You should read Jim Webb's "Born Fighting" to understand some of what 's

going on. Essentially, Webb's thesis is that it is a mistake to consider whites as a monolith or even WASPs as a monolith. He believes that the Scotch-Irish remain a distinct cultural group within the US. He points out that often times this group is labeled red-necks or white trash.

An example of this thesis in action is yesterday's vote. The "white working class" voters who went for Obama are descended from people who came from New England. Culturally, they are a different group than the white working class of Kentucky and West Virginia. They respond top Obama's call for community values because these are New England values. The Scotch Irish will love Obama too, if they realize that he is also determined to break the stranglehold the elites have on power in this country. IMO, Obama needs to find a way to connect to the Scotch Irish both to win the election and to be able to govern afterward.

I haven't read his book, but I've read one of the books it cites, Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fischer, which traces cultural differences in the United States to differences between successive waves of immigrants from the British Isles. It's an interesting read, though it necessarily ignores the influence of non-British/Irish immigrant groups (other than slaves).

He understands and connects very well with the Appalachian culture and sensibilities. And he would have no problem taking on the attack-dog role in the campaign, which is commonly one of the roles of the VP nominee.

I think there are profound differences among white cultural subgroups in America. Think of a New Englander whose Puritan ancestors came to America after Cromwell's fall in contrast to a North Dakota Russian-German, a Seattle Norwegian, and a Milwaukee German Socialist. And I haven't even gotten out of the Germanic tribes yet, haven't even started on the various flavors of Celt, Slav, Greek, Italian, Russian versus German Jew, etc.

You don't have to get far under the skin to start finding immense variations in the cultural foundations upon which the politics of each is built.

God, but that would make for an interesting book. I wish I had the time and talent to write it.

checking in. As in, the folks who were ALWAYS pacifist draft dodgers,
but also irascible moralistic sons of bitches! They are big on civil
society, skeptical of government, but believe in a social safety net.

Unlike Appalachian Pentecostals, they are mostly not so much into
checking the power of the wealthy interests as they are believers
in civil responsibility of the wealthy to serve the interests of
the community by paying taxes. They take the whole "render unto
Caesar" notion seriously. They are also habitually anti-war.

German Lutheran Pietists have a strong sense of moralistic ethics,
but don't believe in talking about their religious beliefs or
shoving them down other peoples' throats. So they have a visceral
dislike of Southern Baptist proselytizing.

Missouri synod Lutherans are right wing fundie branch of pietism;
they are skeptical of dancing and believe any government that is
not ordained and sanctified by God is communist. They are why
states like the Dakotas vote 75% for Bush while electing liberal
Democrats to the Senate.

ELCA Lutherans are the pacifist, anti-establishment, pro-safety-net libruls.

in my formative years then. :hi:

I can attest, living across the pond in the homeland of Luther, that yeah -- we don't like religion anywhere near our politics. I live in a predominantly Catholic Bundesland (Bayern) and they don't like people who flaunt their beliefs either, must have been all those darn wars. LOL. :shrug:

And this world needs MORE ELCA members....


so, to join up... post me privately! ;)

I'll have to read the whole thing sometime to really understand what he is saying, but that stuck me right off as incorrect or not fully explained in the limited space you have.


I suggest that if Obama wants to reach this group he should start talking about specifics. Vague generalizations of hope and change just don't mean alot. We are a practical people (generally speaking) and we want actions not words. We want to know that he has a plan, not that he hopes to make a plan if elected. I have no interest in hearing the preacher voice talking about "yes we can" hope, change, unity, etc.

What I want to hear from him is what I expect others want to hear. That is: What are his solutions? How will he go about making the changes? Knowing these things would go a long way in making this New England Irish-English-Scot-NA have more confidence in the nominee come November.

But let me also add that these same people- these working class Dem whites- are not Stupid, nor Ignorant. They will watch McCain and realize the guy is just not right in the head.

Just my two cents !

Fischer's thesis is that New England's values were shaped by the East Anglian puritans that settled there, while the "British Borderers" (he dislikes the term "Scots-Irish") were more prevalent in Appalachia.

who the Scotch Irish are and why they are the way they are. Another book almost as good is Grady McWhiney's "Cracker Culture".

Except for Indiana and Ohio which have a huge presence of Appalachian folks that came out of Kentucky and West Virginia. In the case of Indiana they were headed for Chicago (which is why Chicago and Baltimore used to have "ethnic Appalachian" ghettos.) This might help explain the difference between mainline Protestant Yankees in places like upstate New York, Oregon, and the Upper Midwest vs. Baptist and Pentecostal "rednecks" in the Ohio valley where lots of southerners mirated northwards.

Especially helps explain Indiana (Chuck Todd noted that there is a demographic line across the middle of Indiana south of which rural voters behaved like they did in Kentucky and Tenessee, and north of which they behaved like Massachusetts, Illinois and Michigan.) Interestingly, Cincinatti area is still German, and seems to have their own isolated branch of Republicanism. I don't know what their story is, never been there.

Congregationalists used to be the puritan church. Then the puritan
church essentially converted to Deism (unitarianism) and went from hard
core theocracy to liberal Dutch-style open-minded business Protestantism
in the course of only two generations.

Meanwhile the Great Awakening happened and sent lower-class
Congregationalists (who were being pushed out by downward mobility in
the gentrifying, immigrant-packed New England) out into the sticks of
Upstate New York and eventually Ohio and Indiana and the future
Lincoln states in general.

The first and second Great Awakening could be construed by some as
progressive movements...

...Except around the same time, Baptists and Methodists involved in the
process got tied up on the issue of RACE and divided into Northern and
Southern branches.

In a generation the Baptist church (at least in the south) went from
being at the heart of the second Great Awakening (which was mostly a
"progressive" phenomenon involving lots of social gospel of the
Rev. Wright variety) to being a statist, pro-slavery, theocratic,
politically conservative religion -- the opposite of the original
separationist, abolitionist, anti-elite, anti-establishment
tendencies of the Baptist Church, and more in keeping with
Puritanism, in fact.

The third Great Awakening in the early 1900s coincided with
Pentecostalism, which was quickly twisted into a regressive
phenomenon by aforementioned Southern Baptists and more
importantly, anti-communists looking for a religious justification
to sow hatred against unions due solely to the professed atheism
of the communist movement.

All of which is ironic since communism was influenced by the
charismsatic utopians that were involved in the second great awakening
in the 1840s; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/christian_communism/
for an example of why Southern religious hatred of "socialism" is so silly.
(Caveat: I am not a communist but the hypocrisy of theocrats on this issue
is telling.)

The fourth Great Awakening happened in the 1970s and 80s with the rise
of postmodern fundamentalism, in response to (some might say a part of)
the 1960s postmodern cultural upheaval.

The impression I get is that practicality in this context would be more of a German, Scandinavian trait and that the Scotch-Irish are more defined by an outmoded irrational opposition to governance. Hence the sparseness of the Lutheran Church and the preponderance of snake-handling as a religious tenet throughout portions of Appalachia.

For example, a practical person would conclude that any governmental program coming out of almost any government is a amalgam of competing political groups, executive branch bureaucrats, lobbyists, Congresscritters, and the White House and that the type of detailed calculation that normally defines a plan, although it can appear practical, is generally not an effective legislative approach. Nobody really wants to hear ten point plan after ten point plan...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots-Irish_Americans

New England is much more of a later fusion of English and Irish with a streak of Scots. Hence Massholes...;-)

Are certainly different than this. (and by Midwest, I'm referring to the Great Lakes region of the Midwest) They are closer to what you describe of the New Englanders. So perhaps the effect of manufacturing-based economies also play a role?

I honestly don't know how much the ancestry plays a role here. It's certainly an oversimplification of the situation.

Pugnacious
Anti-government
Sometimes racist
Anti-intellectual
Anti-elite
Religiosity instead of religion
Demagoguery goes over well
Clan relationship rather than larger community

Think Hatfields and McCoys
Think moonshine

It's more a product of the factors that determine the local culture than just the ancestry.

Maybe I'm a little touchy about this because my family is of Irish descent, but we're of more recent immigration, which also maybe makes a difference?

I don't know, in my opinion, Appalachia is just Appalachia and no one factor can take the credit (or the blame) for that culture.

Scotch-Irish or Scots-Irish were in Ulster only a few generations. They came to this country and were allowed by the Anglo-Anglican ascendancy to settle up in the hills as a buffer against the Native Americans. This group is related to what most people think of as Irish-Americans, but while there are significant similarities there are also significant differences. I should also note that at this point we're discussing culture rather than a "pure" blood-line.

Geography of the Eastern United States

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Geography-of-the-Eastern-United-States

Appalachian Great Valley

Extending from the Hudson River valley to Alabama, the Great Valley is one feature of the Appalachians that has greater continuity than any other. It is determined structurally by a belt of topographically weak limestones and shales (or slates) just inland from the crystalline uplands. Hence regardless of the direction of the rivers draining the belt, the valley has been worn down by Tertiary erosion to a continuous lowland from the Gulf of St Lawrence to central Alabama.

The lowland is uninterrupted by any transverse ridge throughout its distance of 1,500 miles, though longittidinal ridges of moderate height occasionally diversify its surface. In the middle section, the Great Valley is somewhat open on the east, by reason of the small height and broad interruptions of the narrow crystalline belt. On the west, it is limited by the complex series of Alleghany ridges and valleys. In the northeast section, the valley is strongly enclosed on the east by the New England uplands, and on the west by the Adirondacks and Catskills (see below). In the southwest section, the valley broadens from the North Carolina highlands on the southeast almost to the Cumberland plateau on the northwest due to the weaken, though still present, ridge-making formations.



The ENTIRE Great Valley was settled round the same time by
"Whiskey Rebellion" Scots-Irish. They are by and large
libertarians with a Calvinist streak.

Note the enormous Appalachian / Cumberland Plateau (purple/brown, upper left).

Commonly misidentified as "Mountains", the majority of Appalachia is serrated plateau.

The entire Great Valley (wavy line) is a continuous visible geological rift separating the recently uplifted remnants of the first Appalachian range (ancient, crystalline, mostly buried rock including the Smokies, Blue Ridge, upper Piedmont, suburban Philly, Palisades in NY, and most of New England) from the bones of the secondary plateau formed by the sediments washed out from the Himalaya-size range (including the upfolded section of the plateau which are the Allegheny ridges and valleys, opposite the Blue Ridge / Delaware Gap / Palisades, which bounds the Great Valley to the east.)

The silt from the original (greater than Himalaya) range washed into what is now the Appalachian plateau (most of WV, eastern KY and OH, all of northern and western PA, and the un-glaciated segments of the Endless Mountains that extend south of the Mohawk Valley) creating an enormous flat sedimentation plateau that compacted and formed horizontal layers of coal (fossilized plant matter) where the range once stood. The remnants were then folded in the east by action of the uplift that raised the crystalline rock to form the Blue Ridge & Smokies. The upfolds then split along the seams at top and hollowed out, producing parallel ridges. However the Appalachian Plateau area remained flat, and composed of similar rock, began to erode.

The resulting "pancake flat" plateau is completely serrated now to the point where there is NO flat land (unlike in the ridges and valleys or blue ridge). Go to any peak in the Cumberland / Allegheny plateau and you will discover that they are all the same height because it is a serrated plateau.

The entire Appalachian plateau was settled by mostly German and some Scots-Irish or Eastern European miners and foresters. Unlike in the Great Valley / Allegheny ridges and vallies, there is little arable land because it is a serrated plateau. There are many (mostly horizontal because the area was not uplifted recently) coal seams however -- the
compacted remnants of the silt deposited from the original range.

"Mountaintop removal" is the practice of removiong the entire upper (horizontal) strata from the un-eroded "peaks" and filling in the serrated "hollers" to get at the parallel coal seams at a certain consistent elevation.

These two "redneck" populations are distincly different. One is homogeneous, Scots-Irish, settled a long a continuous uninterrupted string of valleys from the Hudson to the Raritan to the Shenandoah to Knoxville to Huntsville Ala, politically libertarian and laissez-faire Calvinist (right wing capitalist, anti-government libertarian -- basically, Ayn Rand Republicanism associated with the Calvinist work ethic). Their lands are some of the best farmland in the US. Their vote has been mostly solid red since Roosevelt (including places like Lancaster PA, Hagerstown MD, and Bristol TN).

The other is widely dispersed in "hollers" with no uninterrupted stretches of level ground; of diverse European background but mostly Scots and German; and economically populist. They believe in government solutions to their (and only their -- other "undeserving outside ethnic groups" need not apply) economic problems. They are characterized by typical mountain man "don't fuck with me" politics, a mix of economic populism, pentecostal religion (charismatic -- traditionally the opposite of Calvinist, appealing to poor people in mining towns and often with an apocalyptic anti-wealth tendency), xenophobia and feuding between people living in different valleys, and social libertarianism (often coupled with -- well, xenophobia towards people of different folkways and backgrounds, however.) That is the Appalachian plateau area.

It would be interesting to know which population Webb comes out of.

If it is the former, and Webb can get them, we could be witnessing a realignment where Dems become the party of Lincoln -- upper middle class urbanites, small town Calvinist businessmen, educated plutocrats and African Americans -- and Republicans become the party of William Jennings Bryan.

Clinton seems to be making an effort to become William Jennings Bryan, the faux populist who accidentally destroyed the Populist revolution in 1900 by attempting to merge it with racist and orthodox anti-socialist religious tendencies.

Until the early 20th century, elements of Protestantism in the US were essentially a force for socialism, especially in Appalachia. Other Baptist/Pentecostal elements, of course, were essentially snake-oil salesmen preaching the prosperity gospel, a Calvinist off-shoot, and opposition to labor organizing, teaching that fundamental reading of the Bible was all people needed to get ahead in life and that they must not act collectively to improve their lives because that was socialist. Guess which variant won out?

Ironically, early Calvinism was essentially Communist in nature,
cf. Plymoth Colony and the early Calvinist theocracies. Then the
Baptists came along and established the primacy of competition as
a path to salvation (and wealth), combined with the Calvinist
idea that all governments are ordained directly by God. Starting
in England, they took over the (mostly Anglo and border Scots)
Deep South. I'm not sure how Appalachia relates to the Deep South
in religious terms but I know they take their religion seriously
which raises the question of why the American left (ever since Marx)
refuses to engage them in either class-conscious OR religious terms.

I can't get over all the time wasted in geography class as a kid learning so little that was actually worthwhile!

"Rednecks" aren't the same as WASPs, and we aren't a monolith.

He won them over, hopefully Obama can too.

for the good of all of them! I agree totally!

But how can someone make them realize it is in their best interest? Odd!

:shrug:

:kick: