PITTSBURGH (TNS) — Rick Saccone could have been, and in his mind should have been, Doug Mastriano’s running mate. Instead the Franklin County state senator recruited ex-police officer Teddy Daniels to run for lieutenant governor. If you add Saccone’s second-place votes to Daniels’ third-place ones, you have enough to beat nominee Carrie Lewis DelRosso.
It’s a snub that Saccone doesn’t fully understand. He and Mastriano share eerily similar backgrounds: an impressive military career followed by a doctorate and college professorship, then elected office and enchantment with Donald Trump, culminating in what Saccone describes as a chance meeting on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021.
They also share devotion to an ideology and historiography that has come to be known as Christian nationalism, to which Saccone has built a shrine on his family’s ancestral property in Elizabeth Township.
THE SHRINE
I visited Saccone this week to talk about his career and connections with Mastriano, but also to check out his Constitution and Godly Heritage Discovery Center. The product of decades of collecting and years of mostly his own handiwork, the converted storage space above his garage is now a place of pilgrimage for homeschool, church and civic groups.
Saccone guides visitors through this space with the enthusiasm of a boy showing off his Lego sets and the professionalism of a museum docent. Moving clockwise around an island that features a model of the USS Constitution, the room tells the story of a nation imbued from the start with explicitly Christian principles and a heavenly purpose. Models of Lexington and Concord. Busts of presidents. A portrait of George Washington straight from Mount Vernon. Framed quotes from Founding Fathers referencing God. And the keystone, a massive reproduction of the United States Constitution.
Through it all, Saccone explains how the secular account of American history has systematically erased the country’s religious heritage.
What makes his Discovery Center compelling isn’t that it tells the whole story, but precisely that it does not. It’s meant as a counterweight to the dominant secular narrative. The point isn’t that Thomas Jefferson, who in an act of titanic egotism produced a redacted version of the Bible without all the miracles, was actually an orthodox and devout Christian. The point is that in his public life he was more Christian than many of today’s history books would have it.
The Discovery Center trades on the sense that this version of America has been systematically scrubbed from the public consciousness. It represents, for many people, irrefutable evidence of a patrimony denied.
For Saccone and many of the visitors to his little museum, the phrase “Christian nationalism” doesn’t sit well. This is just America, plain and simple.
THE CANDIDATE
Of course it isn’t that simple, but the idea that historical evidence for the “real America” has been laundered, and that this America is currently slipping away, rings true beyond devotees of Americanist theology. It’s key to understanding the appeal of men like Donald Trump and Doug Mastriano — and it’s also how Saccone could see no contradiction in opening his shrine shortly after participating in the events of Jan. 6.
He’s not too keen to talk about that day, but avers that he never got close to the Capitol and that his social media posts were heat-of-the-moment exaggerations that he regretted and deleted as soon as he found out how terrible things had gone beyond his view. I’m convinced he’s telling the truth as he sees it, but it only accentuates the fine line between rally and riot, between angry assembly and shambolic insurrection, when the stakes and passions are so high.
And the stakes are seen, on all sides, to be the very survival of America — as each side sees America. That’s how some can see Jan. 6 as an act of patriotism and others as its ultimate perversion: We’re talking about loving entirely different countries. And only one, seemingly, can survive.
That’s why the race for governor is so volatile: Josh Shapiro and Doug Mastriano represent not just different policies, but different views of the soul of the United States of America.
For his part, Saccone isn’t terribly impressed with Mastriano’s campaign. He doesn’t see these camps as fixed; he thinks his side can win converts, and that his party’s nominee is neglecting to try. Mastriano needs to “get outside his base,” he said. Engage the media. Open up his events. The only way to win people over is to trust them enough to build a bridge in the first place.
THE DYNAMITE
The Discovery Center isn’t the only curiosity on Saccone’s property. There’s also a shed built into the hillside that shelters the entrance to a coal mine, complete with rails and a cart that looks on loan from the set of a Western.
Saccone explains that his grandfather mined for his own coal to heat the home, and we muse about how solidly the little structure is built. They used to build for the long haul; this shed could last hundreds of years.
But it almost didn’t. Saccone points to a hidden shelf in the rafters. There, some years ago, he found a long-forgotten box. It was full of ancient, fragile, volatile dynamite.
For years the second floor of the shed had served as a workshop. One careless move, one unfortunate jostle, one badly placed bump could’ve sent this solid little shed to the moon.
Saccone may be convicted that America is an intrinsically Christian nation, but he’s also convicted that we all have to figure out how to live together. He’s confident that there’s a consensus for a “safe, stable, virtuous” republic.
But one person’s virtue is another’s vice, and those convictions are only deepening. That’s the dynamite under our feet that we’ve never been able to defuse. And no political structure, no matter how solid, can withstand its detonation.
(Brandon McGinley is the deputy editorial page editor for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.)
