By Richard D. Erlich

The full bit, as I heard it from a "12-Step" person, was that you'd say to a member of a family in denial (of alcoholism in the family, or whatever), "Uh, about the hippopotamus in your living room ..." And the response would be, "There is no hippopotamus, and besides, it's only a small hippopotamus -- and we never talk about it outside the family," or, probably, at all.

The joke made an important point: families with problems obvious to outsiders often deny the problems, minimize them, and, when finally conscious of them, will still refuse to deal with them.

A country isn't a family, but -- about some hippopotamuses in America's living room ....

Three big ones are (1) our identity as a people, (2) population policy, and (3) drug policy.

In a recent column, Bill O'Reilly talks about the "deep divisions in the United States" that are in small part revealed in arguments over Christmas.

For once O'Reilly may understate.

Anthony Burgess somewhere calls America -- with disapproval -- "a secular, revolutionary republic." That's one possibility, an identity we celebrate on the Fourth of July. We may also be a nation or a Judeo-Christian nation or a plain old Christian nation; and a quick surf on the web will bring you to sites where we're a "White, Christian nation." Or we may be more ecumenically and less racistly a religious and family-oriented nation, a nation many celebrate on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Our view of ourselves makes a difference, certainly for me.

I'm not Christian, and to orthodox Klanners and neoNazis I'm not White. If the USA is a White and/or Christian nation, a lot of Americans are excluded: me for one, but also Catholics, according to a hardly-unique college student who said, "I used to be Catholic, but now I'm Christian."

If we're essentially a secular republic, born in an Enlightenment revolution, we can all be citizens, if we agree on the basic principles of the republic. Which is good and my position, but is rather cold and intellectual even for me: I don't celebrate Christmas, but I do like Thanksgiving; far more important, in emergencies, the emotional strength of nationhood is crucial.

Seeing ourselves as a nation can also ease decision-making on population policy and drug policy.

For population policy, "People are the riches of a nation," and a modern economy demands growth: "More people, more sales." And, of course, "In numbers there is strength": large nations can support powerful militaries and survive high casualties. So if we're a nation, we should continue encouraging bearing and raising lots of kids, providing public education, tax breaks, and other benefits even for couples with four or five children.

For drug policy, the rule for a nation is what William Bennett once said it is: the laws are the laws and what is crucial is obedience to those laws. A nation is "the family writ large" -- a patriarchal family -- and the kids are to follow Dad's rules, and that is that; indeed, a few weird rules are a good idea: sensible rules test mostly common sense; nonsensical ones train in obedience and -- each time obeyed -- reinforce parental authority.

But re-producing lots more Americans and people who want to live like Americans is a bad idea in a world of environmental degradation and declining resources. Continuing "The War On Drugs" warps public discourse -- a "drug-free America" would have to do without antibiotics, aspirin, and beer -- hurts Black and Hispanic communities and the young, and undercuts far more literal U.S. warfare in Afghanistan, while worsening problems in such neighbors as Mexico, Columbia, and Peru.

Nation vs. republic -- and there are other ways to see ourselves -- can't be resolved and probably shouldn't be. But we should be conscious of the conflict here and careful and civil in balancing claims on our identity. For population, drugs, or most other real-world issues, there are no neat, logically elegant solutions.

As with troubled families, some figurative hippos will stick around; we must, though, notice that they're in the living room, acknowledge the size of the problem, and talk seriously about some clean-up.

Richard D. Erlich retired from the English Department at Miami University, Oxford, OH, and now lives in a milder climate in California.