There are many ways of analyzing a nation’s character and political sentiments. One such way is with reference to the concept of Weltanschauung. The concept does not have an equivalent word in English, although the literal translation is “world view.” It refers to a comprehensive way that individuals and societies understand and interact with the world. Immanuel Kant coined the term and the historian and philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey developed the concept. The term “worldview” will be used here instead of the more detailed but unwieldy German word.
A societal worldview incorporates culture, experience, tradition, values, and sensibilities. Humanism, Islam, Nazism, Christianity, and Marxism are all worldviews. Many worldviews are influenced by religion, but others are not.
The worldview of a country generally includes the prevailing attitudes regarding four areas: its concerns about the future, individual rights, justice, and agency.
Future-oriented worldviews contemplate and plan for posterity. They tend to be naturally attentive to the needs and necessity of children and families. They are mindful of economic prudence and responsible stewardship of resources. Such worldviews recognize necessary tradeoffs between present and future needs, but prioritize the future. The more narcissistic, hedonistic and nihilistic a worldview, the less future-oriented it is.
Some world-views prioritize the dignity and value of the individual person, and others subordinate them to other concerns. The worldview of Switzerland is predominantly sympathetic to the individual person but those of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were rigorously nation-oriented. Most revolutionary worldviews subordinate individual considerations to that of the incorporeal “revolution.”
The place of justice in a worldview divides into those perspectives in which justice refers to appropriate consequences for individual decisions and volitional behaviors, and those perspectives that are concerned with more abstract considerations such as group rights, and equality of outcome.
The domain of agency is concerned with whether people have the ability to affect their own circumstances, or whether forces outside their control determine their condition in life. This is the portion of a worldview where oppressed/oppressor models of society have the greatest relevance.
These four domains are schematic models. They are not intended to be exhaustive or precise. There are other considerations, such as the place of a country in world affairs, but these tend to be less reflective of a society’s character. The distinctions within them are not binary or absolute. Worldviews are shaped by the inevitable trade-offs that life requires.
The United States has, and has had since its founding, a world-view that is oriented toward the future, individual rights, consequential justice, and individual agency. There is a distinctively American worldview that influences our attitudes toward such things as family, free speech, the Second Amendment, personal responsibility, and opportunity.
The more extreme progressive world-view is fundamentally not future-oriented, as evidenced by its attitude toward the welfare of children and the family. Its defining orientations are more toward present indulgence rather than future prosperity, state authority over individual rights; group justice and grievance over individual responsibility; and helpless victimhood over individual merit. This worldview, which is commonly referred to as “woke,” is fundamentally opposed to the established American worldview in each of the four areas described above, and this is why large swaths of American society increasingly repudiate it.
One example of such repudiation is California’s experimentation with matters of justice. In 2014 California passed a progressive initiative that lessened, and in some cases effectively abrogated, the consequences for certain criminal behaviors. It reflected a progressive notion that many criminals were themselves passive victims. In the last election, this was repudiated when Californians approved Proposition 36, partially repealing the earlier initiative. Many progressive initiatives are theoretical abstractions that do not survive the realities of the world.
A worldview does not determine or explain the outcome of any one election. There are, for example, more straightforward explanations for Kamala Harris’s defeat. She was singularly unqualified, incompetent, unlikable, and unaccomplished. These factors undoubtedly had a more immediate effect. Nevertheless, a society’s world-view determines generational trends that may make the difference in a given election. The rather frivolous complaint that Latino and black males voted for Donald Trump because of misogyny or racism overlooks the more consequential possibility that his worldview was more closely aligned with theirs, particularly in matters of the family, individual rights, and opportunity.
When someone claims that Kamala Harris lost because Democrat overreach following the 2020 election, this may be understood as claiming that they lost because their demonstrated policies and results were at too great a variance from the prevailing American worldview.
The worldview model has significant implications for such issues as immigration. Immigrants who share the prevailing worldview of American society are more likely to assimilate. Most immigrants are inherently future-oriented. Many are individual rights oriented, and that is why they choose the United States rather than other immigration destinations. They cannot be relied upon as the foot soldiers of “fundamental change.”
The progressive endeavor to change American society will require changing the established American worldview. This reflects the insight and aspirations of Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci, who originated the phrase “long march through the institutions.” As progressives are discovering, however, they can only do so much with indoctrination and propaganda. The declining influence of mainstream media and the flagging prestige of higher education reflect this fact. The American worldview accommodates human nature and collective experience, where progressive ideology and virtuous-sounding theories do not. Radical progressives are unlikely, for example, to succeed in replacing individual responsibility in matters of justice with a notion of group rights and group guilt because these are not only contrary to the American worldview but also to common sense.
As a rule, worldviews are more robust than ideologies. Worldviews of functioning nations are difficult to change. This helps explain why, despite centuries of Islamic rule under the Mughal or Ottoman empires, neither India nor Greece is a Muslim nation.
Progressives understand that they are unlikely to significantly influence the prevailing worldview in the setting of free and open discourse. They therefore attempt to control speech with such dubious notions as misinformation and hate speech.
Propaganda, gas lighting and name-calling will not change the distinctive American worldview. The media and higher education are likely to run out of credibility long before they significantly affect the dominant American worldview, although they can do great damage in the effort.
Defending American values necessarily means defending a future-oriented worldview, where children and family are paramount. It means defending the dignity of individuals against the state, defending the idea that people are responsible for the consequences of their choices and actions, and the idea that they have the ability to improve their lives. Defending our liberties and American character necessarily, but not sufficiently, consists largely of defending those habits, traditions and values that express the dominant American worldview.
A country’s worldview reflects its values and provides the animating spirit that is necessary to the prosperity and happiness of its people. The United States prospered because its worldview, a product of Western civilization, was suited to its circumstances, people, and resources. The unique American worldview has been shaped by experience, mistakes, failures, triumphs, and reason. It has been, and continues to be, one of the essential pillars of American greatness.
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