This is a really good bit of info, but I think you (and perhaps Meade) misread and mis-apply the Jeffersonian perspective. Jefferson was almost a proto-Nitzschean figure. A polymath who was wealthy beyond belief and talented at everything. It's probably better to think of him as a late 18th century Elon Musk.
He was against expansive government and foreign involvement. But he was very much for egalitarian government (vastly expanding the franchise) and an expansive active society and an "aristocracy of talent". He was in a real sense a forerunner of social activism in that he was a veritable proponent of rebellion, even for stupid causes. The is also Jefferson:
"And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion. The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two?"
In practice, his government was most noted for
1) Louisiana Purchase, a massive expansion of the US,
2) The First Barbary War, which, in a somewhat confused manner, could also be our first undeclared war, as Jefferson sent the first batch of ships with the orders to not cross the war but to basically "use judgement" in how far to respond if attacked.
3) The Embargo Act, which was a general ban on American trade with warring France and England. It's worth noting that this was both his major failure and major departure from his long career as a proponent of individual liberty. As such, to me it underscores the depth of his moralizing (individuals should do the right thing, and in this case the federal government should enforce it).
Today, Jefferson is probably most thought of as the massive hypocrite who owned a bunch of slaves (and fathered some) while writing the Declaration of Independence. If we look past the hypocrisy of his time though, it's pretty consistent. Jefferson thought it appropriate for individuals to do things that states should not.
Moving forward to our time, I don't think that this Jefferson, the author of a paean to rebellion who sought a federal ban on trade, would be troubled at all by individuals and private businesses refusing to trade with a country out of a moral belief. Rather, I think it would fit right in to his basic perception of the world that individuals should have the right to do so. When the state does compel people, it might be ok if it's the morally correct thing (as in the Embargo act).
What seems most literally Wilsonian to me about this war is the ritual shunning of Russians with no direct complicity in it because of their refusal to denounce Putin or his actions. As much as I think those Russians are wrong, it is terribly wrong also for them to be fired or sanctioned over their views. Unfortunately it is common for this to happen in war, and that is what is so literally Wilsonian: the same and worse happened to Germans, German sympathizers, and war opponents generally during WWI. So far the "and worse" has not come to pass this time, which we may take as progress-- but who knows what would happen if the US were more directly involved?
I think mask mandates are fine when conditions are such that they area a cost-effective way of preventing the wearer to transmit Covid to others. I have never considered the right to infect other people with disease (more applicable to vaccinations than masks) as among my rights.
Because I don’t’ think pronouns are important I’m in favor of everybody using the ones they want for themselves and that it’s good manners others to go along with their (often silly, in my opinion) preferences.
I want the energy that reduces net CO2 emissions at least cost but am not much concerned with its color. (I think a tax on net CO2 emissions would result in some "drilling" for fossil fuels offset by CO2 sequestration.)
"I don’t’ think pronouns are important I’m in favor of everybody using the ones they want for themselves and that it’s good manners others to go along..."
It's bad manners for someone to expect other people to play along with his "point deer make horse" fantasy, and it's socially destructive to indulge it.
I mean I see vaccine mandates as being wise or not as data bear on their preventing the onward transmission of the disease. It's like the regulation of any other environmental externality, the cost of prevention should not exceed the benefits of non-transmission, but not becasue the prospective transmitter has a right to transmit
David Hackett Fisher's narrative is a neat story, and I can see why people are drawn to the poetry of it, perhaps it was even true to some extent for some of the country's history, but I'm doubtful that it actually explains modern American political fault lines. Appalachian voters don't even seem more individual-freedom oriented than the average American. Nor does it make sense to describe people who want to decriminalize heroin as puritans. I see little evidence that modern-day political tribes are descended, in any meaningful sense, from the groups Fisher describes. It seems the evidence that modern-day progressives, for example, are in some 'spiritual' sense the descendants of the puritans is merely that, well, they're kind of puritanical, but that's just a tautology.
There's actually another American split that predates Puritans & Scotch-Irish: Puritans and Cavaliers, which stems from the English Civil War. Puritans leaving England, particularly after the restoration, settled in the northern colonies while the Cavaliers, supporters of the Stuart monarchy and Anglicans, settled in the South. Southern culture derived from aristocratic Cavalier roots. Puritans became more commercially active while Cavaliers were largely agricultural. You can see much of the Civil War divide in the cultural split of Puritan & Cavalier.
David Reynolds' recent biography of Lincoln ("Abe") has a good discussion of this cultural divide. Reynolds bio seeks to place in Lincoln in his cultural milieu. Lincoln has both Puritan & Cavalier forbears.
Hackett-Fischer of course includes the Cavaliers in his four folkways, along with the Puritans, the Scots-Irish "borderers," and the other dissident Protestants (notably the Quakers) in NY-Pennsylvania. The Cavaliers don't really map to any of Mead's four categories--you could maybe try to force them into the Jeffersonians
You need not assume a "national character". Just as one understands an individual's behavior in the context of their personal history and mood, one understands a country's behavior in the context of its past actions and beliefs. It's not so much a static national character but a history of national mood and understanding of events.
Don't get too caught up in the names; they are just convenient shorthand for ways to describe a very old and continuing pattern of inner cultural rivalry which, however much the membership of the classes and groups have shifted over time, remains an unresolved dispute that is the legacy of the heritage and specific details of early American history. Unresolved because unsolvable absent total obliteration and conquest by the dominant faction, which is still not yet fully accomplished but may be soon, one way or another.
No more than I'm skeptical of the validity of modeling the behavior and mood of any particular human and his/her personal affairs.
In both cases, it's valuable to understand someone/something's mood and history, but that knowledge is no kind of guarantee to predict future actions. Which is really the only kind of "validity" that matters. I believe in using every model we can apply to a situation, seeing which fit the best, and still not expecting them to be right.
These four splits are the veritable history of the actions of economics and the machinations of politicians. They're a framework for understanding them.
The trouble is that no possible *chain* of calls for help could be answered in American English, or you are right back where you started. If the call is answered in German, but the Germans call the French, the French call the British and the British call the Americans, then it all reduces to the same thing. And there is no way America can isolate or credibly commit to not helping someone in that help chain.
Since WWII, strategic logic forces all but the most powerful states into a few blocs with a leading element nation in the role of security guarantor. Today there is the American bloc, China, and the fate of Russia was a question mark but some hoped they would accept the special role as a 'pivot' between Beijing and Washington. So, not 'just another country' or 'bigger Serbia with nukes', but with a key position in the system of the new order.
The trouble is that Russia was already on the road to Big Serbia and was inevitably going to get assimilated into the American cultural borg as its young elites defected in essence, and thus eventually neutralized as an independent great power. In the most general sense, literally everybody including other Americans are in this same predicament.
But, for the Russians, all that's changed now, though nobody knows how it's going to turn out. I fear quite badly.
This is a really good bit of info, but I think you (and perhaps Meade) misread and mis-apply the Jeffersonian perspective. Jefferson was almost a proto-Nitzschean figure. A polymath who was wealthy beyond belief and talented at everything. It's probably better to think of him as a late 18th century Elon Musk.
He was against expansive government and foreign involvement. But he was very much for egalitarian government (vastly expanding the franchise) and an expansive active society and an "aristocracy of talent". He was in a real sense a forerunner of social activism in that he was a veritable proponent of rebellion, even for stupid causes. The is also Jefferson:
"And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it’s motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion. The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13. states independant 11. years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two?"
In practice, his government was most noted for
1) Louisiana Purchase, a massive expansion of the US,
2) The First Barbary War, which, in a somewhat confused manner, could also be our first undeclared war, as Jefferson sent the first batch of ships with the orders to not cross the war but to basically "use judgement" in how far to respond if attacked.
3) The Embargo Act, which was a general ban on American trade with warring France and England. It's worth noting that this was both his major failure and major departure from his long career as a proponent of individual liberty. As such, to me it underscores the depth of his moralizing (individuals should do the right thing, and in this case the federal government should enforce it).
Today, Jefferson is probably most thought of as the massive hypocrite who owned a bunch of slaves (and fathered some) while writing the Declaration of Independence. If we look past the hypocrisy of his time though, it's pretty consistent. Jefferson thought it appropriate for individuals to do things that states should not.
Moving forward to our time, I don't think that this Jefferson, the author of a paean to rebellion who sought a federal ban on trade, would be troubled at all by individuals and private businesses refusing to trade with a country out of a moral belief. Rather, I think it would fit right in to his basic perception of the world that individuals should have the right to do so. When the state does compel people, it might be ok if it's the morally correct thing (as in the Embargo act).
What seems most literally Wilsonian to me about this war is the ritual shunning of Russians with no direct complicity in it because of their refusal to denounce Putin or his actions. As much as I think those Russians are wrong, it is terribly wrong also for them to be fired or sanctioned over their views. Unfortunately it is common for this to happen in war, and that is what is so literally Wilsonian: the same and worse happened to Germans, German sympathizers, and war opponents generally during WWI. So far the "and worse" has not come to pass this time, which we may take as progress-- but who knows what would happen if the US were more directly involved?
I guess I must be a Scotch-Puritan. 😊
I think mask mandates are fine when conditions are such that they area a cost-effective way of preventing the wearer to transmit Covid to others. I have never considered the right to infect other people with disease (more applicable to vaccinations than masks) as among my rights.
Because I don’t’ think pronouns are important I’m in favor of everybody using the ones they want for themselves and that it’s good manners others to go along with their (often silly, in my opinion) preferences.
I want the energy that reduces net CO2 emissions at least cost but am not much concerned with its color. (I think a tax on net CO2 emissions would result in some "drilling" for fossil fuels offset by CO2 sequestration.)
"I don’t’ think pronouns are important I’m in favor of everybody using the ones they want for themselves and that it’s good manners others to go along..."
It's bad manners for someone to expect other people to play along with his "point deer make horse" fantasy, and it's socially destructive to indulge it.
???? :)
"This?"
I mean I see vaccine mandates as being wise or not as data bear on their preventing the onward transmission of the disease. It's like the regulation of any other environmental externality, the cost of prevention should not exceed the benefits of non-transmission, but not becasue the prospective transmitter has a right to transmit
David Hackett Fisher's narrative is a neat story, and I can see why people are drawn to the poetry of it, perhaps it was even true to some extent for some of the country's history, but I'm doubtful that it actually explains modern American political fault lines. Appalachian voters don't even seem more individual-freedom oriented than the average American. Nor does it make sense to describe people who want to decriminalize heroin as puritans. I see little evidence that modern-day political tribes are descended, in any meaningful sense, from the groups Fisher describes. It seems the evidence that modern-day progressives, for example, are in some 'spiritual' sense the descendants of the puritans is merely that, well, they're kind of puritanical, but that's just a tautology.
There's actually another American split that predates Puritans & Scotch-Irish: Puritans and Cavaliers, which stems from the English Civil War. Puritans leaving England, particularly after the restoration, settled in the northern colonies while the Cavaliers, supporters of the Stuart monarchy and Anglicans, settled in the South. Southern culture derived from aristocratic Cavalier roots. Puritans became more commercially active while Cavaliers were largely agricultural. You can see much of the Civil War divide in the cultural split of Puritan & Cavalier.
David Reynolds' recent biography of Lincoln ("Abe") has a good discussion of this cultural divide. Reynolds bio seeks to place in Lincoln in his cultural milieu. Lincoln has both Puritan & Cavalier forbears.
Hackett-Fischer of course includes the Cavaliers in his four folkways, along with the Puritans, the Scots-Irish "borderers," and the other dissident Protestants (notably the Quakers) in NY-Pennsylvania. The Cavaliers don't really map to any of Mead's four categories--you could maybe try to force them into the Jeffersonians
AS DESCRIBED, a Jeffersonian is just a Jacksonian in nicer, more traditional clothing.
BUT, as MikeDC notes above, an ACTUAL Jeffersonian serves partially as a go-between the ideas of Hamilton and Wilson.
Splits are useful analytic devives. But pushing them too far produces stunted thinking, a good bit of which seems to have shown up in this post.
Also, how would you plot Wilson, Hamilton, Jackson and Jefferson on the 3 axes? Do you more or less agree with:
Jefferson, Hamilton < Less / Traditionalism / More > Jackson, Wilson
Jackson, Hamilton < Less / Sympathy / More > Jefferson, Wilson
Jackson, Wilson < Less / Freedom / More > Jackson, Jefferson, Hamilton
You need not assume a "national character". Just as one understands an individual's behavior in the context of their personal history and mood, one understands a country's behavior in the context of its past actions and beliefs. It's not so much a static national character but a history of national mood and understanding of events.
Don't get too caught up in the names; they are just convenient shorthand for ways to describe a very old and continuing pattern of inner cultural rivalry which, however much the membership of the classes and groups have shifted over time, remains an unresolved dispute that is the legacy of the heritage and specific details of early American history. Unresolved because unsolvable absent total obliteration and conquest by the dominant faction, which is still not yet fully accomplished but may be soon, one way or another.
No more than I'm skeptical of the validity of modeling the behavior and mood of any particular human and his/her personal affairs.
In both cases, it's valuable to understand someone/something's mood and history, but that knowledge is no kind of guarantee to predict future actions. Which is really the only kind of "validity" that matters. I believe in using every model we can apply to a situation, seeing which fit the best, and still not expecting them to be right.
These four splits are the veritable history of the actions of economics and the machinations of politicians. They're a framework for understanding them.
The trouble is that no possible *chain* of calls for help could be answered in American English, or you are right back where you started. If the call is answered in German, but the Germans call the French, the French call the British and the British call the Americans, then it all reduces to the same thing. And there is no way America can isolate or credibly commit to not helping someone in that help chain.
Since WWII, strategic logic forces all but the most powerful states into a few blocs with a leading element nation in the role of security guarantor. Today there is the American bloc, China, and the fate of Russia was a question mark but some hoped they would accept the special role as a 'pivot' between Beijing and Washington. So, not 'just another country' or 'bigger Serbia with nukes', but with a key position in the system of the new order.
The trouble is that Russia was already on the road to Big Serbia and was inevitably going to get assimilated into the American cultural borg as its young elites defected in essence, and thus eventually neutralized as an independent great power. In the most general sense, literally everybody including other Americans are in this same predicament.
But, for the Russians, all that's changed now, though nobody knows how it's going to turn out. I fear quite badly.