Today, I finished Jack Carr’s new book, The Fourth Option, and in it, Carr’s protagonist, Chris Walker, repeats this Jean Paul Sartre quote in one of his internal monologues:

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

It has been many years since I read Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (the origin of the quote), but I remembered this one right away. I’ve always thought of the ideal of being “condemned to be free” to be a pretty apt expression of the action/consequence/action that Soren Kierkegaard expressed.

Kierkegaard believed that life is defined by choices, and that every meaningful choice closes off other possible lives while opening new paths. In that sense, each decision becomes a kind of irreversible fork in existence.

Anxiety, for him, came from recognizing the infinite weight of possibility.

Sartre meant that humans have no fixed divine blueprint or predetermined essence telling them what they must become, and because of that, people are radically free to choose without escaping the fact that this freedom is also a burden, since every choice carries responsibilities and outcomes and cannot ultimately be blamed on fate, society, or God.

After all, even if we are informed by fate, society, or God, it is still our unavoidable choice to make (even choosing not to choose is a choice).

I have been thinking about this in the context of our national issues.

I think a large driver of our discord is a distinct lack of unity.

And by “unity,” I don’t mean that everyone agrees about everything. I mean that we at least agree on the basic “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” aspects of the Declaration of Independence — and that we define those aspects in very similar ways.

A relatively solid, but generally quiet, percentage of America loves this country, but when they express that love, they are harangued for their expressions and called racists and nationalists. If they go to church, the term “Christian” is applied to make the assumed evil seem religiously motivated.

Then there is a smaller, much louder, and more aggressive percentage that hate America. They have turned Sartre’s proposition on its head, believing that certain classes are not born into freedom; they enter the world as slaves, and since they came into the world in bondage, have no free will or agency and are responsible for nothing that they do.

While the former group of “olds” (as Maoists would call them) is promoted as the root cause of the discord, it is the latter group that provides the fuel that ignites and sustains the conflagrations erupting across the nation.

That we are being subsumed by so many things that are antithetical to traditional American values is an example of how our culture is progressively weakening. Strong cultures force assimilation because they are strong; weak cultures invite competition. I don’t presume American culture is weak, but it is weakening.

The events and conflicts of our time are indicators of weakening.

What do we do?

I believe there is still a majority who love America. Those people must get louder. Traditional American culture must assert itself again. National pride, in recognition of the good America has done and continues to do, needs to be acknowledged. American flags need to fly — and that’s not some Pollyannaish idea. Culture must express itself to ward off competing narratives, the good must be so obvious it is irrefutable, and when the refutations come, they must be immediately exposed as the burning trash heap they are (we spend far too much time listening to moronic arguments that are built from a base of lunacy, broken logic, or simple exaggerative lies.

If it is to end with us, it must also begin with us.

Something to consider after observing Memorial Day, as we remember and express our gratitude for the gift of lives of service that have been given by the honored dead.