America’s National Origin Myth

Thomas Paine:

Arguably the most important Founding Father of the new Republic was Thomas Paine.  (George Washington even averred that the colonies would not have prevailed in the Revolution but for the galvanization effected by Paine’s inspiring oratory.)  So it is worth heeding Paine’s perspective on the matter.

Even as a Deist, Paine harbored extreme antipathy toward religion (qua institutionalized dogmatism; especially insofar as it was tribalistic and atavistic). He inveighed against the “obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness” of the Old Testament.  He described it (accurately) as “a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”  The New Testament, he noted, is less brutalizing but more absurd.  The story of Christ’s divine conception a “fable, which—for absurdity and extravagance—is not exceeded by anything that is to be found in the mythology of the ancients.” For good measure, he added: “All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or [Muslim] appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind; and monopolize power and profit.” He was not wrong.

Paine’s “Common Sense” was a significant catalyst for the American Revolution; and it provided the primary articulation of the colonists’ REASONS FOR seeking independence.  Suffice to say: It had nothing whatsoever to do with religion.  Paine actually devoted his masterwork, “The Age of Reason” to an argument AGAINST atheism AND religionism (that is: institutionalized dogmatism).  Why?  Because he championed Deism.  He knew that the greatest enemy of civil society was a Reactionary mindset; and that dogmatic thinking was antithetical to societal progress.

For this reason, Paine recognized how crucial it was to separate religious matters from matters of State. He was clear on this point: “Mingling religion with politics” was to be “disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.”  Note that this was from the man of whom John Adams–no fan of Deism–said: “I know not whether any man in the world has had more influence on its inhabitants or its affairs for the last thirty years than [Thomas] Paine.  Call it, then, the Age of Paine.”

YET, in spite of all this, the “Christian basis of the U.S. government” myth persists to the present day.  This is a claim that the Founders of the Republic would have certainly found baffling.  We might think of it this way: Had the authors of America’s founding documents been thoroughly convinced that Judeo-Christian lore was entirely mythical, they would have articulated themselves IN THE EXACT SAME WAY.

Lo and behold, many of them actually did take such lore as myth, and–as it happened–actually did articulate themselves in the manner we find in the historical record.

The point, then, is to look at the underlying message.  Doing so involves culling the spirit behind the exposition from the myriad quirks of the specific phrasing employed by the authors (who were, after all, themselves products of their own time and place).  This requires one to get beyond the stylistic choices that the authors made when crafting the documents-in-question.

In sum: Elucidation of “original intent” is only possible by understanding the vernacular of the time and place.

When it comes to the era in which America’s Founders lived, we find that many prominent figures employed the prevailing idiom of the time.  To contend that this is a sign of staunch religiosity misses the point.  Such special pleading fails to recognize idiomatic expression AS IDIOMATIC; and elides the amorphous nature of semantics.

In crafting a sacred history to suit a given purpose, wrinkles in a narrative (technicalities that complicate the desired flow) are often “ironed out”; and any events that threaten to undermine the desired schema are glossed over, or even elided.  For example, when most of us think of the American Revolutionary War, that the British technically surrendered to the FRENCH (thereby rendering the Colonies the DE FACTO winners in September of 1781 in Yorktown, Virginia), not to the Colonies themselves, is generally disregarded as a (dispensable) technicality. {14}

It would seem to be a straight-forward question: To whom did the British surrender to bring the Revolutionary War to an end?  And it is; though Americans infected with super-patriotism don’t like the actual answer.  (They have a need to proclaim, “WE did it!”)  Indeed, for many a proud citizen of the U.S., it seems unseemly to point out that, but for the arrival of France’s powerful navy (thanks to Benjamin Franklin’s prodigious skills of persuasion back in Paris), the American colonies would likely not have prevailed in their noble war for independence. {15}

The fact that most Americans are blissfully unaware of this is testament to the fact that sacred histories are made-to-order; tailored to suit our sensibilities and gratify our egos.  We usually tell a story the way we WANT it to be told; Reality be damned.  We want to leave ourselves in a flattering light; to heck with anyone else.  And to heck with Truth.  We regale ourselves with tales of past glory–thereby leaving our forebears looking marvelous.  Thus OUR heroes are the only REAL heroes.

This ornery posture is a staple of tribal chauvinism; and the lifeblood of American Exceptionalism.  Once infused with the conceit of divine Providence, we wind up with fascistic pathologies like American “Christian Dominionism”.

Americans are inclined to ignore the fact that the biggest genocide in world history (somewhere between 20 and 100 million eradicated) was perpetrated by settlers of European descent in the so-called New World.  Americans likewise pat themselves on the back for “winning” World War II in the European theater (even though the tide had already turned against the Nazis, thanks to the Russians) and in the Pacific / southeast Asian theater (even though the U.S. government committed genocide gratuitously, in Japan).  And, of course, Americans are told that they “won” the “Cold War”, never mind the genocide in Vietnam / Lao / Cambodia and the fictional “missile gap” used to justify an obscene military build-up during the Post-War era.  America, so the story goes, is only a force for good in the world.  End of story.

The point here is not to knock American history per se; it is to show that massive amounts of people can get history egregiously wrong (or, at least, severely misunderstand it); especially when the farce is self-serving.  People collectively remembering events that never happened has been dubbed the “Mandela Effect”.  Such collective “false memory” often emerges organically (that is, it is not necessarily of a calculated plan to deceive).  However, sometimes it is orchestrated–as it can be surprisingly easy for impresarios of the Grand Narrative to exploit the susceptibility of people to the Mandela Effect.  In such cases, the mis-remembering is constructed in accordance the interests of those in power.  The result is False Consciousness (BY DESIGN) at a societal level.

Actual historical scholarship is animated by perspicacity and a dedication to elucidating Truth (stating the facts, whatever they might be).  By contrast, sacred history is animated by fealty to an ideology (that is: an urge to rationalize it by concocting a “just so” story).  Put another way: Actual history stems from erudition; whereas sacred history stems from sentiment.  The former is a matter of understanding Reality; the latter is a matter of being attached to certain ideas (esp. coveted myths).  The pivotal difference, then, comes down to vested interests.

In “How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience Of Our Addiction To Stories”, Alex Rosenberg explained it thus: “The same science that reveals why we view the world through the lens of narrative also shows that the lens not only distorts what we see but is the source of illusions we can neither shake nor even correct for most of the time.”  Here’s the catch: “It is people’s beliefs about history that motivate [them], not the actual historical events.  So, even if we get the facts right, that may be irrelevant to understanding people’s [perception of] the present or their future…”

When it comes to unscrupulous hagiographers, the standard approach is as follows: Extol any ethereal verity (read: anecdote), countenancing whatever salutary “truths” happen to be in fashion, whilst coyly disregarding inconvenient facts…all in the name of upholding some program of mass consolation.  That way, no toes are stepped on; and we can all carry on with our day, unperturbed.  After all, consoling fables are–well–CONSOLING.

Disrupting this homeostasis is considered unseemly, as challenging sacred histories involves upsetting sacred apple-carts.  But disrupt we shall.