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The Fundamental Root of Division in the United States

United States History

In 1607, English settlers landed on the East Coast of America and formed the Jamestown colony.  That began a colonial period until 1776 and a Declaration of Independence of the original thirteen colonies from England.  They became states of the United States of America.  After those states ratified the Constitution in 1788, they seated the first Congress in 1789. By December 15, 1791, three-fourths of the states had ratified the Bill of Rights.

Before states ever united under one Constitution and Bill of Rights, division began according to ideological positions termed, federalist and anti-federalist.  The Federalists were a political party and supported a strong centralized government.  On the other hand, another party, the Anti-Federalists argued against expanding national power and advocated individual liberties, states rights, and localized authority.

Before the ratification of the Constitution, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay debated federalism versus anti-federalism in the Federalist Papers, first published in New York newspapers between October 1787 and May 1788.  Division along the lines of these two general positions continued in the early history of the United States.  With the addition of other issues, like slavery, this division grew and then fomented into a Civil War.

Since the Civil War

The completion of the Civil War in 1865 did not end division in the United States.  That continued.  Some of the disunity founded by the early disparity between Federalists and Anti-Federalists persisted.  Those seeds still germinate and rise in various iterations of the original ground of division.

The United States is no kingdom of Jesus Christ under the unifying power and discipline of the words of Christ.  Its form of government cannot sustain oneness like that between God the Father and the Son expressed in John 17.  The superstructure of this nation doesn’t portend toward biblical unity.  Discord is baked in.  The United States doesn’t possess the tools or instrumentation necessary to ward off significant division, even though United is its first name.

Paul taught Timothy to pray for rulers and those in authority so that the church can live peaceably (1 Timothy 2:1-3).  Peaceably stands for a manifestation of unity.  The government agrees not to imprison and kill believers for merely practicing scripture.  It doesn’t mean the government supports the church or its positions, just allows it to operate freely.

Greater Division

Out of the soup of Federalism and Anti-Federalism comes the present and even greater division in the United States.  It stems to a certain degree from the original division, but it grew in magnitude.  The founders of the United States did not, maybe would or could not, put in the necessary preventatives against massive division in the country.  They compromised at the beginning to hold everything together, which meant not providing the crucial deterrents for division that first turned into a Civil War and now we’re where we are.

A popular Democrat and media talking point is that Donald Trump is the number one cause of division in the United States.  Their point argues that Trump operates in conflict with established political norms, which creates chaos and a very uncomfortable environment.  People will describe this situation dividing families, making for an uncomfortable time at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

The Cause of the Division

Trump didn’t cause the division seen in the environment heading into election on November 5, 2024.  Very often today people will call this clash a culture war.  It already existed before Trump, but his rise reveals its existence.  Trump embodies the division in the country, doesn’t cause it.  It represents two completely diametrically opposed views of the world.  Not everyone voting for Trump falls neatly into one of the two sides of this dispute.  Some just like his policies better.  The heatedness and underlying threat of war emanates from the fundamental root of the division.

The separation between the two major factions goes back a long ways, even preceding the time of the founding of the United States.  It relates to epistemology, how that we know what we know.  The printing and publication of scripture in people’s language took nations out of the dark ages.  Arising from this was modern science and a return to the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:26-28, especially seen in Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica.  True science started on a good trajectory, but splintered finally for various reasons (important ones to understand) into modernism first in Europe and then on to the United States.

Modernism arose in the United States after the Civil War parallel with the industrial revolution.  Instead of God and scripture as a starting point, modernism shifted to human reason, rationalism, or “evidence.”  Premoderns began with a bias toward God, what Stephen Meyer calls the “God hypothesis.”  They believed in a transcendent, which is objective, basis for truth, goodness, and beauty.  Modernism came into major institutions, influenced their leaders, and changed the culture.

Further Explanation

The insufficiency and inadequacy or failure of modernism finally led to a total rejection of objective truth, goodness, and beauty.  This transformed the culture.  Pragmatism in churches led to compromise, capitulation, and then cooperation with the cultural changes in the United States.  The right side of the two major factions does not necessarily embrace the reality or necessity of objective truth, but it understands the suicide of not living or acting like it exists.

Many if not most would ask, “Why Trump?”  That requires a long answer that many won’t accept even if it is the right answer.  The country is divided and taking Trump out of the equation will not change that.  It comes from deep philosophical and even theological differences and an unwillingness at least for now with either side to accept the other.  Some still won’t vote for Trump even though they also don’t accept the other side.

Over a year ago, I called this a “slow moving car crash.”  The cars have about arrived now.  We’re days away.

Democrats Most Astonishing Hate of Democracy

The Symbol of the Reichstag in Germany

A pivotal moment in Hitler’s rise in Germany came from the Nazi burning of the Reichstag.  They started the fire, put it out, and then blamed it on the Communists.  Democrats in the United States steal this act in a campaign to destroy democracy.  The Nazis convinced a large portion of the German population that the Communists burned down their Parliament building.  Even their courts wouldn’t disagree.

The Democrats, which have the related word “democracy” imbedded in their name, similarly point the finger at Trump as an authoritarian or totalitarian.  His policies looked and still look exponentially more democratic than the finger pointers.  He would like the government out of most of the business of Americans.  Evidence abounds for this, but let me first take a small step back.

Democracy

The United States isn’t a democracy.  James Madison in Numbers 10 and 14 of the Federalist Papers makes this point quite well.  But let’s set that aside for now.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that a Constitutional Republic is a form of democracy.  A website called “Principles of Democracy” writes:

Freedom of speech and expression, especially about political and other public issues, is the lifeblood of any democracy. Democratic governments do not control the content of most written and verbal speech. Thus democracies are usually filled with many voices expressing different or even contrary ideas and opinions.

Citizens and their elected representatives recognize that democracy depends upon the widest possible access to uncensored ideas, data, and opinions. For a free people to govern themselves, they must be free to express themselves — openly, publicly, and repeatedly; in speech and in writing.

Freedom of Speech and Democracy

Wikipedia for “Freedom of Speech” reads:

Freedom of speech is understood to be fundamental in a democracy.

Democrats censor their opposition more than anyone and with unending examples.  They are similar to the presence of Islam in any country.  While Moslems are in a small minority, they cry for human rights, but the moment they take charge with less than a majority, they eliminate unfavorable voices.

Oligarchy followed democracy in Greece.  Democrats control a vast majority of the public square in America.  I include in that schools, media, and even government.  They gladly censor opposing viewpoints.  The Democrat controlled institutions don’t allow the truth of the Bible.  Unless Christians privately fund their own museum, you won’t see a creation account in public.  Democrats label many biblical truths, “hate speech.”

Censorship

Democrats use both hard and soft censorship.  By hard censorship, I mean official and legal disallowance of a place and opportunity to speak.  It may be the loss of a job, because the Democrats don’t hear a statement of support for same sex activity.  That turns the non-speaker, who would like to say something against the activity but doesn’t, into enemy status.

By soft censorship, I mean an avalanche of public repudiation and ridicule until speakers do not receive opportunities to speak.  It’s also moderating who speaks.  The establishment offers a phony, a fraud, as the representative of the alternative point of view, who goes along with the official or permitted position.  Very little to nothing comes in a way of supporting the alternative position.

A historic label for soft censorship is the “kangaroo court.”  The J6 Committee is a good example of this, but they abound in every state in either blue states, districts, or regions.  They also exist in red areas with blue strongholds.  The committee cherry picks their own rubber stamps to represent opposition.  Opposition is actually major support with a fake label of opposition.  I would hope everyone knows this, but I’m afraid it fools just enough of the disengaged.

Other Examples

The J6 Committee parallels with the internet.  You read about the “algorhythms.”  The oligarchs of the tech industry force opposition or non-supportive speech into an uninhabited hinterland.  They are whole national forests of trees that fall and no one hears, so they don’t make a noise.  Only approved speech moves into a hearing zone.  Yes, people published something, but no one is reading, because no one is seeing.

The Hunter Biden laptop is a good example too.  I say these are just examples of what is now normal.  Any supportive tweet or internet entry of the laptop goes unseen, censored as disinformation.  The censorship itself is the disinformation, much like the Russian collusion operation.  I think this is the least of it though.  It’s a censorship industry.

The industry removes the bad news about the favored issue or person.  Right now, it has the ability to project a pro-Hamas experience, despite a relatively powerful coalition for Israel.  Pro-Palestinian protestors crowd the White House and knock down a protective fence with little coverage from the media.  The industry does not parallel or hearken to anything insurrectionist.

Massive Scale Elimination of Democratic Values

As I write on this subject, the most massive scale about which I speak is in education, where for years, the Bible, God, righteousness, and creation and the like are kept out of the massive state school complex even in red states.  No one can take a male headship position in anything close to a public square.  Can you imagine a professor at a major university who takes open biblical views?  It doesn’t happen except in private.  You must pay to hear the truth told.

I would agree that the Bill of Rights and especially the first amendment is the essence of democratic values.  When do you read anything from the left defending free speech anymore?  Democrats don’t write about their love for the first amendment. The closest is a totalitarian support of smut for small children in public schools and genderless bathrooms.  These are not about the protection of speech or opportunity to have a voice.

Pent-Up Voices

The J6 crowd came to a rally and then walked to the capital out of a long pent-up frustration of censorship.  Yes, better means of expression exist.  The high percentage of silencing from the left came to a logger head.  That group that day did wrong things.  This is not what-aboutism.  I see that day as the equivalent of throwing snow balls at the Old State House in Boston in 1770.  The censorship industry, I’m afraid, because of its reaction, has not seen the worst.

We could hope that people care enough to do something about the actual attack on democracy from the Democrat Party.  So far, I see it as a peaceful embrace of those who would allow free speech.  It seems most represented by an ability to oppose masks and vaccinations.  Still, do positions exist for scientists with an opposing view?  Are there safe places of employment in hospitals and in medical schools with an alternate view?  I’m saying this is just representative, because the worst relates to far more important issues of truth.

Democrats have a burning Reichstag type hatred of democracy.  The Nazis opposed burning the Reichstag.  But they burned it.  The Democrats don’t mind burning everything down to get their way.  They don’t care if you vote or not.  They don’t even want you able to say what they don’t want to hear.

The Founders Didn’t Found a Democracy

The main strategy, it seemed, of the Democrat party for the mid-term election was the “attack on democracy.”  I think I understand them correctly when I say they refer to a spin on January 6, 2020 and then the so-called “election denial” or “election denialism.”   January 6 was this amazing attempt to overturn the election.  It was so close to seeing Donald Trump in the White House, just razor thin.

You’ve got to have people, when it’s announced that they lost, that they concede.  You give a gracious concession speech where you agree that you lost.  If not, you’re attacking democracy.  If later, you say something in the nature of the election being rigged against you, that will bring violence and a 1930’s Nazi takeover around the corner.

Most of the Democrat attempt to impede the expected red wave revolved around saving democracy.  Based on a very general definition, the United States is a democracy.  It is in the sense that legal voters elect their representatives.  In that way, the people rule the country.  However, the founders didn’t think they were founding a democracy.

If you google “federalist papers,” you’ll get a discussion on democracy.   Speaking of democracy, Alexander Hamilton (yes, Hamilton), wrote:

Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

He continued in the next two paragraphs:

A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.

The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.

In the answer by James Madison, the Father of the United States Constitution, he writes:

The error which limits republican government to a narrow district has been unfolded and refuted in preceding papers. I remark here only that it seems to owe its rise and prevalence chiefly to the confounding of a republic with a democracy, applying to the former reasonings drawn from the nature of the latter. The true distinction between these forms was also adverted to on a former occasion. It is, that in a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.

To this accidental source of the error may be added the artifice of some celebrated authors, whose writings have had a great share in forming the modern standard of political opinions. Being subjects either of an absolute or limited monarchy, they have endeavored to heighten the advantages, or palliate the evils of those forms, by placing in comparison the vices and defects of the republican, and by citing as specimens of the latter the turbulent democracies of ancient Greece and modern Italy. Under the confusion of names, it has been an easy task to transfer to a republic observations applicable to a democracy only; and among others, the observation that it can never be established but among a small number of people, living within a small compass of territory.

They write much more.  Their words stand on their own to repudiate the claim of American democracy.  Both Hamilton and Madison argue against it.

I think the Democrat strategy won’t work.  I don’t think most people even comprehend their point.  “Please elect people who support your right to elect them.”  If they couldn’t vote for who they wanted, it would be obvious.

If you’re thinking like me, you see an irony in the Democrat strategy.  Elon Musk bought Twitter, because the Democrats who controlled the company took away the right to express an opinion.  In justifying his overbid for Twitter, Musk wrote:

Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.

The threat to free speech comes from the Democrats.  People know they could lose their job over their opinion.  Parents lost their say over the education of their children.  Those with a different opinion than the Democrats can’t work in Hollywood.  The mainstream media censors stories that hurt their favored political party.

The United States wasn’t founded as a democracy.  Even if it was, only one political party threatens the democratic values behind the American Republic.  It isn’t the Republicans.

AUTHORS OF THE BLOG

  • Kent Brandenburg
  • Thomas Ross

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