Our Great U.S. Culture War Series, No.3b; A Tale of Two Cities contrasted London and Paris during the French Revolution. It begins with “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven…” These words fit our times as well. The same ideologies are at war.
America’s Enlightenment
America’s thinkers wrote about Political Liberty. Clearly, they were influenced by the European Enlightenment, especially from Great Britain. The genealogy of their ideas is traceable. Follow the dots from University of Edinburgh to John Witherspoon to Princeton University to James Madison.
These ideas include Thomas Jefferson’s “All men are created equal.” Thomas Paine’s “government is a necessary evil.” And, John Adams’ assertion that “our Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people.”
The ideas are explicitly written into the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, as well as the arguments for the Constitution found in the Federalist Papers. Benjamin Franklin, Jefferson again, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Mason put into words the ideas Conservatives hold dear today.
A Tale of Two Revolutions
The American Revolution started in 1775 and the French Revolution in 1789. They were very different. The ideas of two different Enlightenments produced very different revolutionary worldviews and distinct revolutions.
The American Revolution has been described as a “conservative” revolution because the social order didn’t change when colonies became states. The local government and laws didn’t get destroyed and replaced, except in their allegiance to a national sovereign.
The French Revolution was a social upheaval. It was a repudiation of the Ancien Regime – the old order. Furthermore, the ideas of Human Secularism compelled the French to try to create a better human being as well as an improved social order. They even changed the days in a week and the whole calendar.
Two Different Worldviews
The American Revolution kept the Biblical worldview from Great Britain. We gave the key points in Our Great U.S. Culture War Series, Number 2, May 2023. The relationship between Man and God seen through the prism of 18th Century Dissident Protestantism and the historical Rights of English Men were imbedded in our American Revolutionary Worldview.
While our population expanded to include Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Jewish believers, as well as the ambivalent agnostics and arrogant atheists among us – as Americans one and all – the American Revolutionary Worldview remained recognizably intact. The American Revolutionary Worldview is basically an English-speaking Biblical Worldview.
Furthermore, barriers based on race and gender fell. Also, waves of legal immigration before the 1980s enriched the demographics of the consensus American Culture. The American culture that existed until the 1960s assimilated the “others” of American society. The Leftist Bullies, good Human Secular Totalitarians that they are, hate the idea of assimilation.
Admittedly, assimilation was and is imperfect. But, it was powerful until the open split of the Great U.S. Culture War in the 1960s.
The French Revolutionary Worldview embraced Human Secularism as a new religion. The practice of that modern pagan faith is Human Secularist Totalitarianism. Their trinity of race, class (or privilege), and gender fits the Marxist mold. If Human Secularist Totalitarianism were a tree, the roots are the French Revolution and Marxism is the base of its trunk.
Their ideas are a liturgy for today’s very American Human Secularist totalitarians.
- There is no God.
- The state – Government – is supreme.
- Government is designed to create peace, unity, and equality of outcomes
- Government represents the “General Will” of the People.
- There are group rights for protected classes of persons.
- Life is a conditional gift from the government, because if it is expedient that a person or group of persons should die, then they must die.
- Government grants rights and privileges.
- Humans are born “tabula rasa” and can be made more perfect.
- Justice comes from reason alone.
The two revolutionary worldviews are very different, antagonistic worldviews. The American Revolutionary Worldview and the French Revolutionary Worldview are incompatible. Since only one Worldview can shape a culture at a time and “Culture Commands”, the Great U.S. Culture War is a conflict over which worldview will prevail as the consensus culture.
Next Issue
We didn’t finish the cultural assimilation into the four, original American sub-cultures and outline of the incipient, post-Revolution, consensus American Culture as we projected last month. It took longer to make the linkage between the past and present for different Enlightenments, Revolutions, and Worldviews. Next month, we’ll get to the assimilation and first All-American Culture’s basic tenets of what America was and what Americans agreed about themselves – upon winning our American Revolution.
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