Why is America So Divided?

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and whether or not there was ever a time we were united and if we were how did we lose that uniting principle so I want to start at the beginning if I can and I bring an assumption to this my assumption is that the

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United States is today at least an empire composed of multiple nations

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I don't think we were always this but we always did have divisions and this is where we start the story if you read

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David Hackett Fisher's book Albion seed this becomes very evident there were multiple folkways at the beginning of the

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United States so during the era of settlement you had people going to different regions from different parts of England and then also

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Scotland and Ireland so essentially Albion seed this is a

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British or an Anglo Protestant project the United States and you had

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Cavaliers who were Anglican settling in Virginia you had Scotch Irish who were

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Presbyterian going to Appalachia you had people who were Puritans going to Massachusetts and New England which later became

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Congregationalist which later became Unitarian you have those on the frontier regions becoming

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Baptists and Methodists over time you have in the Mid -Atlantic colonies a smorgasbord of Catholics and Quakers and even

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German Lutherans settling there but the majority of people were some form of Anglo Protestant and you can see this in those who signed the

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Declaration of Independence only one and I believe that was Charles Carroll of Delaware if I'm not mistaken was a

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Roman Catholic all of them had Anglo ancestry of some kind now there was a uniting principle at the beginning if you want to call it the beginning

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I mean people had been here for well over a century but when you have the Revolutionary War or the

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War for Independence 13 separate colonies soon -to -become states unite as Englishmen to fight for their

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English rights against the king and the Parliament of England and so they secede and separate from England and form their own thing now this is a loose

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Confederation at first and it remains a loose Confederation a federal arrangement even under the

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Constitution George Washington in his farewell address when he's leaving the public stage he kind of talks like a parent to younger children who are siblings not in a diminishing or a condescending way but in a nurturing kind of way and he tells them one of the things he tells them is to make sure that they stay out of foreign entanglement so cultivate their own kind of in group preference and identity and he emphasizes the fact that they have a shared heritage a shared religion shared manners and customs and they did but they also had many differences and it does strike you when you read this as if it were a parent saying your siblings even though there's differences so these differences obviously emerge later during the war between the states or the

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American Civil War depending on the term you use but before we get to that point there are ebbs and flows in the unity that Americans feel for one another the affinity the togetherness you have under James Monroe's presidency an era of good feelings after the war of 1812 because during that war there was a lot of separation in fact

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New England was the main one who kept threatening to secede from the United States most prominently at the

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Hartford Convention they did not see a good deal for themselves and especially their economy they relied on seafaring trades and the

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Jefferson presidency was pretty adverse to that but so were some of the presidents who came after that and this is there's an agrarian versus commercial interest kind of thing going on and it wasn't just economic it was social but there were certainly economic fractures that I think were on they you saw the more prominently on the veneer of these social fractures well pretty soon after the era of good feelings you have a tariff controversy and the tariff controversy is again agrarian versus commercial interest the state of South Carolina most prominently threatens to nullify federal law there's the force bill and then there is a reconciliation of sorts and this tenuous relationship remains for a number of years until the

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Civil War and of course the issue of whether or not those in the South who were in the prominent classes who owned slaves could go into the

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Western territories with their slaves becomes a big cause for dissension namely because Southerners viewed this as unconstitutional to prohibit their slaves from entering these territories and it was about influence in those territories it wasn't really even about the enumeration of slaves as you see under the

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Confederate Constitution they outlawed the international slave trade it's it was more about whether or not

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Southern elites are going to have influence and carry their understanding and their vision for the economy and social arrangements into the states that will eventually decide who controls the

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United States so the the South secedes from the Union and it's really the lower

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South because the upper South stays in the Union until Lincoln calls for troops and then they say we don't want to be in this arrangement because it's a federal arrangement and the basic understanding of a federal arrangement is you can leave in fact three of the ratification agreements that states made with the federal government explicitly say this this was an understanding even before that going back to the

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Revolutionary War and the treaty that England signed with separate states 13 of them not just one conglomeration anyway after that big division there is steadily a of course a forced unification but steadily an actual unification begins to happen and this takes decades in fact when

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I myself was a child I remember members of the greatest generation and hearing them talk and even members of the greatest generation still had a sense of I don't know disdain is too strong a word but there was a a dislike for Yankees one of my great uncles would say he wouldn't even visit me when

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I lived in upstate New York because there were Yankees up there and so this and you can understand if you study reconstruction if you study even what happened in the the war when

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Sherman marched through and burned whole cities down burned churches burned everything really

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I mean there's a lot of of disdain for what happened during those times some estimates say about a million slaves themselves starved and died after the war and so this was the worst kind of arrangement to be freed into and the the bonds that existed between master and slave were severed between the elites of the local region and then they were reattached to an impersonal government in DC and those

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I would argue cords are still present and they're still so it's more like trading masters than it is actually ending subordinate position and so this is sort of a side story in the whole grand narrative but you have the descendants of slaves who are who function many of them at least in this political capacity as pawns of whoever the ruling classes and whatever they promised them and right now it's the

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Democrat Party so so this is also going on and the Soviets later on in the 20th century but even the

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Japanese actually get on in on this but our enemies see this as a weak point to use to exploit the

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United States but let's go back to the Reconstruction era eventually during and after Reconstruction it really after Reconstruction you have that what are called the

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Redeemer governments arise in the south and you have a sense that we've got our land back among the local populations who used to control things and you have these these reunions among Civil War veterans where the

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Union and the formerly Confederate soldiers get together and say you know you're an

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American I'm an American Robert E Lee's a hero and so is Abraham Lincoln and we've lived under that regime up until probably my teenage years when

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I was a kid that was still in place Robert E Lee was a good guy and so is Abraham Lincoln and we

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North and South unite and I mean you see this carried on through World War one and World War two

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Southerners prove their allegiance they are welcomed back as Americans in the fullest sense of the word you even have in the 1970s

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Robert E Lee Jefferson Davis are pardoned post their death and by the

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Democrats nonetheless I believe it was Jimmy Carter who pardoned Jefferson Davis this is something that is really there's still a regional distinction but there's really this this sense of we are

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Americans we're all Americans again and we have a common enemy and that was the USSR but obviously

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World War one World War two these are efforts that all Americans get in on they need to be behind the war effort now there were your people who didn't want to be involved in these efforts but by and large especially in World War two people get behind the war effort these are times in which people unite as well and this is also coming off of the settlement of these

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Western states so manifest destiny also gives this shared purpose for Americans of different regions and they go out west and in going out west conquering the frontier they have a shared destiny and a shared purpose and this is what allows large amounts of immigration into Ellis Island and other places to really give them land that where they can call their own you have

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Germans in the Midwest you have these different regions that have their unique peculiarities but they're it's kind of like kids that are separated from one another they're not gonna fight and they can kind of work together and and and that's what you have in the

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United States the scale of the country gives it a sense of federal and loose kind of affiliation but a sense of unity and purpose at the same time now this is this is where we're at now the the

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Cold War era which I think ended actually after the war on terror so it was on life support and then

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George Bush kind of breathe new life into it after 9 -11 there was a new sense of a Americans together against a common enemy and that extended for a period of time until Obama I think

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Obama's presidency is the cutoff point for that Lincolnian America that America that is together as one but it's such a loose watered -down oneness that what does it really mean these regions of the

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United States are so different you have metropolitan identities regional identities state identities and different kinds of nations now it's post 1965

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Immigration Act settling in different areas if you go to Dearborn Michigan it's Muslim and the default settings are

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Muslim and different areas are like this if you go to Los Angeles when I was a kid it wasn't like this as much now it's completely

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Hispanic as far even people speaking Spanish in many places as their primary language

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I mean this is not uncommon in many regions of the southwest and so you have a separation happening and this loose kind of Lincolnian Cold War era and Cold War era unity isn't enough to keep people together because much of it was based on the fact during the

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Cold War that we weren't the Soviets so we believed in God we believed in freedom we believed in the American dream we believed you could make anything of yourself if you wanted to make something of yourself and there's groups in America that feel like they're left behind that they haven't been able to make of themselves what they want to make in themselves so you already have that fracture in the

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BLM movement really exposed that fracture happening that they were promised that these disparities will be eliminated that was the civil rights movement but they're not and of course that wedge has been driven home by our enemies for years and then you have the fact that this is the

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Christian nationalism thing you have the fact that there are regions and especially in the Northeast and the Pacific Northwest that don't want

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Christianity at all anymore they want to return to some kind of paganism and the Bible Belt isn't like that at all completely out of step so you have a major division over religion

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Christian nationalists I think are trying to find a unifying principle in the fact that most

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Americans still value Christianity even if they're not Christians and they claim to be so it may be a loose kind of Christianity a cultural

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Christianity can be a uniting principle of some kind if we can get authentic real Christians and positions of authority that would be great but there's other uniting principles in competition with this or maybe complimentary to it of course

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Trump wants to unify the country along the lines of success as long as they're successful that'll unite the country right it's about the money you have and the ability to spend and enjoy things and of course this does help some people to have a good economy but this isn't gonna be the uniting thing because it's not ultimately a squabble over the economy even though the economy does represent a squabble you also have people who want to unite the country over liberal values and I feel probably the most sorry for them in a sense but I also don't feel sorry because it's this was just a stepping stone it was a halfway measure it was a transitional period to try to use liberalism and this idea that we're for some kind of notion of equality some kind of notion of freedom but it's very vague and the civil rights regime

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I think definitely shows what this is most clearly but this was never gonna be a uniting principle this was never really that rooted if anything that this was a watered -down kind of post -christian ideology that in some ways doesn't even suit our country anymore because people aren't self -governing many people in many regions if you're in Chicago you need people to have their decisions limited because they're making bad decisions right if you're out in a country area it's fine if people make their own decisions because they're they still have a sense of community and shared responsibility and they want to help their fellow man and so forth so that's part of the fracture in our country to liberal some of the aspects of liberalism still can exist where you have a stable healthy society where they're already making decisions that benefit the greater society but in areas where you don't have that it doesn't work at all liberalism is not a uniting principle and that's one of the reasons

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I wrote my book against the waves Christian order in a liberal age to provide a way forward so this is why we are in the state we're in now when

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Obama became president he won he was interested I think in accelerating some of these fractures but we were also already on life support during in the war on terror and it really did the enthusiasm for that ended under Obama's presidency and there was no uniting principle left and so you have now

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Americans who are completely divided and they don't even trust each other the one half of the country or the people living in the country do not trust the other half of the people living in the country to actually even care about the country and it really has come down to whether or not you even love the country

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Trump comes in Trump represents the old order Trump represents those a uniting a united base of those who are

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Cold War era FDR Democrats Lyndon Baines Johnson Democrats even who just love the country along with paleo conservatives and libertarians and it's a it's a big coalition but all these people really do want they love the land they live in they want to honor its history and they believe that there have been sacrifices made by various groups but most notably the settlers who first came here that should be honored and should not be extended to the whole world so they're against globalism the question is is that a coalition that is united enough to keep things going after the baby boomer generation dies and I have my doubts about that I think moving forward this is my prediction you are gonna see more and more especially through the use of the

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Internet this is will be facilitated people moving to various regions and affiliating with people who share their political beliefs and religious beliefs and cultural beliefs there will be a separation and this is going to happen whether you want it to happen or not it's just a fact of life this is how people behave it's gonna happen organically it's gonna happen when you look at your children and you think what kind of life am

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I giving them in this liberal city I could go somewhere else so that's going to start happening especially as Trump leaves the stage

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I think we're in a temporary position right now of feeling that things are very united that I don't really have to move because Trump's got it under control maybe

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Vance gets in the next time maybe this extends for another eight years or 12 years who knows but eventually

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I think there's gonna the cracks are going to form again they're gonna be revealed I don't want to be a pessimist here

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I'm actually an optimist but I think there's a couple possibilities and this is what I think is gonna probably happen there are going to be many elites you already see this happening who start to realize

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Christianity was a uniting principle and we've lost it and some of them will have liberal values but they realize they can't ground them and many of them will become

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Christians the ones who do not become Christians who are interested in Christianity will at least respect it on in a social capacity and they will see it as necessary for the preservation of the culture they love you are going to see the fractures over religion

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I think become even greater over time and I don't know which direction that exactly is going to go in but I do think that that God could do a work here he's already doing a work in in people reading the

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Bible and people becoming saved and people affiliating with Christianity and no

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Christian institution no denomination can take credit for it Tim Allen's just reading the Bible Tucker Carlson's just reading the

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Bible Joe Rogan and Elon Musk are talking about the importance of Christianity even though they're not

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Christians they're not getting this from the Southern Baptist Convention right Naylor Ray isn't saved because someone from the

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PCA came and told her about Jesus I mean this stuff is happening it seems like God is directing this in a very direct way so we'll see what the providence of God has but that could be the thing that could be a uniting principle that forms that will at least help provide some solidarity but even with that you're still gonna have a regionalism forming it's inescapable you're gonna have people who because it's more than just religion it's also a whole way of life that people unite around it's also ancestry and living in a place and I mean it's all the things that make up and confer identity so people are going to I think start forming more local attachments and more attachments to people facilitated through the internet with various political guilds and thinking and and and just you know communities that that kind of form online and have a mirror in localized communities as well

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I think that's what you're looking at moving forward and the best way to I think try to maintain peace and also preserve our way of life through common defense and shared trade agreements etc is to try to get back to a federal arrangement now

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I don't know exactly how this happens because centralization is what we seem to be going towards and people want a king and when there's times of mass chaos people are gonna want a king more to just come in and restore order so can we get back to a federal arrangement

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I don't know that's what I want to see happen I think that's probably the best way forward given the circumstances we're in but you may have another possibility is someone like a

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Caesar a Caesarian figure rising to the public stage who says I'll restore order and then order is forced in the cities where they don't want let's say if it's a right -wing kind of Christian authoritarian figure you the cities who don't want that the regions who don't want that too bad you're getting that right and so that's another possibility now what's is that good

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I mean it may be better than the alternative the alternative could just be chaos the alternative could be tape being taken over by another country the alternative could be some kind of a pagan nationalism that unites people in vice or something

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I mean it who knows right the the future is is very much uncertain from our limited human perspectives but this is why the

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United States is not united and why it can't be united unless we find a uniting principle once again

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George Washington tried to reinforce a uniting principle in the early stages of the

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American Republic and even then there were divisions how much more so now after all the immigration that we've had so with that I'll just cap it by saying there were points in American history where there was there were uniting principles generally with common enemies or with a shared vision of and purpose in settling frontiers which

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I think Trump is trying to tap into again with Mars and Greenland etc or with just the fact that we have the same heritage or a similar heritage we come from a similar place

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Albion seed and we have similar religious and moral and social values and ways of living with with those things eroding you're not going to have unity anymore and the enemy now is domestic for most people they don't most conservatives that I talk to now mistrust their own deep state government more than they do

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China the common enemy is no longer there there's not a so all of these things have been eliminated over time and so it's no wonder that there is a lot of disunity all right well