THE ANGLO-SAXON INFLUENCE

 

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This blog currently is looking at the effect identity, that factor that defines a person (for example, as an Irish American), has had on polarizing the American public.  While this has become particularly virulent, identity always exerts itself in politics.  It is ubiquitous.  And it is not only in politics but in other realms of life.  Take sports.  There, teams count on identities based on localities or educational linkages to sell tickets or paraphernalia to a fan base which results in gobs of money for those teams.

          Usually, such expression does not cause any or much antagonism – yes, there are the occasional fights and strains, but they are usually considered a source of good-natured ribbing or put downs.  One usually speaks of “bragging rights” if one’s team wins.  But of late, the identity factor is being expressed in the political arena seriously and persistently.  And when ethnicity, race, and/or nationality serve as its source, identity, as the historian Schlesinger warns, threatens to debase the nation’s unity.[1]

          Of course, this usually is related to immigration, but it also has to do with race relations, an ongoing source of animosity and violence in the nation’s history.  And it does represent, among unjustly treated people (due to their identity), legitimate protests – e.g., the Black Lives Matter movement. 

But a troubling question is:  to what extent should immigrant, racial, or indigenous groups divorce themselves from the nation’s overarching cultural base?  That is an argument that multi-culturalists pose and its aimed at the adoption of the Anglo-Saxon cultural base – the base upon which the nation’s culture has developed.

That base, it should be remembered, has provided the basic constitutional structures, processes, and legalities upon which the nation rests.  Of course, this reliance has not of necessity staved off influences from other cultures.  And the nation has during the years of its existence entertained and adopted elements of those other traditions. 

Most of them are aesthetics in nature.  Influences in food, music, art, and so on have been a continuous part of the American story.  But in addition, there are other areas – beyond aesthetics – in which varying cultural influences have made their marks.  For example, the whole notion of professional policing originates with the Romans, not with the Anglo-Saxons.

          But today’s expression of heightened allegiance to some political/national/ethnic based identity – an allegiance approaching or expressing a tribalism – does not originate from a communal sense.  It instead stems from an extreme individualism and, as such, reflects a nuanced concern.  David Brooks makes this connection.[2]  He explains how individualism allows for uninhibited natural motivations to go unchecked and part of that package of dispositions is to favor one’s tribe and to degrade other “tribes” – other nationalities, ethnicities, and/or races. 

The classic Us vs. Them mentality is spurred by such thinking.  And consequently, it becomes the fuel that feeds the polarization the nation faces.  One should point out, counterintuitively, and ironically, it serves to undermine the basic individualism that brings it to the fore. 

That is, the individual is subsumed under resulting movements by which this identity is expressed.  Again, the historian Schlesinger warns that the individual is absorbed into a united expression of national, racial, and/or ethnic messaging and his/her personage is subsumed with that process.  The analogy, a silly one, that illustrates the point, might be how people lose their identity when they apply makeup that exhibits team colors to the point one cannot identify who they are.

          But one should not misidentify this allegiance.  It is not an example of commitment.  It instead reflects a type of transaction.  The exchange is this mindless devotion to the source of the identity for an enhanced ego.  “I belong to this group, and it makes me special” is the basic message one projects.  Shouting “USA, USA” when so motivated is basically one that proclaims the shouter’s importance; he/she is an American and, therefore, superior.

And when this is expressed in terms of a nation, one can discover the main difference between patriotism and nationalism.  Patriotism promotes a sense of commitment that one is willing to sacrifice for the common good within the context of one’s nation.  Nationalism, instead, calls for sacrifice so as to be able to promote an expression of oneself. 

The main difference lies in this ultimate targeting, but one can describe it practically:  with patriotism one can protest what one’s nation does if what it does hurts the common good, where nationalism does not allow such a divergence from national policy or for some leader.

As for the Anglo-Saxon influence, why should one be an adherent to its provisions or basic ideals?  First, it should not be seen as a static entity.  It has a long history of evolving even before arriving on these shores.  It either adopted or developed those ideas and ideals that became this nation’s basic constitutional framework and not all of that originated in Britain.  And, in part, that framework calls for a commitment to a union of volunteers that comprises the American republic and its basic values and norms.

Within its tenets, it establishes a partnered arrangement among those volunteers to work toward the common good – a more perfect union.  And the path toward establishing this partnering was not arrived at smoothly.  Religious tribalism predated the other forms mentioned above.  Intolerance among the different Christian sects was common, not to mention the antagonism toward Jews.[3]  

But through them, usually for practical reasons, the evolving cultural base found itself accepting more variance within the population.  And with that, a level of secularization gained ground.

By doing so, that commitment to a partnered populous eventually became institutionalized.  Its adoption to a meaningful degree did not take hold until well into the nation’s history.  This commitment assumes and holds that any polarization in which the populous is divided into two uncompromising alliances – which religious divisions resembled – serves as an antagonistic expression to those federated ideals. 

It is instead a form of tribalism while the Anglo-Saxon based tradition – the one this nation inherited in a more crude form from the British in the eighteenth century and grew through complex developments – calls for a committed congregational arrangement.[4]  The two, the partnered view vs. the nationalist view,  are basically different.

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[1] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Disuniting of America:  Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, 1992).

[2] David Brooks, The Second Mountain:  The Quest for a Moral Life (New York, NY:  Random House, 2019).

[3] Kenneth C. Davis, “America’s True History of Religious Tolerance,” Smithsonian Magazine, October 2010, accessed November 1, 2020, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/americas-true-history-of-religious-tolerance-61312684/#:~:text=In%20the%20storybook%20version%20most,followed%2C%20for%20the%20same%20reason.

[4] More specifically, this congregational tradition stems from the Puritanical influence that in effect were being encouraged to leave Great Britain in the 1600s.  But one can argue, the established view of formal religion reflected the Roman Catholic Church’s vertical structure while the Puritanical congregation more closely reflected a traditional Anglo-Saxon tradition.  It is their congregational bias that seems to have encouraged the federal structure of the US, with its supporting processes, that this nation implemented.