Whether the “Disunited States of America” can be cured remains a question with no immediate answer.
But it is a serious question with enormous ramifications. Many countries now seem to face similar issues, creating conditions where a growing number of citizens of those countries arguably do not have enough civilizational confidence that “having children” makes as much sense as might be expected.
“Such lassitude—spiritual, moral, intellectual—is a slow, relatively peaceful, and somnolent form of suicide,” Anthony Esolen, Distinguished Fellow of the Center for American Greatness argues.
Such civilizational suicide matters quite a lot if the civilizations thus afflicted have contributed meaningfully, if at time incompletely, to the advance of human freedom; rights and respect.
And, in addition to civilizational confidence, some substantial unity of belief and values seems necessary.
Indeed, “unity is what requires explanation,” not division, says Esolen, commenting about the loss of unity we all see in U.S. national life.
“Strife and discord are the default for mankind,” he notes.
“I am not saying that fractious mankind will always and without trouble be united by a common religious faith,” Esolen says. “I am saying that without some common devotion, they will not be united.”
Nor is that view the same as arguing we need some form of organized "national" religion. The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States wisely forbids the establishment of a formal national religion.
But it also is rational to argue that without some underlying philosophical commitments of such a nature, any civilization (and logically, any nation or culture) will eventually crumble.
That aligns with a view I also hold, that critics of “organized religion” ignore something very important, namely that privatized spirituality might well serve the needs of individual believers, but do nothing to elevate and sustain the broader culture and civilization in which those people live.
“People are united by a common vision of, and devotion to, what transcends them,” Esolen says. “I am not saying that fractious mankind will always and without trouble be united by a common religious faith; I am saying that without some common devotion, they will not be united.”
It’s quite the conundrum. Without shared values, a civilization dies. But how such values can be sustained over time, without “organized religion,” shared by the populace, is not at all clear.
“Houston, we have a problem.”
