January 10, 2004
GETTIN' WHIGGY:
Dean, Yankee of Vermont (Michael Lind, January 09, 2004, The Globalist)
It is easy to see that the map of Democratic electoral votes in recent primary elections tracks the Puritan migration closely.The political line of confrontation involved white Southerners and New England Yankees. These two groups have hated each other warmly since the early years of the Republic.
New Englanders view Southerners as violent, superstitious and reactionary barbarians. Southerners, in return, have always viewed New Englanders as annoying and preachy prudes attracted to utopian fantasies of social reform.
Over the decades — within the Northeast and Midwest — Greater New England Yankees alienated Catholic immigrants for many generations with their anti-Catholicism and their social liberalism. [...]
Today’s Democrats are in danger of being marginalized like the Federalists, Whigs and New Deal era Republicans. That will be their fate if the party’s white Greater New England voters cannot make alliances with other groups which otherwise share few — if any — of their basic values.
Blacks and Latinos, like white Southern populists, tend to support government spending programs that benefit ordinary Americans — and they also tend to have conservative religious and social views.
A party that combines New England’s fiscal conservatism with New England’s social liberalism is not likely to appeal to any of these groups. Latinos, like white Southern populists, may be lured away from the Democrats by the Southern Right’s use of jingoistic patriotism and traditional values.
The deep strain of anti-militarism among the descendants of the New England Puritans is a political liability as well.
Again and again, Southern conservatives have successfully portrayed anti-war New Englanders as pacifists, defeatists — even traitors.
Add to all that the demographics of the situation, with the Southern conservative region growing and the Puritan region shrinking and you've got the recipe for one party rule for decades. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 10, 2004 8:34 AM
Except that the ruling party is hidebound enough to want to import voters for its opponents.
About the Federalists, don't miss Allen Guelzo's recent essay
Posted by: Paul Cella at January 10, 2004 8:45 AMIf the dominant New England tendency has always
been toward pacifism, I doubt the civil war
would have been fought (or at least carried
through to its decisive conclusion).
As a geographer I am always fascinated by these
types of regional analyses. On the other hand
I think they usually play loose with the facts
in order to push the analogy.
The descendents of the New Enland Puritans committed political and ethnic suicide and
were overwhelmed by mass immigration from Europe.
It is not clear to me that utopian aspirations
of the current inheritors of the Puritan homeland
are literally descended from the eschatological
utopianism of the real Puritans. Rather I think
these are part of the wave of mass utopianism
that sprang from the enlightenment and are more
kindred with 19th century English progressives
and to an increasing extent with continental
state socialism.
The Democrats have enough pragmatists in their ranks (particularly in the Midwest where Clinton-Gore have performed pretty well) to remain a force for some time to come.
Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at January 10, 2004 11:32 AMI've heard it described (it was in a book long ago and don't ask which one) that the War Between the States was due to differences between Massachusetts and South Carolina, which managed to drag their respective regions along, and force the rest of the country to choose sides.
As for the pacifisim part, it's more of a reverse jihad, in which everyone else is supposed to not fight against God's will. And wasn't one reason the South decided to fight was because they perceived the North as not having the will, especially if they lost the first few battles? (Funny, that means Jeff Davis and Osama bin-Dead have something in common-- misunderestimating their opponent.)
Ali,
First, the few pragmatists you must be refering to must be primarily state governors or may be some other high state official. Why not mayors, why not State Senators? Because the problem is that many of the pragmatists end up having to sacrifice whatever made them reasonable to the average Midwest crowd (pragmatism, you and The Economist say; here, we may say, they still have traits of traditional American values) to be big city mayors almost an anywhere and to earn the National machinery's support for almost any expensive Federal race (Senate, Presidency). If the national machinery coninues to be dominated by a secular (which is reallly, anti-religious) cultural snobs, trial lawyers, and angry (urban) victimn groups, they will not get far.
Posted by: MG at January 10, 2004 6:52 PMIsn't the Bush family from New England?
Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger at January 10, 2004 11:21 PM