In 286 AD, the Roman Emperor Diocletian administratively and peacefully divided the immense Roman Empire in two, under the control of two emperors.
A Western Empire included much of modern Western Europe and Northwest Africa. The eastern half controlled Eastern Europe, parts of Asia, and northeastern Africa.
In 330, Emperor Constantine institutionalized this split by moving the empire’s capital from Rome to his new imperial city of Constantinople, founded on the site of the ancient Greek polis of Byzantium.
The two administrative halves of this once immense empire continued to drift apart. Soon two increasingly different, though still related, versions of a once unified Romanity appeared.
The Western Empire finally collapsed into chaos at the end of the 5th century AD.
Yet the Roman eastern half survived for almost a thousand years. It was soon known as the Byzantine Empire, until it was overwhelmed by the Ottoman Turks in 1453 AD.
Historians still disagree on why the East survived while the West collapsed. And they cite the various roles of different geography, border challenges, tribal enemies and internal challenges.
We moderns have certainly developed unfair stereotypes about a late imperial Rome and supposedly decadent Hollywood sensationalism that deserved its end. And we have also, wrongly, labeled a rigid, ultra-orthodox bureaucratic “Byzantine” alternative, expected to become more reactionary in order to survive in a tough neighborhood.
Yet in both cases, geographical differences multiplied the growing differences between a Greek-speaking Orthodox Christian and an older civilization of the East, and a more or less polyglot and often conflicting Christianity of the Latin West.
Byzantium held its own against its ancient Persian, Middle Eastern and Egyptian rivals. But the West has disintegrated into a tribal amalgam of its own ancient peoples.
Unlike the West, the glue that held the East together against centuries of foreign enemies was the revered idea of an ancient and uncompromising Hellenism: the preservation of a language, a religion, a of a common and holistic Greek culture and history.
In 600 A.D., at a time when the West had long been fragmented into proto-European tribes and kingdoms, the jewel of Constantinople was the nerve center of the world’s most impressive civilization, stretching from Eastern Asia Minor to southern Italy.
There is now much talk of a new split between red state and blue state in the United States – and even far-fetched threats of a new civil war. Certainly, every year millions of Americans self-select, disengage from political opponents, and take actions based on divergent ideologies, cultures, politics, religiosity or lack thereof, and viewpoints. divergent views on the American past.
The more conservative traditionalists head inland, where there is generally smaller government, fewer taxes, more religiosity, and unapologetic traditionalists.
These modern Byzantines are more likely to define their patriotism by honoring ancient customs and rituals: standing for the national anthem, attending church services on Sundays, demonstrating respect for American history and its heroes, and emphasizing the nuclear family.
Immigration to flyover countries is still defined as a crucible of assimilation and integration of newcomers into the body politic of a sacred and enduring America.
Although red states welcome change, they believe that America never needed to be perfect to be good. It will still survive, but only if it sticks to its 234-year-old Constitution, remains united by the English language, and assimilates newcomers into an enduring and exceptional American culture.
In contrast, the more liberal blue state antithesis is richer in globalist wealth. The West Coast, from Seattle to San Diego, benefits from trade with thriving Asia. It is limited to the East Coast window on the European Union, from Boston to Miami.
Major research universities the Ivy League, MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and the University of California system are bicoastal. Just as Rome was once the iconic center of the entire Roman project, blue Washington DC is the nerve center of big American government.
The salad bowl is the bicoastal model of immigration. Newcomers can maintain and revitalize their old cultural identity.
The religion is less orthodox; atheism and agnosticism are almost the norm. And most of the recent social movements of American feminism, transgenderism, and critical race theory have emerged from coastal urbanity and academia.
Outsiders see Blue Coast Americans as the most dynamic, sophisticated, cosmopolitan – and reckless – culture, whose vast wealth is based on technology, information, communications, finance, media, education and entertainment.
In turn, they concede that the vast red interior – with roughly the same population as blue America but with a much larger area – is the more pragmatic, predictable and home of food, fuel, of America’s minerals and material production.
Our Byzantine interior and Roman shores interpret their shared American heritage very differently, as they chart increasingly radically divergent courses for survival in frightening times.
But as in the past, it is far more likely that a state model will prove untenable and collapse than that a region will spark a civil war.
