Humans have a phrase, 'What is past is prologue.' [...] Minbari also have a phrase. 'What is past is also sometimes future.'
-- Delenn, Babylon 5: Z'ha'dum

A few months back I wrote a diary over at TOP arguing that Donald Pumpkinhead is a "Borderer Strongman". I think that description is still apt, but I realized today that the argument can be extended to cover the current state of politics in this country.

First, a bit of background. The term "Borderer" comes from David Hackett's seminal work of American historiography Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in North America. Hackett's thesis is that there were four distinct British cultural groups that settled this continent in pre-revolutionary times and these groups still dominate our political and cultural life. The book was written in the late 1980s and he was wondering what changes other groups like Hispanics might bring, but my impression is that these first four "attractors" tend to absorb later immigrants (although not without some modifications).

Albion's Seed documents a wide range of folkways in support of his thesis: Speech patterns, cooking habits, house design, marriage customs, you name it. My favourite bit of trivia is that New England roofs use the same number and locations of anchor pins in the beams as traditional houses in East Anglia. But for this post, the leadership and political folkways are the most relevant.

What are the four groups he describes?

The first is the Puritans, who moved to New England from East Anglia. They were pious but somewhat communitarian capitalists. Today, I think they form the establishment wing of the Democratic Party and are represented by the Clintons. Note that all these groups have migrated around, so where they settled is not as important as their central folkways.

The next group is the Cavaliers. These were the younger sons of the British nobility who had no land thanks to primogeniture laws. They moved to The Chesapeake bay region from Southwestern England and set up estates. Since they needed serfs, and none were available (in part due to the high mortality rate from malaria among white convicts) they turned to African slaves instead. This group has morphed into the establishment wing of the GOP, but probably has connections to the Libertarians.

Settling between these two groups in the Delaware valley were the Quakers, who came from the northern Midlands. They were relatively egalitarian and almost feminist at times, but they still had their own form of cultural enforcement in the form of "meetings". I think this group corresponds to the Berniecrats in the present day.

The last group (and in some ways the most interesting) is the Borderers. These were people who settled in Appalachia after fleeing the violence in the borderlands between England and Scotland prior to the act of Union in 1707. Culturally, they were adapted to the lawless environment of the border wars, with a focus on self-reliance (because who else was going to look out for them?) Unfortunately, their leadership folkways centered around the "strong man" and Andrew Jackson is the archetypal Borderer leader. What such leaders say is irrelevant: All that matters is strength in various forms (including sexual prowess). The Small Handed One is a modern version of this kind of leader.

The modern border area is no longer violent because after Union, the army came in a and strung up anyone who made even the slightest amount of trouble¹. Within a generation the old violent folkways had been eradicated, but no such suppression happened in this country. This goes a long way towards explaining the violent subtext at The Orange Haired One's rallies.

What I think is most interesting about Hackett's analysis for the present political moment, however, is not the ongoing toxicity of Borderer culture, but how all the major political shifts in this country occur when groups switch parties. Before the civil rights movement, the Borderers were part of the Democratic Party and the Puritans were part of the GOP. Another switch happened with FDR (see the book for details - my copy is loaned out, so my apologies if I have forgotten some details) and so on back into the mists of time. When we talk about political realignments in the US, it is hard to get away from these four building blocks being used to compose the two parties the Constitution inadvertently constrains us to.

This site basically represents a branch of the Quakers. This makes sense to me personally because I flirted a bit with the Friends when I was younger and this site matches my predilections. Will Latinos form a fifth group or will they get absorbed like so many groups before them? If not, what other group do we need to join in order to be politically effective? Hoping that everyone will see the light (another Friends phrase, that) has not worked historically and we are currently at odds with the Puritans. Do we try to make them clean up their act? Do we try to forge an alliance with the populist Borderers and let the two establishment groups merge again? The one group we seem destined to be at odds with is the Cavaliers, but that is hardly surprising because genetic/cultural elitism is a fundamental part of their world view, but anathema to the Quaker outlook.

In parliamentary systems, our folkways could constitute separate parties and form alliances as needed. The US constitutional system does not work that way - as 225 years of third party failures has shown. The Puritans are now claiming that they are the "true Democrats" and trying to browbeat us into giving up our folkways in exchange for power. We are unwilling to do this, so if we are to continue to have an alliance with them going forward, we need to make it clear that it is a partnership or nothing. History is on our side, and they had better figure that out.

1. Note that the '45 was a Scottish uprising, not a Borderer one.