Mr Joe Haines recently wrote
an excellent
essay for the Abbeville Institute detailing President Lincoln’s destruction
of the voluntary union of free States and his creation of a new, indissoluble,
and unitary nation from the wreckage. We
hope folks will read it if they haven’t already.
It is a well-constructed
essay in its historical and political aspects, and yet there is one aspect that
we felt was underdeveloped – the religious.
Mr Haines set the table with some provocative dishes at the outset of
his essay:
‘I am not a “Lincoln
Scholar.” And I will fight any man who accuses me of being one. Not that being
a Lincoln Scholar isn’t good business. Thanks to these folks, who recycle the
Lincoln myths like a perpetual motion machine, Lincoln is surpassed by only Jesus
Christ in our national pantheon of deities.
‘Challenging the Lincoln myth
is viewed as unpatriotic at best and heretical by those who make a living
praising his name. The irrational behavior by Lincoln Scholars was commented
upon as far back as 1931 by writer H.L. Mencken, who wrote;
‘“Lincoln has become one of
our national deities and a realistic examination of him is no longer
possible.”’
But he took them away after
that; the rest of the piece veers away from any examination of those religious
themes, leaving the reader’s mind quite famished. That is unfortunate, for the religious
dimension is vital to understanding the longevity of the new American union
that Lincoln established, which, at first sight, would seem too large and
diverse to be held together for very long.
The author David Gelernter is
helpful in this regard. His book, Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion,
explores the religious dimension that Mr Baines does not.
There are some things to note
at the outset. The dishonesty of the
Lincoln cult is rather notorious, and Mr Gelernter is no exception to the
rule. His book contains notable distortions,
such as his labeling of the colony of Virginia as a ‘settlement’ with ‘a
Puritan flavor’ (Americanism, Doubleday, New York, 2007, p. 51)
–transforming the staunchly un-Puritan Cavalier settlers of Virginia into the
opposite is quite a feat of historical alchemy; his ascribing the first
representative body in North America to the ‘Puritan colony’ of Virginia (p.
72); and his claim that aristocratic, Cavalier Maryland ‘soon had a Puritan
majority’ after her establishment (p. 53), which is as non-sensical as his
oxymoronic pairing of Puritan Virginia.
That is shameful, but it
gives the reader an idea of the darkness he is confronting with Lincoln and
Americanism.
And into that darkness we now
step.
Mr Gelernter is quite open
about his belief: America is a new world
religion with its own particular creed.
It grew out of a dying Puritanism, and its central religious figure is
none other than Abraham Lincoln.
He provides some of the
central tenets of this new religion early on:
‘No religion had ever before laid out these three political ideals as
its creed: Liberty. Equality.
Democracy. The great
achievement of Americanism is to proclaim these three principles and
their biblical origins, to proclaim them in America’s own new
scriptures—especially Lincoln’s presidential speeches—and to make them real in
a functioning nation. But Americanism
goes further, to declare that these principles are not the exclusive property
of Americans or Christians or believers in God or descendants of white
Europeans. According to the American
Religion, they belong to all mankind, and Americans have a duty not merely to
preach but to bring them to all mankind’ (pgs. 3-4).
It is noteworthy that the
three elements of the American Creed are contradictory. Liberty tends to be stifled by a focus on
equality and democracy (the latter two tend to promote a stifling uniformity).
Furthermore, the odor of
heresy and blasphemy is quite strong.
Asking Jews and Christians who have received revelations from God
Himself to accept a new religion is audacious and foolhardy, to say the least. But Mr Gelernter is not bothered by this in
the least, gently chiding them for their concerns instead: ‘Christians and Jews ought not to see
Americanism as a blasphemous replacement for Christianity or Judaism. . . .
The American Religion is traditional religion’s response to modern
political reality. It is an extension to
the structure of Judaism or Christianity, an extra room out back’ (p. 11).
It would seem to be a bit
more than that. If one can be an
adherent of Americanism without believing in God at all (per his statement
further above), then this new religion is nothing at all like traditional
Judaism and Christianity.
The duty to institute the
contradictory American Creed in countries all over the world (and not simply to
preach it to them) Mr Gelernter calls ‘democratic chivalry’. From whence comes this duty? From Puritan America’s chosenness: ‘They were a new chosen people in a new
promised land, blessed far beyond their deserts. They were grateful to God and indebted to
God. They owed Him. Americans took up chivalry to pay a debt to
the Lord—and to reassure themselves that they too deserved their
blessings on account of good behavior’ (p. 36).
Notice the uniquely Puritan
psychology at work here: Americans must
be constantly intervening in other countries’ affairs to assure themselves that
they remain in God’s good favor; they are always anxious to never appear
un-chosen. They are thus unable and
unwilling to obey the Apostle Paul’s commandment to ‘lead a tranquil and quiet
life’ (I Timothy 2:2).
The spiritual delusion at
work in Americanism is so strong that actual Christian commands like St Paul’s
are ignored while fatuous assertions like the following are accepted without
question: ‘Americans started lecturing
the world on right and wrong long before the United States was born. (That’s one reason the world loves us so
much.) . . . willingness to butt in on the side of right
is what America is all about’ (pgs. 35, 68).
We would be awfully curious to see what an actual poll of people in
countries where the Yankee American Empire has ‘butt[ed] in on the side of
right’ – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, just to name a few – think of
those so-called chivalric interventions.
But none of this fabulous
work at home or abroad would have been possible without the singular figure of
Abraham Lincoln. Mr Gelernter says
plainly, ‘Lincoln and the Civil War completed the American Religion. It was Alexander Stephens, vice president of
the Confederacy, who said that “with Lincoln the Union rose to the sublimity of
religious mysticism [better said, perhaps, that it fell deep into the black pit
of idolatry—W.G.]”’ (p. 103).
. . .
The rest may be read here
https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/the-religion-of-americanism/
Or here:
https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/i-believe-america-false-religion-americanism
--
Holy
Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema
to the Union!
