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My worst fear lately has been that this country is falling apart. Opposing factions seem to be tearing our society apart and I wonder what will remain of us, if anything, when it is all over. I began to read Meachum’s book fearfully, fearing that it would make me feel even worse about our final destiny. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel the same way when I finished the book. Our country has been here before and yet survived.

I used to think of our early settlers and the statesmen who founded and cared for our nation in its infancy. I envisioned them as being one-minded, I wish they had the best interests of our country first on their minds. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to be reminded of how different the various factions were and still are to this day.

I think of the leaders who brought out the best in the expression of our national soul. Meachum tells us that none of them had a single purpose. Each of them felt the need to engage to some degree in the problems that divided the nation to achieve something. These leaders were human after all and they also represented people with many different beliefs and priorities. Bringing everyone together was a monumental challenge for our previous leaders and some did a better job than others in closing the gap.

In the end, our soul is not cut from a single cloth, but rather a patchwork quilt of vastly disparate energies that often pull the nation in opposite and contradictory directions. For the most part, many of those who held strong opinions had the welfare of our nation in mind along with their own deeply held beliefs. However, they often disagreed on how best to unite the nation.

Trump is only mentioned once in the book. However, our current age and the state of our soul push us in many contradictory directions once again. We currently disagree on what is best for us or how to get to a point where we can agree on the direction we should take from here.

An obvious example is the issue of racial equality versus white supremacy. This tension has plagued us since the early days of the American experiment. We have certainly moved towards equality, but fear and prejudice have continued to separate us. We still have a lot of work to do to become a nation that is the soul of America. We have been to this stressful point of tension many times before and have somehow recovered from the abyss. We need to discover a way to unite once again in our common interest. This is the challenge we all face in these difficult times.

Review by Joseph G. Langen