Posted on 07/22/2005 11:34:38 AM PDT by neverdem
State of Franklin / Watauga Territory bump
"Otherwise, the “unbridled raw, rebellious spirit” of the Scots-Irish grows tamer each day, domesticated by the government programs their democratic impulse demanded. Gradually, the Scots-Irish are becoming more and more like other Americans. Or maybe other Americans are becoming more like them."
Wonder what this is suppose to mean?
Good point. I wonder if their libertarian sensibilities would extend to a neighbor with a collection of junk cars in his backyard. Or who has a smelly dairy farm, and who was there before the metrosexuals moved into the new development next door so they could experience the country life.
PING for the Scots-Irish!
This is a must read if you wish to understand the cultural and moral underpinning of America. It explains quite well the red state/blue state map of today, even with all of the subsequent migrations from Europe, Asia, Africa, et. al.
Sorry, but meth is a much faster ride to hell than booze. And it's much more dangerous to make than bathtub gin.
I think that's why their commentary is often reclassified to blogs or chat from editorials.
The Scots-Irish were the shock troops of the American frontier, and I'm damn proud to be descended thereof.
Thanks for that post. Having an Ulster Scot background, I just ordered that book the other day. Can't wait for it to arrive.
Tell that to the parents of a kid who died from acute alcohol intoxication or a motor vehicle accident while intoxicated.
And it's much more dangerous to make than bathtub gin.
It's a matter of volatility. Idiots using ethyl ether or ethyl alcohol are dangerous, regardless.
GEORGE KEREVAN
WHY did Bush win? My first experience of the American hinterland was more than 30 years ago, on a long, lazy car drive: down from Germanic Cincinnati in Ohio; across the Blue Ridge Mountains in West Virginia, where the radio stations play wall-to-wall country music; southwards through the Carolinas, where the red earth sticks to the magnolia blossoms; then northwards again along the bleak Atlantic coast where the Wright Brothers first took to the air.
It was a revelation: no New York skyscrapers, no urban sophistication, and my then American girlfriend had to slip a ring on her left hand lest the prim North Carolinan landlady in the gorgeous colonial B&B take Presbyterian offence at our unwed status. This is the America that has given George Walker Bush his huge popular majority in the teeth of world opinion and despite the ire of America’s coastal elites.
Here in Scotland, where the mainstream view is anti-Bush, the instant reaction will be to dismiss this other America as redneck, racist, bigoted, gun-loving and ignorant. But hold a mirror to thyself: the part of America that doggedly voted Republican on Tuesday is its ethnic Scottish-Ulster heartland. These are the descendants of the lowland yeoman folk who colonised Virginia in the 17th century, then crossed the Appalachian Mountains to open up the frontier in the 18th, joined by the refugees from the Govan slums in the 19th.
They brought with them a Celtic tribalism, a small-farmer self-reliance and a rationalist Presbyterian morality based on the Good Book. They also brought their own home-spun music, with its sentimental narratives and view of this world as a trial to be endured. From the bluegrass fiddle music of the Appalachian crofts to the Burns-like honky-tonk ballads of the itinerant oil workers in the Texas dustbowl, country music has evolved to dominate contemporary musical tastes. But beyond the saccharin-sweet commercialism of country rock, it is music that still defines the mental and moral landscape of a community that was prepared to defy the world last Tuesday. Never in a million years were America’s Scots-Irish going to vote for John Kerry, whatever the eastern pollsters thought.
That is not to say that many Americans were not legitimately critical of George Bush - for failing to capture Osama bin Laden, for overestimating Saddam Hussein, for letting Iraq slide into anarchy and for having a dangerously ad-hoc approach to economic policy. Mr Bush is a man for the grand gesture - much needed in the aftermath of 9/11 and the dot-com crash - but his interest in the subsequent follow-up has frequently proved a tad inadequate.
Yet when the political chips are really down, the American Scots-Irish prefer two things when choosing a leader: moral certainty in taking decisions (which is different from sexual morals) and a populist ability to speak in something approaching the vernacular. That’s why they ditched George Bush, senior, for folksy Bill Clinton, until they saw through Clinton’s synthetic political outrage. And that’s why they stuck with Bush, junior, reformed drunkard and someone literally not afraid to overthrow tyrants.
I mention all this not to justify George Bush but to suggest a way for Europe to understand a resurgent American nationalism that conforms pretty much to what the Scots-Irish made it. Contrary to European myth, it is not an especially imperialist nationalism, but when provoked it sees things with a terrible, biblical simplicity.
The Scots settlers who first colonised America, and then illegally slipped across the Appalachians to live among the Indian tribes, were not out to found a new empire. Having been chased out of Scotland and Ulster for economic and religious reasons, then having clashed with the conservative English merchant elites who ran the eastern colonies, the Scots just wanted to be left to their own devices. To this day, their predilection for owning guns is less to do with the desire to blast away at dumb animals, as pique at the idea that someone should tell them what to do. That’s why it is not a good idea to try to frighten them by crashing airliners into tall buildings: it just makes them mad.
When roused, usually by a wholly correct moral indignation, Scots-Irish America believes it is the agency for Divine retribution. Don’t snigger: you are here because of this gut reaction. Back in 1940, the United States was split down the middle - nothing new there - over the war in Europe. The large German immigrant communities of the industrial Mid-West (think Ohio) were fervently isolationist. They had just re-elected Franklin Roosevelt on a platform of non-intervention. The Americans in favour of dealing with the fascists were the Scots-Irish, who had a long tradition of military service, especially during the Civil War (on both sides). Otherwise, the capital of the EU would be called Germania.
OF COURSE, there are downsides to the Scots-Irish psyche in America. Historically, it has been prone to racism. It was socially conservative long before the rise of Christian fundamentalism (and I worry about a Bush administration packing the Supreme Court with reactionaries for the next generation). Mind you, I suspect that if we put gay marriage to the vote in Scotland, it would be rejected. And I think it is too easy to put the Bush victory down to an evangelical plot: the Catholic German strongholds of the Democratic Party in the industrial Mid-West are stridently anti-abortion.
Here is the saving grace of the Scots-Irish version of American nationalism: it would really rather finish the job quickly in Iraq, and go home and listen to Roy Acuff or Hank Williams. It does not like being drawn into the role of imperialist policeman. But anti-Americans should beware of getting what they wish for - living without the Americans may prove worse than living with them.
As a culture based on self-reliance and Mosaic rules of social conduct, Scots-Irish American nationalism cannot comprehend societies based on clientelism and endemic personal corruption.
That’s why it does not like the way the United Nations has developed into a talking shop, and why it gets exasperated by the Middle East. The Scots-Irish have given George Bush a mandate: but it says: "Finish the job quickly, or we will let the world stew in its own juice."
The world has woken up to four more years of George Bush with something of a headache. Personally, I’m glad the incipient trade war that the Democrats were planning against Europe - to make good their promise of protecting jobs in Ohio - has receded into the distance.
I also think that by legitimising George Bush with a serious popular majority, the Scots-Irish have cut the diplomatic feet from under those who dismiss him as a usurper; as well as seeing off tiresome posers, such as the documentary-maker Michael Moore, who trivialise and personalise debate.
The world can now get down to some serious politics, starting at the G8 summit at Gleneagles Hotel in July. Remember that Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder will retire long before Bush. There is a space for a new generation of European politicians to rebuild the transatlantic alliance.
Like it or lump it, a Bush White House is now a fact of life. But if Scotland calms down a minute, we might discover that his America is a far less alien place than we imagine.
And it's illegal for kids to have alcohol, isn't it?
I've known a couple of former meth users. They say it is the worst drug going. Period. Far worse than booze, cocaine or heroin.
Please notice that this is an OpEd Contributor, i.e. a guest writer, as opposed to a regular OpEd Columnist on their payroll.
That being said, I can't imagine such a wrong take on this forum as on this thread, Why Do They Hate Us? Not Because of Iraq (it's-the-US'-and-Israel's-fault barf up a lung alert).
From time to time, I’ll ping on noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs. FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
"Reason has problems that way. It tends to represent the "metrosexual" urban wing of libertarianism, and doesn't know what to do about the country cousins."
Reason aspires to highbrow respectability, and tends to affect a sneering pose toward those kindred spirits who might happen to be, shall we say, a little on the embarrassing side, blowing right past the notion of their being natural allies. They'll grow up one of these days; they're like first-generation college attendees, ashamed of their own families.
Tribalism is much more universal than that. There's no one more tribal than the elite of New York or Washington.
Rosa Parks, Muhammad Ali,Malcolm X... hmmmm very interesting!
This spew underhandedly tries to further promote the "wild men from the mountains, rednecks and outlaws" stereotype. What a bunch of crap.
"the Sots-Irish"
Uhhhh....
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