We all know that the red-state/blue-state vision of American politics is too simplistic—and yet, due to the nature of our political culture, particularly our winner-take-all election system—there is a powerful logic behind the two-party system that finds its expression in the seemingly static red-state/blue-state configuration. At the same time, we also recognize a sort of four-way logic, with two axes—social and economic. In a recent article at Huffington Post, novelist Jane Smiley argued for another four-fold vision of American politics—one rooted in four distinct cultural traditions dating back to Colonial America. This vision, elaborated in David Hacker Fischer’s book, Albion’s Seed, has the advantage of being rooted in rich, concrete cultural traditions, rather than stripped-down theoretical ideals. In this diary, I want to tease out some of its potential power.
Background
This is my third diary about Smiley’s take on Fischer’s book, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, in which she first describes the four folkways—Puritan. Cavalier, Quaker and (Scots-Irish) Borderer—then speculates on their significance for American politics. The first diary, "Political Correctness vs. Discussing American Culture At Dkos" introduced her article, and defended it against unfounded charges cultural stereotyping, which would have the effect of short-circuiting any sort of thoughtful discussion about cultural group factors and their impacts on politics. The second diary, "Jane Smiley and James Webb—Contrasting Views on The Scots Irish" contrasted Smiley’s article with a 2004 Wall Street Journal op-ed by James Webb, finding points of agreement, as well as disagreement. While those were both longish diaries closely examining specific texts, this one steps back to highlight connections with larger issues or themes. It gives an indication of some of the reasons why Fischer’s typology is something we should pay a lot more attention to. But first, for the benefit of those who missed the earlier diaries, I’ll reintroduce the typology, as Smiley explained it.
In hopes of preventing misunderstanding and distracting arguments already discussed before, it’s necessary to say that (1) cultural characteristics are not individual ones; (2) they are historical and contingent, not essential aspects of people’s being; (3) they are matters of allegience, rather than blood. Furthermore, while the stress here is primarily on negative aspects of Borderer culture, this is not to suggest that it is only negative. Indeed, the GOP has worked hard to accentuate various negative aspects of Borderer culture, whose political significance is the primary concern in this diary/
Smiley’s Description of the Four Traditions
As Smiley explains, Fischer describes four cultural traditions:
1. Puritans from East Anglia to New England, 1629-1641. Characteristics in both England and America: Calvinist, family-oriented (the ratio of men to women was 3-2, rather than 4-1, as in Virginia), highly motivated, closely related to one another, intently focused on moral principles and precepts, urban, and generally middle-class and highly literate. Women were not equal, but they were relatively independent agents who entered into the marriage contract, could be divorced, could inherit, and often were powers in the community. Children were considered the responsibility of both parents, and they were required to conform. Fathers were expected to be strict but affectionate.....
2. Cavaliers and Indentured Servants from the south of England to Virginia, 1642-1675. Characteristics in both England and America: Anglican, status- and wealth-based, highly hierachical, focused on familial inheritance rather than community, rural, with an emphasis on large estates. Women were legally possessions rather than agents and often referred to as "breeders", but were prized for beauty and fiery independence. Children were absolutely subject to fathers, but frequently indulged, expected to retain their independence of spirit....
3. Quakers from the North Midlands to Pennsylvania and New Jersey, 1675-1725. Characteristics in both England and America: Quakers and Quaker sympathizers were both anti- hierarchical and anti-doctrinal. They believed in a God of love, not punishment, and did away with rituals, sacraments, and professional ministers. Communities of Quakers were ethnically diverse and had strong ties to communities with similar beliefs in Europe; they were welcoming to the large number of German immigrants who came after them, but not welcoming to the next set of English immigrants, the North Borderers (see below). Quakers tended to be working-class.... People tended to be independent, egalitarian, rural, plain-spoken, and receptive to unorthodox religious ideas. In America, Quaker families were love-oriented rather than rule- or status-oriented, and more child-nurturing than other English cultures; husbands and wives were more or less equal, based on the idea that "in souls there is no sex" (p. 490)....
4. Scots-Irish "New Light" Protestants from the Border Counties and Ulster to the Appalachian Backcountry, 1717-1775. Characteristics in both Britain and America: Mean as a snake and twice as quick...oh, excuse me. I am losing my judicious tone. Let me begin again. Scots-Irish immigrants from the northern parts of Britain and from Ulster were generally fleeing what was an increasingly archaic, warrior-based society. Most were tenant farmers or the tenants of tenants. As Irishmen and Scots, they had built up years of economic resentment and Celtic pride with regard to their English neighbors and landlords.... Tenancy was based on the ability to fight, and the economy was primitive compared to other parts of England. Keywords: poverty and violence.... Their religious beliefs were diverse on the surface, but shared an underlying intensity and tribal character--they were believers, simultaneously, in grace and sectarian conflict.... Clannish, suspicious, well-armed, and believers in "bride abduction" (!) as a good method of courtship. In marriage, men dominant, women absolutely subservient, and wife beating considered normal. Rage a typical (if not desired) feature of child-raising; beatings common. [Emphasis added]
These traditions, once matters of blood, have increasingly become matters of affinity, as groups have migrated and interacted, joined by immigrants from around the world who have found different forms of afininty for these pre-existing cultural forms. Smiley even points to G.W. Bush and Al Gore as paired examples of Puritans and Borderers changing their allegiences.
Smiley observes that each of the four has its natural enemy: Puritans vs. Cavaliers (think Civil War) and Quakers vs. Scots-Irish Borderers (today’s culture wars). Additionally, these divisions provide something in the way of answer to to Thomas Frank’s question, "What’s The Matter With Kansas?"
For liberals, perhaps this analysis helps to explain why American economic populists are often split and therefore unable to assert themselves against the depredations of the wealthy. Populism based on an idea of "liberty from want" (a New England idea, and a Roosevelt idea), according to which the community has an obligation to help its unfortunate members, is quite different from populism based on self-assertion by self-consciously resentful non-"elite" parts of society. One is a populism based on a sense of social obligation, the other a populism based on injured pride. I would also suggest that arms-bearing economic populists like James Webb and John Tester, who were elected in November, are not especially trustworthy friends for liberals, because they are temperamentally, traditionally, and psychologically very different from us.
Smiley suggests that Quakers (liberals) would be wiser to seek alignment with Puritans:
Our natural allies are descendants of the Puritans, members of culture #1, who may seem to us hard to get to know, not especially welcoming, too legalistic and insular. That's how they have always seemed to other Americans. One thing Fischer points out about Puritan society is that New England congregations made membership difficult to achieve and surrounded it with rules and responsibilities, but even so, most Puritans and their families strove to become members and succeeded, achieving a tremendously high level of social cohesion that looked from the inside like community and from the outside like an intimidating and exclusive club.
Five Themes On A Four-Fold Typology
With this background in mind, I now want to turn to five larger issues or themes that I think can be greatly clarified by Fischer’s typology—and Smiley’s reflections on it. The utility I see reflected here is a powerful argument for paying much more attention to what both of them have to say.
(1) Borderers and the Southern Strategy.
The rise of the GOP via the culture wars since the 1960s has been predicated in large part on stirring up outgroup animosities, accentuating Borderer-like characteristics across all groups. The Southern Strategy, with a heavy reliance on turning the Southern Scots-Irish against the Democrats over civil rights, is the biggest single piece of this pattern, but is far from isolated or unique.
The original architect of the Southern Strategy was Kevin Phillips. His blueprint was laid out in the book, The Emerging Republican Majority, portions of which were circulated inside Nixon’s 1968 campaign. In a New York Times article, "Nixon's Southern Strategy 'It's All In the Charts'" [PDF] by James Boyd, published May 17, 1970, Phillips is quoted as saying:
"From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."
Flipping the Solid South from Democratic to Republican was surely the most important—and most morally repugnant—aspect of his thinking, but for Phillips it was part of a larger pattern, as Boyd explained:
Phillips had grown up in the Bronx. His observations of life in this polyglot borough had convinced him that all the talk about melting-pot America was buncombe. Most voters, he had found, still voted on the basis of ethnic or cultural enmities that could be graphed, predicted and exploited. For instance, the old bitterness toward Protestant Yankee Republicans that had for generations made Democrats out of Irish, Italian and Eastern European immigrants had now shifted, among their children and grandshildren, to resentment of the new immigrants--Negroes and Latinos--and against the national Democratic Party, whose Great Society programs increasingly seemed to reflect favoritism for the new minorities over the old. No matter that only 29 percent of Americans would admit to being Republicans; Phillips could show you 50 Congressional districts where working-class Catholics were leaving the Democratic party in droves. This would accelerate if only dense Republicans would learn to read the portents.
What we have here is a deliberate strategy of working to fragment American society, fomenting animosity and pitting group against group—despite decades of conservative rhetoric blaming liberals for destroying social cohesion. Southern Borderer culture was the prime target, but a whole host of white ethnic groups—overwhelmingly Catholic—were also targeted in a way that sharpened hostility to the same bottom-of-the-totem-pole group: African-Americans.
(2) Borderer Norms and the GOP/Movement Conservative Hegemony.
The Southern Strategy, and the allied targetting of white ethnic groups nationwide was only the beginning of building GOP/Movement conservative hegemony. The full project required a wide-ranging substitution of conflict-based Borderer norms for the reality-based Quaker/Puritan norms that gained ascencion with the New Deal, and remained dominant through World War II and roughly 20 years of unprecedented post-War prosperity.
This substitution of Borderer norms is evident across a wide range of fronts. The abolition of the Fairness Doctrine under Ronald Reagan did away with the norm requiring a balanced presentation of views, which had the overall effect of moderating discourse, keeping it civil, and promoting both sound arguments and adherence to facts. While far from perfect (entire topics were often simply ignored), it was a powerful bulwark against what was to follow—the torrent of villifcation and Borderer-style fighting words that quickly poured forth from right-wing talk radio.
Similarly, when Newt Gingrich came to power in 1995, he eliminated the Office of Technology Assessment, which provided an objective and authoritative analysis of scientific and technical issues for Congress—a classic exmple of the Quaker/Puritan reality-based approach to public policy-making. Eliminating OTA enabled a shift toward Border values, with assertion replacing objective investigtion as the coin of the realm. This made it child’s play for the GOP-dominated Congress to ignore, and even ridicule the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming—just to cite one prominant excample.
More recently, the promotion of Borderer norms explains the Bush Administration’s wholesale attack on reality, for example. The same day I read Smiley’s article, I read another article at Huffington Post by NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen, The Retreat from Empiricism and Ron Suskind's Intellectual Scoop. The juxtaposition of the two pieces was compelling. Rosen’s piece was an extended reflection on Suskind’s "reality-based community" scoop (which itself unmasked the Borderer contempt for reality), why the press was unable to really digest and build on it, and how they might have done so.
But Rosen’s piece only goes so far, because he lacks the larger context that Smiley’s reading of Fischer provides: What he’s dealing with is ony one aspect of how a Borderer mentality manipulates Quaker/Puritan norms to serve its own ends. For example, the norms of fairness and balance are used to "balance" outrageous lies against well-established fact. Then, in further support of this strategy, the covnetional separation of factual reporting and opinion is used to suppress the inclusion of critical context.
One of Rosen’s suggestions was:
- It could have covered the entire retreat from empiricism, which took place across the government, and not just in war-making. There have been thousands of conflicts between the Bush political machine and every variety of reality check known to modern government. Reporters could have connected those dots.
However, to connect those dots, they would first have to notice them. And this they generally failed to do. Within weeks of coming to power, the Bush Administration was already coming under fire from the scientific press for its anti-science proclivities, but the political press never picked up on this, under the rationale that it was not a subject of political debate. Then, when Congressman Henry Waxman did connect the dots, with the report "Politics and Science: The State of Science Under the Bush Administration", that was covered as a political controversy—when covered at all—in which the subject of Bush’s attack on sicence itself took a backseat to the Borderer/political conflict storyline that framed the coverage.
The same dynamic—a Borderer use of Quaker/Puritan norms as strategic weapons against Quaker/Puritan culture, institutions, values and practices—lies at the heart of the organized attack on evolution. The "Wedge Strategy"—and before it, Paul Johnson’s original strategy of using the adversarial trial setting (Darwin on Trial)—is a plan of battle in which the core body of scientific evidence and norms of scientific practice (both Quaker/Puritan products) are entirely circumvented in substance, while their forms are selectively mimicked in popular fora.
Indeed, this dynamic also explains why Bush became President in the first place, instead of Gore. With its Borderer values, the Conservative majority on the Supreme Court had no problem patching together a rationale for its 5-4 decision that not one law professor would defend at the time. (In defending the result, but not the opinion, the most prominent Bush defender, Judge Richard Posner, even went so far as to argue that judges should have lied about their own thought processes and beleifs to produce a more intellectually consistent rationale.
In short, this dynamic—unrecognized and only haphazardly responded to—lies at the heart of the GOP/movement conservatives’ broad range of political successes over the past 20 years.
(3) The Perils and Challenges of A Populist Quaker/Borderer Alliance & The Democrat’s Search For A New "Southern Strategy."
Smiley is right to be sceptical about the possibilities of Quakers (liberals) to form strong alliances with Borderer populists. She writes:
I would also suggest that arms-bearing economic populists like James Webb and John Tester, who were elected in November, are not especially trustworthy friends for liberals, because they are temperamentally, traditionally, and psychologically very different from us.
Smiley is almost certainly too sceptical in some respects, particularly since (1) Tester and Webb seem to be quite different men, with significant differences as well as similarities, and (2) Tester comes from a more culturally and demographically complex state—typical of the differences between the South and the interior West—while Webb identifies strongly with his native Scots-Irish heritage, even if it was primarily newcomers to Northern Virginia who provided his margin of victory.
Yet she’s right to argue that deep cultural differences stand in the way of mutual understanding and respect. This reinforces the point made by Tom Schaller in Whistling Past Dixie. While Dean’s 50-state strategy is sound, and worth pursuing to build up state and local Democratic Party strength, national campaigns should not be premised on the notion of winning back the South. Electorally such strategies are not necessary (the GOP did just fine without the South from Lincoln until the Great Depress) and will only continue to further muddle what Democrats stand for.
In his op-ed, discussed in an earlier diary, Webb concluded:
The decline in public education and the outsourcing of jobs has hit this culture hard. Diversity programs designed to assist minorities have had an unequal impact on white ethnic groups and particularly this one, whose roots are in a poverty-stricken South. Their sons and daughters serve in large numbers in a war whose validity is increasingly coming into question. In fact, the greatest realignment in modern politics would take place rather quickly if the right national leader found a way to bring the Scots-Irish and African Americans to the same table, and so to redefine a formula that has consciously set them apart for the past two centuries.
While undoubtedly true, the chances of such a realignment are as close to zero as one can imagine. Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to do it with his Poor People’s Movement, and got himself assasinated for his pains. No serious effort has been launched along these lines ever since. This does not mean that the gap can’t be closed somewhat, and that economic populism holds the key to doing this. But there’s a big difference between modestly closing perhaps the largest political gap around and closing it utterly, once and for all.
Smiley and Webb share one thing in common: they are both thinking in terms of major realignments. And that leads both of them astray. Just as modest progress can be made toward forging a populist economic alliance between African-Americans and Scots-Irish, so, too, can Quakers and Scots-Irish form the beginnings of an alliance based on the same populism—however different the thinking that leads them there. Understanding the cultures provides a roadmap for dealing with the hurdles that stand in the way of further progress. That’s a far cry from actually overcoming the hurdles. But it ain’t chopped liver, either.
(4) The Existing Quaker/Puritan Alliance.
Instead of reaching out to Borderer populists, Smiley suggests forging a Quaker/Puritan alliance. Just as I think Smiley’s thinking is sound, but too pessimistic on the former, I think she also under-appreciates how much of a Quaker/Puritan alliance already exists. After all, she herself identified FDR’s New Deal with Puritan culture, writing:
I do think that there are several reasons why culture #4 [Borderer] has risen to prominence. One is that, facing a loss of power in the seventies, the Republican Party (once the party of culture #1 [Puritan], but bumped out of there by Roosevelt) cynically opted to appeal to the worst aspects of culture #4, especially racist anger, in order to use the electoral college to gain office.
With the virtual disappearance of the GOP from the New England Congressional delegation, that alliance seems ascendent once again. The very concept of a "reality-based community" is still more evidence of that alliance, for it has roots in both. This alliance is not without its problems—as seen in so-called "free trade" orthodoxy, for example, an issue on which Borderer populists are clearly correct, even if sometimes tinged with xenophobia. "Free trade" has deep roots in Puritan culture, and we need to confront the deep ideological commitment to it with the cold hard facts showing the gap between theory and fact.
(5) Lakoff’s "Nurturant Parent/Strict Father" Model And The Quaker/Borderer Cultural Dichotomy.
Lakoff’s "Nurturant Parent/Strict Father" model for the metaphorical foundations of American libeeralism and conservatism has histroical precedents in the Quaker/Borderer cultural dichotomy. This is not to say that the Strict Father model was unique to Borderers—only that it manifested more vividly in Borderer culture than in any other. The traumatic nature of Borderer history actually makes it more extreme than Lakoff’s optimal model. It corresponds noticeably with examples of what Lakoff describes as "deviational pathologies."
Smiley:
In America, Quaker families were love-oriented rather than rule- or status-oriented, and more child-nurturing than other English cultures; husbands and wives were more or less equal, based on the idea that "in souls there is no sex" (p. 490)....
Scots-Irish "New Light" Protestants from the Border Counties and Ulster.... believers in "bride abduction" (!) as a good method of courtship. In marriage, men dominant, women absolutely subservient, and wife beating considered normal. Rage a typical (if not desired) feature of child-raising; beatings common.
Lakoff:
The Nurturant Parent Model.... The primal experience behind this model is one of being cared for and cared about, having one's desires for loving interactions met, living as happily as possible, and deriving meaning from one's community and from caring for and about others.....
People are realized in and through their "secure attachments": through their positive relationships to others, through their contribution to their community, and through the ways in which they develop their potential and find joy in life. Work is a means toward these ends, and it is through work that these forms of meaning are realized....
Through empathizing and interacting positively with their children, parents develop close bonds with children and teach them empathy and responsibility towards others and toward society. Nurturant parents view the family as a community in which children have commitments and responsibilities that grow out of empathy for others. The obedience of children comes out of love and respect for parents, not out of fear of punishment. When children do wrong, nurturant parents choose restitution over retribution whenever possible as a form of justice.
The Strict Father Model. A traditional nuclear family with the father having primary responsibility for the well-being of the household. The mother has day-to-day responsibility for the care of the house and details of raising the children. But the father has primary responsibility for setting overall family policy, and the mother's job is to be supportive of the father and to help carry out the father's views on what should be done. Ideally, she respects his views and supports them.
Life is seen as fundamentally difficult and the world as fundamentally dangerous.... He [the father] insists on his moral authority, commands obedience, and when he doesn't get it, metes out retribution as fairly and justly as he knows how.
[Deviational pathologies]
- Excessive discipline: When normal desires are seen to be evils to be punished or when punishment is excessive and results in harm.
- Authoritarian behavior: When rules are laid down either for no good reason or without appropriate explanation and discussion.
The similarities are so striking as to need no further comment—though a glance at the passages from Smiley’s essay makes it clear that the Strict Father model has Puritan and Cavalier roots as well.
Conclusion
These five themes are hardly meant to be exhaustive. Rather, they present an initial glimpse of the sorts of insights that can flow from taking Firscher’s work seriously, and reflecting on contemporary politics in light of it, as Smiley has done. We do not have to all agree on what it means—as I have sometimes disagreed with Smiley—in order for this to be fruitful for us. Indeed, as a reality-based Quaker, I just can’t help myself: Anything that contributes to understanding is fruitful.
Kumbayah, dudes and dudettes.