Has the American Experiment Failed?

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Mar 26, 2025

Anyone looking on the American political scene today can recognize that we have some serious troubles. When a presidential candidate runs (twice) on the motto, “Make America Great Again,” he sends the unmistakable message that America is not great now, and American voters agreed. Avid Trump supporters believe that a great deal of work must be done before that “great” status is restored, while his opponents insist that the Trump administration is destroying the country. From either end of the political spectrum, then, the current condition of our republic appears grim.

And with reason. Political debates in Washington have become overheated, with nasty invective replacing refined rhetoric. The economy is shaky; the rising generation now expects to live less comfortably than their parents. Surveys show that most Americans believe the country has been moving in the wrong direction. Optimism was once an acknowledged feature of the American character. No longer.

The deep partisan divisions among us are evident in the daily headlines. Both Democrats and Republicans charge their opponents with election fraud. Both sides fear—and with reason—that their rivals will try to put them behind bars. Still more troubling, both sides are utterly convinced that their opponents are deeply immoral. What one side proclaims as a crusade for human rights, the other labels as an invitation to degradation. Even outside the toxic atmosphere of Washington, the signs of moral decay are unmistakable: violent crime, marital breakdown, suicide, drug abuse, and a seemingly endless variety of sexual perversions.

Back in 1976, Americans of all political stripes joined in the joyous observance of the Bicentennial: the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Now the 250th anniversary is approaching, with precious little indication that anyone is planning a celebration.

Have we, as a people, lost confidence that the American experiment will be successful?

Over the past decade or so, I have seen a trend among tradition-minded Catholics to answer that question with an emphatic Yes—and even to take pleasure in that answer. Here I am not referring to scholars like Patrick Deneen, who argue that a philosophical flaw in the thought of the Founders has, over time, produced irreconcilable differences: an interesting thesis that merits consideration. For now, though, I am concerned with a less thoughtful cadre of tradition-minded Catholics, who seem to derive great satisfaction from the thought that America was always on the wrong path. That attitude, I contend, is not only un-American; it is also un-Catholic.

St. Thomas Aquinas cites the love of one’s country as a virtue, a form of piety, which in turn is an aspect of justice. He teaches (ST II-II, 101) that:

…man is debtor chiefly to his parents and his country, after God. Wherefore just as it belongs to religion to give worship to God, so does it belong to piety, in the second place, to give worship to one’s parents and one’s country… The worship given to our country includes homage to all our fellow-citizens and to all the friends of our country.

The Catholic tradition has always seen caritas patria as a virtue, advocating patriotism. My colleague William Fahey, the president of Thomas More College, searched online Vatican archives and found more than 300 papal documents, from between 1878 (when Pope Leo XIII opened the category of Catholic social teaching) to 1939, referring to patriotism—invariably in a positive light, usually in context of piety. But curiously, from 1939 forward, not a single exhortation to patriotism could be found.

Now if patriotism was defined as “advancement of the fatherland’s glory,” as one memorable formula had it, we can readily understand why the virtue would have fallen out of favor with the rise of the Nazi regime. Even today the term “fatherland” carries the taint of Soviet propaganda. But if the definition of the virtue should be changed, still that virtue itself should not be neglected.

Why would Catholics not feel grateful for our country’s political heritage, and proud of the American achievement? To be more specific, why would tradition-minded Catholics feel a reflexive disdain for the American Founding?

Theoretically, some Catholics may believe that their ability as political theorists and analysts exceeds that of the nation’s Founders. I say “theoretically” because any such belief would be arrogant to the point of absurdity. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 saw what was surely one of the most impressive gatherings of political minds in all of history: Washington, Madison, Hamilton, Franklin, Randolph, Morris, Sherman, Wilson, and Carroll, among others. (And Jefferson and Adams, who were not in Philadelphia but contributed mightily to the Founding, add to the luster of the group.)

More plausibly, a Catholic might believe that precisely because he is Catholic, and has the benefit of the Church’s social tradition, he has instincts and insights that the Founders lacked. But while it is true that the American experiment was designed almost exclusively by Protestants, European countries with strong Catholic traditions have not fared much better over the past 250 years. Quite the contrary, in fact. Today France and Italy are arguably much further down the road to moral and cultural decay, with Ireland and Spain racing to catch up.

Ah, but I already hear the rebuttal: Those countries have forsaken their Catholic heritage! Yes, indeed. But if you dismiss the virtue of patriotism—if you do not see love of country as an aspect of piety—so have you.

And what if the basic principles of the American Founding are compatible with the Catholic tradition? Then perhaps both have been forsaken, and must be revived—as I will argue in my next post.