Two Americas

Vice President Kamala Harris, during her debate against former President Trump, insisted in her closing remarks that she would be “a president for all Americans” and that “we all have so much more in common than what separates us.” This was news to me, as I have long believed—and the Democrats have long assured me—that the common living space we share (which is all we share) is not nearly as important as our incompatible values on faith, the sanctity of human life, marriage, family, gender, sex, education, science, economics, policing, the environment, war, peace, and our country’s role in the global order. What is this united America she speaks of?

“Haven’t you noticed that we are two countries?”

C.S. Lewis asked this question in his classic novel That Hideous Strength, writing of a conflict at the heart of England: “something we may call Britain is always haunted by something we may call Logres.“ Others have pointed out that Logres corresponds to England’s Catholic roots—the faith that gave birth to Arthurian legends, saints, and miracles—while Britain is associated with the Puritanical, the bland, and the tyrannical. It’s not merely England that has this conflict. “Every people has its own haunter.” So too, America. 

Two warring versions of America have battled for supremacy since the founders put their grievances in a Declaration—in truth, long before that—and each has its foundational myth.

In one version of history, America, needing no permission or justification beyond the desire for self-determination, broke free from the remnants of Christendom still at work in England—and with it, the cycle of religious violence that plagued Europe for generations. The new nation created an entirely new form of government, basing its Constitution on the Enlightenment values of toleration (along with its sisters, secularism and the non-exclusivity of truth) and equality, which are the prime purposes of the American “experiment” and which develop more fully with time.

The American Revolution was, in other words, a French Revolution that minded its manners, though sharing the latter’s ideals and goals, and would reach its fulfillment over generations. The thread of Enlightenment America originates in the English Reformers, the Puritans, and the Whigs, and it runs through the Anti-Federalists, the Lincoln presidency, the Progressives such as Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, and modern Democrats under Barack Obama (and Kamala Harris, to some degree).

The other version is quite different. America, in the alternative view, was not a breakaway rebel from Christian Europe, but rather, an obedient child of England that petitioned its mother country for the rights due to Englishmen—rights that the king denied to the colonists—and when that failed, they had no choice but to fight a restrained, just war to restore those rights. In doing so, America did not create an Enlightenment experiment of a nation but instead created a Christian nation, centered on the English common law as the basis of our legal system. And with our Constitution, it aimed to curb the excesses that had accumulated in monarchical power since Henry VIII’s seizure of religious authority and property. 

The restoration of the pre-Tudor monarchy was not a possibility, so the framers of the Constitution gave us the second-best option: very few enumerated federal powers, themselves divided between branches, and all the rest devolved to the States and the people. Traditional America has its roots in the Catholicism of pre-Reformation England, in the High Anglicans and Tories, and is found in the Federalists, the Jackson presidency, the Anti-Communists and Nixonians, the Reagan coalition, and subsists in the Trump campaign.

These two versions of the story are not a true account versus a false one; instead, they are lenses with which to view American history. Many of the Founding Fathers insisted that America was founded on Enlightenment ideals. It’s equally true that to others America was simply restoring what was promised to English colonists. Each describes not merely a revisionist look at what happened, but rather, two opposing forces imposing that meaning upon the events themselves at the time. Many of the Founding Fathers insisted that America was founded on Enlightenment ideals. It’s equally true that to others America was simply restoring what was promised to English colonists.Tweet This

In addition, the conflict cannot be boiled down to big government versus small government or freedom versus tyranny. These notions of government are often means rather than ends for the two Americas. The proto-Enlightenment Protestants were for the biggest government possible under Henry VIII during the English Reformation, then the smallest when they became the Whigs and wanted to reduce the power of the monarchy in favor of Parliament, then the smallest again in America, when they debated the monarchists and Federalists, before pivoting to, once again, the biggest government possible during the Progressive Era and beyond. 

For a comprehensive look at how this conflict played out throughout American history, I recommend Charles Coulombe’s brilliant book Puritan’s Empire, which is essential reading for understanding the past and present of the United States.

Which brings us to today.

The modern evolution of Enlightenment America looks very much like Kamala Harris’ philosophy of government and society. Equality, including equality of outcome (popularly called “equity”), is the main tenet, no matter what consequences result, be they social, political, or economic. Everyone should vote in the name of equality, even if, say, those votes are ignored to allow another candidate to take a presidential nomination. Of course, “our democracy” must not let a little thing like the will of the people get in its way. To ensure equality and endless progress, governance must leave the hands of the people and go into the hands of the “experts.” In this vision of America, secularism reigns, and therefore neither religious truths nor traditional notions of morality may take root in public life. Certainly, the people must not be allowed to vote on such things. Otherwise, who knows—they might decide to be pro-life! 

The Traditional vision, while not perfectly embodied by Trump, at least aims at something better: a less centralized economic policy; States deciding how to apply their own police power on issues implicated under it, such as abortion; and an assurance that the federal government will not infringe those rights that it has guaranteed to us, including that of religious freedom and the right to bear arms, not to mention fulfilling its responsibility to maintain our border. These are not drastic changes, but rather, a promise to restore the status quo, much like what the American Revolution (in one view) sought to accomplish. Instead of a perennial rebellion against what came before, it aims to preserve what traditions we have retained and, God willing, restore some of what’s been lost.

When Kamala Harris insists that Americans have something in common, what she means is that the Enlightenment view of America has dominated, is dominating, and will continue to dominate the American public. And she’s perhaps right about at least two of the three. Enlightenment America has been ascendant for at least the past century, if not longer. Harris’ statement is not truly an assertion that we can put aside our differences, but rather, that we have all swallowed enough Enlightenment along the way to defeat the specter of Traditional America forever. “We’re not going back,” she says—as does every enemy of tradition.

But it would be unnecessary to insist that we’re not going back unless there were a substantial number of people who in fact do want to go back. Traditional America is not dead; otherwise, this election would not be taking place in its current form. We still have half a country that holds faith to be sacred, law to be binding, and life to be preserved, despite the other half holding the opposite to be true.

The two Americas have a score to settle, and never have the differences between the two been so stark. Two parallel philosophies seek to impose their vision of what America was, is, and should be in an election that represents almost 500 years of brewing conflict. It is not a unity election, or an opportunity for national reconciliation; it is a pivotal battle in a long-fought war that may never end. The only question is how will America face up to its shadow in November? Will it be Logres, or Britain? Tradition, or Enlightenment?

[Photo Credit: Don Sniegowski (Flikr)]