Yes, we become stronger when men and women, young and old, gay

The words of Bernie Sanders — “Yes, we become stronger when men and women, young and old, gay and straight, native-born and immigrant fight together to create the kind of country we all know we can become.” — are a call to unity that echoes across the ages. They remind us that the true strength of a nation lies not in wealth or armies, but in solidarity — when differences are not weapons of division, but threads woven into one fabric of destiny.

To declare that we become stronger when all stand together is to speak against the eternal temptation of faction and hatred. History is full of nations torn apart when the many allowed themselves to be divided by fear of the other. Yet it is also full of moments of glory, when men and women, the young and old, the privileged and the marginalized, rose as one body, and in that unity accomplished the impossible. Sanders here invokes not a dream of homogeneity, but of harmony — a country not diminished by diversity, but elevated through it.

The story of America itself illustrates this truth. In the great struggles for justice — the Revolution, the fight against slavery, the march for civil rights — victory was never won by one group alone. Immigrants fought alongside the native-born in the Revolution; black and white, men and women, linked arms in the civil rights movement. Each struggle revealed the same lesson: when the people fight together, even the most entrenched injustice trembles.

The ancients too bore witness. The armies of Xerxes at Thermopylae were vast, but their strength was fractured by the oppression of forced peoples. By contrast, the citizens of Athens, poor and rich, rowed side by side in their ships to defeat Persia at Salamis. Their victory did not come from uniformity, but from shared purpose. Thus, Sanders’ words carry the same eternal wisdom: the greatest country is not the one of sameness, but of solidarity.

Let the generations remember: the divisions among us are illusions if we choose to stand as one. Gay and straight, native-born and immigrant, young and old — these are not fractures, but the pillars of a stronger foundation, if only bound together by vision and justice. Bernie Sanders’ words are not merely political; they are prophetic, reminding us that the country we can become already lives in the hearts of its people. It awaits only the courage to fight together, shoulder to shoulder, for the dawn that belongs to all.