The limits of diversity: the end of “E pluribus unum”?

I’m afraid we’re in the midst of a societal crisis of conscience.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident…” These words are from the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence and demonstrate that our republic was founded on a consensus. Or, as Chesterton put it, it was founded on a creed. This consensus included the notions of unalienable rights, popular sovereignty, consent, constitutionalism, separation of powers, morality, and limited government. But the consensus also included the concept of natural law and a belief in the role of reason in human affairs.

Consensus does not mean homogeneity. The United States has always been home to multiple religious sects but this diversity of belief has been united by that consensus or what John Courtney Murray called “the American public philosophy” and the articles of truce between these differing sects has been the First Amendment to the Constitution. This American consensus has been under assault from all sides for more than a half century and is in tatters if it exists at all.

With the consensus we have amicable diversity in religious belief (or the absence of religious belief). Without it we have a kind of brittle majoritarianism in which the victor in the last election attempts to sweep away all of the works of the vanquished. In other words, what we have now.

The recent terrorist attacks in London raise yet another challenge to our society. As more is learned about the nature of the perpetrators of the attack a picture emerges of young men in such profound disagreement with the fundamental values of the society in which they found themselves that all they asked of it was its destruction. And their own. As a recent column in The Guardian put it:

The realisation that Britons are ready to bomb their fellow citizens is a challenge to the whole of our society. One security source I spoke to yesterday, before the police revealed their findings, presciently guessed that the culprits were “a UK group, home-grown, having bypassed al-Qaida training camps”. He reckoned they would have drawn on the pool of young Muslims so disconnected and disenfranchised that they are easy prey to the extremist sermons heard in some mosques, to the wild, conspiracy-theory packed tapes sold outside and to the most fire-breathing websites. The proliferation of that material represents a deep challenge to British Islam; that disconnection and disenfranchisement is a challenge to Britain itself.

Can we reasonably doubt that this kind of anger exists here as well?

I don’t honestly know if our society can survive the rising level of anger that I’m seeing from all sides: left and right, Christian and Muslim. But I equally don’t know if our society can survive the abandoning of the notional diversity that’s been a key factor in our society for all of my lifetime, at least. Can we accept in our midst people who simply don’t want the things that the American consensus requires? But what kind of society will be left if we abandon “E pluribus unum”?