The 48ers? They were opposed to the German "tradition of authoritarianism." That's one big reason why most of them they were opposed to slavery. Of course many Germans came here for economic reasons. But my point was that those attitudes that you attacked as Catholic or big city -- not statism, but a village or communitarian view of the world -- were shared by many Protestants and rural Americans.
Those who went to Texas found out the hard way what public expressions of support for Unionism could get you there.
And you celebrate that? Even the acts of what we'd now have to call terrorism?
Of course they were "conservative" then: They'd won the Civil War (the gomers out West had no idea they'd lost, just like the South, except when they tried to transship their crops to market on Yankee-owned railroads), they were wallowing in the spoils of a continent, and they always had the Southern rednecks to eat .... and spit on. Life was good. Of course they were "conservative" -- they had it all, which was all the sweeter because those crackers down South had damn-all and were poorer than dirt. Yes, life was sweet.
Always with the emotionalism. I'm pretty sure that New England factory or farm hands (or even bankers and professors) didn't spend much time eating or spitting on poor Southerners. It wasn't like they had the Internet and all the leisure to malign people.
"Having it all" in 1880 or 1890 or 1910 mean having not much by today's standards. Life in turn of the last century New England could be pretty tough (read Robert Frost or Ethan Frome). Even back in those days, there was talk about the grimness of New England farm and factory life.
I suppose that every group that isn't conservative can be said to be better off than some other group by somebody who wants to undermine their thinking. Somebody could do that to you too, and maybe point out that Texas or the South today isn't what it was a century ago, and that all your victim talk really doesn't reflect how things are now.
No, attitudes and values migrated west with the people who left the Eastern source-areas ...
That's true of Oregon, but not so true of Washington State. Not really so true of California, either. Sure, New Englanders went to Oregon, but coastal dwellers generally have a different take on things than inlanders. You can see that in the way that Los Angeles, settled by Midwesterners and Southerners, has become more like San Francisco (settled from Europe and the Northeast) in its political attitudes. Even without being on the ocean, a major city like Atlanta comes to harbor very different points of view from the outlying countryside.
But if you think the country would blow apart if confronted by a constitutional convention, then you're certainly entitled to your opinion. I happen not to share it ...
"Middle America or the "Silent Majority" was the product of years of shared experience, struggle even -- the Great Depression, WWII, the Cold War. Most of us now don't have common public experiences like that to tie us together. So if the country splits up it will be messy and complicated. That kind of massive FU that you direct against some parts of the country is a reflection of disaffection or alienation that won't be easy to contain. Don't be surprised if even people you might take for allies turn it back on you.
They were socialists opposed to non-socialism. Plunk them down in the "Workers' Paradise" of 1950's East Germany, and every damned one of them would have joined the Stasi or the Vopos.
A lot of people "opposed to slavery" didn't share fundamentals with the Beechers; they were Free Soilers instead who didn't want to see black bond labor west of the Mississippi. They were not pro-emancipation; they were anti-competition. They knew industrial agriculture was a threat to their livelihoods. That's why they opposed the expansion of slavery, and Lincoln knew the difference, too, which was why he trod the line he set out for himself and the Republican Party ..... at least until he was satisfied that he had achieved something like Total Power over the federal government.
I'm talking about the people who benefited, by design and conspiracy, from the destruction of the Southern agricultural aristocracy, the Southern yeomen who mostly didn't own slaves and whose stake in their own freedom was nevertheless just as palpable as Jeff Davis's. I'm talking about Muffy and Buffy and Skip and Chip and all the other legacy snots who've directed America like a toy train set since 1860 while sneering at anyone who didn't own a Yale sweater: I'm talking about the deciders, and you know it.
Republic, my ass.
Having lived there and visted often, and having often abused my eyeballs with the vitriol of the Urinal-Constipation's editorial page, I can tell you what drove Atlanta's liberalism: lingering planter liberalism in Buckhead (social competition with the yeomanry) combined with relentless immigration from Yankeeland courtesy of major Atlanta employers (looking for "the better sort of people" no doubt: credentialism as a social divider and lever for increasing social distance from the yeoman scum).
There is also substantial black immigration into south Atlanta, to which I should add the constant gamesmanship of Republican "Gang of Eight" types who constantly prate about crossing the aisle to "get things done" (with a tax break included) and like to vote with the 'Rats on social issues because it makes them feel better, i.e. increases their social distance from the scum out in Douglas County.
That's an interesting idea, but it describes the defunct consensus of World War II, which has long since gone away. Liberals repine for the Good War, because they and theirs led it, with the imago of FDR at the head of our column. (Every time I see and hear Doris Kearns Goodwin, the Camelot plagiarist, on TV, I have to tune away: I can't stand her constant whining about FDR and JFK.)
But if you are looking for whatever created the current "Red/blue" split, Communists versus Americans, it is the propaganda campaigning of General Agayants and other disinformation specialists against America and the American ideal that has fed specific anti-American alliances between Communist governments and NGO's and American Leftist NGO's like the SDS, which according to Irving Howe was totally taken over by orthodox Marxist-Leninists [key perp: Bernardine Dohrn] because it refused to expel known Maoists and Communists, and the Weather Underground, which was the wreckage of the SDS-Revolutionary Youth League (led by Dohrn) after the SDS-RYL faction split from the senior SDS leadership in 1969 [we're talking about Left NGO's with the life cycle of a gnat, so "older" is only relative]:
"http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2020261/posts"
(See also Wiki under "SDS", somewhat scrubbed history there.)
The link shows the connection between Hanoi and the U.S. antiwar movement in the 60's. There are doubtless others, such as the notorious involvement of North Korean trainers with antigovernment Mexican Leftists in the late 60's that led to significant battles with government troops.
The poisoning of American public opinion by Left-aligned mediabots and institutions of the Left in opinion, leadership, and academe has produced the division you write of, and we are the remnant of genuinely American opinion, not transplanted Left opinion, 100% of which has come from eastern and central European totalitarian movements.
Of course many Germans came here for economic reasons. But my point was that those attitudes that you attacked as Catholic or big city -- not statism, but a village or communitarian view of the world -- were shared by many Protestants and rural Americans.
I don't believe I mentioned Catholicism at all.
Communitarian thinking isn't Catholic thinking, which emphasizes the Mystical Body of Christ (Corpus Christi), which is the ecclesia militans here on earth, condemned by Adam's sin to struggle with the wiles of the Antagonist.
Catholic thinking has always been dominated by the image of this Body, with Christ at its head with the pope, the Church and kings below that, and everybody else below the nobility and clergy. I'd just point out that there's no room in that vision for "world village" or communitarian thinking. Everyone is challenged to be engaged fulltime with struggles against sin, the Devil, and his own corrupt inner nature.