Tom’s Big Picture

In the first part in this series, I made a case that our lives and the lives of our children are enriched by our ethnocultural identity, as any attempt to erase human distinctions of culture and ethnicity is an attempt to recreate Babel and against God’s ordained order. Even with a Christian veneer and its illusory potential to end interethnic conflict, the end of nations and groups is as sterile and undesirable a goal now as it was then.

Furthermore, we descendents of Northern and Western Europe (the English Isles, Ireland, France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, the Germanic countries, Scandanavia, Spain, etc) have a tendency to ignore cultural distinctions, simply because we imagine (vainly) that there is some sort of abstract “universal man” that can be elevated beyond ethnocultural divisions into global brotherhood. Ironically, this delusion of “universal man” is only possible in the relatively genetically homogenous countries of Western Europe: just like New England liberals, whose experiences with “diversity” are rather limited, Western Europeans and their descendents tend to assume that everyone is like them and would behave as they would- that is, civilly and politely, respecting law and order, the only sort of society where universal rights and equality are possible.

But the reality of the diversity of humanity means that this multicultural ideal will not be achieved in either this world or the world to come. God has ordained us not as men in a general sense, but as specific men (and women) in a specific nation; we cannot and should not attempt to overcome it, as I believe it a blessing of God’s wisdom. Thus, while we should seek peace with other groups and seek to minimize offense to other groups insofar as possible (under the regime of political correctness, the definition of “offensive” has continually been ratcheted down, particularly when it comes to Westerners), it is proper and desirable to have a strong sense of identity with our nation and people.

Secondly, the ease of modern travel and movement of peoples ensures that multiculturalism is to some degree an accomplished fact; our people will never again enjoy the insulation of their idyllic Christian societies as in times past. There’s no going back to the little Christian villages in a Thomas Kincaid painting. We must develop a cultural immune system to deal with competitive threats from other groups instead of assuming that the rest of humanity will treat us as fairly as we are inclined to treat them. If we maintain our Pollyanna-ish view of other cultures and their intentions, we are setting our children up for extreme gullibility when dealing with other competitive groups who do not share our delusions. In our own times, this fundamental gullibility is the root cause of the doom of our nation, both culturally and economically through our insane immigration and trade policies respectively.

I next approach the most difficult part of my task, especially as an American. Who is the ethnocultural group to whom I owe my loyalty? It cannot be simply “citizens of the United States”, as our government’s immigration policies have ensured that this country will never truly be a nation again. The word “nation” itself is derived from a Latin root meaning birth: think of words like neo-natal and the Nativity. A true nation must be bound by both blood and soil: related genetically through an extended kinship network while also occupying a defensible piece of land. So “citizens of the US” fails as an appropriate group for this particular extended loyalty, as we are no longer a nation in the proper sense that serves anyone’s genetic interest.

However, rejecting US citizenship alone as a definition of the group, we find little comfort in the old national distinctions of Europe. If you’re like me, your ancestry looks like a map of Europe: English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, French, German. All of these groups are separate nations, yet one cannot be a member of them all, lest we lose the very essence of nationality. In addition, while I appreciate the historical culture and civilization of my European forebears, the modern nations of Europe are at least as alien to my interests as our own government; European countries are even farther down the road of destruction, embracing immigration, multiculturalism and secularism to a much greater extent than the United States. So being descended from multiple European heritages, I cannot simply pick one, nor even if I could, I cannot very easily be “loyal” to nations separated from me by an ocean of water and an ideological gulf of globalist secularism.

Furthermore, the current cultures of many European countries are not worthy of anyone’s loyalty- as Steve Sailer points out, the average American is far healthier than the average Brit. Our path and the paths of our cousins across the ocean seem permanently divergent. To the extent there is hope for our people, that hope is here where we retain at least some of the historical virtue that built our civilization.

Yet we can still construct an approximate picture of the American cultural identity. A large majority of Americans (70% of white Americans, in fact) are descended from the English colonists here when the country was founded. The colonists, however, were not uniform in composition but instead, according to the definitive Albion’s Seed by historian David Hackett Fischer (this book, written by a Northerner, is a bit slanted towards the Northern ethnic groups, particularly in its selective portrayal of leading Virginian patriarchs as sexually immoral), represented four distinct English ethnic groups:

Fisher identified four “folkways” from Britain that spread out across the continent westward at roughly the latitudes at which their ancestors first settled. They remain highly influential in American politics to this day.

The bourgeois Puritans, intellectual and moralistic, largely originated in Eastern England. From 1629 to 1640, they settled New England, and their descendents later spread across northern tier states like Minnesota, Washington, and Oregon. (The most famous representatives are the Adams family.)

Cavalier aristocrats and their indentured servants from class-ridden Southern England moved to the lowland South from 1642-1675. George Washington and George Wallace illustrate the South’s gentleman and populist sides, respectively.

Calm and business-like Quakers and others from the North Midlands of England and Wales settled Pennsylvania and the rest of the Delaware Valley in 1675-1725. They invited German Mennonites and others of compatible habits to join them. Pennsylvanians spread out across the Middle West. Although he was born in Boston, Ben Franklin became their ideal.

Finally, the bellicose folks from the violent Scottish-English border region - and especially their descendents who had settled Ulster - came to the Appalachian backcountry from 1718 to 1775. Their descendents spread west across the upper South. The prototype: the ferocious Andy Jackson. They’re typically called “Scots-Irish,” although Fischer doesn’t like the term because it makes them sound as if they spoke Celtic languages, when they actually spoke English and were culturally quite different from Scottish Highlanders or Irish Catholics.
These four cultural patterns were carried. They also later attracted European immigrants who shared many of their values. For example, Scandinavians followed Puritans to Minnesota.

The two Southern groups have been the most belligerent. And the Scots-Irish in a class by themselves in their taste for raising hell - both at home and abroad. Patriotism and physical courage are both central to the backcountry tradition, as reflected in the very high rates of military enlistment among the Scots-Irish. (Stock car racing, which was originally dominated by fearless ex-moonshine runners like Junior Johnson, is the backcountry’s signature sport.)

History tells us that colonies are essentially cultural time capsules. Their isolation from the mother country in a new and wild frontier tends to encourage conservatism as they seek a cultural anchor to cope with an uncertain future. So while England continued down the secularist path pointing out of the Enlightenment, American remained as a cultural anachronism reflecting the beliefs and politics of 18th century England, or even earlier, in the case of Virginia. So while America is a younger nation that England, it is older in a cultural sense, and has retained more of its virtue, since the latter has pursued a generally downward course in our age.

Consider the following description of Old Virginia from the book Rebel’s Recollections by Eggleston (I must give credit to H. W. Crocker’s excellent book Robert E. Lee on Leadership, a gift my wife bought for me after hearing about it on American Family Radio, for bringing this quote to my attention; the first time I read it I believe my blood pressure dropped about 10 points, just the description of this idyllic past…):

It was a very beautiful and enjoyable life that the Virginians led in that ancient time, for it certainly seems ages ago, before the war came to turn ideas upside down and convert the picturesque commonwealth into a commonplace, modern state. It was a soft, dreamy, deliciously quiet life, a life of repose, an old life, with all its sharp corners and rough surfaces long ago worn round and smooth. Everything fitted everything else, and every point in it was as well settled as to leave no work of improvement for anybody to do. The Virginians were satisfied with things as they were, and if there were reformers born among them, they went elsewhere to work their changes. Society in the Old Dominion was like a well-rolled and closely packed gravel walk, in which each pebble has found precisely the place it fits best. There was no giving way under one’s feet, no uncomfortable grinding of loose materials as one walked about over the firm and long-used ways of the Virginia social life.

By far the dominant cultural groups of the original four are the Virginians and the Scots-Irish, both merging into a common cultural entity in the South and spreading much of their folkways to other states of the union. The backcountry of Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Ohio were also primarly populated by this group. This is also the group most hated by the elites in the media, who are primarily the liberal descendents of the Puritans (and immigrant groups who all-too-eagerly internalized the hostility of the New England elites to the rest of the country), who having burned out their faith with legalism proceeded to annoy the rest of the country with various extra-Biblical fanaticisms: abolitionism, Prohibitionism, Planned Parenthood, gun control, forced busing, etc. The liberal elites in New York hate the Scots-Irish probably more than any other group. Senator-elect Jim Webb from Virginia (no political endorsement here implied, though this post-election column in the WSJ is very encouraging from an economic nationalism point-of-view) writes of this marginalization in his excellent book about the Scots-Irish (who he describes as America’s largest and most invisible ethnic group), Born Fighting (full excerpt here):

Standing on the mountain, I worry that when this generation dies, the memory of those who went before me will be lost just as completely, buried under the avalanche of stories that have on occasion ridiculed my people and trivialized their journey. They came with nothing, and for a complicated set of reasons, many of them still have nothing. The slurs stick to me, standing on these graves. Rednecks. Trailer-park trash. Racists. Cannon fodder. My ancestors. My people. Me.

This people gave our country great things, including its most definitive culture. Its bloodlines have flowed in the veins of at least a dozen presidents, and in many of our greatest soldiers. It created and still perpetuates the most distinctly American form of music. It is imbued with a unique and unforgiving code of personal honor, less ritualized but every bit as powerful as the samurai code. Its legacy is broad, in many ways defining the attitudes and values of the military, of working-class America, and even of the peculiarly populist form of American democracy itself. And yet its story has been lost under the weight of more recent immigrations, revisionist historians, and common ignorance.

Walking down the mountain and driving back toward the world that these people made possible for me, I make a simple vow. Or maybe I simply hear them, calling to me from the place where I will someday join them.

The contributions of this culture are too great to be forgotten as America rushes forward into yet another redefinition of itself. And in a society obsessed with multicultural jealousies, those who cannot articulate their ethnic origins are doomed to a form of social and political isolation. My culture needs to rediscover itself, and in so doing to regain its power to shape the direction of America.

The Scots-Irish, generally poor and non-slave-owning, formed the backbone of both the Union and Confederate armies in that fratricidal struggle; in the North particularly, where the rich could buy themselves out of service, poor pioneers fought a war to benefit monied interests in the railroads and manufacturing mills. And today, America’s military might is largely composed of Scots-Irish soldiers and Scots-Irish officers. And while we hear a lot in our Bible studies about the military toughness of the ancient Israelites, it must be remembered that while the Jews were conquered and ultimately destroyed as a geographic state by the Romans, the Scots-Irish were nearly alone as a people never conquered by Rome. In fact, the Romans so feared this people (a pre-Christian Scots-Irish tradition was displaying the taxidermied heads of Roman officers as trophies in their living rooms) that they built Hadrian’s Wall all the way across the British Isle to keep them out of Roman-governed areas of England.

So America is not an abstract concept, but rather the specific cultural creation of a specific ethnic group, notably three subcultures of England and the Scots-Irish. And there should be our loyalty- to our people, as they actually exist in the country today. I would expand this to include other European groups who have completely and finally assimilated into the larger group, and except for reference to their last names, are indistinguishable in any other way from the founding groups. This is the group to whom we owe our loyalty: simply the American people as they existed historically and their descendents.

In my next post on this topic I will discuss what this loyalty and identity should mean to us practically, and ways to turn an abstract appreciation of one’s culture into an experiential plan of action for our families.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 26th, 2006 at 6:31 pm and is filed under Christianity & the Church, Heritage & Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.