The Eleven American Nations

Scott Hardie | April 27, 2014
I read this article last fall (thanks Anna), and it continues to shape my thinking about politics in this country, so here's sharing it for discussion. It argues that political differences are defined by migration patterns, such that people who settled in different parts of the country wound up with completely different political philosophies because of their experiences in getting there, forming eleven distinct nations within America. For example, considering that Colorado is so far-right ideologically that rural Coloradans want to secede rather than be controlled by liberals in its state capital, the article explains:

The other "second-generation" nation, the Far West occupies the one part of the continent shaped more by environmental factors than ethnographic ones. High, dry, and remote, the Far West stopped migrating easterners in their tracks, and most of it could be made habitable only with the deployment of vast industrial resources: railroads, heavy mining equipment, ore smelters, dams, and irrigation systems. As a result, settlement was largely directed by corporations headquartered in distant New York, Boston, Chicago, or San Francisco, or by the federal government, which controlled much of the land. The Far West's people are often resentful of their dependent status, feeling that they have been exploited as an internal colony for the benefit of the seaboard nations. Their senators led the fight against trusts in the mid-twentieth century. Of late, Far Westerners have focused their anger on the federal government, rather than their corporate masters.

Among the eleven regional cultures, there are two superpowers, nations with the identity, mission, and numbers to shape continental debate: Yankeedom and Deep South. For more than two hundred years, they've fought for control of the federal government and, in a sense, the nation's soul. Over the decades, Deep South has become strongly allied with Greater Appalachia and Tidewater, and more tenuously with the Far West. Their combined agenda - to slash taxes, regulations, social services, and federal powers - is opposed by a Yankee-led bloc that includes New Netherland and the Left Coast. Other nations, especially the Midlands and El Norte, often hold the swing vote, whether in a presidential election or a congressional battle over health care reform. Those swing nations stand to play a decisive role on violence-related issues as well.

Samir Mehta | April 28, 2014
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | May 4, 2014
During Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign, a time of high Tea Party anger over ObamaCare and Medicaid expansion, it became widely discussed that the states that receive the most money in government benefits and contribute the least to the national budget are in the Deep South, states that consistently vote red. These "moochers" are the "47 percent" that Romney famously groused about, and yet they were the same people voting for him. I can't find it now, but someone interviewed a poor rural white Southerner who lived without medical insurance and whose family subsisted in part on SNAP programs, and yet who voted for conservatives. When asked why he opposed government welfare programs despite needing them to get by, he thought hard about it and said that what ultimately motivated him was a feeling of shame. He hated that he was dependent on the government and wasn't "man enough" to support his family by himself (despite there being no real opportunities in his area to earn more). He aspired to the American ideal of hard-working self-sufficiency and raising oneself by one's bootstraps, and voted according to his aspirations in spite of the cost to himself and his community. That interview shed a lot of light for me on why some voters "bite the hand that feeds."

The sharp decline in American mobility is a worrisome sign for our future, given that widespread willingness to relocate for economic opportunities on the frontier was one of the leading causes of American economic prosperity across our history. If our generation today isn't willing to pursue a fortune, because we're satisfied with the lot that we have already, then economic stagnation grows likelier. Houses are dirt cheap in Detroit and nobody wants to go there. If you think it's just because the city has few jobs and a high crime rate, Fargo is safe and enjoying an economic boom and yet it still can't get enough people to fill the new jobs. If people are staying put more today than they used to, then the cultural norms that inform these voting patterns are likely to set in even deeper than they used to. Samir, I would guess that your feeling of disassociation from these regional values are because you're one of the mobile minority (you've lived in several states and your parents are immigrants), rather than someone whose family has lived in the same area for generations and had their values ossify.