What Is Past Is Prologue - American Migration And The Current Political Climate

Recently, an article reminded me of a book I'd read almost twenty years ago - in it, historian David Fischer pointed out that there were four distinct migrations to the shores of America, and that each one laid the groundwork for the social structure which led to the Civil War and the cultural divide we have between the northern and southern states today.

Revisiting that book was an interesting experience this week, as I was compelled to view the material in a new light - a far darker and less-romantic vision of America, as the fundamentals of our makeup have led us to this pass - the reaction to 9/11; the ascendancy of the Right, and especially the all too real possibility of another civil conflict.

Fischer identifies these waves of migration as follows:

1.   Puritans, who settled mainly in New England.
2.   Cavaliers, who settled in Virginia.
3.   Quakers, who settled mainly in the Delaware Valley and surrounding regions.
4.   Borderers, who settled in the backcountry of the rural South.

While these weren't the only migrants - there were French Canadians and French who settled Louisiana, for example - these were minor migrations which did not materially affect the fabric of American society, save for their local influence.  It was the four major migratory 'waves' which literally created America.

In the 1770's-'80's, the Revolution was fought primarily due to a union between the Puritans of New England and surrounding northeastern states and their Cavalier counterparts in Virginia.   The American Civil War of the 1860's was more of a continuation of that conflict than a 'new' war - the Puritans, wanting an end to slavery, could not force the hand of the Cavalier culture in the South at the time the Constitution was written.  This happened when the two cultures turned on each other in the 1860's, settling with a Constitutional amendment the issue of human slavery, and settling (for the time being) the ideas of states rights and secession - more on that later.

Approaching the whole as a socio-anthropological study gives us the ability to detach much of the emotion from the thing, and look at our past from a very human standpoint, devoid of the twin concepts of politics and religion.  It's the aftermath of the Civil War period which gives credence to the concept, and gives us pause as we ponder our future as a nation - it also gives us the framework by which to answer a perplexing question - why is nearly half of the nation - made up almost exclusively of working-class people who are (or should be) at fundamental odds with the core tenets of, yet are supportive of, the political party of the 'ruling class'.


The startling thing about this map is that it almost exactly reflects the Borderer migrations pre and post Civil War.   While the Republican party has maintained some of the classic Cavalier philosophies of money and privilege, paradoxically the Republicans have also, in order to gain a broader base, adopted a Borderer culture with Borderer values.

Who are the Borderers?  

The Borderers are those peoples who resided on or near the borders between Scotland and England.   In a state of near-constant conflict since the 1100's, the border regions were finally 'pacified' (read: Militarily defeated) in the 1700's.   Many of them - in fact, entire regions along the borders were stripped of indigenous populations, these people suffering wholesale-deportation to America.

Capitalists from England came to the border regions to create estates from the newly-vacated land.  Not content with what they had, mass evictions of Scots and border-English families became common - the evicted took ship for America in droves.

These people were not like the Puritans, who aspired to education and who had loftier reasons for leaving England - religious and political freedom; the ability to speak one's mind without sufferance.   The Borderers came to America with one goal in mind - material improvement in their lives.

The lands to which they were relegated were in the backcountry of America at the time - the southern regions of the colonies and westward to what is now Kentucky and Tennessee.   These areas were already populated by First Nations peoples, and the Borderers wasted no time inflicting on them the same treatment they had suffered themselves.  

Borderer politics were rough-and-tumble; Andrew Jackson is probably the best example of this, along with John C. Calhoun.   Their religion was also far less structured, taking the form of field meetings and prayer-groups, with semiliterate preachers giving broad-ranging interpretations of the Bible and its meaning.   Living a hardscrabble life, these people were easy converts to the teachings of people like John Darby and the Dispensationalists; pre-millenial 'rapture' was prominent in their church culture, and the desire to hasten Christ's return (when, ostensibly, life would be better) was also a prominent feature.

Coming from a culture of definite superiors and inferiors based on material possessions (mainly land and cattle), which gave rise to an order based on social rank, the Borderers who came to America mimicked this structure in their New World lives.  Conservative to an extreme, they routinely ostracized people who didn't conform to the 'rules'.  Whereas they had well-defined notions of 'freedom', the freedom to dissent wasn't one of them.

Indeed, violence in Borderer culture was ingrained for a thousand years before any of them came to America.  The concepts of shooting trespassers; the beginnings of America's 'gun culture'; favoring property over civil or human rights - all are hallmarks of Borderer culture.

Fighting ability was valued highly - to the extent that favoring anything military (if you'll pardon the almost-pun here) bordered on worship.  

On the other hand, there were things which were not valued in Borderer culture - top of that list is education.   In England, education was only reserved for the most-promising or the most-wealthy; while schools were built in backcountry America, most adhered to the 'blab-school' concept, offering very little in the way of genuine education, save the little a child could learn by rote or repetition. 

Again paradoxically, early American backcountry sexuality was dominated by the twin concepts of promiscuity and Calvinism - the 'shotgun wedding' literally got its start in America's backcountry.   Girls became pregnant as teenagers; illegitimacy was rampant, and due to the low population both in English-Scottish Borderer country and America's backcountry-South, the population didn't draw such a fine-line regarding sexual congress between close relatives.

Always an insular culture brought on by the differences they brought and the remoteness of their location, Borderers were always quick to join-ranks against any outsiders - or outside ideas.  Their own peculiar brand of conservative activism prevented the dissolution of slavery during the Constitutional convention, and led to the Civil War in the 1860's.   American Backcountry xenophobia, wrapped up in a culture which predates the founding of the nation, exists to this day.

_________________________________

So, what of today?

Some of the dots are easy to connect - the Republican Party is the party of the conservative South and America's backcountry; it espouses much of what Borderer culture has become, and while it represents a fixed-point cultural anachronism in American society, it also has the benefit of great financial support from America's ruling class, and a ready-and-willing set of culturally-ingrained servants - a form of political servitude not much distanced from its 16th and 17th-century roots in the border-ridings of England and Scotland.

In fact, much of traditional Borderer values are present in recent headlines and conservative gatherings.  A quick look:

--  Fear of religious persecution
--  Promotion of a 'thugocracy' - beating-down the 'liberals'
--  Shooting abortion providers
--  Actively calling for a 'Christian revolution'
--  Conservative activism, carried to extremes (assault-rifles at speeches; etc.)
--  Defense of 'traditional marriage' at the expense of the civil-rights of others
--  "Taking their country back" (through force of arms and a gun-culture, if necessary)

This 'culture-within-a-culture', while not unnoticed, has caused many a journalist, politician, and other pundit no small amount of alarm and confusion.    Until we examine its sociopolitical and anthropological roots, however, we can't begin to understand its meaning.

The polarizing effect of this culture is evident both religiously and politically.   With pastors calling for 'a new Christian revolutionary war', and with Congressmen like Joe Wilson shouting 'You lie!' from the floor of the House, it's not hard to see that there are highly-charged emotions running rampant over common sense.

This sort of thing, regrettably, isn't new to the American political scene.  Let's connect a few dots:

Borderer culture gave rise to John C. Calhoun, the firebrand of the senate during the years prior to the Civil War; it was Calhoun who advocated (as early as 1832) outright secession from the United States, and who later stated that slavery was a 'positive good' in America. 

We cannot forget another Borderer, Preston Brooks (who, like Calhoun, was also from South Carolina); Brooks beat fellow senator Charles Sumner almost to death with his cane, having disagreed with Sumner's speech vilifying then-recent pro-slavery violence in Kansas.

It appears that Calhoun-style politics has raised its head again in America, thanks to the persistent Borderer culture.

We only have to look at the rhetoric of Michele Bachmann, who has called for a 'revolution in America' so that Liberals 'can't achieve their ends.', or the recent calls from Governor Rick Perry of Texas for outright secession.

Ignoring the media at this juncture is a mistake.   We only have to look at the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly to see the true nature of Borderer-culture-made-manifest in modern American politics.

Economic marginalization has always been part and parcel with Borderer culture.  It shouldn't be a surprise to see right-wing extremism - seated in 'red' states with heavy Borderer ancestries - on the increase.


The ranks of disaffected Americans are growing.   The recession has disrupted the plans of 1 in 3 Americans - a level not seen since the Great Depression.   Extreme philosophies; honed for decades by 'red' state residents, have greater appeal with the advent of a bad economy.

On one side, we have a philosophy which espouses property rights over human and civil; xenophobia over openness, and a culture of violence over a culture of peace.    On the other side, we have a philosophy of enlightened, educated reason. 

If I'm right, we have the rest of this year and the next to straighten things out.   If we don't, our own history and cultural differences suggest serious civil conflict - this time, as before, a cultural divide, but the stakes are actually far higher:   We'll be deciding whether we remain a republic which values property over people, or whether we become a true social democracy. 

The choice, I fear, will be made by those with the loudest voices.


(If you like what you've read either here today or in the past, I'd ask you to do me a favor and click on the link here to cast your vote for me in the Multiply Blogger of the Year contest!  Thanks again for reading!)

Subversives from Within - The Christian Right and America

As you know by now, I'm not terribly fond of 'sandwich pieces' (posts where someone introduces, then comments on, another post - they're also called 'reposts').

Occasionally, however, I make exceptions.

Frank Schaeffer, one of a handful of 'thinking Christian' authors, describes in detail the problems we're facing here in America with Fundamentalist Christianity, and the dangers they represent - from their organization through their education system, Fundamentalists have created, as Dr. Schaeffer points out so well here, an alternate-America, right under the noses of everyone else.

I can't say this enough:   These people are dangerous.   If you don't believe me - read on....

Subversives From Within  (Francis Schaeffer; 2009)

Who are these people?! Where do they come from?! Ordinary Americans might wonder why anyone would stoop so low as to follow Glenn Beck, Fox News and Dick Armey (and their corporate sponsors masquerading as "FreedomWorks") as they organize their "9/12 March On Washington" to cynically exploit the 9/11 attack.

Patriotic Americans might question the organizer's aim to provide a media forum for dimwitted right wingers to scream "Liar!" "Socialist!" "Antichrist!" "Muslim!" "Death Panels!" "He's not an American!" and so on and on and on about the commander in chief charged with defending us from further attacks. And some people might even cry "shame on you!" to the more mainstream Republicans participating that include Dick Armey of FreedomWorks, as well as GOP Reps. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Mike Pence of Indiana, Tom Price of Georgia, and South Carolina GOP Sen. Jim DeMint.

Ordinary folks from Planet Earth may ask why the Republican Party, right-wing activists and members of the Religious Right seem so unreachable with mere facts let alone decency and decorum. (As the proud father of a US Marine who fought in Afghanistan, I'm particularly outraged that these people would exploit the 9/11 attacks after my son and others were prepared to give their lives in response to our enemies.)

As a former Religious Right leader, who was raised (and home-schooled by my Evangelical-leader parents, Francis and Edith Schaeffer) in the movement, let me explain just why the ordinary rules of decency don't apply to the right these days.

Let me also answer this question: Who are these people?

Protecting Your Children From Satan

A big part of the answer to understanding the heightened climate of outright hate and fear of the "other" is the home school and Christian school movement. It is a modern incarnation of the anti-federal government ideology of earlier firebrands such as John Calhoun who was the 7th Vice President and a Southern politician in the 19th century. Calhoun embraced slavery, states' rights, limited government, and said that Americans should secede from the union if it went against their wishes. (See: "Calhoun Conservatism Raises Its Ugly Head" by Mike Lux in the Huffington Post Sept 11/09.)

In the early 1970s the evangelicals like my late father and James Dobson decided that the our society had fallen so far "away from God" and so far from "America's Christian history" that it was time to metaphorically decamp to not just another country but to another planet:. In other words virtually unnoticed by the media and mainstream political operatives, a big chunk of American society seceded from the union in all but name.

What they did is turn the white race-based in "Christian school" movement of the 1950s into a countercultural phenomena. As tens of thousands of new Christian schools opened, it was no longer just about "protecting" white kids from minorities and African-Americans. It was about protecting your children from Satan in other words the United States government's long reach through the public school system.

To protect your children from Satan -- in other words mainstream, open patriotic and pluralistic America -- you either kept them at home where mom and dad could teach the children right from wrong or sent them to a cloistered private evangelical/fundamentalist school. At home or in school you used curriculum prepared by the likes of James--beat-your-child-and-dare-to-discipline-Dobson, RJ-slavery-was-a-good-thing-Rushdoony, or many and other right-wing anti-American activists. That curriculum presented "secular America" as downright evil. Hating the USA became next to godliness.

The Anti-American Home Schoolers Come Of Age

We are now several generations into this experiment of holier-than-thou withdrawal from our American mainstream culture. If you wonder who it is that's both running and underwriting organizations such as the Family Research Council, Focus On The Family, Freedom Works and other organizers of the 9/12 March and who are the most faithful followers the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh or viewers of Fox News your answer is: it's the home school/Christian school generation of men and women now hitting their thirties and even forties who might as well have been raised on a different planet.

What are these home school and Christian school children taught? Here's a quote from one of the far right's leading home school curricula creators:

"The political question is this: By what biblical standard is the pagan to be granted the right to bring political sanctions against God's people? We recognize that unbelievers are not to vote in Church elections. Why should they be allowed to vote in civil elections in a covenanted Christian nation? Which judicial standards will they impose? By what other standard than the Bible?"

(Gary North of Institute For Christian Economics)

The generation raised on the belief that the US government is illegitimate because it is trying to "impose" non-biblical laws on people has hit the streets. These are the people who grew up indoctrinated into an alternative reality. Today they are out there waving signs of Obama dressed as Hitler. They are buying weapons and ammunition. Some are in the growing and revived militia movement. They are Dick Armey's foot soldiers. People like Armey and Beck can count on the ignorance of their dupes. It's against their religion to read a real newspaper, watch anything but Fox or go to a real school.

Evangelical Red Guards

Over the last 30 years Evangelical fundamentalists have managed to do what Chairman Mao failed to do with his Red Guards: indoctrinate a whole generation of evangelical people to see their own society as the enemy and act like subversives from within the culture. These people are as anti-American as Al-Qaeda. The "Christian Reconstruction" movement is working for theocracy. Reconstructionism (of which Gary North is one leader) says that the law given for the political and legal ordering of ancient Israel is intended for all people at all times.

Reconstructionist leader David Barton gives a definition:

"The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God's law."

Who are Glenn Beck's foot soldiers? In effect what we have is a group of indoctrinated people who have never actually lived in America because they were brought up deliberately cloistered from it by their parents and churches. Because they are legally "Americans" they can move freely around our democracy trying to destroy it working within the United States. Today they are acting like a fifth column, no, they are a fifth column. Some of them have not just seceded metaphorically, there is even a growing movement for states to secede literally.

Today the right wing America haters actually are doing to America what no "illegal" immigrants ever do: work to overthrow our democracy and replace it with a theocracy. The home-schooled, privately educated brainwashed horde are an antidemocratic, fundamentally anti-American political movement. For a start they do not accept the results of the last election.

Liberal/Progressive Wishful Thinking and Blindness

Meanwhile those ordinary Americans including many Democrats, progressives and liberals who work within the system can hardly imagine that there are people so far outside the lines of what they regard as ordinary decent behavior that the progressives seem psychologically unequipped to deal with this reality.

President Obama is one such person. His talk of bipartisanship is a pipe dream. Why?

Bipartisan Pipe Dream

Because you can't be bipartisan with people who don't play by the same rules -- say accepting the will of the people -- as you do. Obama is not alone in his gentlemanly wishful thinking. For instance consider New York Times book review editor Sam Tanenhaus saying in his book (The Death of Conservatism) that the the conservative movement is over.

Tanenhaus rightly points out that the extremism of the right has driven away traditional Republicans. I ought to know! I, as a life-long Republican and former Religious Right activist helped create this situation. But Tanenhaus and others like him just don't get the fact that the far right is resurgent, in fact more dangerous than ever as a wounded animal is dangerous. They don't get it because kindly liberals also live in a bubble.

The kindly liberal reasonable bubble of an open free culture in which reason, argument in fact prevails is far removed from the other America, one of militia training camps, fundamentalist churches, parents who follow Dobson's "parenting" advice by "breaking" their children and whipping them (as Dobson tells them to do in his books) and thus raising the damaged and dangerous automatons of biblical vengeance and sadism.

The Last Chess Game You'll Ever Play

What reasonable people don't understand is this: if one person is playing chess abiding by the rules and their opponent is losing at the chess game it may appear that they have lost the match. But what if one person is willing to change the rules? For instance, if you're playing chess against someone who -- if they start losing -- takes a lead pipe out of their back pocket and smashes you over the head with it the "rules" change.

Serial Killers

The real story of the Religious Right and their power to destroy is told by Max Blumenthal in Republican Gomorrah, and Jeff Sharlet in The Family and by me in Crazy For God. What our books have in common is the understanding that you can lose in the political system but still "win" -- according to your destructive agenda -- if your agenda is non-political but rather religious and apocalyptic in nature.

To understand the Religious Right today and how dangerous they are don't think politics -- think serial killers who "win" by "getting even" with the society they perceive as having disrespected them. It isn't about facts. It isn't about election results. It isn't about truth. It's about victimhood and revenge on the "elite" in other words on everyone not like you. It is about the weird combination of sadism and masochism Blumenthal describes in his book.

Think Republicans who have no plan of their own for health care reform other than stopping Obama. Think "Deathers" and "Birthers" who are all about de-legitimizing our system as "evil" because it includes rights for gays.

New Rules: Anarchy and Scorched Earth

What those who think that the power of the Religious Right and/or the Republicans is ended don't understand is that it's only ended if you believe in the rules. When I say the rules I mean, for instance, that if you lose an election the other side gets to legislate. However if your opponent is not interested in the rules and is, A) waiting for Jesus to return and consume all the "infidels" or, B) you are just waiting to take that "lead pipe" out of your back pocket -- say go to public meetings and intimidate people by carrying loaded weapons to those meetings -- or worse, maybe even use them to shoot down someone -- all polite bets are off!

The fact of the matter is we now know what the experiment in raising children outside of the American mainstream means. It means that there's a whole subculture within American culture that mistrusts facts precisely because they are facts. They glory an alternative view of not just politics but of reality.

They frequent the creationist museum and look at dioramas of dinosaurs cavorting with humans. They believe that gay people choose to be gay just stick it to the rest of us and could change if they invite Jesus into their hearts. They believe that before you run for governor of Alaska, for instance, you should get a preacher specializing in "casting out the spirit of witchcraft" to anoint you so you can win against the demonic forces of secularism -- as was the case with Sarah Palin when she first ran for governor. They believe that the NRA was telling the truth when they claimed that Obama would "take away your guns" and so have loaded up with more guns and ammunition. They think the time has come to rise up and overthrow the government. And yes, most of them also believe that black people are inferior to whites, so to have a black man in the White House is itself "proof" of American's fall from grace.

There's no arguing with such people and no winning against them using mere elections. They are not playing by American rules. Their idea of winning is not fair elections but Armageddon.

Religious Right Growing Again

Those who say that the Religious Right and the far right have lost their power are looking through the lens of rule-obeying democratic liberalism. They don't understand that their opponents will always carry the proverbial lead pipe in his or her back pocket. To the progressives who think that the Religious Right and the right wing has lost its power I say this: You're correct when it comes to political facts (for the moment) of the last election, but you're dead wrong when it comes to the way revolutions work.

Second American "Tea Party" Revolution

Revolutionaries never have played by the rules. They don't have to win by the rules. They hate the rules. They don't live in a rule based or fact based universe.

They believe they are serving a "higher cause" so it makes the "mere human" rules unimportant. They're ready to shout down opponents, call out "liar" about someone telling the truth, undermine public meetings and/or commit physical violence. They are also willing to become the tools of cynical corporate lobbyists using them for ulterior purposes, say stalling health care reform.

In order to "win" -- in other words destroy our country as we know it -- the far right merely needs to be true to its own rule which is, to put it very mildly, that coloring outside the lines is not only perfectly okay but required.

Conclusion

Not only do the Religious Right distrust facts to them facts are evil. You are "satanic" if you believe in evolution. You're also satanic if you believe health-care reform is about anything but death panels and abortions. You're satanic if you don't believe that gay people are evil or if you think sex education is sensible. You're satanic if you don't believe in Satan!

The tactics that progressives develop for actually winning against the right have to involve far more than politics. They have to also involve ceaseless vigilance against an enemy that has now -- literally -- raised up an armed, paranoid and deluded alternative nation within our borders and created a fifth column to undermine the United States and our democracy. They need to be called out by the rest of us in no uncertain terms.

Long term the Religious Right subculture has to be understood, then exposed for what it is: an anti-democracy movement built on willful lies with potentially violent underpinnings in the thrall of an apocalyptic cult of revenge on everyone not like "us." It is also the useful tool of corporate lobbyists. Who use these shock troops of the proudly ignorant for non-ideological reasons.

The Religious Right may have lost a round politically but they've still got a "lead pipe" in their back pocket. They can still "win" by making the rest of us lose our democracy by increments.

______________________________________

Folks, again - please don't say I didn't warn you.