A product of the post-Revolutionary era 1787-1824 that set the stage for Jacksonian democracy. Socially it was an ascendancy of Scots-Irish yeomen artisans, small farmers and “independent” men. Property qualifications for vote fell away, north abolished slavery, 1812 war fever
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Replying to @zenpundit
I guessed as much. The interesting thing is that I see versions of that idea in black culture too. It's a minority tradition (Luke Cage? James Baldwin...?). A tendency to judge structural iniquities by a gold standard of the *average* human rather than the *exceptional* human
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Replying to @vgr
Theres cultural interplay between yeomen and free blacks in the 19th C that planter elites were keen to stop both antebellum with laws against whites fraternizing with slaves and postbellum with Jim Crow. Huge elite fear of Farmer’s Alliance unifying poor whites and blacks
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Replying to @zenpundit @vgr
Lot of Scots-Irish values of bootstrapping, personal independence, pride in skills that began as ethnic identity became a generic lower middle class and working class American ethos rolled later into American Dream beliefs
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Replying to @zenpundit
As a religion it's got a weird mix of strengths and weaknesses. Compared to say Jewish or Asian immigrant cultures (which shares the pride in skills, bootstrapping, self reliance, but not egalitarianism or personal independence) it seems to build weaker, shallower institutions.
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Replying to @vgr
Well, the reason is that the Scots-Irish subculture retains elements of pre-nuclear family antecedents which we see in the predisposition for feuds, fighting and preference for martial professions. Gravitate to military as an institution in outsize career numbers. Also LE
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Replying to @zenpundit @vgr
The military notably reproduces an honor culture and tough structure that keeps ppl from leaving at will. Which BTW Scots-Irish tended to do - ie westward expansion in America and colonization for the British Empire.
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Replying to @zenpundit
Very good point. You need strong anti-defection enforcement or religion-like apostasy strictures to stabilize that kind of culture. It's not quite honor culture though I think... more a subset. I think Arab/Afghan are more stereotypically honor cultures.
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Replying to @vgr
Yes it’s diluted. There’s actually an anthropological theory that the old Scots-Irish folkways became part of the antebellum Southern honor culture that got passed down eventually to inner city street gangs via the grandchildren of the Great Migration. A book on it I believe
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Replying to @zenpundit
Isn’t that Thomas Sowell theory of black inner city culture post various shutdowns of ‘black wall street’ etc?
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Heh yeoman power and monarchical power allying against feudal power since Robin Hood something something Switzerland has a closely parallel culture: William Tell as founding figure, but stabilized by siege of geography. I suspect Edo Japan maps too.
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Replying to @vgr
On yeoman agrarian populist culture https://www.amazon.com/Roots-Southern-Populism-Transformation-Upcountry/dp/0195306708 …
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Replying to @zenpundit @vgr0 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
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