Two-Faith Nation by David French, National Review

This piece by David French in the National Review, is very similar to Croatia being Catholic and Serbia being Orthodox Christian within the constrains of the kingdom of Yugoslavia, but the difference being is that both are highly irreligious in comparison to America. Many people state that their activated identity is Croat/Catholic (Oh I'm Catholic), Serb/Orthodox, but then state "But I don't believe in God, and don't go to church that often." Similarly, America, evinced by the last election is becoming much like that, and is starting to lack the horizontal ties and friendships that cut across activated identities that are needed to outright stop a Civil War. Similarly, Orson Scott Card, the great author of Ender's Game, wrote a whole book called Empire, a book based off the Yugoslav Civil Wars (the second Yugoslavia, the more famous Yugoslavia) about an American Civil War today. You can read his book here.

David French also correctly points out how if one side gains, it is a loss for the other side. I feel like this is more like the run up to the Great Depression in the First Yugoslavia. The Croats signed up for Yugoslavia expecting more the federalism of the American state, while the Serbs expected a unified, centralized state weighted in their favor, Yugoslavia being seen as a "Greater Serbia". The Serbs had the majority of the population, and also had a preexisting independent nation-state with a king and institutions, unlike the Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, Albanians, and Bosnians at the time of independence. The country was more centralized, based in Belgrade (Beograd), and was ruled by the king.This started the first wave of protests in Croatia, demanding the promised federalism. The king just about acquiesced, when the Orthodox priests said no don't do this. This, along with the funding of printing presses by the Nazi regimes in Germany and Italy, led to the radicalization of the Croats, as the Ustashe, or Croatian Nazis began to agitate and plan terrorist attacks,. One of these plots, actually ended the king's life. Had the king listened to the Croats, he might have had three really bad options for him regardless of what he did:


1) Give into the Croatian demands, and be seen in the post-Versailles world as a weak ruler. This is in light of the loss of Fiume/Rijeka to a ragtag group of Italian nationalists who managed to take over the city for about two to three years. (There's a great sci-fi novel if you have never read it)The Croats might have even gained their independence, and that would have blocked Yugoslavia's way to the sea---not good for an agriculturally based economy, and may have even led to a war, much like how in the second Yugoslavia, Serbia desired Croatian ports to maintain its economy.

A map of Fiume/Rijeka

No machine-readable author provided. Decius assumed (based on copyright claims). [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

2) Give into the Croatian demands, and have the powerful Orthodox church conspire with the army to overthrow him. (There were two historical Serbian royal families, the Karadjordjeviches and the Obrenoviches.) In 1904, the Obrenoviches were overthrown by a military coup by the same guys who launched WWI. This paved the way for Prince Alexander Karadjordjevich, the king I am talking about to eventually become king of Serbia and Yugoslavia. One must also parallel how the Orthodox priests demoralized the citizens of the besieged Constantinople by telling them about their wickedness, and robbing them of the will to fight. "He is a wicked king." Loosing the mandate of heaven would have been a bad idea in an Orthodox majority country.
3) Give into the Orthodox priest's' demands and have the course of history happen as it did.

Credit: British Pathe

Option 3.5 might have been give into the Croatian demands, but find a way to be more of the American state system. I don't know if that was even possible one hundred years ago!
*Edit: I received a lot of backlash on this post, so this is my explanation of why I put this stuff in.
The map below is a map of how the kingdom of Yugoslavia was divided during this time. It is this conflict that led to the horrible civil wars in both the 1940's and the 1990's because neither side could be satisfied. They were trying to divide the country by non traditional borders. This is why Tito and his Communists allowed the "independent republics" to be set up. They were definitely not independent because they were controlled by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Money from Slovenia and Croatia went to poorer parts of Bosnia and Serbia. I have heard stories of people working three to four jobs in order to pay off their taxes. This wasn't fair or sustainable. And evidently, there were killings and atrocities and identity cleavages I had no idea about due to the particular politics of the time. I knew it was bad, but I didn't realize how difficult it would be to talk about it.

Credit: Bukkia [Public domain]

This didn't work. Period. It didn't fit traditional BCS ethnic enclaves, it was gerrymandering so to speak!

Here are traditional (post 1990's) ethnic compositions. There is a reason the Kingdom of Yugoslavia didn't work.

Here is the attempted de jure " Communist federalism" during Communist Yugoslavia. In reality, de facto, it was one country under one regime.  It didn't work. On a map it seemed to solve the ethnic issues and the issues of federalism. In reality, most people had to flee as refugees or they had to work outside the country as guest workers.

Source: FamilySearch

So finally after the war, this is what it has come out to be.  5-7 independent countries that

And this is why we cannot have a two-faith nation---it doesn't work, especially as the seven different nations of the split ex-Yugoslavia shows. There is no unity there right now. Whether it pits the sacred and the secular, the Catholics and the Orthodox, liberal versus conservative, this kind of conflict simply doesn't work. And we have enough knowledge of history that I think we can work it out here in America. We don't have to end up with this particular situation playing out here in the United States. Our choices in the moment everyday are what determine how our national culture plays out. If I reach out to a liberal as a conservative, we can find a way to work together. I know it's hard, I have had some very bad experiences with the rising tide of liberal power in America---but I've also had some awesome community-building experiences too. And I would rather look at the humanity within all of us, for good and for bad, and see what we can do with it for the betterment of our families, our neighbors, our communities, our states, our countries, our people, our species, our world, and work from there regardless of our past.