One of America's biggest root problems: Scots-Irish culture [View all]

[AZ Progressive]

The vast majority of white southerners as well as many throughout the west are descendants of the Scots-Irish people. I think it's important to understand the cultural roots of people as many things, including problems in society are rooted in culture. Read the article to know more about the Scots-Irish:

The Article: The Scots-Irish Vote

"Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen, psychology professors at the University of Michigan and University of Illinois, conducted an in-depth study in the 1990s examining what they dubbed the "Culture of Honor" prevalent in the South."

"Nisbett argues that many of the cultural traits of the modern South can be traced back to the heritage of the population's descendants. "The Scots-Irish were a herding people, while people from the north [of the U.S.] were English, German and Dutch farmers. Herding people are tough guys all over the world, and they are that because they have to establish that you can't trifle with them, and if you don't do that then you feel like you're at risk for losing your entire wealth, which is your herd. This creates a culture of honor, and the Scots-Irish are very much a culture of honor, and they carried that with them from the Deep South to the Mountain South, and then out through the western plains.""


"According to Nisbett, the Scots-Irish were a warlike people distrustful of a powerful central government, a result of the herder mentality as well as centuries of fighting, first against the English and Irish, then against Native Americans, then against the Yankees. As he points out, "The Scots-Irish are very much overrepresented in the military ... and you find them there because they're a fighting people.""

"An analysis of Scots-Irish may help to explain why rural white voters in many areas of the South and West often share similar viewpoints, and why they differ from rural whites in areas like New England and the upper Midwest in their cultural beliefs and voting patterns."



The article also goes on to say that they were once solidly New Deal Democrats, broke with the Democratic Party increasingly since the 1960s as the Democratic Party became increasingly socially liberal and anti-war.

Of course, there's the whole history of racism in the South, and one can argue that that alone is the reason why they broke off from the Democrats. FDR was able to keep them under the influence of the Democratic Party partly because of FDR's own success in promoting economic progressivism but also because the party did not really tackle minority rights (in part the reason that many Southerners were Democrats.)

Since the time that they went into the Republican camp, because of their outsized influence, it has been difficult to get economically progressive legislation through. The Republicans encouraged them to embrace their cultural roots of distrust of big government and being pro-war. Their cultural roots in Calvinism also suggests why they don't support the government helping the poor and disadvantaged (even if they get help from the government themselves.)

People with these cultural roots are the reason why the Republican party continues to exist, and are the people that have basically allowed the big corporations and the 1% to take over this country (foolishly unknowingly.) Their viewpoints and beliefs, rooted in their culture, continue to be thorns in the way of America's ability to progress.