The Mythology of America
I think it was the dubious justifications for post-1945 wars that started this hullabaloo about “Freedom.” After 1945, the U.S. began its ascent to the position of unipolar hegemonic world power, and it needed a justification for pushing back against the Soviet Union/Russia and China partnerships across the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Later conflicts were essentially geopolitical sparring on the global stage against the same two powers (focus on Russia) to maintain USG’s influence/power in certain regions. For these wars, the American people would need to know why their children were being sent to fight and die in random countries around the world that seemingly had nothing to do with the United States, so this vague American notion of “freedom” was consistently marketed as the reason.
“We are fighting for our freedom in Korea.”
“We are fighting for our freedom in Vietnam.”
“We are fighting for our freedom in the Gulf War.”
“We are fighting for our freedom in Afghanistan.”
“We are fighting for our freedom in Iraq.”
“Your children are fighting and dying in other countries on the other side of the world to protect the freedom back home” should have transparently been seen as, at best, a half-truth if truthful at all. To call it a “lie” would be too much, after all, USG (the United States Government) was indeed securing its interests in these other nations, but its aims were not at all based on anything remotely familiar to the common peoples’ American consciousness. Across the second half of the 20th century, the identity of USG had significantly diverged from the identity of USA (the United States of America), but the wars had to be fought by the children of the USA somehow…(USG’s own children were too precious, too elite for something like this).
I’m not saying that “freedom” or “liberty” were not bedrock values in American consciousness as they certainly were, but they were properly encased inside of the appropriate context prior to 1945. After the USA became a hegemonic world power, the concept of “liberty” started to be perverted. Once a nation reaches its apex, it cannot really be fighting for freedom even if such a thing is one of the foundations of its ontological genesis. After 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the perversion and subversion of the concept of “freedom” became even worse because the USA was at the helm of the new unipolar world order. How can you be the “little guy fighting for freedom” when you are the reigning entity over geopolitical conflicts? Where does all your revolutionary energy go when you no longer have anything bigger than you to revolt against? America had suddenly entered into an identity crisis.
In United States mythology, the U.S. is the “land of refuge from tyranny,” the “Promised Land” of the entire world. It is the “land of opportunity” that everyone dreams of coming into one day (comparable to a “land flowing with milk and honey”). It’s a glorious mythos, and I would never speak ill against it as this is the identity, purpose, and destiny that God gave this nation, the United States of America.
The reason that I call it a “myth” is because a myth is a metanarrative that reveals the abstract thematic truths of reality. Myths are realer than real and truer than true. The myth of America as a refuge from tyranny is truer than the reality of America being a refuge from tyranny. And that’s actually a good thing. In our times, when the country seems to be falling apart little by little, it’s important to reflect on the identity of the nation, on what God intended it to be because the source of its God-designed identity is its strength.
Think of the myths around calling a person or entity by its “true name.” If you needed a catalyst to revive something, wouldn’t you need to call it by its true name? Even though the USA isn’t what it once was, only its true name, its transcendent mythos, its identity given to it by God can call it back to its original purpose and destiny. Only inheritors of America, those that embrace “America” by birthright (being literal offspring who have a claim to the land), have the power to ignite the spark needed to revive the America of Myth once again. Beautiful guidelines here, but of course…how is it done?
If what I’ve said about myth is true, then, of course, you’re wondering why I still don’t think America was about Freedom. Liberty is only a small part of the American mythos. America has always been about establishing a new order, a new paradigm. It has always been about being the nation that every other nation wishes it were. This is a difficult concept to grasp, but our founders made our nation to be the “city on a hill” amongst all the other nations. In other words, America’s mythology is a metanarrative inside another metanarrative. This is why its called a “propositional nation.” To understand this…
Imagine the perfect nation.
Write a Constitution for that nation.
Congratulations, you have created a perfect nation.
…right?… I mean…that’s how it’s done…right?
If you haven’t yet figured out what I’m doing here…Our founders didn’t know what a perfect nation looked like, so they decided to create a framework for it, the Constitution, that was both solid enough to provide scaffolding but murky enough to allow for adjustments. It is a document that is filled with ideals about the metaphysics, the mythology, of the nation as the “Promised Land” Nation that all peoples long for, but figuring out what that would look like is a difficult process, so each generation of Americans participates in figuring that out themselves. A risky decision.
Perhaps a colossal failure. Maybe an overwhelming success.
Truly, we don’t know. We’re living at a time when everything appears to be going wrong, but if God intervenes, maybe in a generation, in a day, this nation turns around. The issue with interpreting the Constitution from an originalist perspective is that our founders didn’t really know (which is why the document is a governance framework more than it is a legal document). Thinking of the Constitution as a contract is not to truly understand what it’s doing. My feeling is that it’s not really a legal document. Otherwise, why would it be so vague in so many ways?
Isn’t the legal realm all about contracts and specific terms? Since many of our founders were in law, wouldn’t they have known this?
Strangely, the document that forms the foundations of the United States of America is oddly flexible, unusually configurable, and even quite modular. It is a different thing altogether, and it must be noted that it is the most unique governance document in the history of the world. We haven’t even scratched the surface of its pliability. Truly, it was beyond our founders’ abilities to birth such a thing. Divine providence had to be on their side. I’m including The Declaration of Independence as well in this discussion. They scratch at the underlying truths of the reality of governance without revealing the metaphysical depths of such secrets.
Reducing America’s core to the concept of “freedom” is not doing it justice. Our founders brought a new order to governance. They explicitly stated the forever-truth of the implicit relationship between those governed and their rulers. Although a lot of criticism has spun up in e-right spaces over this, it’s important to note that there is some truth to the “consent of the governed” Lockean framework. Whether or not an individual “believes” in God is not at all an influence on whether or not God exists or whether or not God has authority over the domain of men. He exists, and he has a law and authority over men. That being said, God gave you a choice on whether or not you will choose to be ruled by him. Christians have CHOSEN to be ruled by God.
America is about choosing who rules over you. It is about consciously choosing to submit to an order instead of unconsciously allowing yourself to be ruled by whatever order has presented itself as over you. The battle taking place for the soul of our nation is about whether or not we will be ruled by the foundational order of this nation or will be ruled by a foreign order (one that revealed itself during the 1960s…). We get to decide.
So, how do we call this nation back to its God-given identity? Well, it all starts with remembering its true history. Remembering its moments of transcendent righteousness, where it rose to heights not seen since.
(more on this in future posts…)