Or, maybe I could just call it Chesterton’s Insight on War. However, in his writing about the history of man, when he is writing about war, he has actually presented a new, and useful, insight to my hypothesis about the Philosophical Divide.
What I have proposed is that as a Great Crisis comes, part of what leads a unified society into a crisis within itself is that the society no longer finds itself in the spider web of tensegrity that allows for stability. Instead, what emerges is two distinct sides or opinions that swallows up all other differences. By the time of Crisis, the society, there is little to no more unity and in its place is “us” and “them.”
In the history of the world, the generalization of “them” or “those people” is what so often leads to conflict. This can, of course, happen in a workplace or even a family….what is a divorce but a civil war between two formerly united people.
What contributes to this moment in time, though, is that whatever the issue is, it allows one, sometimes both sides the moment to stake out a high-stakes situation where the other is threatening the very fabric of life. Of course, in most cases it isn’t really that the “very fabric of life” has been threatened, but merely that’s how it is perceived. Oh, trust me, very real change will come; have no doubt that on the other side of the Crisis, for over 500 years, clear and deep change to the civic society has occurred. It’s just that if you are on the losing side, it’s not as if the winners go about killing everyone. So, it’s not so much the “very fabric of life” but more the way that one has long experienced life and culture.
Still, in that moment, when you consider that the way you have long experienced life and culture could be transformed, that is usually a threatening feeling. It is here then that Chesterton provides real insight. 
“…in the psychology of war, our history is stiff with official documents, public or private, which tells us nothing of the thing itself. At the worst, we only have the official posters, which could not have been spontaneous precisely because they were official. At the best we have only the secret diplomacy, which could not have been popular precisely because it was secret….[yet in the end] governments do not fight at all. [So] why do the fighters fight? What is the psychology that sustains the terrible and wonderful thing called a war?
[Humans fight for] generally two ideas, which are only two sides of one idea. The first is the love of something said to be threatened, if it be only vaguely known as home; the second is dislike and defiance of some strange thing that threatens it. The first is far more philosophical than it sounds….but the negative side of it is quite as noble as well as quite as strong. Men fight hardest when they fell that the foe is at once an old enemy and an eternal stranger….Men are moved in these things by something far higher and holier than policy; by hatred….This is not the sentiment which some of my idealistic friends describe as Love. I am quite content to call it hatred; the hatred of hell and all its works….
There is a religious war when two worlds meet; that is when two visions of the world meet; or in ore modern language when two moral atmospheres meet. What is the one man’s breath is the other man’s poison; and it is vain to talk of giving a pestilence a place in the sun.”
This last paragraph is perhaps as succinct and clear picture of what is going on currently in the USA. There is a religious war in which two moral atmospheres are meeting. On the one side is the old religion of an American that has some connection to the Christian religion. It isn’t perfect and it certainly isn’t “American is a Christian nation.” The USA never has been such, either in fact or in myth. However, it always was a nation, or an idea, with at least one foundation stone being the Christian faith, and in particular it’s view of the world regarding human interaction.
On the other side is a new religion of an American that not only has openly rejected the Christian religion, but in its place created a new moralism, some new unnamed religion. In fact, if challenged, most supporters of this will refuse to accept the idea that they support a religious view, showing how deep their animosity and disdain is for faith. And yet, their agenda is no less a morality that they want protected and enforced by law.
I’ll stop there and not get into how I think things should be or thoughts of the USA Founders or anything else. Just go back and re-read Chesterton’s words. It clarifies why the Philosophical Divide is such a big deal. Once we get there, to this religious war, then both sides are, in essence, asking the other to breath in the poison of the other. As Lincoln noted, such a house cannot stand for long so divided. As Chesterton wrote, the willingness to fight in conflict emerges over “dislike and defiance of some strange thing that threatens” one’s way of life.
We are on the cliff. As Gandalf said in Return of the King: “It is the deep breath before the plunge.” Get ready.