Jacksonians, transnationalists, Red States and Blue States
We’ve been subjected to a flood of drivel from the Main Stream Media (MSM) ever since the election. Much of the MSM’s whining is about the “values” that divide “Red States” from “Blue States”.
Personally, I’m mystified about the preoccupation with the Red State-Blue State electoral maps; to me they basically resemble the same divisions we’ve had for the last 30 years. Much of the mystery over the “values” question would vanish if the nature of American politics were better understood. It is much more profitable to understand the underlying American “political tribes” when examining subjective issues such as “values”. The way people responded to the “values” question on the exit poll is only a symptom — not a cause. The underlying political ideologies are the cause of the Blue-Red divide.
American politics shaped by what Walter Mead calls America’s four traditions (i.e., Jacksonian, Jeffersonian, Wilsonian and Hamiltonian) and what John Fonte calls transnational progressivism. I don’t think I could think usefully about either American or European politics without a handle on these concepts.
I will begin with Walter Mead’s description of our four political traditions from his essay Jacksonian Tradition [pdf] and follow by quoting John Fonte’s description of Transnational Progressivism.
Keep in mind that this essay was first published in the winter of 1999. People familiar with this pre 9/11 essay would have a decent idea as to the way America would react to the al Qaeda’s 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.
America’s politics are comprised of contradictory concepts. It is difficult to understand America’s behavior without an understanding of America’s four political-cultural traditions: the Jacksonians, Jeffersonians Wilsonians and Hamiltonians.
The Jacksonians are one of the four primary political-cultural traditions in the U.S. Walter Mead wrote an essay about the Jacksonians: The Jacksonian Tradition. According to Mead, the four traditions are:
The Jacksonians. Jacksonian politics are poorly understood because Jacksonianism is less an intellectual or political movement than an expression of the social, cultural and religious values of a large portion of the American public. And it is doubly obscure because it is rooted in one of the portions of the public least represented in the media and academia. Jacksonian America is a folk community with a strong sense of common values and common destiny; it is neither an ideology nor a self-conscious movement with a clear historical direction or political table of organization. Jacksonians are suspicious of untrammeled federal power (Waco), skeptical about the prospects for domestic and foreign do-gooding (welfare at home, foreign aid abroad), opposed to federal taxes but obstinately fond of federal programs seen as primarily helping the middle class (Social Security and Medicare, mortgage interest subsidies), Jacksonians constitute a large political interest.
The Jacksonian tradition includes a code of honor that is a recognizable descendent of the frontier codes of honor of early Jacksonian America. The principles of the Jacksonian honor code are:
For foreigners and for some Americans, the Jacksonian tradition is ugly face of American politics. It is the most deplored abroad, the most denounced at home. Jacksonians reject the Kyoto Protocol, starve the UN and the IMF, cut foreign aid, and ban the use of U.S. funds for population control programs abroad.
Jacksonians are instinctively democratic and populist. Jacksonians believe that the political and moral instincts of the American people are sound and can be trusted, and that the simpler and more direct the process of government is the better. Jacksonians tend to see representative rather than direct institutions as necessary evils, and to believe that governments breed corruption and inefficiency the way picnics breed ants. Every administration will be corrupt; every Congress and legislature will be, to some extent, the plaything of lobbyists.
Jacksonians see corruption as human nature and, within certain ill-defined boundaries of reason and moderation, an inevitable by-product of government. It is perversion rather than corruption that most troubles Jacksonians: that the powers of government will be turned from the natural and proper object of supporting the well-being of the majority toward oppressing the majority in the service of an economic or cultural elite—or, worse still, in the interests of powerful foreigners. Instead of trying, however ineptly, to serve the people, have the politicians turned the government against the people? Are they serving large commercial interests instead of the common good? Are they giving all our industrial markets to the Japanese, or allowing communists to steal our secrets and hand them to the Chinese? Are they wasting billions on worthless foreign aid programs that just transfer these billions to corrupt foreign dictators? These are the issues that excite the Jacksonians.
Jacksonians tolerate a certain amount of government perversion, but when it becomes unbearable, they look to a popular hero to restore government to its proper functions. This was why Ronald Reagan was elected.
When it comes to Big Government, Jeffersonians worry more about the military than about anything else. But for Jacksonians, spending money on the military is one of the best things government can do. Yes, the Pentagon is inefficient and contractors are stealing the government blind. But by definition the work that the Defense Department does—defending the nation—is a service to the Jacksonian middle class.
The profoundly populist world-view of Jacksonian Americans contributes to one of the most important elements in their politics: the belief that while problems are complicated, solutions are simple. Jacksonians believe that Gordian Knots are there to be cut. In public controversies, the side that is always giving you reasons why something can’t be done, and is endlessly telling you that the popular view isn’t sufficiently "sophisticated" or "nuanced"—that is the side that doesn’t want you to know what it is doing, and it is not to be trusted. If politicians have honest intentions, they will tell you straight up what they plan to do. If it’s a good idea, you will like it as soon as they explain the whole package. For most of the other schools, "complex" is a positive term when applied either to policies or to situations; for Jacksonians it is a negative.
While other schools often congratulate themselves on their superior sophistication and appreciation for complexity, Jacksonianism provides what many scholars and practitioners would consider the most sophisticated of all approaches to foreign affairs: realism. Jacksonian realism is based on the very sharp distinction in popular feeling between the inside of the folk community and the dark world without. Jacksonian patriotism is not a doctrine but an emotion, like love of one’s family. The nation is an extension of the family. Members of the American folk are bound together by history, culture and a common morality.
At a very basic level, a feeling of kinship exists among Americans: we have one set of rules for dealing with each other and a very different set for the outside world. Unlike Wilsonians, Jacksonians believe that it is natural and inevitable that national politics and national life will work on different principles from international affairs. Jacksonians believe that international life is and will remain both anarchic and violent. The United States must be vigilant and strongly armed. Our diplomacy must be cunning, forceful and no more scrupulous than anybody else’s. At times, we must fight pre-emptive wars. There is absolutely nothing wrong with subverting foreign governments or assassinating foreign leaders whose bad intentions are clear.
Of all the major currents in American society, Jacksonians have the least regard for international law and international institutions. Jacksonians believe that there is an honor code in international life and those who live by the code will be treated under it. But those who violate the code—who commit terrorist acts in peacetime, for example—forfeit its protection and deserve no consideration.
Jacksonians do not believe that the United States must have an unambiguously moral reason for fighting. In fact, they tend to separate the issues of morality and war more clearly than many members of the foreign policy establishment.
The Gulf War was a popular war in Jacksonian circles because the defense of the nation’s oil supply struck a chord with Jacksonian opinion. That opinion—which has not forgotten the oil shortages and price hikes of the 1970s—clearly considers stability of the oil supply a vital national interest and is prepared to fight to defend it.
The atrocity propaganda about alleged Iraqi barbarisms in Kuwait did not inspire Jacksonians to war, and neither did legalistic arguments about U.S. obligations under the UN Charter to defend a member state from aggression. Those are useful arguments to screw Wilsonian courage to the sticking place, but they mean little for Jacksonians. Had there been no UN Charter and had Kuwait been even more corrupt and repressive that it is, Jacksonian opinion would still have supported the Gulf War. It would have supported a full-scale war with Iran over the 1980 hostage crisis, and it will take an equally hawkish stance toward any future threat to perceived U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf region.
In the absence of a clearly defined threat to the national interest, Jacksonian opinion is much less aggressive. It was not, for example, enthusiastic about the U.S. intervention in the case of Bosnia. There the evidence of unspeakable atrocities was much greater than in Kuwait, and the legal case for intervention was as strong. Yet Jacksonian opinion saw no threat to the interests, as it understood them, of the United States, and Wilsonians were the only segment of the population that was actively eager for war.
While in many respects Jacksonian Americans have an optimistic outlook, there is a large and important sense in which they are pessimistic: they do not accept a belief in the perfectibility of human nature. They do not believe that utopia is just around the corner; if anything, they tend to believe the reverse. Jacksonians believe that neither Wilsonians nor Hamiltonians nor anybody else will ever succeed in building a peaceful world order, and that the only world order we are likely to get will be a bad one. Similarly, regarding plans for universal disarmament and world courts of justice, Jacksonians’ historical skepticism make them doubt that any of these things will do much good.
A Jacksonian rule of war is that wars must be fought with all available force. The use of limited force is deeply repugnant. Jacksonians see war as a switch that is either "on" or "off." They do not like the idea of violence on a dimmer switch. Either the stakes are important enough to fight for—in which case you should fight with everything you have—or they are not, in which case you should mind your own business and stay home. To engage in a limited war is one of the costliest political decisions an American president can make—neither Truman nor Johnson survived it.
Convinced that the prime purpose of government is to defend the living standards of the middle class, Jacksonian opinion is instinctively protectionist, seeking trade privileges for U.S. goods abroad and hoping to withhold those privileges from foreign exports. They see the preservation of American jobs, even at the cost of some unspecified degree of "economic efficiency", as the natural and obvious task of the federal government’s trade policy. Jacksonians can be convinced that a particular trade agreement operates to the benefit of American workers, but they need to be convinced over and over again. They are also skeptical, on both cultural and economic grounds, of the benefits of immigration, which is seen as endangering the cohesion of the folk community and introducing new, low-wage competition for jobs. Neither result strikes Jacksonian opinion as a suitable outcome for a desirable government policy.
Although Wilsonians, Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians do not like to admit it, every American school needs Jacksonians to get what it wants. If the American people had the fighting prowess of, say, the French in World War II, neither Hamiltonians, nor Jeffersonians nor Wilsonians would have had the opportunity shape the postwar international order because they would be inhabitants of German and Japanese colonies.
Of course the Jacksonians are neither transnationalists nor “progressives”, in the leftist sense of that word.
The Jeffersonians. One way to grasp the difference between the Jeffersonians and Jacksonians is to see that both Jeffersonians and Jacksonians are civil libertarians, passionately attached to the Constitution and especially to the Bill of Rights, and deeply concerned to preserve the liberties of ordinary Americans. But while the Jeffersonians are most profoundly devoted to the First Amendment, protecting the freedom of speech and prohibiting a federal establishment of religion, Jacksonians see the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, as the citadel of liberty. Jeffersonians join the American Civil Liberties Union; Jacksonians join the National Rifle Association. In so doing, both are convinced that they are standing at the barricades of freedom. Neither Jeffersonians nor Jacksonians are transnationalists.
The Wilsonians. Wilsonians favor benevolence, anti-colonialism and support for democracy. Wilsonians don’t approve of the political rough and tumble. Mead explains that it is “the crusading moralism of Wilsonian transcendentalists” that inspires their intentions to convert the Hobbesian world of international relations into a Lockean political community. The Wilsonians are idealistic moralists who think that international affairs can be best managed via legal frameworks and see transnational institutions as both feasible and necessary. Wilsonians aspire to a global world order; they are transnationalist.
The Hamiltonians. The Hamiltonians are the commercial interests; they view the world from a perspective of commercial realism. They pursue international free trade. They disparage trade sanctions as a diplomatic tool. They pursue the commercial and industrial policies that encourage commercial growth. Hamiltonians mistrust democracy. The Hamiltonians are realists who view certain legal frameworks and transnational institutions (e.g., WTO, NAFTA) as necessary to promote free trade. They are transnationalists.
Now in light of this description of Jacksonians, consider the presidential election of 2004. George W Bush was careful to explicitly — and clearly — state his positions. Bush showed both backbone, and clarity of vision in his pursuit of threats to America. Bush clearly didn’t give a damn about approval from the UN, the weasels (i.e., France and Germany), Russia, China or the New York Times’ editors. Bush was defending his people with out any regard of the political consequences. Bush’s behavior was profoundly Jacksonian.
Bush’s opponent, John Kerry, was notoriously vague and — except for claiming that he would do everything differently — refused to state what he would do. Whatever his explanations were purporting to explain was lost behind clouds of pointless qualifications, verbal escape hatches and “nuance”. What was very clear about Kerry was his Wilsonian commitment to the UN and his Jeffersonian commitment to — and patience with — diplomacy.
Recall Mead’s description of Jacksonian contempt for leaders who believe issues are “complex”. Recall that Kerry’s vote against the 87 billion dollar bill to fund our troop equipment, rebuilding Iraq and so on. Kerry stated his reasons for voting against the 87 billion dollars were “complex”. Bush’s riposte, “there’s nothing complex about supporting our troops”, was music to Jacksonian ears.
How Americans voted in 2004 was influenced by the tradition they subscribed to. Jacksonian American (i.e., Red State America) summarily rejected Kerry. The Wilsonian and Jeffersonian Blue State America rejected Bush.
The Jacksonians can roughly be thought of as what makes Red America distinctive from Blue America. The question then becomes: “why is it that Jacksonians are in the south and other, say, Wilsonians are in the north?”
Michael Lind, in his book Vietnam: The Necessary War, discusses America’s regional cultures with respect to war. Lind writes:
Thus the U.S. is comprised of several regions, each with a persistent political subculture.
Interestingly, Lind describes the “moralistic Yankee” culture spreading over the northern parts of the country, concentrating in the Great Lakes region, the upper prairie, and the Pacific Northwest. The 2004 electoral map generally showed that these same regions went for Kerry.
This means that the Red State-Blue State phenomenon is nothing new. This also means that the MSM’s “value voter” spin is complete nonsense. It’s just the MSMs way of insinuating the Red States’ vote as based on emotion instead of based on logic or intellect.
This also means that we have no reason to expect any major changes for decades. The voting patterns of yesterday, today and the future are wired into America’s regional cultures. Whatever changes that do occur will be evolutionary and incremental.
I’ve basically quoted Mead’s description of the four traditions (i.e., Jacksonian, Jeffersonian, Wilsonian and Hamiltonian). There is yet another main current — this on international — that needs describing: transnational progressivism.
The Leftist’s primary notions are all aspects of transnational progressivism. John Fonte enumerated the distinctions between Transnational Progressivism and what he calls Liberal Democracy (and which I call Classical Liberalism). Here is Fonte’s enumeration of key transnational progressivism concepts:
That was a very lengthy quote. I would be sorry for forcing my readers to wade through that but I believe it was necessary to grasp the huge intellectual span encompassed by the phrase “transnational progressivism”.
Careful readers noted that Fonte’s description of the transnational progressivism concept also comprised of a number of subordinate and smaller concepts:
I believe that everybody recognizes all of these agendas. I believe that everybody realizes that Republicans tend to rejects every one of them. To be fair, I believe that there are some Democrats that also reject every one of these agendas; they are the ones called “conservative Democrats”. On the other hand, I think it is obvious that some or all of these same agendas are favored by those who characterize themselves as “progressives” or liberal”.
In America self described progressives or liberals affiliate with the Democratic, Green, Communist or similar political parties.
These leftist concepts are hostile to the U.S. and its traditional culture. The U.S. cannot incorporate these concepts—to assimilate them—and remain the America we were born into.
Wilsonians and Hamiltonians share the transnational aspect of this ideology. The Wilsonians value transnational organizations (e.g., the UN and the ICC) and international agreements (e.g., the Geneva Conventions). The Hamiltonians need transnational frameworks (e.g., WTO, NAFTA) to increase international commerce.
The Jeffersonians are more loosely coupled with transnationalism. Jeffersonian notions of transnationalism emphases diplomacy — which is a transnational endeavor — and gives them an appreciation of transnational organizations such as the UN. On the other hand, Jeffersonians are similar to Jacksonians in that they are both wary of any entanglements from these same transnational organizations.
With the partial exception of appreciating the advantages derived from increasing commerce, the Jacksonians have either little use for or are hostile to transnationalism.
Progressivism — which is another alias for leftistism — is the other aspect of transnational progressivism. Leftism is a relatively recent development in American politics that emerged during the latter part of the first half of the twentieth century.
Leftism is a sin that dares not speak its own name. Leftism camouflages itself with various names. For example, the leftists formed the short-lived Progressive Party when the Democrats expelled the Communists in the 1940’s. The Progressive Party’s was originally formed by Teddy Roosevelt and was anything but leftist in nature.
The leftists hijacked the label liberal and eventually succeed in destroying both the meaning and the reputation of that honorable name. Having stained the world liberal so badly that it became a burden, the leftists are back to recycling progressive. Googling progressive politics will yield many hits from leftist websites.
So which of the traditions does Progressivism (AKA leftism) map onto? In my opinion, none of them. Leftism is a new and distinct ideology in America.
In American life, leftists’ are concentrated in the following area:
This list shows that Leftism is not a regional political culture. This list also shows a placement give the leftists control over how information is presented to the American people. Until the Internet and conservative talk radio arrived they had effectivily total control over information flow.
Controlling a major political party provided a means for the American people to vote them into office.
The leftist’s strategy — to monopolize the means for distributing information — was actually pretty effective for about 30 or 40 years. This strategy began failing in the 1980’s. Their strategy’s failure was due to the emergence of conservatives finding new means for the mass communication of conservative viewpoints.
Conservative Talk radio emerged in the 80’s. Conservative websites began dominating the Internet in the late 1990’s. Consequently the leftist lost their advantage in the cultural wars.
So to what extent has leftism been adopted by the American people? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that it is less than 15% of the American people. I think that the Leftist domination of the MSM, and the Democrat elites gives an impression of greater numbers and power than they actually have. It sure gives them influence far beyond what their numbers justify.
My impression is that transnational progressivism is genuinely the dominant ideology in Europe and, if anything, is weak and is weakening in the U.S.
In terms of influence, Jacksonianism is probably has the edge in the U.S., but not by much; they are opposed within the U.S. by a cocktail of traditions and ideologies. Each one of these has it’s own reasons to oppose the Jacksonians war on Islamic extremists.
The Hamiltonians. The international hostility aroused by the Jacksonians war on Islamic extremists damages the Hamiltonians commercial interests. This hostility, for example, makes it harder for Boeing to sell 747s and easier for the French to sell Airbus.
The Jeffersonians. The Jeffersonians are pacifists. They oppose wars in general and are much more patient with diplomacy’s ineffectiveness,
The Wilsonians. The Wilsonians are committed transnationalists who — down deep — care more for their transnational institutions’ well-being than America’s.
The Leftists. The leftists are at war with America in general and Jacksonian America in particular. They support anything that reduces America’s prestige. They are the islamofascist allies because the islamofascist are at war with the U.S. They support transnational organizations because they can be used to contain the U.S. They support multiculturalism because multiculturalism is at war with America’s culture and her sense of herself.
The left knows it can win only if America loses.
It means that it will be relatively static. The Red State-Blue State electoral maps for the next 30 years will look a lot like the Red State-Blue State electoral maps of the last 30 years.
It means that the current preoccupation with gimmicks like “values” overlooks the essential underlying causes of the voting behavior.
It means that any long-term changes will only occur slowly. Aberrations (e.g., Clinton winning two terms) will occur due to exceptional and temporary circumstances.
Postscript:
Almost all of the of commentary regarding the four traditions (i.e., Jacksonian, Jeffersonian, etc.) was cut and pasted from Walter Mead’s essay.
The blockquoted materal regarding John Fonte’s essay was 100% cut and pasted.
Personally, I’m mystified about the preoccupation with the Red State-Blue State electoral maps; to me they basically resemble the same divisions we’ve had for the last 30 years. Much of the mystery over the “values” question would vanish if the nature of American politics were better understood. It is much more profitable to understand the underlying American “political tribes” when examining subjective issues such as “values”. The way people responded to the “values” question on the exit poll is only a symptom — not a cause. The underlying political ideologies are the cause of the Blue-Red divide.
American politics shaped by what Walter Mead calls America’s four traditions (i.e., Jacksonian, Jeffersonian, Wilsonian and Hamiltonian) and what John Fonte calls transnational progressivism. I don’t think I could think usefully about either American or European politics without a handle on these concepts.
I will begin with Walter Mead’s description of our four political traditions from his essay Jacksonian Tradition [pdf] and follow by quoting John Fonte’s description of Transnational Progressivism.
Keep in mind that this essay was first published in the winter of 1999. People familiar with this pre 9/11 essay would have a decent idea as to the way America would react to the al Qaeda’s 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.
About America’s four political traditions
America’s politics are comprised of contradictory concepts. It is difficult to understand America’s behavior without an understanding of America’s four political-cultural traditions: the Jacksonians, Jeffersonians Wilsonians and Hamiltonians.
The Jacksonians are one of the four primary political-cultural traditions in the U.S. Walter Mead wrote an essay about the Jacksonians: The Jacksonian Tradition. According to Mead, the four traditions are:
The Jacksonians. Jacksonian politics are poorly understood because Jacksonianism is less an intellectual or political movement than an expression of the social, cultural and religious values of a large portion of the American public. And it is doubly obscure because it is rooted in one of the portions of the public least represented in the media and academia. Jacksonian America is a folk community with a strong sense of common values and common destiny; it is neither an ideology nor a self-conscious movement with a clear historical direction or political table of organization. Jacksonians are suspicious of untrammeled federal power (Waco), skeptical about the prospects for domestic and foreign do-gooding (welfare at home, foreign aid abroad), opposed to federal taxes but obstinately fond of federal programs seen as primarily helping the middle class (Social Security and Medicare, mortgage interest subsidies), Jacksonians constitute a large political interest.
The Jacksonian tradition includes a code of honor that is a recognizable descendent of the frontier codes of honor of early Jacksonian America. The principles of the Jacksonian honor code are:
Self-reliance. Real Americans, many Americans feel, are people who make their own way in the world. They may get a helping hand from friends and family, but they hold their places in the world through honest work. They don’t slide by on welfare, and they don’t rely on inherited wealth or connections. Earning and keeping a place in this community on the basis of honest work is the first principle of Jacksonian honor, and it remains a serious insult even to imply that a member of the American middle class is not pulling his or her weight in the world.
Equality. Among those members of the folk community who do pull their weight, there is an absolute equality of dignity and right. No one has a right to tell the self-reliant Jacksonian what to say, do or think. Any infringement on equality will be met with defiance and resistance.
Individualism. In Jacksonian America, everyone must find his or her way: each individual must choose a faith, or no faith, and code of conduct based on conscience and reason. Despite this individualism, the Jacksonian code also mandates acceptance of certain social mores and principles, including loyalty to family, raising children "right", sexual decency (heterosexual monogamy—which can be serial) and honesty within the community. Corporal punishment is customary and common; Jacksonians find objections to this time-honored and (they feel) effective method of discipline outlandish and absurd.
Financial esprit. While the Jacksonian believes in hard work, he or she also believes that credit is a right and that money, especially borrowed money, is less a sacred trust than a means for self-discovery and expression. Jacksonians have always supported loose monetary policy and looser bankruptcy laws.
Courage. Jacksonians defend their honor in great things and small. Americans are far more likely than Europeans to settle personal quarrels with extreme and even deadly violence. Jacksonian culture values firearms, and the freedom to own and use them. The right to bear arms is a mark of civic and social equality, and knowing how to care for firearms is an important part of life. Jacksonians are armed for defense: of the home and person against robbers; against usurpations of the federal government; and of the United States against its enemies. In one war after another, Jacksonians have flocked to the colors. Independent and difficult to discipline, they have nevertheless demonstrated magnificent fighting qualities in every corner of the world. Jacksonian America views military service as a sacred duty. When Hamiltonians, Wilsonians and Jeffersonians dodged the draft in Vietnam or purchased exemptions and substitutes in earlier wars, Jacksonians soldiered on, if sometimes bitterly and resentfully. An honorable person is ready to kill or to die for family and flag.
For foreigners and for some Americans, the Jacksonian tradition is ugly face of American politics. It is the most deplored abroad, the most denounced at home. Jacksonians reject the Kyoto Protocol, starve the UN and the IMF, cut foreign aid, and ban the use of U.S. funds for population control programs abroad.
Jacksonians are instinctively democratic and populist. Jacksonians believe that the political and moral instincts of the American people are sound and can be trusted, and that the simpler and more direct the process of government is the better. Jacksonians tend to see representative rather than direct institutions as necessary evils, and to believe that governments breed corruption and inefficiency the way picnics breed ants. Every administration will be corrupt; every Congress and legislature will be, to some extent, the plaything of lobbyists.
Jacksonians see corruption as human nature and, within certain ill-defined boundaries of reason and moderation, an inevitable by-product of government. It is perversion rather than corruption that most troubles Jacksonians: that the powers of government will be turned from the natural and proper object of supporting the well-being of the majority toward oppressing the majority in the service of an economic or cultural elite—or, worse still, in the interests of powerful foreigners. Instead of trying, however ineptly, to serve the people, have the politicians turned the government against the people? Are they serving large commercial interests instead of the common good? Are they giving all our industrial markets to the Japanese, or allowing communists to steal our secrets and hand them to the Chinese? Are they wasting billions on worthless foreign aid programs that just transfer these billions to corrupt foreign dictators? These are the issues that excite the Jacksonians.
Jacksonians tolerate a certain amount of government perversion, but when it becomes unbearable, they look to a popular hero to restore government to its proper functions. This was why Ronald Reagan was elected.
When it comes to Big Government, Jeffersonians worry more about the military than about anything else. But for Jacksonians, spending money on the military is one of the best things government can do. Yes, the Pentagon is inefficient and contractors are stealing the government blind. But by definition the work that the Defense Department does—defending the nation—is a service to the Jacksonian middle class.
The profoundly populist world-view of Jacksonian Americans contributes to one of the most important elements in their politics: the belief that while problems are complicated, solutions are simple. Jacksonians believe that Gordian Knots are there to be cut. In public controversies, the side that is always giving you reasons why something can’t be done, and is endlessly telling you that the popular view isn’t sufficiently "sophisticated" or "nuanced"—that is the side that doesn’t want you to know what it is doing, and it is not to be trusted. If politicians have honest intentions, they will tell you straight up what they plan to do. If it’s a good idea, you will like it as soon as they explain the whole package. For most of the other schools, "complex" is a positive term when applied either to policies or to situations; for Jacksonians it is a negative.
While other schools often congratulate themselves on their superior sophistication and appreciation for complexity, Jacksonianism provides what many scholars and practitioners would consider the most sophisticated of all approaches to foreign affairs: realism. Jacksonian realism is based on the very sharp distinction in popular feeling between the inside of the folk community and the dark world without. Jacksonian patriotism is not a doctrine but an emotion, like love of one’s family. The nation is an extension of the family. Members of the American folk are bound together by history, culture and a common morality.
At a very basic level, a feeling of kinship exists among Americans: we have one set of rules for dealing with each other and a very different set for the outside world. Unlike Wilsonians, Jacksonians believe that it is natural and inevitable that national politics and national life will work on different principles from international affairs. Jacksonians believe that international life is and will remain both anarchic and violent. The United States must be vigilant and strongly armed. Our diplomacy must be cunning, forceful and no more scrupulous than anybody else’s. At times, we must fight pre-emptive wars. There is absolutely nothing wrong with subverting foreign governments or assassinating foreign leaders whose bad intentions are clear.
Of all the major currents in American society, Jacksonians have the least regard for international law and international institutions. Jacksonians believe that there is an honor code in international life and those who live by the code will be treated under it. But those who violate the code—who commit terrorist acts in peacetime, for example—forfeit its protection and deserve no consideration.
Jacksonians do not believe that the United States must have an unambiguously moral reason for fighting. In fact, they tend to separate the issues of morality and war more clearly than many members of the foreign policy establishment.
The Gulf War was a popular war in Jacksonian circles because the defense of the nation’s oil supply struck a chord with Jacksonian opinion. That opinion—which has not forgotten the oil shortages and price hikes of the 1970s—clearly considers stability of the oil supply a vital national interest and is prepared to fight to defend it.
The atrocity propaganda about alleged Iraqi barbarisms in Kuwait did not inspire Jacksonians to war, and neither did legalistic arguments about U.S. obligations under the UN Charter to defend a member state from aggression. Those are useful arguments to screw Wilsonian courage to the sticking place, but they mean little for Jacksonians. Had there been no UN Charter and had Kuwait been even more corrupt and repressive that it is, Jacksonian opinion would still have supported the Gulf War. It would have supported a full-scale war with Iran over the 1980 hostage crisis, and it will take an equally hawkish stance toward any future threat to perceived U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf region.
In the absence of a clearly defined threat to the national interest, Jacksonian opinion is much less aggressive. It was not, for example, enthusiastic about the U.S. intervention in the case of Bosnia. There the evidence of unspeakable atrocities was much greater than in Kuwait, and the legal case for intervention was as strong. Yet Jacksonian opinion saw no threat to the interests, as it understood them, of the United States, and Wilsonians were the only segment of the population that was actively eager for war.
While in many respects Jacksonian Americans have an optimistic outlook, there is a large and important sense in which they are pessimistic: they do not accept a belief in the perfectibility of human nature. They do not believe that utopia is just around the corner; if anything, they tend to believe the reverse. Jacksonians believe that neither Wilsonians nor Hamiltonians nor anybody else will ever succeed in building a peaceful world order, and that the only world order we are likely to get will be a bad one. Similarly, regarding plans for universal disarmament and world courts of justice, Jacksonians’ historical skepticism make them doubt that any of these things will do much good.
A Jacksonian rule of war is that wars must be fought with all available force. The use of limited force is deeply repugnant. Jacksonians see war as a switch that is either "on" or "off." They do not like the idea of violence on a dimmer switch. Either the stakes are important enough to fight for—in which case you should fight with everything you have—or they are not, in which case you should mind your own business and stay home. To engage in a limited war is one of the costliest political decisions an American president can make—neither Truman nor Johnson survived it.
Convinced that the prime purpose of government is to defend the living standards of the middle class, Jacksonian opinion is instinctively protectionist, seeking trade privileges for U.S. goods abroad and hoping to withhold those privileges from foreign exports. They see the preservation of American jobs, even at the cost of some unspecified degree of "economic efficiency", as the natural and obvious task of the federal government’s trade policy. Jacksonians can be convinced that a particular trade agreement operates to the benefit of American workers, but they need to be convinced over and over again. They are also skeptical, on both cultural and economic grounds, of the benefits of immigration, which is seen as endangering the cohesion of the folk community and introducing new, low-wage competition for jobs. Neither result strikes Jacksonian opinion as a suitable outcome for a desirable government policy.
Although Wilsonians, Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians do not like to admit it, every American school needs Jacksonians to get what it wants. If the American people had the fighting prowess of, say, the French in World War II, neither Hamiltonians, nor Jeffersonians nor Wilsonians would have had the opportunity shape the postwar international order because they would be inhabitants of German and Japanese colonies.
Of course the Jacksonians are neither transnationalists nor “progressives”, in the leftist sense of that word.
The Jeffersonians. One way to grasp the difference between the Jeffersonians and Jacksonians is to see that both Jeffersonians and Jacksonians are civil libertarians, passionately attached to the Constitution and especially to the Bill of Rights, and deeply concerned to preserve the liberties of ordinary Americans. But while the Jeffersonians are most profoundly devoted to the First Amendment, protecting the freedom of speech and prohibiting a federal establishment of religion, Jacksonians see the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, as the citadel of liberty. Jeffersonians join the American Civil Liberties Union; Jacksonians join the National Rifle Association. In so doing, both are convinced that they are standing at the barricades of freedom. Neither Jeffersonians nor Jacksonians are transnationalists.
The Wilsonians. Wilsonians favor benevolence, anti-colonialism and support for democracy. Wilsonians don’t approve of the political rough and tumble. Mead explains that it is “the crusading moralism of Wilsonian transcendentalists” that inspires their intentions to convert the Hobbesian world of international relations into a Lockean political community. The Wilsonians are idealistic moralists who think that international affairs can be best managed via legal frameworks and see transnational institutions as both feasible and necessary. Wilsonians aspire to a global world order; they are transnationalist.
The Hamiltonians. The Hamiltonians are the commercial interests; they view the world from a perspective of commercial realism. They pursue international free trade. They disparage trade sanctions as a diplomatic tool. They pursue the commercial and industrial policies that encourage commercial growth. Hamiltonians mistrust democracy. The Hamiltonians are realists who view certain legal frameworks and transnational institutions (e.g., WTO, NAFTA) as necessary to promote free trade. They are transnationalists.
How did these traditions affect the outcome of the 2004 Presidential election?
Now in light of this description of Jacksonians, consider the presidential election of 2004. George W Bush was careful to explicitly — and clearly — state his positions. Bush showed both backbone, and clarity of vision in his pursuit of threats to America. Bush clearly didn’t give a damn about approval from the UN, the weasels (i.e., France and Germany), Russia, China or the New York Times’ editors. Bush was defending his people with out any regard of the political consequences. Bush’s behavior was profoundly Jacksonian.
Bush’s opponent, John Kerry, was notoriously vague and — except for claiming that he would do everything differently — refused to state what he would do. Whatever his explanations were purporting to explain was lost behind clouds of pointless qualifications, verbal escape hatches and “nuance”. What was very clear about Kerry was his Wilsonian commitment to the UN and his Jeffersonian commitment to — and patience with — diplomacy.
Recall Mead’s description of Jacksonian contempt for leaders who believe issues are “complex”. Recall that Kerry’s vote against the 87 billion dollar bill to fund our troop equipment, rebuilding Iraq and so on. Kerry stated his reasons for voting against the 87 billion dollars were “complex”. Bush’s riposte, “there’s nothing complex about supporting our troops”, was music to Jacksonian ears.
How Americans voted in 2004 was influenced by the tradition they subscribed to. Jacksonian American (i.e., Red State America) summarily rejected Kerry. The Wilsonian and Jeffersonian Blue State America rejected Bush.
The Jacksonians can roughly be thought of as what makes Red America distinctive from Blue America. The question then becomes: “why is it that Jacksonians are in the south and other, say, Wilsonians are in the north?”
Michael Lind, in his book Vietnam: The Necessary War, discusses America’s regional cultures with respect to war. Lind writes:
The historical record could not be more clear. There is a centuries-old northern antiinterventionist, antimilitary culture in the United States, centered in New England and the regions of the Great Lakes, Midwest, Upper Plains, and Pacific Northwest settled by New Englanders. … For generations, the isolationist of Greater New England have battled the promilitary interventionists of the Tidewater South.
…
What accounts for this remarkably persistent pattern of North-South disagreement about the necessity and legitimacy of U.S. military intervention abroad? The ... reason for the persistence of sectionalism in U.S. foreign policy can be found in the ethnoregional theory of American politics, which has been developed by the historian David Hackett Fischer [et al]. The ethnoregional theory holds that in the United States powerful ethnic and regional subcultures are more important and enduring than political parties or ideologies. The labels “Democrat” and “Republican” differ in their meaning from generation to generation; regional subcultures such as those of New England and the Tidewater South change far more slowly.
The greatest insight of ethnoregional theorists is that immigrants in the United States do not assimilate to a uniform American national culture; rather they assimilate to one of a small number of preexisting regional cultures. The historian Wilbur Zelinsky had defined a thesis he calls the Doctrine of Effective First Settlement that holds: “Whenever an empty territory undergoes settlement, or an earlier population is dislodged by invaders, the specific characteristics of the first group able to affect a viable, self-perpetuating society are of crucial significance for the later social and cultural geography of the area, no matter how tiny the initial band of settlers might have been.” According to Zelinsky, “[I]n terms of lasting impact, the activities of a few hundred, or even a few score, initial colonizers can mean much more for the cultural geography of a place than the contributions of tens of thousands of new immigrants a few generations later.”
…
[Most historians generally agree that there are four regional cultures in the United States.] A Yankee culture that spread westward overland from New England; a Quaker culture originating in Pennsylvania; … a Cavalier culture origination in the coastal South, … the Scots-Irish Highland South from Appalachia to the Ozarks and Texas.
Thus the U.S. is comprised of several regions, each with a persistent political subculture.
Interestingly, Lind describes the “moralistic Yankee” culture spreading over the northern parts of the country, concentrating in the Great Lakes region, the upper prairie, and the Pacific Northwest. The 2004 electoral map generally showed that these same regions went for Kerry.
This means that the Red State-Blue State phenomenon is nothing new. This also means that the MSM’s “value voter” spin is complete nonsense. It’s just the MSMs way of insinuating the Red States’ vote as based on emotion instead of based on logic or intellect.
This also means that we have no reason to expect any major changes for decades. The voting patterns of yesterday, today and the future are wired into America’s regional cultures. Whatever changes that do occur will be evolutionary and incremental.
About transnational progressivism.
I’ve basically quoted Mead’s description of the four traditions (i.e., Jacksonian, Jeffersonian, Wilsonian and Hamiltonian). There is yet another main current — this on international — that needs describing: transnational progressivism.
The Leftist’s primary notions are all aspects of transnational progressivism. John Fonte enumerated the distinctions between Transnational Progressivism and what he calls Liberal Democracy (and which I call Classical Liberalism). Here is Fonte’s enumeration of key transnational progressivism concepts:
(1) The ascribed group over the individual citizen. The key political unit is not the individual citizen, who forms voluntary associations and works with fellow citizens regardless of sex, or national origin, but the ascriptive group (racial, ethnic, or gender) into which one is born. This emphasis on race, ethnicity, and gender leads to group consciousness and a deemphasis of the individual’s capacity for choice and for transcendence of ascriptive categories, joining with others beyond the confines of social class, tribe, and gender to create a cohesive nation.
(2) A dichotomy of groups: Oppressor vs. victim groups, with immigrant groups designated as victims. Influenced (however indirectly) by the Hegelian Marxist thinking associated with the Italian writer Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) and the Central European theorists known as the Frankfurt School, global progressives posit that throughout human history are essentially two types of groups: the oppressor and the oppressed, the privileged and the marginalized. In the United States, oppressor groups would variously include white males, heterosexuals, and Anglos, whereas victim groups would include blacks, gays, Latinos (including obviously many immigrants), and women.
Multicultural ideologists have incorporated this essentially Hegelian Marxist “privileged vs. marginalized” dichotomy into their theoretical framework. As political philosopher James Ceaser puts it, multiculturalism is not “multi” or concerned with many groups, but “binary, concerned with two groups, the hegemon (bad) and “the Other” (good) or the oppressor and the oppressed. Thus, in global progressive ideology, “equity” and “social justice” mean strengthening the position of the victim groups and weakening the position of oppressors-hence preferences for certain groups are justified. Accordingly, equality under law is replaced by legal preferences for traditionally victimized groups. In 1999, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission extended antidiscrimination protection under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to illegal immigrants.
(3) Group proportionalism as the goal of “fairness.” Transnational progressivism assumes that “victim” groups should be represented in all professions roughly proportionate to their percentage of the population or, at least, of the local work force. Thus, if women make up 52 percent and Latinos make up 10 percent of the population, then 52 percent of all corporate executives, physicians, and insurance salesmen should be women and 10 percent should be Latinos. If not, there is a problem of “underrepresentation” or imbalance that must be rectified by government and civil society. Thomas Sowell recently wrote-as he has for several decades-that many Western intellectuals perpetually promote some version of “cosmic justice” or form of equality of result. The “group proportionalism” paradigm is pervasive in Western society: even the U.S. Park Service is concerned because 85 percent of all visitors to the nation’s parks are white, although whites make up only 74 percent of the population. Therefore, the Park Service announced in 1998 that it was working on this “problem.”
(4) The values of all dominant institutions to be changed to reflect the perspectives of the victim groups. Transnational progressives in the United States (and elsewhere) insist that it is not enough to have proportional representation of minorities (including immigrants, legal and illegal) at all levels in major institutions of society (corporations, places of worship, universities, armed forces) if these institutions continue to reflect a “white Anglo male culture and world view.” Ethnic and linguistic minorities have different ways of viewing the world, they say, and these minorities’ values and cultures must be respected and represented within these institutions. At a 1998 U.S. Department of Education conference promoting bilingual education, SUNY professor Joel Spring declared, “We must use multiculturalism and multilingualism to change the dominant culture of the United States.” He noted, for example, that unlike Anglo culture, Latino culture is “warm” and would not promote harsh disciplinary measures in the schools.
(5) The Demographic Imperative. The demographic imperative tells us that major demographic changes are occurring in the United States as millions of new immigrants from non-Western cultures and their children enter American life in record numbers. At the same time, the global interdependence of the world’s peoples and the transnational connections among them will increase. All of these changes render the traditional paradigm of American nationhood obsolete. That traditional paradigm based on individual rights, majority rule, national sovereignty, citizenship, and the assimilation of immigrants into an existing American civic culture is too narrow and must be changed into a system that promotes “diversity,” defined, in the end, as group proportionalism.
(6) The redefinition of democracy and “democratic ideals.” Since Fukayama’s treatise, transnational progressives have been altering the definition of “democracy,” from that of a system of majority rule among equal citizens to one of power sharing among ethnic groups composed of both citizens and non-citizens. For example, Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castañeda wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in July 1995 that it is “undemocratic” for California to exclude noncitizens, specifically illegal aliens, from voting. Former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) general counsel Alexander Aleinikoff, declaring that “[we] live in a post-assimilationist age,” asserted that majority preferences simply “reflect the norms and cultures of dominant groups” (as opposed to the norms and cultures of “feminists and people of color”). James Banks, one of American education’s leading textbook writers, noted in 1994 that “to create an authentic democratic Unum with moral authority and perceived legitimacy the pluribus (diverse peoples) must negotiate and share power.” In effect, Banks said, existing American liberal democracy is not quite authentic; real democracy is yet to be created. It will come when the different “peoples” or groups that live within America “share power” as groups.
(7) Deconstruction of national narratives and national symbols. Transnational progressives have focused on traditional narratives and national symbols of Western democratic nation-states, questioning union and nationhood itself. In October 2000, the British government-sponsored Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain issued a report that denounced the concept of “Britishness” as having “systemic . . . racist connotations.” The Commission, chaired by Labour life peer Lord Parekh, declared that instead of defining itself as a nation, the UK should be considered a “community of communities.” One member of the Commission explained that the members found the concepts of “Britain” and “nation” troubling. The purpose of the Commission’s report, according to the chairman Professor Parekh, was to “shape and restructure the consciousness of our citizens.” The report declared that Britain should be formally “recognized as a multi-cultural society” whose history needed to be “revised, rethought, or jettisoned.”
In the United States in the mid-1990s, the proposed “National History Standards,” reflecting the marked influence of multiculturalism among historians in the nation’s universities, recommended altering the traditional narrative of the United States. Instead of emphasizing the story of European settlers, American civilization would be redefined as a “convergence” of three civilizations-Amerindian, West African, and European-the bases of a hybrid American multiculture. Even though the National History Standards were ultimately rejected, this core multicultural concept that that United States is not primarily the creation of Western civilization, but the result of a “Great Convergence” of “three worlds” has become the dominant paradigm in American public schools.
In Israel, adversary intellectuals have attacked the Zionist narrative. A “post-Zionist” intelligentsia has proposed that Israel consider itself multicultural and deconstruct its identity as a Jewish state. Tom Bethell has pointed out that in the mid-1990s the official appointed to revise Israel’s history curriculum used media interviews to compare the Israeli armed forces to the SS and Orthodox Jewish youth to the Hitler Youth. A new code of ethics for the Israel Defense Forces eliminated all references to the “land of Israel,” the “Jewish state,” and the “Jewish people,” and, instead, referred only to “democracy.” Even Israeli foreign minister Simon Peres sounded the post-Zionist trumpet in his 1993 book, The New Middle East, where he wrote that “we do not need to reinforce sovereignty, but rather to strengthen the position of humankind.” He called for an “ultranational identity,” saying that “particularist nationalism is fading and the idea of a ‘citizen of the world’ is taking hold. . . . Our ultimate goal is the creation of a regional community of nations, with a common market and elected centralized bodies,” a type of Middle Eastern EU.
(8) Promotion of the concept of postnational citizenship. “Can advocates of postnational citizenship ultimately succeed in decoupling the concept of citizenship from the nation-state in prevailing political thought?” asks Rutgers Law Professor Linda Bosniak. An increasing number of international law professors throughout the West are arguing that citizenship should be denationalized. Invoking concepts such as inclusion, social justice, democratic engagement, and human rights, they argue for transnational citizenship, postnational citizenship, or sometimes global citizenship embedded in international human rights accords and “evolving” forms of transnational arrangements.
These theorists insist that national citizenship should not be “privileged” at the expense of postnational, multiple, and pluralized forms of citizenship identities. For example, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, under the leadership of its president, Jessica Tuchman Mathews, has published a series of books in the past few years “challenging traditional understandings of belonging and membership” in nation-states and “rethinking the meaning of citizenship.” Although couched in the ostensibly neutral language of social science, these essays from scholars from Germany, Britain, Canada, and France, as well as the United States, argue for new, transnational forms of citizenship as a normative good.
(9) The idea of transnationalism as a major conceptual tool. The theory of transnationalism promises to be for the first decade of the twenty-first century what multiculturalism was for the last decade of the twentieth century. In a certain sense, transnationalism is the next stage of multicultural ideology-it is multiculturalism with a global face. Like multiculturalism, transnationalism is a concept that provides elites with both an empirical tool (a plausible analysis of what is) and an ideological framework (a vision of what should be). Transnational advocates argue that globalization requires some form of transnational “global governance” because they believe that the nation-state and the idea of national citizenship are ill suited to deal with the global problems of the future. Academic and public policy conferences today are filled with discussions of “transnational organizations,” “transnational actors,” “transnational migrants,” “transnational jurisprudence,” and “transnational citizenship,” just as in the 1990s they were replete with references to multiculturalism in education, citizenship, literature, and law.
Many of the same scholars who touted multiculturalism now herald the coming transnational age. Thus, at its August 1999 annual conference, “Transitions in World Societies,” the same American Sociological Association (ASA) that promoted multiculturalism from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s featured transnationalism. Indeed, the ASA’s then-president, Professor Alejandro Portes of Princeton University, argued that transnationalism is the wave of the future. He insisted that transnationalism, combined with large-scale immigration, would redefine the meaning of American citizenship. University of Chicago anthropologist Arjun Appadurai has suggested that the United States is in transition from being a “land of immigrants” to “one node in a postnational network of diasporas.”
It is clear that arguments over globalization will dominate much of early twenty-first century public debate. The promotion of transnationalism as both an empirical and normative concept is an attempt to shape this crucial intellectual struggle over globalization. The adherents of transnationalism create a dichotomy. They imply that one is either in step with globalization, and thus with transnationalism and forward-looking thinking, or one is a backward antiglobalist. Liberal democrats (who are internationalists and support free trade and market economics) must reply that this is a false dichotomy-that the critical argument is not between globalists and antiglobalists, but instead over the form Western global engagement should take in the coming decades: will it be transnationalist or internationalist?
That was a very lengthy quote. I would be sorry for forcing my readers to wade through that but I believe it was necessary to grasp the huge intellectual span encompassed by the phrase “transnational progressivism”.
Careful readers noted that Fonte’s description of the transnational progressivism concept also comprised of a number of subordinate and smaller concepts:
- multiculturalism
- groups over individuals
- oppressor groups vs. victim groups
- Group proportionalism as the goal of “fairness”
- The displacement of Western culture in favor of any other culture
- The opposition to the U.S. regulating immigration so as to retain a dominant European culture
- redefinition of democracy from a system of majority rule among equal citizens toward one of power sharing among ethnic groups composed of both citizens and non-citizens
- Deconstruction of national narratives and national symbols
I believe that everybody recognizes all of these agendas. I believe that everybody realizes that Republicans tend to rejects every one of them. To be fair, I believe that there are some Democrats that also reject every one of these agendas; they are the ones called “conservative Democrats”. On the other hand, I think it is obvious that some or all of these same agendas are favored by those who characterize themselves as “progressives” or liberal”.
In America self described progressives or liberals affiliate with the Democratic, Green, Communist or similar political parties.
These leftist concepts are hostile to the U.S. and its traditional culture. The U.S. cannot incorporate these concepts—to assimilate them—and remain the America we were born into.
How does transnational progressivism map onto Mead’s “four traditions”?
Wilsonians and Hamiltonians share the transnational aspect of this ideology. The Wilsonians value transnational organizations (e.g., the UN and the ICC) and international agreements (e.g., the Geneva Conventions). The Hamiltonians need transnational frameworks (e.g., WTO, NAFTA) to increase international commerce.
The Jeffersonians are more loosely coupled with transnationalism. Jeffersonian notions of transnationalism emphases diplomacy — which is a transnational endeavor — and gives them an appreciation of transnational organizations such as the UN. On the other hand, Jeffersonians are similar to Jacksonians in that they are both wary of any entanglements from these same transnational organizations.
With the partial exception of appreciating the advantages derived from increasing commerce, the Jacksonians have either little use for or are hostile to transnationalism.
Progressivism — which is another alias for leftistism — is the other aspect of transnational progressivism. Leftism is a relatively recent development in American politics that emerged during the latter part of the first half of the twentieth century.
Leftism is a sin that dares not speak its own name. Leftism camouflages itself with various names. For example, the leftists formed the short-lived Progressive Party when the Democrats expelled the Communists in the 1940’s. The Progressive Party’s was originally formed by Teddy Roosevelt and was anything but leftist in nature.
The leftists hijacked the label liberal and eventually succeed in destroying both the meaning and the reputation of that honorable name. Having stained the world liberal so badly that it became a burden, the leftists are back to recycling progressive. Googling progressive politics will yield many hits from leftist websites.
So which of the traditions does Progressivism (AKA leftism) map onto? In my opinion, none of them. Leftism is a new and distinct ideology in America.
So where are the “progressives”
In American life, leftists’ are concentrated in the following area:
- Academia
- Hollywood
- The Main Stream Media (MSM)
- The elites of a major political party (the Democrats)
- Europe
This list shows that Leftism is not a regional political culture. This list also shows a placement give the leftists control over how information is presented to the American people. Until the Internet and conservative talk radio arrived they had effectivily total control over information flow.
Controlling a major political party provided a means for the American people to vote them into office.
The leftist’s strategy — to monopolize the means for distributing information — was actually pretty effective for about 30 or 40 years. This strategy began failing in the 1980’s. Their strategy’s failure was due to the emergence of conservatives finding new means for the mass communication of conservative viewpoints.
Conservative Talk radio emerged in the 80’s. Conservative websites began dominating the Internet in the late 1990’s. Consequently the leftist lost their advantage in the cultural wars.
So to what extent has leftism been adopted by the American people? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that it is less than 15% of the American people. I think that the Leftist domination of the MSM, and the Democrat elites gives an impression of greater numbers and power than they actually have. It sure gives them influence far beyond what their numbers justify.
My impression is that transnational progressivism is genuinely the dominant ideology in Europe and, if anything, is weak and is weakening in the U.S.
Conclusion
In terms of influence, Jacksonianism is probably has the edge in the U.S., but not by much; they are opposed within the U.S. by a cocktail of traditions and ideologies. Each one of these has it’s own reasons to oppose the Jacksonians war on Islamic extremists.
The Hamiltonians. The international hostility aroused by the Jacksonians war on Islamic extremists damages the Hamiltonians commercial interests. This hostility, for example, makes it harder for Boeing to sell 747s and easier for the French to sell Airbus.
The Jeffersonians. The Jeffersonians are pacifists. They oppose wars in general and are much more patient with diplomacy’s ineffectiveness,
The Wilsonians. The Wilsonians are committed transnationalists who — down deep — care more for their transnational institutions’ well-being than America’s.
The Leftists. The leftists are at war with America in general and Jacksonian America in particular. They support anything that reduces America’s prestige. They are the islamofascist allies because the islamofascist are at war with the U.S. They support transnational organizations because they can be used to contain the U.S. They support multiculturalism because multiculturalism is at war with America’s culture and her sense of herself.
The left knows it can win only if America loses.
What does this mean about the Red State-Blue State phenomena?
It means that it will be relatively static. The Red State-Blue State electoral maps for the next 30 years will look a lot like the Red State-Blue State electoral maps of the last 30 years.
It means that the current preoccupation with gimmicks like “values” overlooks the essential underlying causes of the voting behavior.
It means that any long-term changes will only occur slowly. Aberrations (e.g., Clinton winning two terms) will occur due to exceptional and temporary circumstances.
Postscript:
Almost all of the of commentary regarding the four traditions (i.e., Jacksonian, Jeffersonian, etc.) was cut and pasted from Walter Mead’s essay.
The blockquoted materal regarding John Fonte’s essay was 100% cut and pasted.
posted by johnh | 4:57 PM
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