Posted on 08/11/2009 4:43:48 PM PDT by NYer
As a native of New York state, I am surprised that the percentage isn't higher in the tri-state area. I find it to be the case that many people who are non-religious still identify as "Catholic" or "Jewish" out of some need to be affiliated with something culturally.
Massachusetts used to elect the most conservative Senators and Governors in America (think Calvin Coolidge and Cabot Lodge Sr.) through the 1940s. The Irish and French Canadian Catholic Democrats outbred them, however.
You do have outliers in New Jersey like Monmouth and Morris Counties, but that is due to the fact that these places are dominated by private sector management-types, and even said counties were only narrowly GOP. The blue collar Catholic counties (Middlesex, which also has alot of Asians, Camden, Gloucester, Burlington, etc) all voted heavily for The One.
Yes ... they are now "cultural" Catholics and Jews. However, we got a glimpse into their faith on 9-11. Many of them ran to their Churches and Synagogues, but settled back into their secularist patterns once additional threat was removed. Let's pray they still have enough faith for the future.
Thank you, Clemenza. While it is certainly true that there has been a radical tradition in Massachusetts for a long time (Unitarians, Transcendentalists, radical abolitionists, women's rights advocates, pacifists, etc.), there was once upon a time something called a Yankee (now no longer in existence). Calvin Coolidge is the perfect example. Unfortunately, certain sectors of the conservative movement like to point to Massachusetts today and then following a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument blame Ted Kennedy liberalism on Jonathan Edwards. I am thinking in particular of the Professional Confederates who also like to claim all opposition to current federal policies as the continuation of Jefferson Davis. Another New England "radical" movment (which later proved very popular in the South) was the temperance/prohibition movement.
I am sorry Massachusetts is in the shape it's in today, just as I am sorry that the Jewish People are in the shape they are in today (ie, the overwhelming impression that "Jewishness equals radicalism"), but that doesn't change the fact that Massachusetts is as close to a "holy land" as we have in the United States of America--the Pilgrims, the Puritans, the Revolution, the literary flowering, the abolitionists, the "old money" brahmins, etc. As an Upper Southerner from the Unionist/Republican tradition, I like to think that the true essence of that long suffering but dearly beloved state is not too different from the essence of my own home. After all, the South had its radicals too (like Richard Mentor Johnson).
Once upon a time New England and the Upper South were as one in their opposition to Tammany Hall, liquor, and Al Smith. Is it too much to hope that one day they will be united again?
And btw, considering that Massachusetts is now almost totally Irish Catholic, blaming Jonathan Edwards instead of the Pope for Ted Kennedy seems a little foolish.
Interesting maps. But what is that little rectangular island off the coast of Delaware?? It seems to have unique data. o_0
It's the Lost Continent of Atlantis . . . and it's JEWISH!
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