Who are these people?
Who are the "Birthers", "Tea-Baggers" and various other haters and malcontents?
A great posting last month answering that question had me thinking about it.
Yo, Pundits! Here's What's Up With the Republicans by Geenius at Wrok
It was a study on historian David Hackett Fischer's book Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America
That posting and that book concentrated on the migrants that came from England's northern border region to America's Appalachia and their impact on today's political thought and culture in general.
In my opinion, those migrants were never the power players. They have always been on the sidelines watching the real match.
I've always been interesting in history and in particular American and British history.
When the British first were able to establish colonies in America, it was in two places by two different people for two very different reasons: Virginia and Massachusetts.
Virginia was a commercial venture sanctioned by London power-brokers.
Massachusetts was refuge for some new-age cultists from East Anglia outside of London's financial influences.
London and East Anglia themselves have different cultures and histories. London was founded by the Roman Empire while East Anglia was founded by Germanic tribes. Back on the continent, these two entities were playing Empire and Barbarians.
The Virginians carried a historical imperial legacy of conquering lands, enslaving people and a strict social caste system.
The Massachusetts Puritans carried a historical legacy of religious zealotry but with some meritocracy.
When they developed to the point of breaking away from Mother England, these two had become the cultural centers of the Northern and the Southern states.
The first issue of a shared Constitution required the infamous Three-Fifths Compromise that was the splitting of the difference of counting or not counting the slaves to appease the South and allow them to support to the new Constitution, thus creating the United States.
The election of 1800, the first real political fight of the newly formed United States, it was a battle between the Federalist John Adams of Massachusetts and Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson of Virginia.
What Slavery did for the South was that it kept the medieval economic system of feudalism still alive long after it had disappeared elsewhere in favor of industrialization.
Sixty years later. the Civil War settled the matter of slavery. Northerner Lincoln was the political decedent of John Adams and John Quincy Adams and Southerner Jefferson Davis was the political decedent of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. They each played their roles following their scripts.
This is a very important thing to remember; between the Civil War and the Great Depression the two major political parties representing each side of the ancient feud radically switched ideologies. The Southern Democrats moved Left while the Northern Republicans moved Right. This happened for a number of different reasons. Between FDR and Reagan, the Democrats became the party of the North while the Republicans became the party of the South. From the end of the Civil War to today, the once religious North became more secular and the once secular South became more religious.
The Red/Blue split of today is still that outgoing fight between North and South and between the imperial and idealistic. This thread reaches back thousands of years ago.
And because I may have a regional bias, here is a comment that should be noted from Navy Vet Terp.
I don't think it is right to compare Jefferson Davis to Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. Jefferson had the harshest words for slavery early on, and although he softened his opposition late in life, as he relied on his slaves to farm Montecello, he was never a defender of slavery, and was alarmed at the threat of dissolution that was temporarily settled by the Missouri Compromise, "the fire bell in the night."
Jefferson responded to British impressment of U.S. seaman by the British navy on a U.S. ship with the Embargo Act of 1807, which barred trade with all countries. Jefferson near the end of his term pushed through Congress the Non-Intercourse Act, which allowed trade but still barred trade with Britain and France. The War Hawks denounced Jefferson for being a coward afraid to fight Britain and France. Rather than starting the War of 1812, Jefferson tried to keep us out of war with Britain.
Jackson, like Jefferson, owned slaves, but, unlike Jefferson, as far as I know, never condemned slavery. But, like Jefferson, he was a fervant Unionist - his put down of John C. Calhoun and nullification is one of the most famouse episodes of our history. Neither Jefferson nor Jackson would have supported secession had they been alive in 1861.
Jefferson Davis was the political descendant of John C. Calhoun, not Jefferson and Jackson.
And Virginians and Tennesseans owned slaves, but they didn't burn witches and Quakers.