America’s Destructive Polarization is Natural to a Post-Christian Society

A house divided against itself cannot stand. Luckily for America’s enemies, “a house divided” is now the status quo for the United States.

Many Americans have come to accept the high divisions and polarization typical of this age as perfectly normal. Younger citizens have perhaps never known anything else, having grown up in a society characterized by two very different, nearly polar-opposite political camps vying to crush one another in the battle for political domination.

Some attribute this circumstance to the political system — whether they label that system republicanism or, as the media wrongly says, “democracy.” They say that when a government is decided by votes and elections, there will always be high polarization.

It’s true that factions have existed from time immemorial; the Founders knew very well that factions were a reality of early republics. They had factions in their day, and knew that factions would continue on into the future.

But the gap that separated the American factions of yesteryear was nothing compared to the chasm that separates the two major political camps of today. Federalists and anti-federalists, and Democrats and Whigs, still operated within the same moral, religious, philosophical framework. Their differences were generally in the way they applied their shared general principles to the specific issues which confronted them.

For example, in seceding from the United States, the members of the Confederacy did not reject the foundation upon which the Republic had been conceived.

On the contrary, the Confederates appealed to the Declaration of Independence, to the War of Independence, and to the legacy of Founding Fathers like Washington and Jefferson (those two were, after all, Southern plantation owners). They viewed themselves as the true heirs to the experiment in republicanism and freedom that began in 1776.

During the Civil War, both sides often employed similar rhetoric in support of their own causes. It’s worthy of note that the popular song “Battle Cry of Freedom” was employed in both the North and the South, albeit with different lyrics.

But today’s Right and Seft in the United States are living in two entirely different worlds. Political debate is no longer possible because there is no longer so much as a shared political language between the two sides. The very words and ideas which the Left holds up as the highest values are seen as anathema by the Right, and vice versa.

This unfortunate, unstable, and turbulent situation is the inevitable result of eliminating Christianity as the nation’s religion. The Christian faith brought a shared moral code, a shared understanding of the universe that allowed Americans from all political factions to understand where each one was coming from. That shared basis made it possible for individuals from different political camps to be able to compromise and work together in good faith — as, at the end of the day, they knew that they might be rivals, but not enemies. They might not agree on policy means, but they were trying to work toward the same overarching ends.

Such good feelings are impossible in the age of moral relativism, in which every man serves his own personal god. For if you and I do not have the same end in mind, then there is no room for trust, since what I am trying to achieve is exactly the opposite of what you want to achieve.

Compromise is also a victim of modern-day relativism; when two factions are arguing over means, which are arguably superficial, then compromise is morally acceptable. It’s like a couple deliberating over what kind of dog to purchase for the household. They may disagree on the breed, but ultimately they agree on the overarching point that a pet is going to be purchased for the home and that the pet will be a dog.

But when each party seeks the polar opposite end goal of the other, compromise is no longer laudable, but contemptible, for one is no longer compromising on something superficial, but on something fundamental. To compromise on the superficial is trivial, for both sides are still remaining true to their underlying principles; to compromise on the fundamental is to make a pact with evil, for it involves a rejection of those underlying principles.

Often, political commentators argue that Americans today are unable to deal with “serious” issues like foreign policy because they’re “distracted” by social issues like abortion and transgenderism. Such arguments fail to grasp what is truly important. Culture-war issues are, in fact, of supreme importance because they affect society at its foundational level. If a nation is weak and corrupt at its foundation, then foreign policy is of little relevance. 

Nevertheless, such commentators are correct in the sense that division over these fundamental questions eats away at the nation’s ability to effectively unite and deal with international affairs — and that fact is not lost on adversarial powers like China, which are all too glad to foment these divisions in America by means of influence within the media-industrial complex.

The spread of immorality and anti-Christian propaganda is helped along by the interference of foreign, globalist powers who want America weakened until it is unable to stand in their way.