Essential fault lines, but too sharply drawn

Review of American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard

Extreme polarization has jolted many of us out of a complacency we scarcely knew we indulged. After a lifetime as a political junky, I am beginning to seriously wonder how well I understand the United States – I had assumed so much and ignored much more.

Woodard’s book is a regional history of the United States, as 11 separate “nations” or more accurately, “cultures”. Its ambition is to trace the roots of our political behavior to present as determined by our demographic composition and the circumstances of our origins. The characteristics of the 11 nations, he argues, were largely determined by the conditions of their establishment – who moved into them, when, and why.

First, there was the “tidewater” in the Virginia and Maryland areas, educated planters who settled in order to conquer the land, much like the Spanish. It was a catastrophic failure until they discovered tobacco, creating a number of quick fortunes and pseudo-aristocratic oligarchies. This elite sought laborers first via indentured servitude, according to which liberty was earned and then granted rather than a right, before moving on to slaves.

Second, there were the Puritans who emigrated to New England in order to live a purer life – a relative freedom so long as settlers conformed to local religious norms. This grew into “Yankeedom” with a reformist impulse, a faith in change, and a lack of aristocratic presumptions of power inheritance and immutable hierarchy. Unlike the tidewater colonies, which was blocked geographically and by other groups, Yankeedom was able to spread its culture westward.

Third, there was a tolerant Dutch culture limited to the New York area, with an interest in trade and a somewhat libertarian notion of freedom. These were the 17^th century cultures.

Later, poorer settlers came to the south. Greater Appalachia, the fourth region, was founded as a relatively autarkic area, mostly by less educated Scots and Englishmen; they valued their freedom from authority of any kind. Their spread westward proceeded in a rather lawless manner.

Fifth, there was the deep south, which modelled itself on the slave state in Barbados, a brutal regime whose planter elite ruled large estates that predominantly grew cotton; their lower-class residents tended to bow to authority and accept their condition, particularly as they could look down on the other races. The cotton estates were labor-intensive with an extremely high fatality rate among workers. This would become the Bible Belt.

Sixth, there were the midlands colonies, founded by the Penns and others; they were tolerant and moderate, wishing to pursue their economic future with minimum interference from the state.

The remaining cultures – the far west, New France, Spanish El Norte, and the left coast – were essentially variations on earlier cultures, either as described above or by their own historical origins. Finally, in Canada, there was a “First Nation” that was heavily Indian.

As Woodard demonstrates, these colonies represented separate cultures with differing interests and values, most of whom were skeptical of central authorities. Power-elite elements within them united in common interest in order to achieve independence, but were by no stretch of the imagination a coherent nation in formation; many pockets of loyalists to Britain persisted, particularly in what became Canada. Among other things, this extraordinary diversity demonstrates that the notion of “original intent” is a contemporary political fiction; as Woodard argues: there were many intents.

Once independent from the British Empire, a national system worked in the early years as states pursued their development in the manner in which they chose, held together by a vague and flexible Constitution. The cultures could co-exist, if for no other reason than lack of intimate contact.

Division arose when the early cultures – Yankees, Midland, Deep South, Appalachia – pushed to the west, ending their easy co-existence in isolation. The Southern ones were attempting to extend slavery, hence to preserve their economic privileges and power arrangements. Eventually, a reformist coalition from the northeast opposed them, which provoked the Deep South and Greater Appalachia to secede, along with Virginia but not Maryland. While Woodard does not offer a narrative of the Civil War, this is an extremely interesting analysis of why the actors did what they did: southerners accepted without question their elites’ vision of “preserving their societies” (as based on slavery and race division), northerners wanted both to preserve the union and free the slaves, to create a new society. After 1865, this conflict transformed itself into the cultural wars, which we are playing out today.

This perspective explains a great deal about our political development. Much of the north believes in government, visionary progress, and indeed, ideals of inclusion and free enterprise. Wide-ranging debate and inquiry are integral to the process of governing. In contrast, the south opposes all this, tends to think with less nuance, and heavily relies on elite authorities to guide their beliefs, as we see with fundamentalist sects. Woodard argues that this explains our electoral blocs, that is, ideologies bound within our original cultures.

What tips the electoral balance? Swing states in a more pragmatic middle, according to Woodard. If you want to understand why Senator Joe Manchin (of Appalachian West Virginia) votes the way he does – against progressives in his own party from the northeast – this book offers a clear and, I think, convincing explanation. Woodard’s message is that progressives should listen to Manchin because he unambiguously speaks for a huge swing vote block, one crucial to their hold on power. I agree with this, even if I don’t particularly like it.

The whole time I was reading this delightful book, I was poking holes in Woodard’s arguments. While impressive in its ability to frame how we should conceive of American political possibility, I believe that Woodard’s model is too deterministic. For example, the New Deal Coalition included the south and was indisputably progressive – so long as African Americans were excluded from the government largesse, it provided basic infrastructure development to impoverished regions such as the Texas Hill Country (where LBJ was from), created jobs, and moderately redistributed wealth. It was only later, with the civil rights reforms of the 1960s, that the Coalition broke apart; today, it has evolved into forms of white nationalism and nativism that are new and more fascistic than they were in the past.

The problem is that the author takes his approach too far – I don’t believe it can explain as much as he thinks it does. Nonetheless, his perspective is so fundamentally useful in framing recent US political developments that it is a must read.

After a few weeks of thinking about it, I see that Woodard has singularly succeeded in changing the way I see the country and its possibilities. I now feel forced to acknowledge that some constituencies will remain unreachable and the Democratic Party is out of touch with a very large part of the country, indeed the lion’s share in geographical terms. Most progressives live in urban areas, cut off from a conservative rural world that we do not respect or understand, with whom we can no longer even speak. We have to change this.

Moreover, Woodard argues that the Constitution is the only thing holding us together. This deeply impressed me: I had felt for years it was obsolete and pathetically dysfunctional, indeed I would have had little regret to throw it out and try again. Now, I am wondering if that should be attempted – perhaps the result will be irreparable, violent fragmentation, even the breakup of the nation. I would not have contemplated this – something so basic – without this book. That alone is worth the price of admission.

Finally, Woodard offers a frighteningly prescient warning. To quote: we “had best respect the fundamental tenets of our unlikely union. It cannot survive if we end the separation of church and state or institute the Baptist equivalent of Sharia law. We won’t hold together if presidents appoint political ideologues to the Justice Department or the Supreme Court…or if party loyalists try to win by trying to stop people from voting rather than winning them over by their ideas. The Union can’t function if national coalitions continue to use the House and Senate to prevent important issues from being debated in the open because members know their positions wouldn’t withstand public scrutiny.” That was written in 2011. It nearly made me weep.