The elites declared a separate allegiance first. The significance of September 11 was, apart from the obvious, was also in the refusal of the political elite respond to a direct attack on American soil. This was the ultimate “loyalty test” and to varying degrees large parts of it said “um, no thanks”. The refusal ranged from the Bush’s oblique unwillingness to name an enemy to Obama’s overt refusal to even acknowledge the aggression. The Ground Zero Mosque, the refusal to enforce the immigration laws are all a gradual “coming out” of something which until the litmus test forced it out, could finesse its divided allegiance.
I think history will judge that the “elites” left the idea of America, to declare their own intellectual and moral independence from it’s contemptible NASCAR-watching, gun-owning, Bible-clinging roots — long before the rest realized they were gone. They now form, or are forming a community of their own with specific attributes. They “know” their own and it is a definition that transcends race.
A pundit at the Huffington post reveled in the ‘whining death’ of Christianity in Britain; they know to laugh at Sarah Palin; sneer at this or that — without prompting. They can’t abide the company of the other and form their little Journolist cabals not so much for the conspiracy as for the community. The story of a revolution, if ever it is told, will not be about the creation of one nation, but the simultaneous rise of two nations, each aware of the other.
The real divide, I think, will be when the non-elites (if one may call them that) also leave the idea of America behind in the same way that the elites have already done. For the biggest hold the elites have on the non-elites are the very values they can scarcely abide. The harder by they are put, the greater the elites will appeal to God, patriotism and family; and appeal to it to advance the state as a religion, transnationalism as an allegiance and transgenderism as a social model.
What is not clear, and what will not be clear for a while is whether obtaining freedom from the elites must come at the cost of destroying what Jefferson and Adams created. I think the idea of Jefferson and Adams must be extended, as they themselves extended the ideas of their day and yet preserve the essentials. In 1776 the physical boundaries of America resembled nothing like their present-day ones. It was the mental boundary which defined it. I think the challenge is to re-create or re-dedicate that mental boundary and if that is done then idea of America will have a future not just on the North American continent, but out into the stars.
