From Jefferson to Joshua: America’s Fall from Reason andthe New Israel: How America Abandoned the Enlightenment

America began as a deliberate rejection of religious authority. The Founders trusted reason over revelation, argument over prophecy, and human judgment over divine command. Jefferson cut miracles from the Bible. Paine called revelation hearsay. Madison built a Constitution to prevent any church from hijacking the state. The United States was meant to be a secular republic defined by consent, rational law, and human equality. That was its philosophical blueprint.But the cultural evolution of the nation did not remain loyal to that foundation. Over time, America adopted a biblical self-understanding: a chosen people with a divine mission. Instead of seeing itself as a man-made republic, it began to imagine itself as a modernized Israel—exceptional, designated, morally exalted. This transition was not symbolic. It fundamentally altered how America interprets its own existence.Once a nation adopts a theology of chosenness, equality becomes impossible. A chosen people does not seek peers; it seeks subordinates. It does not negotiate balance; it assumes leadership. It does not recognize multipolarity; it interprets it as rebellion. This is why the shift from republic to “New Israel” explains American behavior far more effectively than partisan explanations or ideological labels. American policy is not driven by preference—it is driven by metaphysics.The language of American leaders reveals the transformation. They invoke destiny, calling, providence, and moral mission with the cadence of scripture. Foreign rivals are cast not as competitors but as embodiments of “evil.” American actions are framed as righteous by definition rather than judged by outcome. This is covenant logic: moral exceptionalism assigned by identity, not earned by conduct.Under this worldview, America does not oppose Russia or China because they are communist. It opposes them because they are sovereign. The United States has repeatedly partnered with communist regimes when they were strategically compliant—Yugoslavia under Tito, Mao’s China against the USSR, Vietnam today. Ideology is negotiable. Subordination is not. A chosen nation can tolerate any system except one that refuses American primacy.This is why American allies are almost always clients. The U.S. defends “democracy,” yet it arms monarchies, funds military dictatorships, and shelters authoritarian regimes when they obey. Saudi Arabia is accepted not because it is moral but because it is useful. Pakistan’s generals were accepted. Chile under Pinochet was accepted. Indonesia under Suharto was accepted. Democracy is invoked only when obedience cannot be secured by softer means. Human rights become a diplomatic lever, not an ethical commitment. Freedom becomes a slogan, not a standard. Far from hypocrisy, this is the predictable outcome of a theology that sanctifies power itself.A chosen nation believes the end is sacred; therefore any means can be justified. This is why American foreign policy oscillates between moral language and amoral action. The inconsistency is superficial; the underlying logic is stable. When a nation believes it has a divine mandate to guide the world, its self-perception overrides its behavior. America’s contradictions are not contradictions at all—they are expressions of its metaphysical self-image.This same metaphysics shapes personal psychology. Americans grow up with two parallel messages: they are unique and they are victims. Exceptionalism produces inflated expectations; grievance culture produces chronic dissatisfaction. The combination yields citizens who oscillate between superiority and resentment. This mirrors the nation’s foreign policy stance: morally elevated yet perpetually aggrieved that others resist its guidance.Radical individualism intensifies the problem. A culture that treats autonomy as sacred undermines long-term relationships. Marriages collapse because commitment is experienced as a limit. Parenting becomes conflict because authority feels like oppression. Friendships dissolve because maintenance requires obligation. The national ethos—no limits, no equals, no constraints—translates directly into personal habits. A nation that rejects constraints abroad raises citizens who reject constraints at home.The long-term result is loneliness. Independence, when mythologized, becomes isolation. America weakens family structures, disperses communities, and treats elders as burdens rather than repositories of memory. The cultural taboo against dependence makes emotional continuity difficult. The same society that replaces allies with new allies replaces spouses with new spouses, neighborhoods with new neighborhoods, obligations with new identities. A country that worships autonomy produces people who age alone.Yet America had an alternative philosophical lineage. Robert Green Ingersoll represented the rationalism that could have triumphed. Ingersoll defended ethics grounded in human dignity, not divine favoritism. He believed compassion required no revelation, justice required no prophet, and morality required no chosenness. He embodied the America of Jefferson and Paine—a nation that could have matured into a consistent secular republic guided by reason.Instead, America embraced Billy Graham and the evangelical literalists. Graham turned Christianity into a national identity, a political force, and a cultural certainty. He fused patriotism with scripture and made biblical literalism respectable in politics. Under his influence, revelation replaced rationalism and emotional certainty replaced philosophical inquiry. He provided the theological infrastructure for the Religious Right, which in turn provided the spiritual vocabulary for American exceptionalism.Once that fusion occurred, the republic could no longer restrain itself. A government guided by reason can accept limits; a nation guided by divine mission cannot. Biblical certainty cannot coexist with constitutional humility. A chosen nation cannot coexist with a multipolar world. And citizens formed by a theology of self-exception cannot sustain stable personal lives. The Founders understood this danger, which is why they built barriers against religious authority. But metaphysics eventually seeped through the constitutional walls.The result is today’s America: a nation that behaves like a superpower with a covenant. Its foreign policy is missionary, not diplomatic. Its domestic culture is individualistic to the point of fracture. Its citizens embody the same contradiction the nation embodies: self-importance paired with grievance, autonomy paired with fragility, power paired with loneliness. The United States still uses the vocabulary of a republic, but its operating system is theological.This crisis is not political. It is metaphysical. A nation founded on reason now behaves on the world stage with the psychology of a chosen tribe. Until America relinquishes the fantasy of being New Israel and returns to the secular republican identity of its origins, it will continue to destabilize both itself and the world.