The ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. This present era is interesting, indeed; it is a true period of transition, though many historians have said, with some truth, that every age is an era of transition, in one way or another. It can be depressing to visualize a country heading toward its future dissolution, though the hope is that this perceived historical reality may not really be true.
But, nonetheless, some intriguing questions may be raised. Is there what could be reasonably called a single “national character” existing as the main or truly representative American character in this country?
Or, can it be that there really are, in fact, at least two fairly distinct kinds of national characters? Another possible alternative, e. g., has been suggested that a split personality actually exists in a national culture. As a set consequence, much of this discussion provokes and encourages psychological as well as sociological evaluations, as to the relative facts involved, in various presented considerations; all sorts of people are affected, regardless of race, color, creed or any other such redundancy, in at least a basic sense of what some might wish for in terms of human decency and respect, of fair play. Earlier in history, some more traditional thinkers, perhaps in optimism, used to call it Americanism.
In addition, there may be a good question as to if America really remains a so-called Christian country, which may reflect upon the fact that most people, in this country, claim to be Christians of various denominations. Should that (still) be a major or vital part of a national identity? But, what of what may be the larger question of there being a national culture?
Michael Barone, a notable contemporary thinker and pundit, has publicly stated that there is a culture of dependence and a culture of independence both coexisting in this country; he is, in the opinion of many people, substantially correct; the culture of dependence is integrally locked into a manifestly social, cultural, political, and moral struggle with the different and opposite culture cited.
Christianity v. Secularism
This article will critically interpolate the more intense, ongoing struggle between the Culture of Death versus the Culture of Life as is overtly seen in the increasing belittlement of Christians, especially those who choose the latter culture against the former, meaning in an America quite often overtly dedicated to vilely celebrating materialism, hedonism, secularism, and, ultimately, nihilism. And, admittedly, something else, concerned with the important matter of religion, had been going on in the Western world for centuries, since at least the 16th century, not just the recent 20th century; a failure of historicism is the reading backwards of history, which ought to be always studiously avoided; it can, of course, be as bad as is presentism.
Historically seen, as Protestantism had advanced out into the world, it generally helped to sufficiently enlarge the widening sphere of secularization, within the social and cultural orders, as it delimited the once comprehensive realm of religion by, usually, assigning Catholic worship into the status of papist superstition and paganism; the secularizing progress of philosophical nominalism, furthermore, is to be plainly seen in the rabid development of so many ideologies, Communism, Nazism, etc., too numerous to fully mention with attendant explanatory details.
Added to this are, of course, the various continuing and overarching effects of modernization, industrialization, bureaucratization, and, moreover, the rigid compartmentalization of modern and, now, increasingly postmodern life that assists enormously in the privatization of religious belief; this is, surely, with the emerging and vast techno-structure of a civilization dedicated, more or less, to the advancement of technology at almost any cost, especially to humanity itself.
Consequently, the attempted nihilistic eradication of Christianity from having any overt public life is a very significant fact to be seen by the efforts of such organizations as, e. g., the Freedom from Religion Foundation and many other such aggressive groups who truly hate religion in general and, of course, Christianity in particular. The American legal system has come to often eagerly service the cause of militant atheism and its supporters, though only a tiny minority are supposed to be that dedicated to promoting the religion of secularhumanism, which yet denies being a religion, of course. Secularism’s rather harsh assault upon society is coldly seen, by the (ideological) progressivists, as basically being a fundamental sign of really genuine progress that helps to, thus, requisitely spread true enlightenment, as it positively reduces ignorance and superstition, bigotry and prejudice.
And, as is quite usual, the greatest focus of that “enlightened” attack is definitely against the Roman Catholic Church as being the generally most stubborn and hardcore of all the (larger) denominations; the center or core of said attack is the ongoing sex scandal that too often gets reduced, quite falsely, to pederasty; this is since the basic truth concerns mainly homosexual predation, on the whole, set upon teenage boys and, sometimes, younger. Homosexuality is then not blamed, held responsible, in this particular matter, of course; rather, it is seen that the Church (read: religion) gets nearly all of the blame. What, one may suppose, does this mean?
There are forces, in this nation, that then must clash and conflict because one side adheres basically to an anthropocentric orientation, secular-materialist humanism, versus those whose point of view is decisively theocentric/Christocentric. The culture of dependence, naturally allied to Big Government, is highly favorable to the former, while the culture of independence, involved with a moral regard for self-government, aligns itself most surely with the latter viewpoint.
Battle of the Nations
The culture of dependence (a nation of victims) forcefully stresses the important need for, thus, always maintaining and expanding the welfare State with its intense devotion toward a cradle to grave system of security, the social net, the Nanny State; in quite set sharp contrast, the culture of independence (a nation of heroes) wants the dynamic promotion of free enterprise, the constitutional principles of the Founding Fathers, an acknowledgement of the need for self-reliance and self-government as socio-political principles, and, in general, a grandly assertive spirit willingly dedicated toward lives oriented to independent strivings for greatness, honor, dignity, achievement, and mutual respect for the rights of others. What, therefore, is going on in this troubled country?
It is as if there are really two different peoples, two nations, merely inhabiting the same territory (AKA country) in terms of just having a common political geography, not a common socio-cultural ethos. When looked at critically and profoundly as to the fundamental clash that is occurring and, in fact, has been going on since at least the 1960s, it is increasingly hard to understand why these two “groups” have not rationally and politically decided to separate, to engage in some sort of secession movements, by which the two different cultures/peoples could then have their own distinct countries. A dramatic and prolonged kind of “battle of the nations” is occurring and whether or not most people are aware of this actual fact. E Pluribus Unum no longer seems that appropriate as a true national motto when the contemporary nationalism appears to be a no longer singular possibility of assumed affirmation.
Right now, the culture of dependence (COD) is, logically, fiercely engaged in a truly antagonistic and internecine culture war with the culture of independence (COI); the two readily and naturally divergent points of view, decisively conflicting philosophical visions of the true, the good and the beautiful, are not at all rationally compatible nor reciprocal, as can be perceived so easily.
And yet, they must, for now and into the foreseeable future, battle it out endlessly, within the same political system, while each side seeks to somehow dominate, though the COD now has the manifest upper hand with, conveniently, a neosocialist/neo-Marxist in the White House, of course. The COD denies any validity to the words of Lord Acton: “Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.” Is, however, any real change of political direction to be expected or, perhaps, anticipated?
Even if both the November 2010 national election and those in 2012 were to actually result in Republican Party victories and, in addition, a Republican President in 2012, all that would still not be fully enough to undo what Obama and the Democrat Party-controlled US Congress have and would have done; it would be still all too little, too late; only massive, strategic, and absolute constitutional reform with the necessary addition of several Amendments to the Constitution, along with other extremely intense political and economic measures, would be able to rightly then turn the full tide significantly and substantially against collectivism for this country.
Can the Republican Party give up its usual symbiotic role, as has been true since at least the 1930s, as the party that manages the welfare State, by helping to supply the needed ways and means of funding and sustaining it for making it work?
What is needed, however, is not just political change of a temporary nature, meaning only about two or so election cycles. Chiang Kai-shek, when asked why he thought the Japanese invaders were a different kind of enemy than the Communists, had then expressed the situation well; he, rather interestingly, said that the Japanese were a mere disease on the skin [in essence, a superficial matter], but the vicious Communists were a disease of the heart; he had, of course, made the very logically correct assessment, historically speaking, concerning the greater enemy to be then faced and fought, meaning collectivist ideology and its rabid supporters.
The American liberals qua ideological progressivists are, therefore, a disease of the heart that cannot be dealt with only in simple political terms of reference; there must be, as a direct consequence, unfailing social, cultural, moral, and spiritual opposition of the strongest kind to the entire COD, Culture of Death, and welfare-warfare State, meaning all inclusive, never separately understood. At present, barring a genuinely national crisis of extremely monumental dimensions, this situation, the adamant suggestion of a very great need for a genuinely macro-political tsunami incorporating major social and other elements, is so completely inconceivable under both current circumstances and, moreover, probable future realities.
The best that the American people can hope for, on average, is something fairly comparable to a kind of Augustin Restoration , as was done by Octavius Augustus Caesar in that he could not restore the Roman Republic but was yet able to do a sort of restoration of the basic societal, moral, and cultural virtues; these were set solidly, as is known, within the Roman imperial mode of existence and reality. It would not be so suitably possible for this country, unfortunately, to do a truly full republican restoration, in the largest sense imaginable, because of the substantial impossibility of leaving a world with a political power vacuum the likes of which has not yet been seen since the once total collapse of the Roman Empire in Western Europe.
Thus, among other important considerations, both the dedicated domestic isolationists and neoisolationists cannot have their way of making a Fortress America to then see the nation mostly or totally withdraw from the world; it is not realistically possible, therefore, when given, obviously, both current and probable future world conditions; there are, as is so geopolitically and geostrategically known, still plenty of definitely aggressive powers, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Red China, and other nations, intent upon world-power dominance, hegemony, games of struggle for the foreseeable future.
The realistic prospects for this nation, consequently, include the continuing existence of the American imperium, along with a divided society and culture, meaning each with its own opposed ethos, as was previously noted. But, yet much further than that consideration is the observed and ongoing intensification of the growing intellectual, social, cultural and economic persecution of those Christians (and non-Christians for that matter) who oppose the Culture of Death, meaning abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, homosexual liberation, etc.
A good indication of the major seriousness of what is being contended can be gained by reading such interesting books as: The Naked Public Square Reconsidered: Religion and Politics in the Twenty-First Century, which is edited by Christopher Wolfe. Among the contributors, Mary Ann Glendon, J.H.H. Weiler, Michael Pakulak, and Hadley Arkes, they have taken up the urgent questions and worries that were initially expressed, over 20 years ago, by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in his truly path-breaking book, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America.
Neuhaus had, valiantly and explicitly, explored the highly important matter of the determined secularization of America and its various implications and ramifications for this country. And, a much related matter can be here usefully explored. As both a direct affect and effect of what is rightly and properly called cultural Marxism (multiculturalism, amnesty/support for illegal aliens, environmentalism, affirmative action, diversity, homosexual rights, feminism, basic pro-abortion attitudes, gender consciousness, etc.), there has been, since at least the 1960s, a growing change in language that has provoked a continuing and destructive change in the culture. (A useful historical example of note concerns, e. g., how the once solely French-speaking Normans eventually, generation by generation, became Englishmen by dropping their French language.) As Richard Weaver had properly noted, ideas have consequences.
Thus, illegal aliens, actual outlaws/criminals who then break the immigration laws, are supposed to be (positively) called undocumented workers, if one is to be politically correct (PC) in one’s public speech, as well as in private, of course. Although he was a committed socialist, George Orwell, author of 1984, had critically foresaw and well understood how the ideologically-inspired limitation and forceful molding of a language ends up, necessarily, determining what and how human beings are able to think about cultural, political, religious, and other matters in their society. Well beyond all that, the Roman Catholic historian Christopher Dawson, e. g., wrote intelligently about the always intimate connection between religion and culture and how, when the religion dies, the vitality of the culture also, fundamentally, disappears.
One can see, furthermore, that people now must, increasingly, fight it out vigorously, in the context of the naked public square, as to whether or not religion will then be more than just simply tolerated but, rather, well protected socially, culturally, and legally against vicious, sustained, and unconscionable assault. Secularism, through viewing events in America, wishes to become predominant as it gathers together those forces, trends, and movements intent upon the diminishment of any presence of solid religion, especially Christianity, in the nation’s public life. Neuhaus and, of course, others had observed, for decades, the monumental struggle to keep an abiding and permanently substantial appreciation of the Christian heritage of America, while the marginalization of Christians continues unabated.
It has been, one suspects, rather perversely observed how the First Amendment to the US Constitution, meant explicitly to rightly protect the free exercise of religion, was turned into a chief weapon to attack religion, which means, in effect, hostility to Christianity. All the historical, legal, and other evidence that has been amassed, of course, definitively refutes the liberal or progressive view (absurdly) taken of the First Amendment’s religion clause, which antithetically denies the fundamental intensity and substantive reality of the Christian heritage so obviously present in this nation’s entire history.
Conditions have, not unexpectedly, gotten much worse since Neuhaus had written his notably seminal critique over a generation ago. One can, on the whole, readily perceive this truth in The Naked Public Square Reconsidered because, e. g., the legalization of abortion, since 1973, has been transformed into a protected and praised secular sacrament; as a further logical or natural expansion of surely aggressive secularism, the militant homosexual-rights movement explicitly demands the fullest legalization and normalization of sodomite “marriages” as a part of expanded “civil rights.”
Both the aforementioned COD and the Culture of Death, therefore, freely and enthusiastically endorse the transformation of the American culture done by this so deliberately Nietzschean transvaluation of values sought after by and through set promotion of the language of cultural Marxism and the desire to be absolutely PC. The quite practiced intolerance of Christians is, on the other hand, thought to be, ironically, the very height of today’s progressive tolerance.
Nothing will fundamentally change in America, therefore, until cultural Marxism is no longer promoted, honored, and respected; there must, moreover, be a substantial revival and fairly conscious restoration of what the historian Clarence B. Carson called the American tradition; in the 1960s, he had, in fact, authored a book with that same title, The American Tradition, that essentially defended what Barone has properly called the COI. It is the critical case, as with a sociological law, that people do not become truly conscious of a tradition until it is passing away, either quickly or, perhaps, slowly; otherwise, a tradition is simply a part of the unconscious way that people live.
The Tea Party political movement, to cite a current obvious example, seems to be trying to do a good recovery, a vital resurgence, of the American tradition by stressing and defending the COI, which, in more simple terms, used to be just denominated as Americanism, which included patriotism and a lively spirit of independence, among other virtues. Agreement would seem to completely exist with these words of Lord Acton: “Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.”
But, the Tea Partiers, generally, have avoided what are called the social issues to focus, instead, upon essentially economic and political issues and matters of debate, which tends to narrow national debate; and, subsequently, raises the question as to whether or not the political class can buy them off or not; time, of course, will tell the larger story of what the Tea Party Movement was able to really accomplish.
This genuinely popular and vital movement, unfortunately, still lacks a needed architectonic vision, an expansive macro-political synthesis, to give a fundamental coherence and cogency to its own apparently assumed political and related mission; in a profound contrast, the existing cultural, intellectual, political, and social elites of America, though being vilely decadent and degenerate swine, have yet the requisitely combined wealth, power, cunning, and influence to then sustain themselves; this is in particular regard to their corruptive desire to create a neo-medieval style sociocultural reality, in this country, by which to covertly replace the ideal of a contract society, the COI, and American tradition, with a Europeanized society based upon status relationships only.
What, in terms of power realities, is actually going on here? The progressivist ideology unites them in their lustful desire to impose a form of collectivism, upon the masses, who will then, in fact, be ruled by a cold and calculating bureaucratic-technocratic elite that is, in turn, legally empowered by the political class and their upper-class supporters. The society of contract will be replaced by a very regressive social status society because, it must be admitted, oppression, tyranny, despotism or other such situations are the historical norm; free government defending a free people with their self-government ideal is still the rare exception to the rule, an anomaly, a manifest aberration in history.
And, when analyzed correctly, the explicit directing of this nation, by the Obama regime, set toward a social-market/collectivist economy is meant to then substantially aid in this reactionary attack upon the contract society that, in fact, has historically liberated the masses; ironically, of course, the paradoxical name of progressivism got readily attached to the contemptible effort at implementing a politically reactionary policy falsely labeled “radicalism.” Toward that heinous end, the Christian majority must be politically, socially, and culturally crushed, if the now regnant forces of reaction are, thus, to succeed sufficiently and, perhaps, successfully.
Diminishment of Christianity as Secularist Imperative
But, the recovery of the American tradition in firm support of encouraging the COI necessitates that the Christian majority be deliberately energized in the face of massive hostility from the secularists and their (ironically) “religious” allies on the ideological Left, as with such bizarre organizations as, for instance, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. That kind of truly peculiar institution, under the skewed guise of supposedly protecting religion, seeks to further empower the State in the absurd name of an assumed defense of tolerance, though not tolerance for religious faith, of course.
It is known, by now, that what happened, in America, was that one line of a letter once written by Thomas Jefferson, about a “wall of separation” between Church and State, had gotten, by the mid- to late-20th century, written into the body of the Constitution through, of all things, primarily the First Amendment.
What was once known and interpreted as the proper constitutional need to rightfully protect the people from the government in terms of an imposed, State-sponsored, official religion was turned ideologically, by the Left, into a full-scale and crescive mandate for the State to suppress Christianity as a threat to the secular State and its ever growing need for unhampered power. Of course, wise people know that the secularists will not stop with just their greatly wanted eradication of Christianity, meaning, first, in the public sphere of action before it is made extremely difficult to exist privately as well; later, they must seek to purge all other faiths as unneeded social and cultural impediments to the triumph of absolute statism, of tyranny, of the Hobbesian Leviathan.
In the beginning, meaning by the 1960s, clever atheists and their allies had then eagerly started, through US Supreme Court rulings, to increasingly circumscribe and delimit, demarcate and restrict, various existing public expressions of faith, especially when oriented toward Christian expressions of belief. The State’s religion of secularist humanism will not really tolerate any opposition to, in effect, the worship of the State as an ersatz god on Earth. The terrene god of secularist power wants no real competition concerning obedience and loyalty and, thus, the secular-humanist push for the absolute privatization of religion so as to better later, eventually, destroy it due to its privatization. Only the basic collectivity, of whatever nature, is supposed to finally remain, meaning the public life of the State and its own cherished needs.
Christians, as a direct consequence, and eventually other religious people who may take their religion and its various moral obligations seriously would be put into the permanently degraded status of a Moslem-like dihimmitude; this means that any (assumed) “private” beliefs must never be actually permitted to then impinge, directly or indirectly, upon the public square and its, thus, dominating secularist humanism that defines the true, the good, and the beautiful for all time and for all people. Neither the COD nor the Culture of Death, consequently, really encourages free debate, as may be then rationally guessed; and, American Christians have, increasingly, acquired an unofficial status as second-class citizens in their own country.
For as Hadley Arkes, in his contribution to The Naked Public Square Reconsidered correctly comprehends in a profound manner, what gets publicly, formally, sanctioned and endorsed as constitutionally/legally valid gets necessarily transmuted, sooner or later, into setting (additional) restrictions upon all private activities, beliefs, and opinions in terms, directly or indirectly, of their quite probable theological impact, whether wanted or otherwise. Good and related reading would easily include David Limbaugh’s Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity. In the exalted names of tolerance and civil rights, Christians have had their civil liberties and rights routinely and, at times, systematically restricted or plainly circumscribed, with seeming impunity, to supposedly achieve degrees of perfection with the ideologized social order of the regnant polity.
The seeming paradox is how, in fact, the State ideologically manufactures new (invalid) civil rights as it, therefore, necessarily takes away (formerly) valid civil rights and associated liberties that once had been traditionally and legally upheld, by the Constitution, from their being wrongly violated by the State. Statism works, ironically and paradoxically, by just guaranteeing infinite numbers of ever new “rights” to people of a lot of things and activities while, in fact, actually destroying the real or once existing civil social freedom and liberty of the citizens who are, by degrees, certainly transformed into mere oppressed subjects, meaning if they happen to violate the “sacred” dictates of the (ideologically-obsessed) nihilistic regime. Of course, progressivism, devoted to this regime of terrene power, does not at all see itself as either intolerant or bigoted in any way whatsoever.
However, as was so easily seen, in the 20th century, with totalitarianism (e. g., Communism, Nazism, Fascism), the modern State, thus, will not tolerate any other god’s existence before it. Can Christians, nevertheless, expect to see their situation improved in the future? Is there, e. g., hope that the Tea Party Movement has attracted many libertarians? Ironically, the vast majority of libertarians, in this country and elsewhere, eagerly support the modernist rise of statism concerning the thrust toward the predominance of secularism in the Western world.
Furthermore, as it is usually known that most libertarians are surely enthusiastic defenders of abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia, it is then not so surprising that they do overtly reveal libertarianism as an evil ideology dedicated implicitly to the worship of statism, of the State, and that, in examined fact, they are fundamentally statists at heart. As can be then, thus, rightly and properly supposed, the culture of independence cannot be trusted with them nor could the larger American tradition; this is because most of their nominalist-inspired beliefs do side toward the degenerate and decadent culture of dependence by default, if not always, in fact, by any active design. What, it might be asked, is the concern being expressed? Historical perspective may help.
The circumscription of Christians in America would seem frightening if one would compare, say, the year 1860 or even 1932 with 2010 to show just how radically different this nation’s religious attitudes are in terms of the vast quantity of extravagant moral vileness that is not just simply tolerated but, rather, actively promoted by government at various levels. Almost any outrage can be made to seem appropriately justified if it is claimed that civil rights is the issue in dispute; today, among many other examples, sodomite “marriage” is claimed as a new and fundamental civil right vitally needed, in the names of tolerance and respect, by civilized society.
If 50 to 60 years ago, one were to make a prediction that there would be, literally, rather routine annual parades of sodomites in most major American cities, such a person would have been then easily denounced as being just a far out, rightwing crackpot or an absurd, contemptible scaremonger, not an accurate prophet. The America of the 1950s, not so absolutely distant in the lifetimes of many living Americans, is, at a minimum, very different from the progressivist-dominated country now existing in this current era. Among the upper-crust elites in this nation, any actively professed Christians who would practice their faith zealously would be just routinely shunned as freaks, weirdos, untouchables, pariahs, etc.
Many surely dedicated, practicing Christians have been increasingly marginalized as have, for instance, all traditionalist Roman Catholics who are attached to the Latin Mass community; it is typically the normal case that the places where they can go to attend traditional Latin Masses are physically located in or near slum neighborhoods, ghetto communities, and other such very marginalized/unreasonably distant areas; therefore, it is known that the majority of the Church hierarchy, filled with spite and malevolence, is openly hostile and do hold all such believers in cold contempt and either oddball nonconformists or plainly stupid nuisances with archaic beliefs. But, it may be correctly asked, what of the larger religious situation in America?
The mainline Christian denominations, meaning substantially the Protestant sects, have gone with the progressivist flow in terms of embracing, more or less, the basics of the COD and Culture of Death; thus, the religious traditionalists or fundamentalists are part of this battle of the nations on American soil as much as are, of course, the liberal and leftist Christians usually found, as is noted, in the mainstream/ mainline denominations. Because of the aforementioned split involved, it is certainly a kind of disease of the heart in the fairly explicit way that the, e.g., Southern Baptists broke away from the Northern Baptists over the critical issues concerning the War for Southern Independence, the War Between the States, (AKA American Civil War).
Among the most obvious attempts to marginalize Christians can be found in what has happened to the public schools; at some schools, it has been reported, for instance, that because the mention of God is prohibited at school graduation ceremonies, the students are forced into certain extremely desperate subterfuges such as, e. g., having the valedictorian sneeze, and then the student body can then say “God bless you!” as a response. This is, thus, quite sadly, however, but a tiny example, among many, that have been well documented.
Concerning the movie titled: The Last Temptation of Christ, a letter to Jack Valenti, written way back on July 28, 1988, by Charlton Heston, a great American patriot, had included these quite notable words: “Christians, moving towards minority status, have become our only permissible target group.” The explicitly calculated and deliberate, Machiavellian and secularist, targeting and logically resultant marginalization continues basically unabated today.
Conclusion
At a bare minimum, in marked contrast with this perception of domestic reality, it will be quite interesting to see if the COD people can supinely accept, with equanimity, the predicted tidal wave of the rightwing change, at the national level, to be expected in the following years. Is substantial violence to be expected beyond just some simple riots? In yet another realm of discussion, what can Christians expect in a climate of increasing intolerance towards them?
Added to the larger mix is, as far as can be perceived, the apparent indifference of the Tea Party Movement to the ongoing reduction of Christianity, as a force in national life, because this political faction overtly concentrates, instead, upon mainly economic and related issues within the secular order of reality; and yet, political liberty and Christianity are not enemies but friends, as, e. g., Fr. Robert A. Sirico and the thinkers and advocates at The Acton Institute would so fully agree.
Under such circumstances, it is the more difficult to observe sharply the battle between the Culture of Life versus the Culture of Death; and, the latter is greatly preferred by postmodern society, even more so than had been the lust for modernity itself. There is yet, however, the culture war, still going on in the naked public square, regardless of other appearances to the contrary, as is encouraged, e. g., by the rather clever propaganda of the intellectual, political, economic, and other elites. The aforementioned possibility of an Augustin Restoration seems, however, fairly inconceivable, under present political circumstances, because what the Romans had called pietas is definitely needed, which, in America’s particular case, would be the explicitly public call for an invoking of Christianity on behalf of this nation.
Meanwhile, the culture of independence and culture of dependence are, therefore, to fight it out; this is, of course, while harshly coexisting presumably within the very same country, though, in fact, acting in the spirit of two different and opposed nations engaged, unofficially, in a life and death struggle for political, social, and cultural supremacy or hegemony.
Bibliography
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