Before James Webb was elected as a Democratic senator from Virginia, he wrote a book entitled Born Fighting about the history of the Scots-Irish in America. I was particularly interested in the book because my maternal grandmother was Scots-Irish although her personal story was different than those described by Webb. Instead of settling in Appalachia, my grandmother's ancestors settled in Nova Scotia and came to the United States only after the Civil War. No one in my family spoke much about the Scots-Irish part of our ancestry. We were more interested in an ancestor who immigrated from Sweden.
Still, as I read Webb's descriptions of Scots-Irish culture--execrable housekeeping, academic underachievement, distrust of authority, individualism, fractiousness, and the tendency to swing between sensuality and religiosity--I had an epiphany. This is me. I have found my cultural identity.
Perhaps the most politically relevant of Scots-Irish cultural traits is individualism. Foreign observers of the American scene nearly always comment on the weight given to individualism rather than community and are puzzled by the fact that it is often the poorest and least-educated of Americans who espouse these values even though, theoretically, they would benefit from a more communitarian emphasis if that emphasis led to, for example, national health insurance. The Israeli sociologist, Baruch Kimmerling, in personal correspondence with me, commented that the hyper-patriotism of American culture was possibly intended to offset America's "wild individualism" and a writer in Ha'aretz, whose name I forget, expressed the wish that Israel would not become as individualistic as America.
The wonderful Noam Chomsky commented that American society is atomized and that this is a result of deliberate policies to keep the masses from uniting and pressing for real change. A series of videos of Chomsky discussing class warfare is available on youtube and is very much worth watching. Click here for an audiocast of Chomsky on class warChomsky is right about this, as he nearly always is, but it occurs to me that there is something in American culture that makes it easy for the elites to keep the masses atomized. This policy does not go against the grain of American culture. In fact, it exploits a pre-existing tendency in the culture.
Kimmerling, in his book on Zionism and economics, cited the American historian Frederick Jackson Turner, and argued that the availablity of cheap land is the source of American individualism. Early in American history, vast tracts of land were available practically for the taking. People could stake a claim and were responsible for improving and defending the land themselves, without the assistance of the government. When this most valuable resource could be acquired without going through the government, people were free to develop a more individualistic culture.
Israel, on the other hand, had a high percentage of its land owned by the Jewish National Fund, a quasi-official government agency and Israelis had to go through it to buy land or a house. This dependence on government for this necessary commodity helped shape Israel into a more collective and communally oriented society.
I can't help but wonder whether these land policies are not only the cause of different attitudes about individualism but are also the result of underlying cultural differences. To my non-Jewish way of thinking, the most absolutely startling aspect of Jewish culture is its greater emphasis on community. Protestants almost never talk about community and when they do, it is with a sense of duty and annoyance rather than a sense of belonging or satisfaction.
As a Protestant child, there were two songs I learned while still in pre-school. The first, of course, was "Jesus Loves Me." The second song was "The B-I-B-L-E." It contained the line "I stand alone on the Word of God." Then there is the famous Easter hymn "In the Garden": "I come to the garden alone." Catholic hymns, on the other hand, sing of the Church, the Holy Family, and other themes that emphasize family, society, and community. To a Protestant, the greatest sin is lack of faith, a sin that is necessarily highly personal and individual. To a Catholic, the greatest sin is selfishness, a sin against the community. The Scots-Irish are, of course, among the most strongly Protestant of people.
If these aspects of American society are, as I suspect, deeply rooted in ethnic and cultural traits, reformers who want to establish a more collective society are doomed to fail. Two groups of do-gooders who are going against the grain of American culture are the global warming activists and the national service advocates.
The global warming people lament the existence of suburbia--where people have far more space, privacy, and freedom to pursue individual interests and lives than in the city--because it leads to greater energy usage. Thomas Friedman wants to institute an additional fifty cent per gallon gas tax, a policy that punishes the rural poor ,who must travel longer distances for everything, far more than wealthy New Yorkers. He advocates this because, in my judgement, he wants to stick it to the Arabs by reducing oil imports. Sales taxes are among the most regressive of taxes because the poor spend a disproportionately large share of their income compared to the rich. (Friedman, as you will recall, also was a big proponent of the Iraq war, another policy that affected the poor more than the affluent as young people from rural areas and the inner cities were far more likely to enlist than other kids.)
National Service is another idea going against the grain of American culture. It is one thing to be drafted to defend the country during wartime. It is quite another to lose a substantial portion of your liberty to work for low pay on projects important to politicians. Besides, I can't help but suspect that national service plans are backdoor ways of increasing the pool of military recruits.
The usual argument is that young people should give back to their societies that have raised them. No one can disagree with that but they can give back to society far more effectively by working in economically productive jobs, raising healthy kids, taking care of aging parents, and volunteering for causes close to their hearts.
Proponents of national service argue that this is done in Europe, or Israel, or some other place. So what? We are Americans, not Europeans or Israelis. It is time to cling fiercely to our American identity, an identity that values freedom and individuality and that looks askance on government coercion.
One of the earliest American flags depicted a rattlesnake with the words "Don't Tread on Me" written above it. Advocates of a more collective--and necessarily coercive--society will find a deep-rooted, culturally based resistance. They will be treading on a serpent.
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