TOUGH TO SURVIVE

 

The last posting, “Within These Walls,” reviewed the first of three political subcultures Daniel Elazar[1] identifies as coexisting within the US.  That is the individualistic subculture.  Yet to be described is the moralistic, the topic of this posting, and the traditionalistic.  Whereas the individualistic takes a market-oriented view of politics, the moralistic subculture sees politics quite differently.  As with the individualistic, this posting, after reviewing the moralistic elements, will apply George Lakoff’s models of socialization[2] to those elements.

          The moralistic characteristics according to Elazar are:

1.    A political career is seen as a great calling.  It is the opportunity to do things for the betterment of the commonweal.

2.    The emphasis is the commonweal, i.e., the search for the good society.  There seems to be the claim that individual welfare, ambitions, and efforts only make sense through the individual’s work within institutions.  Strong institutions lend to the advancement of the good society.[3]

3.    The values of honesty, selflessness, and commitment are emphasized.  In addition, citizens are admonished that it is their duty to participate in the public politics of the community.  They reject the notion that politics is the opportunity for some to advance their self-interest and/or their careers.

4.    The community bias leads to localism.  The good society is a function of people getting involved and sharing in the responsibility of improving their local communities.

In line with these elements, the moralistic subculture does place on the citizenry certain moral expectations.

Initially, that moralistic view was mostly defined by Puritanical theology as the settlers of primarily New England first established a highly sectarian view of politics – so profound, that contemporary writer, Margaret Atwood, describes early colonial origin not as a democracy, but a repressive theocracy.[4]  This writer acknowledges repressive policies (of note the discriminatory policies against women) but takes issue with the extent of that comment.  A closer look seems to be prudent.

Contextually, here is an overall view of these early settlers’ environment,

 

Because the soil was rocky and the climate was often harsh, colonists in New England only farmed enough to feed their families. Some of these crops included corn, beans, and squash. The New England colonies, however, were full of forests, giving the colonists the important natural resource of trees. These trees [eventually] provided wood that colonists were able to use to build homes, buildings, and ships. Lumber became very important to the shipbuilding industry because they built ships for the colonies. Ships and lumber were also exported to England. Also, because the New England colonies were along the coast, many colonists fished. The fishing industry included whaling and cod, among other types of fish. Whale oil was an important resource that was used as fuel for lamps and could also be sold. Because the New England colonies focused on the shipbuilding and fishing industries, they imported agricultural products (farm products) from other colonies and England.[5]

 

All this economic activity took time and discipline to establish and as George Santayana[6] points out, they were well served by the discipline their Puritanical beliefs provided.  But as for their democratic character, here are the structural elements of their governance:

·      The colony was first established under a charter issued to the Massachusetts Bay Company and initially, only those stockholders, “freemen,” who made the trip over had voting rights.

·      First meeting in August 1630, the freemen selected a governor, John Winthrop, a deputy governor, and seven assistants with the power to enact colonial laws.  This body also served as judges and eventually the highest court of appeals.  Collectively, it was called the General Court.

·      From its beginning, the Court invited the public to attend their meetings and Winthrop secured that all the attending males be named freemen.  That meant they were allowed to vote on whether or not they consented to who was chosen as an assistant and who, in turn, selected the governor and deputies.  Winthrop also encouraged that the decisions the Court made have the full agreement of those being governed.

·      While they held the general belief in separation of church and state, there was not the belief in a separation between state and God and, therefore, restricted voting rights to members of the Congregational Church.  It should be remembered that Calvinists such as Puritans “reformed” themselves against Catholicism and Anglicanism in that these other religions were/are hierarchical with either the pope or the monarch at the head of those churches.

·      As this system of governance evolved, it could be described as somewhat restrictive in terms of membership but by the 1640s, there were definite provisions for a separation of power (a two-house legislature), and the allowance of non-church members to petition the government and participate in various governmental processes.  When compared with England, the colonists could boast a higher percentage of their population participating and being allowed to vote as a right.

·      And with this participation, the early settlers developed a healthy skepticism of governmental officials and the workings of their government.[7]

Again, in relation to the Atwood comment, while the colonial experience of New England would, by modern standards, be considered a theocracy, one is best served by viewing their early efforts as developmental steps toward what democracy would eventually come to be.

          What of Lakoff models of political socialization?  One can definitely see the strict father model in a strong mode of operation.  But taken in the context of the environment that these settlers had to contend with, one – at least this blogger – stands in awe of how democratic they pushed their governance to be.  As such, in line with the argument this blogger presented in the last posting, these New Englanders did not view governance and politics along familial terms, be it strict father or nurturant parent.

What one can ascribe to these settlers – and through the leadership of Winthrop – a definite sense of partnership emerged.  To the extent it did, the whole idea of analogizing their efforts as a family just does not fit.  And as a non-family set-up and given the paucity of manipulable spoils available, one can only assume the motivation these settlers had in their deliberations was to further the common good and to exemplify the attributes Elazar identifies in his moralistic subculture designation.

          Yes, there was the Roger Williams case in 1636, but that case serves as the outer limit of Massachusetts’ tolerance for divergent views at that time.  To remind the reader, he preached religious tolerance and criticized the confiscation of Native American land.  He was cast out of the Bay Colony and went on to establish Rhode Island.[8]  Not a proudful episode, but no polity lives up to its espoused values all the time and, in the case of the Puritans, one can see it as a time of experimentation as they were developing what democracy would come to mean.

          What begs the question, if one accepts this positive image of the Puritans, is:  what would have been an effective socialization approach to encourage the younger generation to carry on what the initial settlers began?  There is evidence that the second-generation members were already rebelling to some degree against the harsher tenor of their parents. 

As just mentioned, Roger Williams and then Anne Hutchinson demonstrated that not everyone was willing to go along with the strict tenets of belief Winthrop and the General Court promoted.  While Massachusetts and the other New England colonies were noted for their Puritanical beliefs, some degree of softening transpired as the years progressed.  Eventually, the influence of the Enlightenment and later transcendentalism would further secularize their governance.

For a well-rounded but concise account of the social life in Puritan New England, the reader is guided to the site, “Puritan Life,” provided by U.S. History.org.[9]  One thing one can say, as Santayana describes, the discipline of the Puritans did lead to a successful economy, high literacy, and longer lives.  That is, it provided for successful settlements in terms of their survival and advancement.

In the next posting, this blog will review the traditionalistic subculture of the South.

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[1] Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View from the States, (New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966).

[2] George Lakoff, Moral Politics:  How Liberals and Conservatives Think (Chicago, IL:  The University of Chicago Press, 2002).  And to read this blog’s report on Lakoff’s models, see Robert Gutierrez, “To Be Strict or Nurturing,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, a blog (December 24, 2021), accessed December 31, 2021, http://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2021_12_19_archive.html .

[3] Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton, The Good Society (New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf, 1991).

[4] Margaret Atwood (an interview), Amanpour and Company, PBS (December 8, 2021).

[5] “New England Colonies,” Colonial America (Article 4, 1630-1638), n.d., accessed December 29, 2021, https://ca01000317.schoolwires.net/cms/lib/CA01000317/Centricity/Domain/146/New%20England%20Colonies.pdf .

[6] George Santayana, “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy,” The Annals of America, vol. 13 (Chicago, IL:  Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc, 1968), 277-288.

[7] “Puritan Massachusetts:  Theocracy or Democracy?,” Bill of Rights in Action (Constitutional Rights Foundation), 29, 1 (Fall, 2013), accessed December 29, 2021, https://www.crf-usa.org/images/pdf/gates/puritans-of-mass.pdf

[8] “Rhode Island Banished from Massachusetts,” This Day in History/The History Channel (n.d.), accessed December 30, 2021, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/rhode-island-founder-banished-from-massachusetts.

[9] “Puritan Life,” The New England Colonies/U.S. History.org (n.d.), accessed December 30, 2021, https://www.ushistory.org/us/3d.asp .

WITHIN THESE WALLS

 

Daniel Elazar, in the mid-1960s, offered a geographic image of how three American political subcultures are situated within the US borders.  The first rendition of that image appeared in 1966 but subsequent versions have emerged since that first attempt.[1]  This posting introduces some of the general attributes one can observe among these subcultures.

In simple terms, the origins of the three date back to the earliest days of the nation’s colonial period in the 1600s.  By the time the national polity was being formed, during the late 1700s, one already had the three distinctive cultural modes:  the moralistic, the individualistic, and the traditionalistic.

          The moralistic originated in the New England colonies/states and basically grew from the Puritanical colonial experience.  It was characterized by strong, disciplined behavior that proved essential as early Americans dealt with the severe physical environment.  George Santayana[2] claims that that view, while strongest in New England, did influence the cultural development of all the colonies.

          Moving south, the next set of colonies/states developed an individualistic subculture and reflected a more market-oriented view.  This posting, shortly, will more specifically describe it, but the immediate point is that relative to the moralistic, one sees a more secular and self-centered orientation to politics and social relationships in general.

          And in the southernmost set of colonies/states, due to the developed plantation and slave economy, the traditionalistic subculture developed.  Here the main assumption is to see society in a more hierarchical fashion.  The upcoming postings will share with the readers a more rounded rendition of what these traditionalistic and moralistic beliefs and customs were/are.

          As for their expansion, one can roughly project westward across the North American continent and each of these subculture modes progressed within three layers toward the Pacific Ocean.  One writes roughly because geographic features such as mountain ranges and more local developments interrupted that progression with each one maintaining its original character. 

Although individual states, even as of 1966, harbored mixtures of the three (e.g., Florida had a mix of traditionalistic and individualistic modes), one could still detect, as of the turn of the last century, that influence being significantly maintained.  That is, this notion or insight of the US having these three subculture modes still has a good deal of vibrancy.

          So, what makes up the ideals of an individualistic subculture?  It is presented first since its devolved form is presently dominant in the US, but one should keep in mind it was not first to develop – that honor belongs to the moralistic subculture.  The introduction or initial development of the individualistic, though, did not take long, and one can argue that it reflects natural proclivities of humans to prioritize their self-interests.  One can denote that bias in its attributes.

          According to Elazar, the individualistic subculture is noted by the following characteristics:

1.    Politics is seen as part and exemplary of the general marketplace.  Activities consist of the trading of favors to achieve public goals.  Those who engage in the work of politics do so for personal advancement and are expecting to be commensurably compensated for their labor.

2.    The focus of society should be private concerns, not public ones.  Therefore, community interventions should be held to a minimum and only allowed in extreme, unusual circumstances.

3.    Politics should be practiced addressing specific problems.  There should not be a programmatic end attached to politics.

4.    The public is not expected to get involved in the professional activity of politics.  First, this business is often “dirty” and should be left to those who have chosen to do its loathsome work.  Second, the public expects some degree of corruption, but calculates the costs of getting involved, i.e., how corrupt must it get before it’s worth doing something about it?

Consequently, public officials will engage in new initiatives only when there is an overwhelming uproar to do so.

Generally, the individualistic subculture encourages political decisions that do not seek to identify or deal with core causes of public problems.  It instead tends to address the surface symptoms.  At best, it typifies the leadership James MacGregor Burns describes as transactional leadership.[3]  That is, “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back.”

          One adjective that comes to mind in contextualizing this cultural mode is simple.  It views politics relatively simply in that it does not call on one to exert much concern other than what is presented to a person at a given time.  The consequences only extend to such outcomes that can be described as one getting what one wants in the immediate circumstance.  Its thinking takes on some form of the following:  one wants X, one has Y to exchange for X; is the current holder of X willing to exchange it for Y?  If yes, that is good and the trade is made; if not, well, can one negotiate to offer Z instead, etc.?

          If common, this mode of thinking and behavior generates a social environment.  In such an environment, how are its attributes socialized to the young?  Here, the insights of George Lakoff can be helpful.  He, as the last posting shared, offers political socialization models that he has devised that include being of the strict father morality model or the nurturant family morality model.  This blogger, while agreeing that the models accurately describe how socialization transpires, personally finds, in terms of social utility, great deficiencies with both models. 

He, the blogger, aims to describe their influence within the three subcultures respectively and hopes to point out those shortcomings.  These efforts to relate Lakoff’s models to Elazar’s subcultures are those of this blogger and should not be attributed to either Elazar or Lakoff.  But to the degree the relationships are true, one can better appreciate the power these cultural forces have.

And as is the case in any socialization approach, there are tensions between and among the ideals of such modes in one plane – e.g., family relationships – and that of another – e.g., the national political arena.  But patterns emerge from the accommodations that are made over the years of social history.  So, in the case of individualistic subculture and the socialization of political beliefs, one can detect a path from the individualistic and the strict father model revealing how families engage in socialization practices.

In both, the individualistic and strict father model, the emphasis is on the immediate and one detects a tradeoff – obedience or willingness to behave in a certain fashion in exchange for avoidance of disfavor or unwanted outcome.  A tension though exists.  The individualistic strives to cater to the desires of the “consumer” while the strict father view looks toward some overall goal. 

After all, parents want good children to become good adults.  It’s just that in everyday family exchanges, that distant goal becomes subsumed under the immediate challenge at hand and that is better expressed in transactional terms.  And the other effect is that the strict father view keeps family affairs within the family and it does not invite outside elements to have a role but, instead, socializes children to adopt an exclusionary orientation – what happens within the family stays there.  “We handle our affairs” tends to be the tone even when external aid is needed.

But there is a nurturant element in the individualistic view.  That is one of limited empathy – not to the level one has with the nurturant parent approach, but to the degree one needs to effectively negotiate.  As the “Godfather” suggested, one needs to think like one’s enemy to understand and predict what that enemy’s next move will be.  And to be able to predict accurately is always a good thing.

In all of this, this blogger wants to be clear.  In both the case of strict father model and that of nurturant parent, one basic deficiency is that both analogize social arrangements – be it a community, a state, or a nation – as “families.”  This is basically misleading and detrimental.  These arrangements are not families, or anything like them.  This blogger rather wishes the common analogy would be a partnership.  And that is what the constitutions of the nation and of all the states establish.  But that’s an item for another posting.

For now, this blog is set to next describe the moralistic subculture that was responsible for introducing federalist ideals and ideas to the American experience.  That will be the topic of the next posting and as with this one, Lakoff’s ideas will add a bit of substantive insight as to how that subculture has its effects on this nation’s political thinking and action.

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[1] For the original depiction see Daniel J. Elazar, American Federalism: A View from the States, (New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966).  For a more recent one, see, for example, “State Political Culture,” Lumen:  American Government (n.d.), accessed December 26, 2021, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/amgovernment/chapter/state-political-culture/ .

[2] George Santayana, “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy,” in The Annals of America, Vol. 13 (Chicago, IL: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1968/1911), 277-288.

[3] James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (New York, NY:  Harper and Row, 1978).