Uniting and Dividing.

“There is more uniting us than dividing us.” Once that was true.

IT ALWAYS WORKED. That rhetorical “Get Out of Jail Free” card, used by politicians from across the ideological spectrum, was oily enough to calm the most troubled of waters.

“There will always be more that unites us than divides us.”

Was it ever true? The proposition is at least arguable. For that extraordinary thirty year period between the end of World War II and the stagflation of the mid-1970s there probably was more that united the societies of the West than divided them.

It was agreed that the global convulsion which had swallowed the lives of close to 80 million human-beings could not be the last word on humanity’s moral character. The Peace had to be of a kind that justified the sacrifices of the War.

And for three decades it did. The world emerging from the titanic struggle to defeat fascism offered enthralling proofs of humanity’s capacity to do both well and good. Between 1945 and 1975, Westerners discovered that it was possible to be both free and prosperous.

Convinced that the paired virtues of liberty and prosperity would endure forever, the beneficiaries of the long post-war boom accepted the claim that there was more that united their societies than divided them. They heard the claim as a neat summation of the generous social contract that underpinned it.

The idea that, in the eyes of at least some of their fellow citizens, division might be seen as preferable to unity would have struck most people as outrageous. What person in their right mind would prefer to live in a society riven by sharp economic, social, political, religious and racial animosities?

Right mind? It was a pun with a razor-sharp edge.