It constantly astonishes me how few people see the United States as schizophrenic. Can hear the waves of, "Whoa! That's outrageous!" Alas, it is spot on.
People cite Ronald Reagan as the person most responsible for instilling the ideal of American exceptionalism. Maybe he was the one to give it the greatest shout-out, but the very ideal seems part of our national DNA. It was widely embraced because it was already almost universally believed.
It can be a great challenge for "traditional Americans" to see how wildly disparate our ideals are from our reality. In their hearts, they see America, the City on the Hill, a beacon of freedom & liberty for people around the world, the bench mark of democracy & justice for the rest of the world.
Perhaps a majority of my friends would be shocked that I experience the USA as fundamentally schizophrenic. Yet, that is unmistakeable reality. If we are to move forward as a truly moral nation, where lofty ideals & pragmatic reality unite, we are going to have to face, address & resolve this centuries-long split between what we hold to be self evident & how they actually are.
A widely accepted definition of schizophrenia is "a mentality or approach characterized by inconsistent or contradictory elements." In that, perhaps no country on this or any other planet is as plagued by moral schizophrenia than the US, from our earliest days as a Union to the present.
No country started with loftier ideals than ours. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness." Those words have inspired people throughout the centuries.
Such uplifting words - penned by a man who owned slaves. Did Jefferson actually oppose slavery? Did he really hope for the day when all slave holders would awaken to the depravity of the institution & free their slaves? I've read as much, but the fact is that Jefferson freed precious few of his own during his life & in his will. Instead of setting an example, at least in death, two hundred humans would be sold to help cover debts he left behind.
Thomas Jefferson embodies the enlightened mind that sees the wrongness of a thing but cannot bring his heart to take action against it. He believed in the evil of a thing, but was as enslaved to it as any of the men, women & children who tended his fields & ran his house.
That Jeffersonian approach - recognizing an evil yet perpetuating it - is branded into our national character. I believe it is the underlying reason why so many Americans can hold themselves as devout Christians yet disavow the very teachings & actions of Christ.
From our beginning, our national sense of morality has been one that separates lofty ideal from expression. And Jefferson was far from alone in embodying that core schizophrenia. In fact, few other politicians embody our great moral divide more than Abraham Lincoln.
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