REPRESENTATIONS OF REALITY

 

The last posting, “Early On,”[1] initiated a series of upcoming postings that addresses American history and how levels of deviance Americans have experienced, either as perpetrators or as victims, developed.  That posting reviewed the early clash of ideas – and feelings – they struggled through, that being between Calvinism (fire and brimstone) and transcendentalism (the genteel tradition). 

That review depended on the work of George Santayana[2] who wrote during the early years of 1900s of this clash.  The posting ended with a reference to the contribution of William James.  James is considered an early advocate of pragmatism.  Santayana shared his thoughts on this construct, a philosophy that sinks its creeds and theories over various estimates that were characterized as being a “local and temporary grammar of action.”[3] 

That is, while maintaining the spotlight on the individual, as in transcendentalism, pragmatism judges the individual not as a maker of meaning, but an extraordinary observer (known as “radical empiricism”) and a possessor of great affect (known as “radical romanticism”):  People, according to pragmatist ideals should be about compassionately interacting with things, not with books and idealized generalities.  Realities, for pragmatists, will change over time, leaving a person relying on “book knowledge” with dysfunctional intellectualized principles.

Santayana adequately shares a basis for this American philosophy.  He describes a development that enshrines the individual through transcendentalism, and now, in the 1800s, pragmatism.  Along the way, Americans institutionalized processes based on the assumptions that hold action, temporal concerns, and self-initiative as implicit ideals.  But Santayana could still write of an American people light of heart and comporting themselves, for the most part, in civil modes of behavior.

This cultural foundation, though, would encounter a fundamental institutional change some years later that would have profound sociological and psychological consequences.  Without the sobering influence of Calvinism, to a meaningful degree, the demystified philosophic core of American culture only needed a newer standard of temporal goodness to set off a chain of institutional changes. 

That occurred, resulting in creating within America a pervasive incivility – the higher level of deviance for which Americans are known as suffering through today.  And that turn brings this account into the twentieth century.  That is, to this view of the temporal and action orientation came an invention that would greatly cement and further the biases of pragmatist thought. 

And to explain the effect of that invention – television – this blogger is well advised to borrow from the very psychology that he sees as a product of its influence.  To explain:  Neil Postman argues that a society’s basic mode of communication governs its epistemology (its origins and natures of knowledge).  He observes:

 

Our conversations about nature and about ourselves are conducted in whatever “languages” we find it possible and convenient to employ.  We do not see nature as “it” is but only as our languages are.  And our languages are our media.  Our media are our metaphors.  Our metaphors create the control of our culture.[4]

 

Surely, the effects of TV might have well been eclipsed to some degree since Postman wrote these words – there has been the rise of social media – but the main point is still valid.

Media defines the languages a people employ in the current advanced world. That is, a people’s metaphors dictate how they see reality and define their expectations of reality.  This blogger hesitates using Postman’s views because those views seem to support what is argued to be part of the problem.  Postman, as the description in the next posting will attest, bases his argument on mental processes as opposed to reality, and the position here is that Americans need to find ways to deal with the real.

          To be clear, it is not claimed here that how a people view that reality has no effect on how they interact with it, but what American culture, at least, has done is to glorify image over reality and that is what the blogger sees as Postman helping his readers understand.  This blog will next compare the epistemology created by television and that of the printed word.  It is in this analysis that Postman makes his most meaningful contribution from his cited book, and this blogger believes it sheds powerful insights into what ails the current condition in American culture.

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[1] Robert Gutierrez, “Early On,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, February 13, 2024, accessed February 15, 2024, URL:  https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/.

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

[3] Ibid., 285.

[4] Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (New York, NY:  Penguin Books, 1985), 15.

EARLY ON

 

One recurring concern among observers of American society is the level of deviance that society experiences.  At times deviance can be simple actions that counter norms affecting few if anyone other than the perpetrators of such behaviors.  On the other hand, there are examples that cross legal bounds or central norms and are deemed serious and antisocial.  Here is a general comment of current thought over this subject:

 

Deviance in American society is more prevalent unlike in other countries of the world. … The American dream had a main theme of freedom for the Americans, something that has been wrongly perceived as being free from the laws and regulations of the society. This perception has made most people in America disobey the societal norms in the name of achieving [their] dream[s]. The dream talks of people being committed to the success of material goals under circumstances that are open with individual competition …

To begin with is the fact that most Americans want to be richer than they are despite their current income level, what is referred to as maximization in the dream. …

Another issue of concern is greed among most Americans which is also justified in the dream leading to a type of deviance known as elite deviance committed by the powerful and wealthy people of the society because of greed. From the above discussion, it is seen that the concept of the American dream contributes so much to deviance and criminality in American society.[1]

 

This quote is not offered as the last word on deviance or even an authoritative one, but a reflection of how people in general view deviance.  And given that Americans are judged as being on the high end on this mode of behavior, one can ask why.

          More specifically:  How did Americans get to be judged to be highly deviant?  Unfortunately, the trends toward excessive deviance are not of recent origin.  They are instead the product of a slow development that can be traced to the nation’s beginnings.  What follows, and in upcoming postings, is the product of research this blogger conducted a few decades ago.  Upon reviewing earlier work, he feels it would be helpful to share this work in understanding the main aim of this blog, i.e., to promote federation theory.

          Given that context, this review begins with the contribution of George Santayana.[2]  He wrote, in the earlier part of the last century, an insightful view of the philosophical development of Americans up to his time.  He characterized the early philosophical development as a two-sided Christian view:  one was a harsh fire and brimstone Calvinism that emphasized the dangers of sin and the impression of an “agonized conscience,” and, on the other side, a gentler view, social transcendentalism (more formally developed during the 18^th century).

          This latter view was a European based philosophy.  It was quite sophisticated for an early American society given that society’s inexperience as a new nation.  Santayana points out that Calvinism, while providing the necessary discipline to prosper in the frontier environment, succumbed to the very prosperity it helped produce. 

This left a “genteel tradition” as the prominent view, that being transcendentalism.  Transcendentalists, especially as their beliefs were defined in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, became the prominent perspective among the population and began Americans on their ever-increasing movement toward an individualism second to none.  Emerson captured this reason-based tradition – what Santayana describes as Kantian – of systematic subjectivism. 

Here, one can start seeing extreme individualism taking hold.  Under a call for honestly expressed self-initiative, romanticized in old Yankee lore, the transcendentalists emphasized present needs and the function of will over intellect.  This train of thought harbored a certain blindness to the evil this entailed individualism could encourage Americans to adopt.  It also promoted an “upbeat-ness” in what Emerson’s called a “self-trust” which this newer philosophy supported. 

Stated succinctly, it called for a sense of reality, as a base, which had individuals transcending to what they, themselves, defined as worthy to pursue and relied on what was intuitive in those same people:  “the perspective of knowledge as [it] radiate[s] from the self.”[3]  One can see the origins of a “ME society” developing.

But with diminishing the contextual foundation of Calvinism, this form of individualism had its influence without any internal check and balance.  Instead, individualism, through the years, became stronger as Calvinism became weaker.  It became more legitimate to be deviant as expressions of the self and that self-centeredness took the status of being an ideal.

          And that transition has its own story.  Each century that follows – 19^th and 20^th – add to the story in particular ways.  The 1800s sees the advent and growth of an industrial society and the 1900s as the growth of a consumer-based economy.  Santayana adds his thoughts to the changes the first of these periods had on American thought and dispositions. 

That is, up against this abstract, outer worldly intellectualizing, i.e., Calvinism vs. transcendentalism, Santayana describes the increasing hum of growing industry having its effect on Americans during the first of these centuries.  In doing so, the demand for objectivity and empiricism hacks away at the genteel tradition.  This leads, finally, to William James’ articulation of a rebellious message against intellectualism and its pedantic rule making.  The next posting will address James’ contribution and how it encouraged the nation to consider pragmatism.

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[1] “Deviance Issue in the American Society/The ‘American Dream’ Contribution to the Frequency of Deviance,’” Study Corgi (n.d.), accessed February 10, 2024, URL:  https://studycorgi.com/deviance-issue-in-the-american-society/.

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

[3] Ibid., 281.

AN “INCREMENTAL” ETHOS

 

Of late, this blog reported on a distinction that psychologist Carol S. Dweck has made in how people view intelligence.  People tend to see intelligence as a given trait in terms of how much they have – entity theory – or as a malleable trait one can work on and increase – incremental theory.[1]  The last posting suggested that this basic distinction – how people see intelligence – can and does influence how people approach civic concerns.

          That posting, in passing, suggested that people who adopt an entity view might very easily attribute intelligence levels to inherited biological factors and further be attributed to such conditions of birth such as race, nationality, gender, or similar factors.  One should be clear here; there is no evidence to support such general attributions people make in their efforts to cast people they don’t like as “them” as opposed to “us.”  And included in such castigation is that “they” are not smart enough.

            This sort of thinking, in whatever guise it takes, hits directly, in a negative way, on federation theory in that it questions equality.  Here is a definition one can use for equality:  Equality is a social quality based on the belief that despite inequality in talent, wealth, health or other assets, it calls for equal consideration of all persons’ well-being, that all have an equal right to maintain their dignity and integrity as individual persons.  

What Dweck offers is an argument that varying levels of intelligence are mostly not determinant.  Sure, some people are blessed with exceptional intelligence.  Surely this blogger is not in Albert Einstein’s league when it comes to physics, or Pablo Picasso’s when it comes to art, or Chris Rock’s when it comes to humor, etc.  But he and most people are within ranges of intelligence that allow for meaningful interaction when it comes to governance and politics.

And this would be further enhanced by a population that believes intelligence is not a given trait in terms of how much one has, but a trait that one can improve on to meet the challenges one faces either individually or as a member of a political association.  The trick is to find out how that improvement occurs. 

Unfortunately, for the purposes here, those “hows” vary according to the challenges one faces.  Therefore, there is no set pattern in how to approach these efforts, but there are general modes of problem solving or investigation one can learn that, given the challenge, can be utilized to advance one’s intelligence given a particular area of concern.

So, for example, such instructional models, usually denoted as inquiry models, can be employed and they lend themselves to an incremental approach to intelligence.  These models are usually forms of the scientific method[2] or some process in which students apply a more logic-based activity such as the jurisprudential inquiry approach.[3] 

But short of those models, essentialist instruction (usually associated with recall objectives) can also be more friendly to this incremental view.  For example, Robert M. Gagne’s model, while essentialist in nature, strives for students to reflect on the material teachers present.

This deserves a bit more explanation.  In summary, here is what Robert Gagne called conditions of learning – five of them – and nine progressive levels or “steps” in which students can advance and engage with school subject content.  The conditions are: 

 

·       Verbal information which consists of knowledge claims one finds among various sources of subject information and can be interrelated with other information in meaningful ways. 

·       Intellectual skills are those abilities students can develop by which they process knowledge such as forming hierarchies, contextualizing relevant, new information, or acquiring information that adds distinctive attributes to what is being studied among other skills. 

·       Cognitive strategies consist of analytic abilities in which students can break down sets of information that assist in exposing problems, the problems themselves, or the information needed to solve those problems. 

·       Motor skills are those behavioral steps that students develop and, through practice, improve upon in which they tackle challenging academic issues. 

·       Attitudes are those sentiments students need to motivate themselves to address the material that classroom instruction presents to them.

 

Hopefully, readers can appreciate how these concerns draw educators beyond just seeing teaching as presenting content for the sake of students to recall that content.

And as for the levels or steps, they are: 

 

Level 1:  Reception (or capturing the attention of students),

Level 2:  Setting expectations (or students being informed about what they are to learn and why they are to learn it),

Level 3:  Relevant retrieval (or calling on students to recall what they know and is helpful in meeting a lesson’s objectives),

Level 4:  Targeted or selective perception (or presenting new information that students are to learn with an array of aids such as visuals, examples, discussions),

Level 5:  Verbal encoding (or presentation of the new information in a variety of language presentations such as graphics or case studies),

Level 6:  Responding (or student presentation of new information in various communicative approaches such as tests, demonstrations, interpretations – perhaps artistic productions),

Level 7:  Evaluative reinforcement (or teaching agents providing students with feedback as to the proficiency students demonstrate with the goal to improve on student performance),

Level 8:  Evaluative assessment (or determination of how well students have learned the content), and

Level 9:  Enriching the retained information (or have students transfer learned content to novel or real-life situations that do not totally match information learned but need to be adjusted or nuanced to be applicable).[4]

 

This is a far cry from a teacher presenting information and students committing information to memory, which is how essentialist instruction usually transpires.

          The point is that incremental approaches are out there and Dweck offers data that supports the belief that this view of intelligence is the more accurate way to view student potential.  Hopefully, for the sake of students and for the sake of approaching governance and politics from a federalist perspective, teachers will opt for strategies reflecting incremental understanding of intelligence, leaving behind strategies that entity theory encourages.

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[1] Carol S. Dweck, Self-Theories:  Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development (Philadelphia, PA:  Psychology Press, 2000).

[2] For example, see Molly S. Bolger, Jordan B. Osness, Julia S. Gouvea, and Alexandra C. Cooper, Jennifer Momsen, “Supporting Scientific Practice through Model-Based Inquiry:  A Students’-Eye View of Grappling with Data, Uncertainty, and Community in a Laboratory Experience,” ASCB/Life Science Education, October 22, 2021, accessed February 7, 2024, URL:  https://www.lifescied.org/doi/10.1187/cbe.21-05-0128.

[3] For example, see Muhammad Japar and Dimi Nur Fadhillah, “Do We Need to Learn about Human Rights Values?,” Atlantis Press, 2018, accessed February 7, 2024, URL:  25891038.pdf.

[4] For example, see “Gagne’s 9 Events of Instruction,” Information Technology/University of Florida (n.d.), accessed February 7, 2024, URL:  https://citt.ufl.edu/resources/the-learning-process/designing-the-learning-experience/gagnes-9-events-of-instruction/.

ENTITY OR INCREMENTAL

 

If readers are of the mind, think back to middle school (or if you are as old as this blogger, think back to junior high).  Ask: is intelligence or how well they did at school the product of inborn intelligence or from figuring out how that learning game was played?  American psychologist, Carol S. Dweck, argues that this basic distinction in how people see intelligence plays a big role in how likely individual students will perform at that level of instruction.  And, consequently, how they will be likely to experience success from that point on when it comes to schooling.[1]

          This blog last addressed Dweck’s work in a posting, “A Middle School Challenge,” back in 2019.[2]  It reports how this psychologist labels each view.  The “I’m just smart or I am not” view is given the name entity theory, while “I just have to figure out how to learn this stuff” view is named incremental theory.  She claims these two views or theories prevail among students.  Students tend to see intelligence either one way or the other.

The first, entity theory, sees intelligence as a given amount a person has from birth.  The more one has, the easier it is to learn new material or content.  It is judged to be a fixed, tangible, or concrete quality, and is part of what makes a person who he/she is.  People either have it or they don’t.

On the other hand, the other view, incremental theory, Dweck describes as malleable, changeable through effort, and has a dynamic quality.  In short, in this second view, people can become smarter or more intelligent.  Yes, it calls for people to work at it, but such challenges take on a puzzle quality and have a higher likelihood of being experienced in positive ways.  And making mistakes in the process can even be given a positive slant since they are opportunities to advance learning.

Asking middle school students, through her research, Dweck found that “entity” students tended to agree with the following statements:

 

“The main thing I want when I do my schoolwork is to show how good I am at it.”

“I mostly like schoolwork that I can do perfectly without any mistakes.”

“I have to admit that sometimes I would rather do well in a class than learn a lot.”[3]

 

Whereas incremental students were likely to agree with:

 

“I like schoolwork that I’ll learn from even if I make a lot of mistakes.”

“It’s much more important to me to know new things in my classes than it is to get the best grades.”

“I like schoolwork best when it makes me think hard.”[4]

 

Ask any teacher which set of biases they wished their students shared, and this blogger believes they would overwhelmingly want their students to see schoolwork and learning through the “incremental” lens as reflected in the above quotes. 

Yet, this blogger believes that most teachers do not see this distinction being based, at least in part, on how their students view or understand intelligence.  As a matter of fact, he also believes that many, if not most, teachers share in the entity theory of intelligence themselves.  If true, this can be detrimental in many ways, including ones in which they – and their students in upcoming years – view civic concerns.

For example, if intelligence is a set element of one’s makeup, is it determined by biological factors?  Can those factors be related to such classifications as race, gender, nationality, and the like?  While the emphasis of this posting is not on these concerns; in passing, they seemed worth considering.

But overall, incremental students consistently chose options reflecting exhortation of effort.  While entity students tended to choose, when it came to schoolwork, options of avoidance, alternative options to study and work such as avoiding subjects or courses, and even entertained cheating on tests.  Incremental students were more apt to seek out the challenges involved.  The next posting will apply these distinctions to the concerns of civics more directly.

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[1] Carol S. Dweck, Self-Theories:  Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development (Philadelphia, PA:  Psychology Press, 2000).

[2] Robert Gutierrez, “A Middle School Challenge,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, October 11, 2019, accessed February 3, 2024, URL:  https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2019_10_06_archive.html.

[3] Dweck, Self-Theories, 33.

[4] Ibid., 33.

AN ARRAY OF DISPOSITIONS

 

The last posting referred to certain points this blog has made through the years.  More specifically, those points describe the political/cultural landscape that the political scientist, Daniel Elazar, describes.[1]  Here is how this blog (with some editing) reported on Elazar’s contribution, back in 2011:

 

Daniel Elazar's study of American political dispositions identified these three subcultures. They are the individualistic, the moralistic, and the traditional. The origins of these distinctive cultural dispositions can almost be traced to the earliest colonial period. Highly affected by the economic diversity that sprang up from the colonies in the northern, New England region to the plantation-based economies of the southern colonies, the subcultures of each of the three regions [New England, Mid-Atlantic, and Southern] reflected the social realities emerging from these diverse economic conditions.

Robert Putnam found these diverse political ideas, ideals, and beliefs surviving in the nation’s more current times.[2] Elazar claims that the distinct cultural dispositions stretched westward in mostly three parallel layers of states. The trend is not perfect; for example, while the traditional subculture of the south moved westward, its expansion was mostly limited to the former Confederate States [and ends at the western border of Texas plus Arizona and New Mexico].

Mostly stretching westward from first the mid-Atlantic colonies and then the resulting states, overall, the individualistic subculture is the most dominant today as it mirrors the marketplace perspective. [This blog has made the argument that that dominance was first exerted in the years just after World War II replacing a more moralistic bias that prevailed.]  Today, the nation’s political culture is well ensconced in the natural rights construct that is dominant in our nation's school curricula. Why? Because it best reflects the nation’s capitalist biases.[3]

 

 

This general description, as presented in this blog, was further supported by the thoughts of the Spanish-American philosopher, George Santayana.[4] He argued that American history saw a religious outlook among Americans that began with a strict Calvinist belief that evolved into a more genteel transcendental perspective. Those competing moral views helped develop or at least co-existed with the above described three distinct political subcultures.

To be clear, none of these perspectives held or hold total allegiance among the American population at any time.  That includes the thinking and feelings of Americans today.  For example, the Republican Party base today is described as holding a Christian nationalist perspective among its MAGA[5] advocates.  Readers can pass judgment as to the validity of that claim.  But to the extent it is true, one can classify such thinking as a form of parochial/traditionalist thought.

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

[2] Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone:  The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2000).

[3] Robert Gutierrez, “Individualistic Political Subculture,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, July 18 or 19, 2011).  This posting is no longer found in the blog’s archive feature.

[4] George Santayana, “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy,” in The Annals of America, vol. 13 (originally published in 1911) (Chicago, IL:  Encyclopaedia Britanica, 1968), The Annals of America, vol. 13, 277-288.

[5] Make America Great Again.

OH, OHIO

 

One might argue that a chief challenging reality to the values and aims of federalist thinking is bigness.  If to be federated means a populous shares a sense of partnership, then large social/political arrangements undermine the supposed interpersonal requisites that such a sense would intuitively demand.  One is more apt to federate with others who see the world through similar lenses, and geographic settings would affect the level of “usness” one would presuppose to be necessary.

          In retrospect, probably from the beginnings of the American republic, its fate was sown-in in the treaty with Great Britain to end the Revolutionary War.  Mostly through the American minister, John Adams, the resulting treaty with Great Britain ceded the American nation just about all of the land from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River.  Of particular interest to this posting is the expansion of land north of the Ohio River or what would become to be known as the Northwest Territory.

          A nation that didn’t even exist before the war was now a significantly large one.  And while on paper that seemed just about unprecedented, it left that nation with a demanding challenge – how does one extend control over that vast expanse?  And here, what would be considered as an added challenge, an extended post-war economic depression, turned out to be a motivator for people to behave in just the way this expansion challenge needed them to behave.

          Here is what the historian, David McCullough, describes took place:

 

Unprecedented financial panic had gripped the new nation since the end of the Revolutionary War.  The resources and credit of the government were exhausted.  Money, in the form of scrip issued by the government, was nearly worthless.  The scrip the veterans received as compensation for their service was worth no more than ten cents on the dollar.  Trade was at a standstill.  In Massachusetts the situation was worst of all.  Farmers were being imprisoned for debt.  Only a few months earlier, an armed rebellion led by poor Massachusetts farmer and war veteran named Daniel Shays had to be put down by a force of loyal militia commanded by General Tupper.

            As it was, the severe economic depression that followed the war would last longer even than the war.  But out west now there was land to be as never imagined – vast land, rich land where there was “no end to the beauty and plenty” – that could be made available to veterans at a bargain price in compensation for their service.  West was opportunity.  West was the future.[1]

 

And this opportunity and how it was exploited portrays a number of the attributes of the prevailing construct among the American population having to do with governance and politics.

          As this blog has argued, that construct can be given the name parochial/traditional federalism.  Yes, it ascribed to sustaining a federated populous but mostly only among the nation’s Western European descendants (including the recent immigrants from that area).  It excluded blacks and indigenous peoples.  While indigenous people’s rights were mostly neglected in the process by which the Northwest Territory was incorporated into the American system, there was an element of the process that addressed the rights of blacks.

          And this concern was also extended to other demographic classifications.  McCullough explains:

 

It was intended that this ordinance, now called the Northwest Ordinance, should stipulate that in the whole of the territory there would be absolute freedom of religion and particular emphasis on education, matters New Englanders considered fundamental to a just and admirable society.

 

Most importantly, there was to be no slavery.  In the plan for the creation of a new state northwest of the Ohio River, the proposition put forth by Rufus Putnam [war hero who led the Ohio Company of Associates] and others at the time of the Newburgh Resolution, total exclusion of slavery was an essential.

 

As would be observed by historians long afterward, the Northwest Ordinance was designed to guarantee what would one day be known as the American way of life.[2]

 

And a couple of points should be emphasized.  One, this area would initially be inhabited by migrating New Englanders.  And two, various states would eventually be formed in this area and all of them were organized and developed under a culturally federalist mind set.

          Initially, the New England base was to be highly Calvinist and as such highly based on covenantal thinking in the formulation of political arrangements.  As the political scientist, Daniel Elazar, points out, the northern stretch of states as one moves from east to west in the US can be considered an extension of New England’s moralistic political subculture. 

That is, it highlights the moral bases of governance.  That view more specifically emphasizes the interests of a commonwealth, that governments are to advance the public interests, that the polities are to have very low tolerance of corruption, and that citizens have a duty to participate in politics.[3]  And these characteristics became common among the New England colonies and then states from the time of their earliest settlement and extended westward among the northernmost layer of states.

As for the landmass in question, it is sufficient to list the states that eventually were formed in this territory.  They are Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.  Significant shoreline on the Great Lakes would prove to be of economic advantage to these states.  This became particularly true with the building of the Erie Canal, which was completed in 1825, and opened trade lanes out to the Atlantic Ocean via the port of New York.

Of course, these developments were done with concerns over the “Indian menace.”  Among the indigenous peoples a certain belief prevailed, that “considered the Ohio country their rightful, God-granted domain.”[4]  This aspect of the American expansion – of its parochial character – deserves its own separate analysis.

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[1] David McCullough, The Pioneers:  The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West (New York, NY:  Simon & Schuster, 2019), 8.  Historical claims in this posting rely on this source.

[2] Ibid., 12.

[3] “Explaining Policy Difference Using Political Culture,” West Texas A&M University, n.d., accessed January 27, 2024, URL:  https://www.google.com/search?q=elazar+moralistic+political+culture&rlz=1C1RXMK_enUS966US966&oq=elazar%27s+moralistic&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqBwgCECEYqwIyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQIRgKGKABMgcIAhAhGKsCMgcIAxAhGKsCMgcIBBAhGKsC0gEJMTQxMThqMGo5qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.  It should be noted, most of the states making up the Northwest Territory would eventually morph into the individualistic mindset except for Michigan and Wisconsin that remained moralistic.

[4] McCullough, The Pioneers, 7.