part of a pledge to Iowa, New Hampshire and other early-voting states not to participate in unsanctioned contests.

But we established above that those contests were sanctioned. Now they seem to be saying the contests were not sanctioned. Confused enough?

Short of scheduling sanctioned events, this will have to be resolved by DNC Chairman Howard Dean and the two presidential campaigns.

Now the DNC wants to sanction its own events. Is the DNC or CBS confused about what “sanction” means? No, according to Merriam-Webster “sanction” is a very flexible word. It can mean approval or disapproval.

So, before you ask for sanctioning of your event you’d better find out what flavor of sanction the higher authority is willing to offer.