Politics replacing religion as a locus for passion.

And the problem is that in the "omni competent Federal super state that must rule all" we can't schism into our own polities. We're all trapped in the same house of hardship....the political equivalent of Jews, Hindus , Baptists and Muslims having to agree on almost everything. Another reason that the states should take a much greater role. As Adam Garfunkel concludes as it relates to Iran:

I do worry about how this diplomatic dagger dance with Iran will turn out, but I worry as much about the increasingly acrid, shrill, and irrational tone that infests what passes for our political discourse. An old professor of mine, a curious but wonderful fellow named E. Digby Baltzell, once remarked that the tragedy of American society in the 20th century was that the prodigious native energies of American religion had migrated into politics, to the detriment of both. A truer or more alarming nutshell analysis has yet to pass my eyes.