We had an interesting discussion one day this spring in my Southwest Minnesota State University Gold College class on the U.S. Constitution.

One of the class members made a comment that what the United States maybe needs is a common enemy, an enemy to everyone. It would be the same as Germany and Japan in World War II or the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

It lead to an interesting dialogue. Instructor Steve Frederickson and class members made comments that tied in directly with the title of the class.

We saw that there were two different questions that could be asked. One is whether or not we need a common enemy. The other question is whether we should need one.

Someone can make a strong case for the idea that one is needed. When I was in grade school at Holy Redeemer in the 1970s and early 1980s we feared the Soviet Union. We thought its leaders were evil. We thought Karl Marx was evil.

We wondered if we’d need to crawl under our desks if Soviet planes bombed Marshall. People were very concerned about the arms race. The nuclear freeze movement in the early 1980s was a reaction to those concerns.

That all changed in 1989 with the liberation of eastern Europe. It was an historic moment when the Berlin Wall was torn down.

On the 10th anniversary of the end of the Wall I wrote an article for which I interviewed German-born Marshall resident Gerlinde Doom and Marshall resident Chad Enstad. As an off-duty soldier stationed in Germany Enstad broke off pieces of the Wall. He recalled that the occasion was like a New Year’s Eve party.

We had high hopes for a peaceful world when the Soviet Union broke apart. We thought we could finally have democracy throughout the world.

Instead in 2024 we still have dictatorships. We still have oppression. Although we formed the United Nations with the goal that nothing like the Nazi-driven Jewish Holocaust would ever happen again, we still have situations that involve genocide.

The events of 911 only partially produced a common enemy in 2001. We weren’t dealing with an established government. Instead it was radical terrorist organizations. We didn’t know everyone who belonged to them and we didn’t know where all of them were located.

Even after the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s Vladimir Putin isn’t the same sort of common enemy as the 20th century Soviets. People in the United States don’t fear for safety as much. We go about our business and often don’t think about Ukraine.

It’s almost as though we’ve become detached from issues such as world hunger, violence, and oppression. We’re not outraged by it.

Tolerance is normally a good thing, but not when it comes to injustices. Maybe there should be more intolerance for it. Maybe it shouldn’t be accepted just because it’s happening on another continent.

So possibly we do need to think of those who stand in the way of peace and justice as enemies. There’s still the question, however, as to whether it’s a necessary part of being unified as a nation.

The bottom line is that we shouldn’t need a common enemy. The U.S. Constitution is one of the greatest achievements in world history. It was crafted by leaders who had widely diverging views about their society.

The Constitution came together because of what the leaders shared. They had a unified desire to be free, to be an independent nation rather than a set of colonies.

One question the Constitution didn’t solve was the balance between federalism and states rights. They lead to two different interpretations of freedom.

A federalist believes that there’s more of a guarantee of freedom if the national government sets minimum standards, if it guarantees all citizens certain rights regardless of where they live. A states rights advocate instead believes that there’s more freedom if states control their destinies without the burden of federal mandates.

The balance has shifted back and forth. I personally lean toward a federal approach. On most issues I don’t think it works to have 50 states with 50 different sets of guidelines.

Whichever way we lean we should not lose sight of the greater good. There’s a point where we need to put differences aside. There should be recognition of the many ways in which our system of government works well. There are many reasons for why it’s admired throughout the world.

— Jim Muchlinski is a longtime reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent