Posted on 03/27/2004 2:47:56 PM PST by Pokey78
LOS ANGELES
Ideological and theological divisions running deep. Opposing factions so far apart they no longer seem to respect one another. A breakdown in communication. The elites of each side, neither able to appeal to the other, poised like opposing armies ready to do battle.
America 2004? Actually, no. This was the lamentable state of affairs in mid-17th century England, as it teetered on the brink of civil war. But there certainly is something disturbingly familiar about this description of a body politic dividing into two unbreachable camps.
Like England under Charles I, when the Cavaliers -- the royalist supporters of the king -- and the Roundheads -- Puritan upstarts led by Oliver Cromwell -- went at it for seven years of war, the United States today is becoming two nations. This is not merely the age-old split between income groups, as Sen. John Edwards kept suggesting in his unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, but something even more fundamental -- a struggle between contrasting and utterly incompatible worldviews.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Cromwell was a dictator, a bigot, and someone I put in the same category as the Ayatollah in Iran, Pol Pot, Josef Stalin, Saddam Hussein, or Adolf Hitler.
Not only that, he's right too.
The bastion of American liberalism and the home of the Eastern Establishment is Greater New England, a term encompassing the six states of New England and its progeny in New York, the Great Lakes region, the Pacific Northwest, and northern California. The Yankee culture of Greater New England derives from the descendants of the Puritans, who long ago abandoned Calvinism and later abandoned traditional Christianity. The Yankees developed allies in segments of the European immigrants that followed them: Scandinavians, German and Eastern European Jews, secular and liberal Protestant Germans, and (to a certain extent and especially after 1960) Irish Catholics. Black Americans and, to a lesser extent, non-Cuban Hispanics have aligned politically with the Yankee/Jewish/Northern European coalition. Most Asian-Americans have also tended to favor this coalition, except for the evangelicals.
Yes, I know that Ann Coulter is a Connecticut Yankee and that there are and have been plenty of Jewish conservatives. Additionally, the Irish Catholic contribution to modern conservatism is second to none: names like William Buckley, Phyllis Schlafly (of Irish and British ancestry), Ronald Reagan (also British and Irish), Gordon Liddy (half Irish, half Italian), Sean Hannity, and Peggy Noonan come to mind without much effort. However articulate these exceptions are, they are still exceptions, just as Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, both of whom were largely Scots-Irish in ancestry, are exceptions among white Southerners.
The conservative heartland coincides with the Old Confederacy, plus areas first settled by Southerners or Scots-Irish. (Southern settled areas include the Ohio river counties of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, much of Missouri, parts of Kansas, most of Oklahoma, southeast New Mexico, and other pockets, including parts of California and Oregon. Scots-Irish areas include the Pennsylania "T-Zone", western Maryland, and the middle sections of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. "Second generation" non-Southern Scots-Irish areas include portions of Iowa and Missouri and much of Kansas and Nebraska.)
There are, historically, two major subregions that constitute the South: the coastal South, settled largely by English settlers and their descendants, who were aligned with the Cavaliers during the English Civil War, and the Upland South, where the largest element was the Scots-Irish, that is, descendants of Scottish and northern English low church Protestants (with some native Irish and Huguenot mixture) who had initially settled in Ulster before emigrating to America. They were theologically similar to the Puritans, but these Calvinist immigrants retained their Christian faith, by and large, even if many of them abandoned some of the standards of Westminster. In the long run, it was these upland Southerners who set the religious tone for the entire region and beyond, into the Southern and Scots-Irish settled regions of the Midwest and West. Thus, non-Southern cities like Columbus, Denver, and Indianapolis can have a strong evangelical presence, though not as intense as what may be found in Charlotte, Nashville, and Dallas.
Unlike the Yankees, the Southerners and their Northern Scots-Irish kin have been less successful in developing allies. Conservative German Lutherans and Catholics, Italian Catholics (the mainstay of post-1970 Northeast Republican Party politics), Dutch Reformed believers in the Midwest, Cubans, and to some extent, those Asians (especially Koreans) and Hispanics who adhere to evangelical Christianity are aligned with the greater Southern and evangelical coalition. Mormons are basically allied with this group, although theological differences between evangelicals and Mormons make this alliance somewhat tenuous. The minority of very conservative Catholics and Orthodox Jews are fervent allies, though their numbers are small.
Several historians and sociologists have pointed out that this fissure of ideologies has underlain American history from its inception. David Hackett Fischer and Kevin Phillips are among those who adhere to this position. The down side to the parallelism is that the Cavaliers lost the English Civil War, the Scots-Irish were to a large extent harassed out of Ulster, and the South lost the American Civil War. If American conservatism sides with the descendants of English noblemen, Scottish Covenanter, and Southern rebels, it picks a side that has lost three times.
I don't know that much about 17th century England and I refuse to register on the WP website so I can't comment on the analogy. But from the excerpt, I didn't take it to mean an exact comparison, only to point out the sharp divides that we face. A nation this divided cannot stand.
But I'm not telling you anything new. ;-)
I have often feared that right might not prevail. Oh, well. Us unsuccessful rebels will be in good company after we hang.
Is your post all your original writing? If it is, congratulations. Ya done good.
My apologies to our New England Freepers, but to me that pretty well describes John F'n Kerry, The Swimmer, and Deaniac.
We really have been dithering with this for 40 years - the huge demographic bulge of the baby boomers masked it. What might have been just another youth culture got hijacked by the left and twisted into a broad social and cultural movement. It haunting our tested political forums but made its camp on their their outskirts and slowly, with craft and stealth, it worked its will, until it gained politcal ascendancy.
But now that the boomers age and cooler middle age sets in we cast about at the fruits of what has been sown. The harvest proves bitter and yet the path to this crisis is so strange, twisted and gradual that we have a hard time understanding how we came by such a bad crop.
That is why is all of the campaigning we see today no one can come out and directly address the real issues and agendas flying about but rather mince around them, wink, nod and push out subtexts and shibboleths. All middle ground has been despoiled. Language and discourse quite literally fails us.
This will change as "globalism" truly impacts but the pocketbook and psyche of the average America: Answer will be sought, doublespeak shall be offered and crisis shall ensue. They attempt to make us into a people we never imagined we were nor ever wanted to be.
The question is can the left destroy - or at least purge - the Military establishment in time to enact their agenda. They cannot move yet.
I've always said that if I had been tasked with the choice of fighting for the North or South during the Civil War, I'd have chosen instead to mine gold out West.
Since I'm already out West, I think I'll move to a remote spot in the Sierra Nevada.
Can you handle that many compliments on one thread????
I think yer right, as well.
Of course, it does! :)
He usually is! ;)
That is true. I do not quite remember the amount of vituperativeness being offered by the Left right now happening before.
A lot of Middle America is buying into it too.
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