"I Have a Dream" and the Gettysburg Address

The August 24 March on Washington this past weekend commemorated the 1963 March, which culminated in the first Civil Rights Act, passed in 1964, but the actual 50^th anniversary is today, August 28, 2013.  Fifty years ago today Martin Luther King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech (http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf), which, along with Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm), is perhaps the best known piece of political oratory in American history.

King directly ties his speech to the American Dream and reminds us how that dream has been denied to most African Americans since they first set foot on American soil. 

When we think of the American Dream, most of us think first of economic prosperity, or, or at least the opportunity to achieve it.  We think of “the land of opportunity,” as countless immigrants have seen us, and the “rags to riches” myth of upward social mobility.  I say “myth” because, while it captures a universal aspiration and is a widespread belief, its reality has been denied to as many, probably more, than have achieved it, however hard-working and virtuous they may have been.

Yet the American Dream represents more than economic success; it also stands for political freedom, social equality, and personal fulfillment.  And King’s speech references those values as much, even more, than it does the dream of material prosperity.

If it is as famous as the Gettysburg Address, what characteristics does it share with Lincoln’s best known speech?  They both rest on what might be better called the American Promise than the American Dream.  They both expressly quote from the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” and King cites the “unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

While Lincoln does not name the blight of slavery, he ties the principle of equality to “the unfinished work which those who fought here have so nobly advanced,” “the great task remaining before us,” and “our increased devotion to that great cause” for which so many have died.  Lincoln calls for “a new birth of freedom.”  Without saying so directly, he frames the Civil War as a struggle to fulfill that original promise of full political and social equality.

King, on the other hand, directly names the failures of that promise a century after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863—“segregation,” “discrimination,” “poverty,” and “police brutality.”  But, like Lincoln, he calls for a new resolve to fulfill the original promise of the American Dream—the promise of “liberty and justice for all.”

Both speakers are addressing but half the nation, Lincoln, the Union, still in the midst of war with the Confederacy; and King, African Americans and their white allies in the grip of struggle with segregationists and white supremacists.

 Lincoln’s rhetorical task is somewhat easier.  As he dedicates a burial ground for the Union dead, he is able to freely use “our” and “we” without excluding any of his Union audience, establishing an unqualified identification with his listeners that serves to unify them in their shared experience, values, and grand national cause.

King’s audience consists of both African Americans and white supporters.  He can use “our” and “we” when referring to their shared values and civil rights struggle, but often refers to African Americans in third person when referring to their experiences of racial injustice.  He sets aside a part of his speech to acknowledge “our white brothers,” who have come to realize that “their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.”  And the dream is expressed in terms of full inclusion for all, not only in the segregationist South, but also in “our Northern cities,” “the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire,” “the mighty mountains of New York,” and “the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.” “Our” and “we” shift back and forth from civil rights supporters to African Americans to all Americans.

Lincoln makes no reference to the enemies of freedom and equality in the slave-holding South.  The lines of war are clearly drawn and well understood.  His focus throughout his speech is the noble ideal of the Union cause.  The ignoble cause of the Confederacy is merely implied by unspoken comparison.

King, on the other hand, is concerned, not only with the legal segregation of the South but with the “slums and ghettoes” of the North.  And while he invokes the history of slavery and the “vicious racists” in the South, his dream is large enough to include all Americans sitting together “at the table of brotherhood,” joining hands “as sisters and brothers.”  He includes segregationists and racists in his dream of “all God’s children,” including blacks and whites, “Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics” singing together as equals “the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, Free at last, Great God Almighty, We are free at last.”

Thus as Lincoln transcends the divisions of the Civil War by focusing on the ideal of a nation united in freedom and equality, so King transcends the divisions of race by focusing on a dream that is all inclusive, even to the point of including white people in the words of a Negro spiritual.

The language of the two speeches is very different.  Lincoln’s is more solemn and stately, as befitting the dedication of a national cemetery, and more abstract, as befitting, perhaps, the more ceremonial occasion.  King’s language is more concrete, metaphorical, poetic, emotive, and rousing as he seeks to mobilize a movement in pursuit of legal redresses for a long history of suffering.  Lincoln is not making an abolitionist speech, but rather seeking to strengthen Union resolve to see the war through to its end.  King does not have the standing of national office from which to speak and must use his language to establish himself as a credible leader and to inspire his followers by putting memorable words to the dream in all their hearts.

Lincoln uses the language of a civic leader while King uses that of a preacher and an activist.  Yet their argument is the same:  the American Promise remains unfulfilled and its realization is worthy of sacrifice.  Our nation’s greatness, our nation’s future, and our nation’s endurance depend upon it.

Both also see themselves as renewing the original American Promise, both invoking the Declaration of Independence, King invoking the Emancipation Proclamation.  Taken together the two speeches mark historical milestones in the ongoing effort to realize the Dream.

"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"

In honor of Independence Day this year, 237 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I decided to reread Frederick Douglass’ speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” delivered on July 5, 1852.  It didn’t occur to me at the time that the verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin would be announced before I got my blog post done.

My original thought was to write about the speech as an under-appreciated rhetorical achievement in the history of American letters, but the death of Trayvon Martin and the court case against George Zimmerman dramatizes the continuing relevance of Douglass’ core argument.  And that may be more important than the brilliance of Douglass’ rhetoric.

First, let me say that I harbor no ill will toward the jury in the Zimmerman case.  As I watched the trial unfold on TV these last few weeks, I kept thinking how glad I was that I was not on the jury.  Though I felt that Zimmerman should be held accountable for profiling and stalking Martin while carrying a concealed weapon, I was not persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt that the actual killing rose to the level of murder, or even manslaughter, given the Florida self-defense law. 

Correct verdict under the law or not, though, it does not seem to rise to the level of justice either.  It seems like yet another example of an African American citizen being denied full equality in a nation that just weeks before the verdict had celebrated its promise of individual rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” of equality under the law, and of “liberty and justice for all.” 

Douglass was invited to deliver his oration at Corinthian Hall, Rochester, New York, to celebrate our nation’s founding as a free and independent state, guaranteeing liberty and justice to its people.  It was a ceremonial occasion and, in some ways, Douglass meets expectations by praising the nation’s founders and the high ideals inscribed in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.  But Douglass takes the opportunity to turn the speech into a political one, focusing on the inconsistency of a slaveholding society espousing the values of equality and liberty and calling for the abolition of slavery.  After excoriating his audience for the hypocrisy of celebrating the 4^th of July while allowing the injustices and cruelties of slavery to exist, Douglass ends by holding out hope that our nation will someday uphold the values and ideals embedded in our founding documents.

A similar argument could be made today.  How do we celebrate our nation’s founding and its highest civic values on one day and on another day in the same month watch as lawyers in our “justice” system defend their client by justifying racial profiling and the killing of an unarmed black teenager on grounds of self-defense when that client had deliberately stalked that innocent teenager walking home in the rain?  Yes, we can hold out hope that Zimmerman will be held accountable in a wrongful death suit and that someday our nation and its citizens will truly live up to the ideals they espouse and celebrate, but that is cold comfort to those who mourn the loss of Trayvon Martin, who will never again  walk home.

Even though Frederick Douglass had been invited by the white civic leaders of Rochester, New York, to deliver this ceremonial speech, he knew full well that their deference to him was only for superficial show.  That is why in his opening words he presents himself as a modest, self-deprecating public speaker and why he goes on to position himself as an outsider, who, like all African Americans, slave or free, cannot enjoy the full benefits of “your” 4^th of July, “your” Declaration of Independence, or “your” heritage of equality and freedom.  And that is also why he presents himself as an educated, well-spoken, eloquent speaker whose performance belies his modesty and indirectly argues for his full equality with those privileged white civic leaders.  Douglass references the nation’s founding documents, the words of its forefathers, the Bible, as well as his own educated white contemporaries and in so doing establishes his literacy, his education, his credibility, and his humanity, despite having been born into slavery.

Repeating a common trope of African American rhetoric, he compares his people to the Biblical Hebrews who suffered under slavery in Egypt and were delivered to freedom in the Promised Land.  He lifts up the suffering of American slaves, drawing on powerful emotional imagery to dramatize their plight: 

“…I see clouds of dust raised on the highways of the South; I see the bleeding footsteps; I hear the doleful wail of fettered humanity, on the way to the slave markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine, knocked off to the highest bidder.  There I see the tenderest ties ruthlessly broken, to gratify the lust, the caprice and rapacity of the buyers and sellers of men.  My soul sickens at the sight.”

               Throughout, both directly and indirectly, he holds up the mirror of hypocrisy to those who would celebrate their national Independence Day:

 “            "The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie.”

How many “free” African Americans today join in our 4^th of July celebrations with conflicted hearts,

remembering the injustices of the past along with the promises of our founders, smarting from their

own experiences of prejudice and racism, and questioning, like Douglass, whether this 4^th of July

celebration includes them?

Although Douglass is speaking of American slavery, he himself was free, though under the Fugitive Slave Law he could be returned to his owner at any time should that owner be identified, and while he had escaped the slavery of the South, he lived with the racism of the North, the very racism of those who had the temerity to invite an escaped slave to deliver their 4^th of July oration, as if he were one of them.  Only the blind arrogance of misplaced self-righteousness could expect the victims of racism to praise their oppressors’ history and values.

Yet Douglass concludes with faith in the Constitution, and while that may undercut his verbal assault on American hypocrisy, it nonetheless saves him and us from despair.  His call to action would fail did he not leave his audience with hope of abolishing slavery and racism.

Similarly, may the realization of our own contemporary failures in overcoming color prejudice and racism leave us not in despair but with renewed conviction that our anti-racist words and actions are not in vain and that the dream of people like Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King for full equality and justice for all may someday be achieved in our country.  (See also previous blog post on Frederick Douglass *Narrative of an American Slave,* December 2009.)

The Tempest in Tucson

On January 1 a new law went into effect in Arizona prohibiting K-12 classes that “promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment toward a race or class of people, are designed primarily for pupils of one ethnic group, or advocate ethnic solidarity.”  The purpose of the law is to eliminate the ethnic studies curriculum in Tucson public schools.  (Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2011/01/01/20110101arizona-ethnic-studies-ban.html#ixzz1kVeUY0j5.) 

 Among the works that is taught in this curriculum is Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  Though the Tucson administration denies the book has been banned, high school teacher Curtis Acosta was told not to teach the play using the “nexus of race, class and oppression” or “issues of critical race theory.” 

 “What is very clear is that ’The Tempest’ is problematic for our administrators due to the content of the play and the pedagogical choices I have made,” Acosta said in an interview. “In other words, Shakespeare wrote a play that is clearly about colonization of the new world and there are strong themes of race, colonization, oppression, class and power that permeate the play, along with themes of love and redemption.”

(http://www.salon.com/2012/01/18/tucson_says_banished_books_may_return_to_classrooms/singleton/#comments)

 This stunning violation of academic freedom and crude imposition of ideological control over public school curriculum spurred me to reread Shakespeare’s mysterious final play and review some of the history of its critical reception and interpretation.

 Since its first production in 1611 (just four years after Jamestown was founded) The Tempest has been read theologically, mythically, aesthetically, biographically, psychologically, as well as politically.  One of the earliest political interpretations of the play is found in Leslie Fiedler’s 1973 essay “Caliban as the American Indian.”  However, the connections of the play to its historical context would have been recognized by its contemporaries.

 Its allusions to contemporary travel narratives of a Virginia Company expedition to Jamestown in 1608 are well established in scholarship.  The flagship of this fleet was separated from the rest and, having failed to arrive in Jamestown, was presumed to be lost.  Nearly a year later the admiral and sailors of the flagship arrived in two small boats, having run aground on the island of Bermuda, where they found food, shelter, and wood to build their boats, despite the site’s reputation as an “Isle of Devils.”  This adventure became sensational news in England, and in Act I, scene ii, of The Tempest, Ariel makes explicit reference to “the still-vexed Bermoothes” (always-stormy Bermudas).

 It would have also been widely recognized among educated contemporaries that “Caliban” is an anagram of “cannibal” (not necessarily meaning eater of human flesh in this context), and that this sub-human character constitutes a refutation of Montaigne’s well-known essay “Of Cannibals,” translated into English in 1603.  This essay is now widely understood as a source of the “noble savage” image of American Indians and the utopian view of the “New World,” in which American Indian society is represented as a kind of ideal state.  Gonzalo’s description of his ideal commonwealth in Act II, scene I, of The Tempest echoes the very same language of Montaigne’s description.

 In addition, at a time when the transatlantic slave trade is at its height, Shakespeare presents both Ariel and Caliban as slaves to Prospero.   It is difficult to deny the connection between Shakespeare’s play and the larger historical context.  In order to avoid “the nexus of race, class, and oppression” must teachers in Tucson avoid teaching The Tempest, ignore history entirely while teaching it, or distort history by treating the “New World” metaphor strictly in positive terms and Prospero as a benevolent slave owner so as to avoid creating resentment against white Europeans? Presumably, the malevolent, revengeful characteristics of Caliban, an indigenous creature enslaved by Prospero, would have to be ignored in order to avoid creating resentment against racial groups that have been historically enslaved.  In other words some of the most obvious features of the text would have to be distorted.

 Like most European literature of Shakespeare’s time, The Tempest is Eurocentric, aristocratic and patriarchal in its world view.  Under the Arizona law, that world view could presumably not be critiqued for fear of creating resentment toward Europeans, European-Americans, aristocrats, and men.  On the other hand, that world view could not be approved for fear of creating resentment toward non-Europeans, non-European-Americans, commoners, and women.  Pity the poor teacher trying to navigate those shoals!  Better to avoid the text entirely than create one’s own pedagogical shipwreck in the classroom.

 Not surprisingly, The Tempest is a far more complex and ambiguous text than any crude political ideology, and it offers a study in power that Arizona legislators, Tucson administrators, and teachers could learn from.

 First, it accurately reflects two competing European visions of the “New World.” On the one hand, it is a Utopia, as Montaigne described—a new Eden, a Promised Land, a “land flowing with milk and honey.”  On the other, it is a “hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts and wild men,” as William Bradford described Plymouth upon the Pilgrims’ first landing—“a wild and savage” place, primitive, barbaric.  If the magic island where Prospero and Miranda are exiled represents the new world, then the sub-human creature Caliban represents the savage view, while the airy spirit Ariel represents the idyllic view.  Ariel had been left imprisoned by Caliban’s witch-mother until Prospero arrived after her death, freed him, and then enslaved both Ariel and Caliban.  If Prospero represents the Europeans, then, allegorically, does this mean that Europeans have power over both the worst and best of the New World? When Prospero frees Ariel at the end of the play, having used him to achieve a redemptive resolution to the injustice done him by his enemies, does that mean that Europeans will bring out the best in the New World? By keeping Caliban enslaved at the end, does that mean that Europeans will keep the worst of the New World under control?  If so, then the play reinforces the contemporary European idea that western conquest had the providential purpose of improving the conquered lands.

 Perhaps, but Caliban’s grievances against Prospero are sympathetic, given Prospero’s harsh treatment of him. 

             This island’s mine by Sycorax my mother,

            Which thou takst from me.  When thou cam’st first,

             Thou strok’st me, and made much of me; would’st give me

             Water with berries in’t; and teach me how

             To name the bigger light, and how the less,

             That burn by day and night. And then I loved thee

             And showed thee all the qualities o’ th’ isle,

             The fresh springs, brine pits, barren place and fertile.

            Cursed be I that did so! All the charms

            Of Sycorax—toads, beetles, bats, light on you!

            For I am all the subjects that you have,

             Which first was mine own king; and here you sty me

            In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me

The rest o’ th’ island.  (Act I, scene ii)

And later Caliban expresses his Ariel-like, spiritual side:

                Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,

               Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.

               Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

                 Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices

                 That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

                 Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,

               The clouds methought would open and show riches

                 Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked,

                 I cried to dream again. (Act III, scene iii)

 Thus, if Caliban represents the indigenous people of the new world, then the play does not entirely represent them in an unsympathetic light.

 Still, Ariel earns his freedom at the end of the play by obeying Prospero’s orders, while Caliban must do penance for his plot against Prospero, and, perhaps if he reforms himself, can earn his freedom as well.  Liberty, it seems, is not a natural right but a privilege to be conferred by one of greater power.

 Prospero, himself, had lost his freedom, when his brother, Antonio, usurped his throne as King of Milan and cast him, with his daughter, Miranda, away on the sea to die. Even royalty cannot rest secure in either their liberty or their power.  Prospero and Miranda survive, however, having been shipwrecked on the magic island, where Prospero continues with his studies of the magical arts, educating Miranda, and using Caliban and Ariel as slave labor.  When Prospero uses his powers to cause the shipwreck of his brother and his co-conspirator, the Duke of Naples, and bring them under the control of his magic on the island, he does not seek revenge.  On the contrary, he arranges for the Duke’s son, Ferdinand, and Miranda to fall in love, and then, after allowing the others to believe Ferdinand has drowned, arranges for a reunion and for the redemption of his enemies through the power of his forgiveness.  In the end the impending marriage of Ferdinand and Miranda symbolizes the restoration of both family and political harmony, as Prospero resumes his “proper” place on the throne.  Of course, Shakespeare’s version of family and political harmony is based on what in his day was considered the natural order of gender and class, a patriarchal and aristocratic “great chain of being,” with men ruling women, and aristocracy, with its own ranking order, ruling commoners.

 The treatment of power in the play relies on this hierarchical world view.  Order in the world depends upon each level in the great chain of being keeping its place.  When a lower level seeks to dominate a higher level, disorder and destruction break out.  Thus when Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo allow themselves to be ruled by their physical craving for wine, they become foolish, greedy, vengeful, and violent.  It was   selfish ambition that led Antonio and Alonso to overthrow Prospero from his rightful throne and establish an alliance that maintained their political rule.  On the other hand, it was Prospero’s neglect of his political responsibilities that contributed to his downfall.  Prospero’s restoration to his rightful place partly depends upon his recognition of having neglected “worldly ends, all dedicated/To closeness [seclusion] and the bettering of (his) mind….” (Act I, scene ii)  Each place in the great chain of being has a responsibility appropriate to that place and failure to execute that responsibility likewise results in disorder.  Prospero’s pursuit of knowledge, however, leads to the development of his intellectual and magical powers, which in turn enable him to regain his political power.  In addition to physical, social, and intellectual power, the play demonstrates the power of romantic love as Miranda and Ferdinand fall under each other’s spell, the power of filial devotion as Alonso refuses to give up Ferdinand for dead and insists that his compatriots help search for him, the supernatural power represented by Ariel and the island’s barely heard music that even Caliban responds to, and finally the power of compassion, forgiveness, and redemption, as Prospero, once he has his enemies in his power, pardons them rather than taking revenge.

 Today, democratic notions of equality and freedom have replaced the Shakespearean aristocratic world view, but we do expect individuals to earn their place in the world, as Ariel had to earn his freedom and Propero had to earn back his throne, and we distinguish between the kind of freedom that causes harm to others and the responsible exercise of freedom that contributes to the well-being of all.  Similarly, though we still live in a social hierarchy, we value power-sharing and the appropriate use of social control such that it benefits the general welfare, not the individual wielder of power.

 Do teachers of The Tempest appropriately use their power in the classroom to convey the full complexity and ambiguity of the play or do they use the play to advance a narrow ideological agenda?  Do Tucson administrators respect the work that teachers have done to earn their positions and their academic freedom? Do they have the right to dictate a teacher’s pedagogy and curricular choices in order to advance their own narrow ideological agenda? Do Arizona lawmakers have the right to deny an ethnic group the opportunity to learn its history and cultural traditions, again, to advance the interests of another ethnic group that happens to have more social power?  If their goal is social cohesion among ethnic groups, do they promote that cohesion by the raw exercise of social control?

 There are lessons in The Tempest for all parties involved and for all who would read, learn, and act with wisdom and compassion rather than with ignorant authoritarianism.

Beloved III: The Mythic Message

From a mythic perspective, Sethe, the mother who murders her own child, is the Earth Mother or Great Goddess. She is Mother Nature, who takes the lives of those to whom she has given life. A nursing mother of one child while pregnant with another, Sethe is the ultimate fertility symbol. Having arranged to send her three children ahead to their free grandmother’s house, Sethe escapes slavery on her own, giving birth in a rowboat on the banks of the Ohio River, across which she and her new baby are later ferried, like dead people crossing the River Styx, except they are reborn to freedom among the living instead of being taken to the Underworld.

After 28 days, the length of a moon/menstrual cycle, the slaveholder arrives to take Sethe and her children back to captivity, and the blood flows freely when Sethe cuts her third-born “already crawling” baby with a handsaw before she can be stopped from killing all four of her children.

Sethe’s quest to free herself and her children from slavery thus takes a twisted route, taking her back to captivity in prison for murder. Released after emancipation, she is restored to her family in her mother’s house followed by the ghost of that dead baby, Beloved, which is all Sethe could get carved on her gravestone (in return for ten minutes of sex with the engraver). Her two boys eventually flee the haunted house and her mother dies, leaving Sethe and her now grown born-in-a-boat baby, Denver, alone with the vengeful spirit of Beloved. Having finally achieved physical freedom, Sethe’s quest now becomes a psychological journey of healing and recovery.

Like Sethe, Denver has her own quest to fulfill. Like a mythic hero, she shows early signs of special powers and a special destiny. As an infant in jail with her mother, Sethe claims, “the rats bit everything in there but her.” Upon being asked by a schoolmate if her mother had been in jail for murder, and if she had been with her, Denver temporarily loses her hearing and develops an acute sense of sight. Living in fear of the Terrible Mother, Denver’s hearing is restored when Beloved is resurrected in fleshly form. Denver is the first to recognize who she is.

Having ingested her dead sister’s blood when she nursed at her mother’s bloody breast immediately after the murder, Denver forms a close bond with Beloved, a bond that represents her own psychological attachment to that moment in their personal history. She jealously seeks to protect Beloved from both Sethe and Paul D., Sethe’s lover.

When Sethe submits to Beloved’s power, however, and deteriorates into psychosis, it becomes Denver’s quest to save her mother and their household from the succubus that Beloved has become. She ventures out on her own for the first time, finds work to support herself and her mother, and seeks help from the community, which results in a kind of exorcism ritual conducted by the neighborhood women as Sethe re-enacts the murder but this time directs her rage at the white man instead of her child. This purging of the past that Beloved represents frees both Sethe and Denver from its power. Thus Denver, like a mythic hero, achieves her quest for liberation of both herself and her mother.

Beloved herself plays many mythic roles. She is a ghost, a spirit, familiar, devil, witch, seductress, temptress, femme fatale, succubus, enchantress, sacrificial lamb, both destroyer and redeemer. If Sethe is the Terrible Mother, Beloved is the vengeful child, the memory of the painful past and the legacy of slavery, which must be suffered and purged before the next rebirth and resurrection can occur.

In one scene, during those 28 days of glory when Sethe and all four of her children were together, the family enjoys a treat of wild blackberries “tasting so good and happy that to eat them was like being in church. Just one of the berries and you felt anointed.” If there is a governing deity in the novel, it is nature, which, as in pagan mythology, brings both death and life, pain and pleasure, destruction and triumph, suffering and joy, guilt and redemption, illness and recovery, apocalypse and creation, sacrifice and resurrection.

Just as “anything coming back to life hurts,” so the vitality of nature cannot be separated from loss and suffering, life cannot be separated from death, and good cannot be separated from evil.

The mythic message of Beloved transcends the separations of race, class, gender, and politics to unify us all.