The Late, Great American WASP ('bout time somebody said it)

Wall Street Journal ^ | 12/20/13 | JOSEPH EPSTEIN

[GodAndCountryFirst]

The U.S. once had an unofficial but nonetheless genuine ruling class, drawn from what came to be known as the WASP establishment. Members of this establishment dominated politics, economics and education, but they do so no longer. The WASPocracy, as I think of it, lost its confidence and, with it, the power and interest to lead. We are now without a ruling class, unless one includes the entity that has come to be known as the meritocracy—presumably an aristocracy of sheer intelligence, men and women trained in the nation's most prestigious schools.

The acronym WASP derives, of course, from White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, but as acronyms go, this one is more deficient than most. Lots of people, including powerful figures and some presidents, have been white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant but were far from being WASPs. Neither Jimmy Carter nor Bill Clinton qualified.

-- SNIP--

WASP life, though, was chiefly found on the eastern seaboard. WASPs had their own social clubs and did business with a small number of select investment and legal firms, such as Brown Brothers Harriman and Sullivan & Cromwell. Many lived on inherited money, soundly invested.

-- SNIP--

The late 1960s put the first serious dent into the WASPs as untitled aristocrats and national leaders. For protesters of that generation, the word WASP didn't come into play so much as the word Establishment, heretofore chiefly an ecclesiastical term. The Establishment was the protesters' enemy and target. The Establishment was thought to have sent the country into Vietnam; it was perfectly content with the status quo, with all its restrictions on freedom and tolerance for unjust social arrangements; it stood for all that was uptight and generally repressive in American culture.

[Savage Beast]

Excellent, Epstein:

"What our new meritocrats have failed to evince—and what the older WASP generation prided itself on—is character and the ability to put the well-being of the nation before their own. Character embodied in honorable action is at the heart of the novels and stories of Louis Auchincloss, America's last unembarrassedly WASP writer. Doing the right thing, especially in the face of temptations to do otherwise, was the WASP test par excellence. Most of our meritocrats, by contrast, seem to be in business for themselves."

[OrangeHoof]

We have the ghetto-ocracy right now. We rule according to what is inoffensive to “oppressed” minorities and, as an ethic, believe that if you can get your hands on it (even by lying or stealing), you deserved it.

Our pop culture tells us to flash our bling, live large, have “ho”s and save nothing because tomorrow you might die.

[Savage Beast]

"But southerners have never been WASPs in the sense of northeast ruling elite."

Washington. Jefferson. Madison. Monroe. Et al.

[ecomcon]

There was a lot more of a desire to please God with how one lived their life.

Now we desire to please ourselves in a secular Sodom.

[Wallace T.]

Technically speaking, the only true Anglo-Saxons are those of English or Lowlands Scots descent, who are actual descendants of the tribes from northwestern Germany and Denmark that invaded England in the 5th and 6th centuries AD. This includes the Scots-Irish, who are descended from northern English and Lowlands Scots settlers in Northern Ireland, with minimal Highland Scots or old-stock Irish input. It does not include the Welsh or Highland Scots, much less French, Dutch, and German descendants who are lumped in as WASPs. Yet families such as the DuPonts, the Vanderbilts, and the Auchinclosses are regarded as WASPs, despite the non-Anglo Saxon origins of their families.

The WASP ascendancy lasted for about a century, beginning with the defeat of the Southern Confederacy by the North and ending with the cultural wars of the 1960s. A new, and substantially Jewish, elite has replaced the WASP ascendancy, which fell first into liberalism starting in the late 19th Century and then into decadence. The new elite is showing similar evidence of decline, due to the effects of political correctness, moral degeneracy, expanded bureaucracy, and economic decline. The next chapter of American history will be interesting, as a new order will replace the current ascendancy.

[Beowulf9]

The Jews are running this country. See Hollywood for reference.

[Born to Conserve]

If you are on welfare, you and your spawn should be sterilized. This includes your parents, your siblings, and your children. If they don’t want to be sterilized, then wonderful, they can support you.

[Sherman Logan]

Dude. They were part of the Virginia Dynasty. Nothing northeastern about them. The government was dominated prior to the Civil War by Virginians and other southerners, in much the same way it was dominated from 1860 to WWII by WASPs.

In fact, the Civil War was to some extent a struggle between these two elite groups. The South seceded very largely because it saw that it was losing its grip on power and saw no way it could continue safely in a Union in which it was no longer dominant.

(BTW, I have no intent here to ignite another Civil War debate. I think the above statement is indisputably true. Legitimate disagreement is possible on whether the southern elite was right in this belief, but not, IMO, that they believed it.)

After the War, southerners were almost completely excluded from political/cultural influence, with notable exception of powerful southern senators acquiring clout via seniority.

[DJ MacWoW]

If you are on welfare, you and your spawn should be sterilized. This includes your parents, your siblings, and your children. If they don’t want to be sterilized, then wonderful, they can support you.

That's not a conservative opinion. Sanger wanted to rid the country of "undesirables" too. So did Hitler.

[central_va]

At a minimum anyone on welfare should be drug tested.

[DJ MacWoW]

Absolutely agree.

[PGR88]

I knew several true Boston and New York WASPS. They have all passed away. They didn’t have great Wall Street wealth. They were the sons and daughters of Presbyterian or Anglican ministers, university professors, or even farmers.

All I can say is that there was a simple and clear code of behavior, thrift and a universal respect for all, as we are all a unique child of God and free-born American citizens.

[ansel12]

California is sure not WASP anymore.

“During the 1920s and 1930s Los Angeles was a bastion of Anglo Protestantism, reflecting the values of Midwestern parishioners who had been carried to the Southland on the Southern Pacific Railroad. Well into the 1970s, Protestant denominational leaders enjoyed comfortable, influential ties with the city is still-strong “downtown business
establishment,” which itself was largely Protestant.

The Immigration Act of 1965, however, created the condition for a radically different religious future for the City of Angels-a future that would anoint Roman Catholicism as the area’s dominant religious group. Today Roman Catholicism is the single largest faith tradition in Los Angeles County, with 294 parishes and 3,631,368 adherents.
Among Christians, 71% are Catholics. Between 1980 and 1997, Roman Catholicism experienced a 36% growth.”

[arkfreepdom]

Some of that is due as well to the main stream protestant churches becoming so liberal. I know many WASPs who are now catholic. Fundamentalist churches have also grown for the same reason.

[ansel12]

Some of what? California becoming Catholic?

[ansel12]

Sorry, I just started on my first cup of coffee and realized that you were indeed saying that conversion to Catholicism was a factor.

I doubt that, since whites have been fleeing Catholicism for many years/decades, the real factor is the importation of Catholics by the 10s of millions, a long term goal of the democrat party and the American left, and their arrival in large numbers, in California.

[AllAmericanGirl44]

bkmk

[Agamemnon]

The Rockefellers, Carnegies, Mellons, Roosevelts, Vanderbilts and a host of others were not Anglo-Saxon, yet were indisputably WASP.

Mellon and Carnegie were Scottish descent -- WASP-ish in the Presbyterian or Anglican sense, but not quite in the true British sense.

The Roosevelt's and Vanderbilt's were descendants of the Dutch/New Amsterdam mercantile families which preceded what became British/New York mercantilism in 1664. As merchant families associated with the VOC they were already quite well entrenched, Dutch protestants, possibly, but not WASPs per se.

Recall the Pilgrims first stayed in Amsterdam and then Leiden, Holland prior to their journey that landed them in what became Plymouth Colony. There, they also mingled with French Protestant Huguenots some of whom came over with the Pilgrims.

Roosevelt's and Bush's can also trace themselves to the Pilgrim's passage as Dutch and English, respectively. So in this way Bush is still the British WASP, though not necessarily Roosevelt.

Rockefellers on the other hand were actually drawn more from German stock, rather than Dutch, but on that basis one could reasonably say they were at least 1/2 of the Anglo-"Saxon" moniker.

FReegards!

[Savage Beast]

What you say is true. Virginia was the cultural, economic, and population center and the center of power throughout the Colonial Period. The colonies outside New England were the "Papist States" to New Englanders, the "Southern States" to everyone else. In the mid-19th century, New Yorker, Herman Melville, referred to himself as coming from "Southern soil".

Both of these sections were populated by White Anglo-Saxon Protestants--WASPs--of the same European extraction.

In the 19th century, power and population shifted to the Northeast. Early in the 19th century, New York passed Virginia in population. It remained the most populous state until California passed it in the 20th century.

As you say, the Civil War decided that the Northeastern establishment would become dominant over the Southern establishment, but both were WASP.

[stonehouse01]

Meritocracy... men and women trained in the most prestigious schools...

Not any more - “diversity” has let in many affirmative action students and the meritocracy is now a sham - Obama and Michelle included.