Can America Be Saved?

I wrote an article a while back that America is not a nation. It is a fairly constant thought I have, as is my reflection on why Dixie is a nation. I’m not just sharing these because they are my favorite articles I’ve written, but rather because I found myself having this discussion recently with a rather militant civic nationalist.

The civic nationalist said it was “giving up” to focus only on Dixie and that we have an obligation to lead all of the United States in the right direction, namely as Christian country. He based this on the notion that we were once a unified and Christian nation. He asserted we were a Christian country starting in 1776 and only recently went astray. I had been having some libations as we were having this discussion so I couldn’t go into detail at the time, but with a sober mind, and the realization that many others probably repeat his talking points, I thought now would be a good time to respond to this civic nationalist worldview.

Starting with 1776, the notion that we were a unified Christian nation ignores two major things. It ignores that approximately 1/3 of the colonists were actually pro-England and another 1/3 didn’t take a stand one way or the other. That pretty much puts the “unified” out the window. It also ignores that many of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence and the men who met at the Constitutional Convention were deists, agnostics, or atheists (so not uniformly Christian). Jefferson famously edited portions of the New Testament, purportedly by literally cutting and pasting sections of it out, to take out all the miracles of Christ and make it a purely moral tale. Whether you can have morality without an objective source of morality is another question altogether, but certainly indicates that the whole Constitution being the framework of a Christian nation is flawed. This also goes into the whole Freemason bit. 9 of 56 of the signers of the Declaration and 13 out of 39 of the signers of the Constitution were freemasons. While you certainly can be a mason and a Christian, the fact that masonry allows you in provided you believe in a “Supreme Being” means you are “yoked” to Muslims, Jews, and Hindus as “brothers” in it. Also, in my experience, civic nationalists usually feel iffy about freemasons but tend to just ignore the pretty intense freemason connections with the Founders.

This worldview also ignores that looking at the War Between the States, men thought of themselves as members of their “State.” We can see that when reading letters of soldiers from the War talk about their beloved Virginia, Tennessee, and even the Yankees for their respective state. They are not talking about the glorious Union when their heart longs for home or even for beautiful Dixie, but the rolling hills, valleys, or other features of their specific state. There is that famous scene in Gods and Generals, where General Lee describes the sacred geography of Virginia. We must remember, most people throughout history didn’t move around all that much. Most people’s connection to land is very much their immediate surroundings. 

National or supranational identities have largely been a recent invention. Certainly, empires existed before the modern period, but even aside from the notable examples like Arminius, it seems dubious at best to claim that people from areas outside of central Italy viewed themselves primarily as “Romans.” As another example, the French were also a lot more heterogenous than romantic books like The Three Musketeers indicates. I don’t mean heterogenous in the sense of a bunch of brown people, but rather that even through the French Revolution, there were so many different languages and dialects that “To walk in any direction for a day was to become incomprehensible.” It wasn’t until after the French Revolution that you saw those languages truly suppressed and what we think of as the French people really developed. To be fair, the languages disappearing doesn’t necessarily mean the identities did. 

Returning to the main point, Americans were not really “unified” in the way people like to pretend they were back in 1776. While the 1^st Amendment has been interpreted so dishonestly as to prevent Christian athletes praying before a football game together with their coach, the original rationale was to avoid wars of religion between states. In the colonial period, there were certainly religious rules in place (Maryland particularly having a bit of a mess) and the beginning of the Republic had various religious rules in place. There just couldn’t be religious rules for federal office. This certainly indicates the states were Christian, but they were not “unified.”

For more disunity, after the War Between the States, which was a clear indicator of division between the different peoples purportedly unified as “Americans,” there was then the Reconstruction Era. This era is often glossed over in history class and included the Southern states divided into military districts and ruled over by military governors appointed by the great “protector of democracy,” Abraham Lincoln. How can a people be unified when half the people are subjugating the other half?

Jumping forward a bit in time, right before the Second World War, we were somewhat divided on entry in the war. Looking at polls from the period, it seems that until Pearl Harbor, there was little interest in involvement. In September 1939, only 42% of Americans polled wanted to join the war if England and France were to be defeated. A month later, only 29% wanted to go to war. Per Gallup in May of 1940, only 7% wanted to enter the war. You then see after France fell that the poll question was asked differently, and you get higher percentages wanting to “help” but it’s not until after the Pearl Harbor attack when you get 91% in favor of the war declaration.

FDR had campaigned on not getting involved in the war and polls pretty consistently showed a desire not to be involved. It was only after the Pearl Harbor attacks, which FDR certainly had received intel about beforehand, and the crackdowns on people who had been opposed to entry, like William Dudley Pelley, that there was the “unity” for war. Of course, unity when it is all but illegal to speak out against it is no real unity at all, is it?

The seeds of the “American” people were sown in the late 19^th century, particularly with figures like Theodore Roosevelt and conflicts like the Spanish-American War, but it was the blood spilled in the Second World War which caused the present notion of America to truly emerge. It really isn’t until that point when people begin referring to themselves as “Americans” rather than of their state, it seems. This also may be because this period saw a lot more movement than in past generations.

So, the America that people want to keep didn’t really exist until the middle of the 20^th century. We point to it as the halcyon days because there were moral laws in place to ensure movies had good messages, the Church was strong, and America was unified against the Satanic Soviet Union. I don’t really want to deconstruct this period and point out how much of it is a farce (MK Ultra in the 50s or our alliances with terrible groups throughout the Cold War), but even if we want to pretend the period was as good as it is remembered, how long did it even last? Is the hyper-capitalistic and greedy 1980s the same “America” as the 1950s? 

We live in a land where Christianity has been on the decline for some time. Even being charitable, only 65% of this country is Christian and this needs to be with some caveats. Ben Shapiro did a “reality check” video that I can’t presently find in which he pointed out that while Hispanics almost uniformly identify as Christian, they are also almost uniformly in favor of abortion. It’s not just Hispanics. Apparently, 37% of U.S. abortions were undertaken by women who identified as Protestant, and 28% were Catholic. So, doing a little math, that means that 65% of abortions were done by Christians. Now, I don’t have the numbers of abortions in front of me, so I can’t totally tell what that means in terms of the 65% of Americans who are “Christian,” but it’s safe to assume that more self-professed Christians are in favor of legalized abortion than who have actually had them. Looking at some other data, we can see the breakdown further, with 79% of Episcopalians and large shares of other self-professed Christian groups being in favor of legalized abortion. That being the case, I would be surprised if we are really even close to 50% Christian in this country.

So, the America that folks want to save existed for maybe thirty years and currently the country is full of non-Christians and fake Christians, yet we should rally together and try to “save” them all, says the civic nationalist. How? 

With the changing voting demographics and the fact that elections aren’t real anymore, there’s no practical way to take power on the federal level. The two-party system we have is entrenched in such a manner to prevent a third party from rising to national success. While there have been attempts to infiltrate the two parties, ultimately, they can hamstring a candidate and prevent them from winning. Additionally, even if somehow we got the “based” candidate that a civic nationalist would like, the president does not nearly have the powers that people like to think.

The Supreme Court can dictate policies he makes as unconstitutional (as was often done against Trump), the legislature can overturn his vetoes by a 2/3 majority, and dissolving federal agencies likewise requires congressional consent. Not only must the president actually have the will, he also needs approval of the legislature to kill an agency. The present legislature being largely a mess, with even the ones people like often being useless or hateful, makes this seem like a fool’s errand. For example, Mike Pence was thought to be “based” but what did he do as vice president? He certified a fraudulent election. Likewise, people seem to like Dan Crenshaw, a man who routinely has the worst takes and has been incredibly rude to people, including a young girl, who ask him valid questions. 

Essentially, to “save” the United States, you would need to get at least a majority of both the House and Senate on your side, win the presidency, and hope that the Supreme Court doesn’t deem the action unconstitutional. All of these are untenable goals with the current makeup of the United States (and the entrenched bureaucrats and elected officials who are terrible but win or keep power through inertia and momentum). It also ignores that the most destructive federal agencies have so many assets off the books (namely the CIA) that even if somehow you did dissolve it, it could still operate.

All of this is to go back to the original point: America is not now nor really ever was truly unified, except for a brief period in the 20^th century and there is no way to “save” it as a whole. That doesn’t mean completely withdraw from politics. Certainly, the local level is vital as these people are who truly interfere with your day-to-day lives. Additionally, on the local level, there’s the ability to interpose and nullify actions above. Obviously, the federal government can send troops to enforce federal dictates, but we will see soon in the international sphere how well they can threaten that.

There is no way to save the country called “America.” However, you can save your families and your community. When the American Empire falls, as all empires inevitably do, you can have plans in place so that rebuilding will be easier or possibly will be unnecessary because you have decoupled from the Empire. Look to the Amish for an example that can be modified, but do not long for Caesar or Franco to march into D.C. and save the “Glorious Republic.”  It never existed in the first place.