Though the
idea has been ridiculed relentlessly, and for good reason, there really is
something exceptional about the United States, and it lies in the terrible
hubris of their view of their place in world history.
Every
normal, traditional people, tribe, nation, etc., has had as its ultimate goal
the friendship or union with some divine Absolute principle or being;
everything for them was subordinated to that end. The ‘American experiment’ turned that ideal
on its head. The idea of an Absolute
remains, called by them ‘sacred liberty’ and other such names, but the
attainment of it is gained not by subordination but by insubordination, by the
dissolution of traditional restraints upon individuals. Furthermore, the practice of a traditional
religion has been relegated from an essential communal act to an optional
private act, to be done however one’s conscience directs him. Religion has become a means to an end, not
the end itself.
If liberty
is the American god, then the sacred writings are things like the Declaration
of Independence and the 1787 Philadelphia constitution (ranked in eminence with
the Bible by such prominent Americans as Ralph Waldo Emerson); the prophets and
apostles of this new religion are her philosopher-statesmen like Thomas
Jefferson, John Adams, and others; and the central, sacramental, uniting,
Grace-conferring rite is the election of public officials by the voters.
We can trace
the lineaments of this religion through the political literature and rhetoric
produced throughout American history.
One of the clearest statements about it comes from President Thomas
Jefferson (1801-9) in his Farewell Address. There, he wrote about the special place of
the American Union in history:
‘The station
we occupy among the nations of the earth is honorable, but awful. Trusted with
the destinies of this solitary republic of the world, the only monument of
human rights, and the sole repository of the sacred fire of freedom and
self-government, from hence, it is to be lighted up in other regions of the
earth, if other regions of the earth ever become susceptible of its genial
influence. All mankind ought, then, with us, to rejoice in its prosperous, and
sympathize in its adverse fortunes, as involving everything dear to man.’
No fixed
doctrines must be permitted that would restrain the freedom/self-government
that he extols; relativism must reign:
‘And to what
sacrifices of interest or convenience, ought not these considerations to
animate us! To what compromises of opinion and inclination, to maintain harmony
and union among ourselves, and to preserve from all danger this hallowed ark of
human hope and happiness! That differences of opinion should arise among men,
on politics, on religion, and on every topic of human inquiry, and that these
should be freely expressed in a country where all our facilities are free, is
to be expected. But these valuable privileges are much perverted when permitted
to disturb the harmony of social intercourse, and to lessen the tolerance of
opinion. To the honor of society here, it has been characterized by a just and
generous liberality, and an indulgence of those affections which, without
regard to political creeds, constitute the happiness of life.’
President
George Washington (1789-97) displays in his own Farewell
Address
the typical utilitarian American attitude toward religion – it makes freedom
and ‘happiness’ possible, but that is about the extent of its goodness:
‘Of all the
dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and
morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute
of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human
happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere
politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A
volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity.
Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for
life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the
instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution
indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.
Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of
peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national
morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
‘It is
substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular
government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species
of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with
indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?
‘Promote
then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general
diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force
to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.’
‘Promote
then,’ what? Churches? No.
Institutions that diffuse knowledge (schools, libraries, etc., it would
seem).
And he
hallows the new American order with these words: ‘the free Constitution, which is the work of
your hands, may be sacredly maintained . . .’
President
John Adams (1797-1801), in his Inaugural Address, proclaims that the most
pleasant vision the world has ever seen is the election of public officials by
voters:
‘There may
be little solidity in an ancient idea that congregations of men into cities and
nations are the most pleasing objects in the sight of superior intelligences,
but this is very certain, that to a benevolent human mind there can be no
spectacle presented by any nation more pleasing, more noble, majestic, or
august, than an assembly like that which has so often been seen in this and the
other Chamber of Congress, of a Government in which the Executive authority, as
well as that of all the branches of the Legislature, are exercised by citizens
selected at regular periods by their neighbors to make and execute laws for the
general good. Can anything essential, anything more than mere ornament and
decoration, be added to this by robes and diamonds? Can authority be more
amiable and respectable when it descends from accidents or institutions
established in remote antiquity than when it springs fresh from the hearts and
judgments of an honest and enlightened people? For it is the people only that
are represented. It is their power and majesty that is reflected, and only for
their good, in every legitimate government, under whatever form it may appear.
The existence of such a government as ours for any length of time is a full
proof of a general dissemination of knowledge and virtue throughout the whole
body of the people. And what object or consideration more pleasing than this
can be presented to the human mind? If national pride is ever justifiable or
excusable it is when it springs, not from power or riches, grandeur or glory,
but from conviction of national innocence, information, and benevolence.’
And if a
rightly conducted election is the highest good, if it is the standard of right
belief in the American religious system, then heresy is the corruption of the
voting process (we will note in passing how hypocritical the United States have
been over the years in interfering in the elections of other countries when,
here, as elsewhere, they bemoan any outside influence in their own election
processes):
‘In the
midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should
ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or
extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and
independent elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a
single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or
corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not
of the nation for the national good. If that solitary suffrage can be obtained
by foreign nations by flattery or menaces, by fraud or violence, by terror,
intrigue, or venality, the Government may not be the choice of the American
people, but of foreign nations. It may be foreign nations who govern us, and
not we, the people, who govern ourselves; and candid men will acknowledge that
in such cases choice would have little advantage to boast of over lot or
chance.’
A later
president, Andrew Jackson (1829-37), confirms the views of his predecessors in his Farewell Address, saying,
‘You have
the highest of human trusts committed to your care. Providence has showered on
this favored land blessings without number, and has chosen you as the guardians
of freedom, to preserve it for the benefit of the human race. May He who holds
in His hands the destinies of nations make you worthy of the favors He has
bestowed and enable you, with pure hearts and pure hands and sleepless
vigilance, to guard and defend to the end of time the great charge He has
committed to your keeping.’
The rather
low view of the traditional role of religion in American society is seen also
in the various political documents written to give life to their political
beliefs. The silence of the Philadelphia
constitution’s Preamble regarding the need to worship the God of the Christians or
any other divine being is telling:
‘We the
People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish
Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote
the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our
Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of
America.’
The 1819 constitution of the
State of Alabama
is explicit in its support for religious relativism (always a great seedbed of
social discord):
‘SEC. 3. No
person within this state shall, upon, any pretence, be deprived of the
inestimable privilege of worshipping God in the manner most agreeable to his
own conscience; nor be compelled to attend any place of worship, nor shall any
one ever be obliged to pay any tythes, taxes, or other rate, for the building
or repairing any place of worship, or for the maintenance of any minister or ministry.
‘SEC. 4. No
human authority ought, in any case whatever, to control or interfere with the
rights of conscience.
‘SEC. 5. No
person shall be hurt, molested, or restrained in his religious profession,
sentiments, or persuasion, provided he does not disturb others in their
religious worship.
‘SEC. 6. The
civil rights, privileges, or capacities of any citizen, shall in no way be
diminished, or enlarged, on account of his religious principles.
‘SEC. 7.
There shall be no establishment of religion by law; no preference shall ever be
given by law to any religious sect, society, denomination, or mode of worship;
and no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office
or public trust under this state.’
New Jersey’s 1776 charter is a little better in
that it upholds Protestantism as a norm of sorts, but it nevertheless empowers
the individual conscience to worship as it pleases (again an invitation to
moral anarchy):
‘XVIII. That no person
shall ever, within this Colony, be deprived of the inestimable privilege of
worshipping Almighty God in a manner, agreeable to the dictates of his own
conscience; nor, under any presence whatever, be compelled to attend any place
of worship, contrary to his own faith and judgment; nor shall any person,
within this Colony, ever be obliged to pay tithes, taxes, or any other rates,
for the purpose of building or repairing any other church or churches, place or
places of worship, or for the maintenance of any minister or ministry, contrary
to what he believes to be right, or has deliberately or voluntarily engaged
himself to perform.
‘XIX. That there shall be
no establishment of any one religious sect in this Province, in preference to
another; and that no Protestant inhabitant of this Colony shall be denied the
enjoyment of any civil right, merely on account of his religious principles;
but that all persons, professing a belief in the faith of any Protestant sect.
who shall demean themselves peaceably under the government, as hereby
established, shall be capable of being elected into any office of profit or
trust, or being a member of either branch of the Legislature, and shall fully
and freely enjoy every privilege and immunity, enjoyed by others their fellow
subjects.’
Once the
South realized the tremendous dangers inherent in the American political
ideology that was set up in 1776, a realization that dawned on her as she
watched it moving toward its logical end in New England with her burgeoning
free-love/open-marriage communities, communists, feminists, Unitarians,
Mormons, and so on, she began to distance herself from it. But such is the power of the new American
religion that President Lincoln (1861-5) led New England and the rest of the
Northern States on a crusade against Dixie and gave her such a comeuppance that
her identity as a people has been nearly erased, and the standard American
ideology has been imposed upon her instead.
We are glad,
however, that even in our day, there is resistance in the South to this ongoing
cultural genocide within organizations like the Abbeville Institute and the Ludwell Orthodox Fellowship.
This
notwithstanding, Pres Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address (1863) would give the
American religion its deepest stamp of messianic fervor by dedicating all
future generations of Americans to the ‘unfinished work’ of ensuring ‘that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall
not perish from the earth’ (a rather bald renunciation of God’s sovereignty
over the nations and an equally over-bold affirmation of the American’s own
self-sufficient, Gnostic divinity – per M. E. Bradford, whose analysis of this
speech in some of his essays is invaluable).
The final
amalgamation of the American religion under Pres Lincoln continues to
reverberate in recent American history.
Pres George W. Bush (2001-9) repeated its main tenets in his 2005 Inaugural
Address:
. . .
The rest is
at https://thesaker.is/american-idolatry/.
--
Holy Ælfred
the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to
the Union!