No one can work with tools that are broken. It is a simple fact of life, if the tools used in life are not whole, then whatever is endeavored will not work. This can be said of anything, be it tools, people, relationships, mere objects; nothing broken can work. The aphorism, “A house divided cannot stand,” encapsulates this concept. The phrase itself can be heard in both the Bible’s New Testament, in reference to an individual divided against oneself, and in the speech A House Divided by Abraham Lincoln. Despite the age of the aphorism, the meaning of the phrase transcends its time and holds true even now.

If the house, a place that provides shelter and protection, is divided, then it will be unable to stand as its foundation has been cracked. Throughout history we see the concept of an institution divided crumbling. Sometimes, it hits much closer to home then some obscure, surreal form of politics. A mother and father who have grown apart, their love strained and no longer is enough a common occurrence in today’s society. The home that they have created will start to shatter, all because the foundation of their love has cracked.

Tragic as this is its not nearly as heartbreaking as the child left neglected as the parents tear each other apart from the inside out, wreaking the home life forever. The child’s home, their place of protection is gone, all because two parts of the whole were divided. In the time of Civil War, Abraham Lincoln used this phrase in one of his most famous of speeches, “A House Divided”. In this speech he underscored the importance of setting aside the enmity each political party had for each other in order to address the greater problem of keeping the country whole.

With factions so unwilling to communicate with each other, all because of differing tenants of belief, the democratic government so hardly fought for showed signs of disintegrating due to the great rift in congress. Each party is so desperate to win, utterly determined and dog-like with a meaty bone, lockjawed, to not yield a single iota of power to the opposing power, the parties lost sight of what was truly important, which was seeing to the protection and comfort of the citizens of American. A competitive nature is ok as long as the competition is to solely benefit the individual.

However, it is absolutely impossible to reach a group goal without working as a group. America today is greatly divided. In a time like this, it becomes mandatory that we become whole; otherwise the whole country will fall tumbling down. In today’s Congress, political parties are so eager to beat the competition that they have ceased to make any forward progress to reversing the situation our country is in economically. One party will propose a sound plan, and the other will shoot it down based only on the fact that the “other” party thought of it.

Like children who simply refuse to be well mannered, stomping their feet and saying “No, no, no, no, no” to anything the Voice of Reason may try to impart with them. Meanwhile the casualties are the American people, hardworking people who can do nothing but sit back and be victimized by the lack of productivity and progressive thinking owed to us by our prominent political leaders. Just as a broken tool will never produce quality work, a country run on a broken system will never produce a quality of life for its inhabitants.

Like a wound left uncleansed, the more time passes the more it will fester, and the harder it will be to mend after a certain extent. If left to fester too long after that it may become impossible to even fix the wound, and the body will die. Just like our country was struck and deep wound by the economy, if the officials the people elected to run our government do not do their job and cooperate with each other, the country may reach the point of no return, and crumble, dead.