In chapter nine of Nicolo Machiavelli's "The Prince," the tactic of "divide and conquer" is spelled out. To stay in power, a ruler must divide people. Bush's top advisor, Karl Rove, is known to be a devoted follower of those teachings. As the 2004 campaign starts, President Bush's first move is to incite a culture war, shifting the focus from actual campaign issues.
After rereading "The Prince," Bush and his advisors should read some other important works, such as the United States Constitution - specifically the First and 14th Amendments, the writings of John Stuart Mill, Sherman's Anti-Trust act and some important court cases like Marbury v. Madison, Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia.
The first front in the culture war is in the courtrooms of Massachusetts and statehouses of New Mexico and San Francisco. Rather than act to unite people while promoting the American ideal of equality, Bush endorsed an amendment that will create second-class citizens when he proposed a gay marriage ban.
Bush argued the amendment would create a separate but equal institution of civil unions, instead of marriages, and he is simply following what the majority of people want. While those positions are not only at odds with the decisions in Brown and Loving, they exemplify what John Stuart Mill warns about when he writes about the tyranny of the majority: "There needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them." Having the government impose regulations into relationships is never a good idea.
If people focus their fear on the possible damages that homosexuals could cause their own marriage, they may forget other problems in this country. The supposed need for shelter from the terrifying outside world was shown by the recent Federal Communications Commission inquiry into the Super Bowl halftime show.
Sometimes it is not the government but their close corporate allies who enforce their idea of decency. Clear Channel Entertainment, run by several close friends and business partners of Bush, including Tom Hicks and Lowry Mays, pulled the Howard Stern radio show from several of their affiliates across the country Thursday. Everywhere, the 21st-century Puritans are speaking up, attempting to whitewash America's palate.
If America is to move forward, it must break the bonds of fear and unite under the basic tenets of democracy. People need to forget how they are different in the bedroom and stop worrying about sullying the good minds of impressionable children. Fears of what other people are doing fall away when people are secure with their finances and health care, the two top issues in this year's election.
As the country started to wake up and realize it was lied to about Iraq, weapons of mass destruction and jobs not returning as promised, something needed to take the country's attention. Americans have to ask themselves if they're willing to be distracted and divided, or if they want to follow the laws and promote equality for everyone. Bush will try hard to change the focus away from his record and fan the flames of the culture war, but we can have peace in our time.
