American Schism Quotes

“But the harsh reality that we have achieved quite unequal success and at times appalling failures in our quest to attain a true meritocracy does not in any way compromise the validity of the principle nor obviate the imperative to strive for its greater realization. The model of a meritocracy can still be a sacrosanct model, a goal to which all societies might strive. I cling to the ideal of a true meritocracy, not because it is the societal model most closely consistent with the French Radical Enlightenment thinkers (which it happens to be), but because I believe it is the only model that aspires to simultaneously establish a just society and preserve the American spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship. It is also the model I would design if given the authority to do so while under Rawls’s compulsory “veil of ignorance.”
― Seth David Radwell, American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation

“Those in the Moderate Enlightenment school of thought abjured democracy because they thought manipulators would inevitably prey on the uneducated common citizens.”
― Seth David Radwell, American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation

“For many, America’s capacity to survive depended on the common people’s ability to discriminate and form sound judgments about what is true and what is false.”
― Seth David Radwell, American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation

“There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: “A republic, if you can keep it.” The brevity of that response should not cause us to undervalue its essential meaning: Democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people; they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health.”
― Seth David Radwell, American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation

“As per Dias’s narration of the event, Trump said: “I will tell you, Christianity is under tremendous siege, whether we want to talk about it or we don’t want to talk about it. Christians make up the overwhelming majority of the country,” he said. And then he slowed slightly to stress each next word: “And yet we don’t exert the power that we should have.” If he were elected president, he promised, that would change. He raised a finger. “Christianity will have power,” he said. “If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else. You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well. Remember that.”15 There is no better illustration of Trump weaponizing a Counter-Enlightenment strain of thinking as a calculated political tool to garner support than this statement. For the evangelical community, this dynamic evidently outstrips the negative effect of his predatory sexual behavior toward women. Later in the same article, Dias writes: Evangelicals do not support Mr. Trump in spite of who he is. They support him because of who he is, and because of who they are. He is their protector, the bully who is on their side, the one who offered safety amid their fears that their country as they know it, and their place in it, is changing, and changing quickly. White straight married couples with children who go to church regularly are no longer the American mainstream. An entire way of life, one in which their values were dominant, could be headed for extinction, and Mr. Trump offers to restore them to [their powerful position at the top of the American hierarchy].16”
― Seth David Radwell, American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation

“In Ava DuVernay’s brilliant 2016 documentary, 13th, DuVernay and co-writer Spencer Averick chronologically narrate in chilling precision how this new approach to criminal justice led to the systematic mass criminalization of African Americans under the veil of the war on drugs and abetted by minimum sentence requirements.”
― Seth David Radwell, American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation

“One recurrent and quite successful Counter-Enlightenment tactic was to portray the thinkers of the Enlightenment, les philosophes, as condescending elites who were disdainful and contemptuous of the masses.”
― Seth David Radwell, American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation

“D’Holbach deplored violence and was extremely wary of the concept of “a people’s revolution.” He feared that logic and reason of the most oppressed citizens would be eclipsed by “‘charlatans’ . . . promising to end the people’s misery while, in reality, exploiting men’s naïveté and ‘superstition’ to forge a fresh tyranny ever crueler and more ‘superstitious’ than that they rebelled against.”
― Seth David Radwell, American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation

“A well-documented phenomenon in the field of group psychology indicates how members of a group, even one weakly affiliated, will make nonrational choices and tolerate inferior outcomes in the service of the emotional satisfaction that results from “winning” against the opposing group. Furthermore, in any zero-sum setting, individuals in each group develop feelings of prejudice and anger toward the out-group, as well as pride and loyalty toward in-group members.”
― Seth David Radwell, American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation

“identity battles, once they take on symbolic meaning, often become fully divorced from a more rational discussion of the meaningful and substantive distinctions in what we believe.”
― Seth David Radwell, American Schism: How the Two Enlightenments Hold the Secret to Healing our Nation