MM#280--The Shaping of America, The Big Sort & The Golden Rule

Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, David Kaiser.

Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute and another voting day. In our great republic, this year is what they call the off year of the off year elections, meaning it is not congressional elections. It's not that off year, which happens every two years, in which a third of the Senate is up for reelection and all 435 members of the House are up for reelection, and these would be members for the federal Congress. That just happened one short year ago, in November of 2022. Nope, this is the off year of the off year, but usually this is when most states will have significant ballot measures that come before the people, and we have one such ballot measure here in Ohio, ohio issue one, and we have made our case to vote no in previous podcasts, so be sure to listen to those podcasts before casting your vote today. But as we take stock of our country and look outward along the fruit of plain, we see a country, the United States, lacking in confidence and unsure of its place in the world and second guessing its values, its traditions, its commitments to his or her fellow American. Now, part of this sullen and defeated mindset comes from a tragic and horrific last eight years. From 2016 till now we have seen a radical and violent clash of political parties and in our culture, perhaps not seen since the years of 1968 through 1972, another set of revolutionary years. But if you couple our last eight years and overlay that with a COVID worldwide pandemic, and then layer in the riots of 2020 and the questionable antics of an election in 2020, all taken together, you can and could understand the extreme skepticism on behalf of most Americans. Folks that are in their 70s and 80s now remember the late 1960s and early 1970s. They tell me yes, the country was going through a revolution of sorts, but you were sure back then that the country would live on. It would live to fight another day. Vietnam was certainly unpopular, crime was rampant, but it was as if America was just on a drinking bridge, you know, at that time blowing off steam from the last 20 years. Just watch any episode of that popular family sitcom at the time all in the family, with Carol Connor playing a grumpy Archie Bunker and you will see that microcosm playing out in front of your eyes Two different generations clashing in America. Yes, america had some growing up to do, but this time, for this revolution, things seem different Cultural staples of religion and family life that started to break apart in the 1960s and 70s are at a full breakneck speed now. Nowadays, the cultural binds that unite most Americans are simply not there. In fact, traditional sports finally put in place from a previous revolution, like title sports for women, are now jeopardized. Biological men can now play in biological women's sports, as an example. How absurd America is beyond a hyper sexualized country. As one can see from that example, it too is perhaps on a bender of sorts, a wild drinking spree where serious thought has left the room and self destructive behavior is clearly clearly observable. So this indeed seems much more than 1968 that we're watching. Or do we have to go back to the early 1900s, to that time when the Industrial Revolution was ushering in all kinds of changes and our political situation was in complete disarray? Who knows? But God help us if our country continues to self select to those parts of the country where they're living with those of only a like mind. And our country has done some self selecting of sorts, meaning people are moving with their feet, they're going to places they want to live with the people they want to live with. Now we will be covering more about this exact subject, but the self selecting of Americans where they choose to live is a big deal. If current trends continue, we will be pacing for a country that's quite similar to the 1850s America versus the 1980s America, and you'll remember 1984, if you're over the age of 30. Reagan won 49 out of 50 states and the world was at peace. And you'll remember from your history books that the 1840s and 1850s America prior to the civil war was one of violence, from bleeding Kansas to the territorial fights over slavery to even violence in our federal Congress. It was not a time or a world at peace. We had not had anything close to a 1980 style winning of the majority of the people for the last 30, 40, 50 years. But to read about that time period before the civil war, leading up to the civil war, I would recommend two books that I read in the last year. What half God wrought, a tome of sorts, a thick book by David Walker Howe. Its subtitle speaks for itself the transformation of America from 1815 to 1848. We have done a mojo minute on this book in the past. I will put a link in the show notes. And the second book is the field of blood violence in Congress and the road to the civil war by Joan Freeman. It's a well done book, incredible research. But to take a step back and to give myself some perspective on these perilous times, I went back to a tried and true man who understood America from its beginnings. That man is Michael Burun. Now, you might know him, for he was the chief editor of the Bible of American politics, the almanac of American politics. There could not be any higher endorsement I could pay to Mr Burun, because it was he, along with the leadership of then speaker Gingrich, that I cut my teeth in American politics. I went to Washington in the summer of 1996 on an internship and worked for the National Republican Congressional Committee, and it was there that the bug had bitten me, the political bug that is. I came back to our nation's Capitol one year later after graduation and began working for my member of Congress. Within six months I was there for the impeachment of Bill Clinton. I was there for what was then a big deal. There was a shooting at the Capitol. My frantic parents were calling that day to see if I was okay. I walked in the Capitol building almost each and every day during my time there, and that was a huge deal for a 23 year old snot nose kid, and so Michael Burun, in his writing for the Almanac, helped to shape my politics. I was a Reagan suburb kid. Reagan was my president through my formative years. Born in 1974, he was the first American president I can remember. I remember my dad telling me as a six-year-old, as I sat Indian style in front of the TV. My dad said that man is a smart man, pointing to the television. You should listen to him. And what Michael Barone fans, what many Michael Barone fans don't know, is that he wrote books that filled out and completed what he was saying, congressional district by congressional district, in that Bible of American politics that Almanac. Now, one such book he wrote in 2013, explains the last 50 years with more clarity than many other historians and social and cultural writers say for Wilford McClay's latest book, the Land of Hope, which we have covered here before. But Michael Barone's book is the shaping of our nation, how surges in migration transformed America and its politics. So let's come along for a quick journey and let Barone be our guide. Let's go to the book. This account will start off with the Scott's Irish migration and show how these migrants continue to move in a drag match Southwest to occupy and Americanize the Indian lands of the Southeast and much of the Mississippi Valley, and how their emblematic leader, andrew Jackson, successfully promoted the acquisition of Florida. Texas and California are first, second and soon to be third most populous state To the young Republic. Having accomplished this enterprise, the Scott's Irish seem to stop in their tracks and occupy the same swath of the nation today, but their achievement presented the nation's political leaders with the difficult issue of whether slavery should be allowed in the new territories, an issue that could not be peaceably settled but resulted in a bloody, hugely divisive civil war, one which the Scott's Irish fought on both sides. Now the next section of this book will look at two surges of internal migration in the first half of the 19th century the Yankee Dyspora spreading from the New England across the upstate New York and great into the Great Lakes States and across the Mississippi and the Southern Grandies. Extension of plantation slavery from the Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi Valley. These migrations were motivated not only by a desire to establish safe havens for each of these two colonial American cultures, but were increasingly aimed at extending their cultural influence beyond their regional basis To shape the national character in their own image. The collision this produced was the Civil War, in which the Yankee vision was not only the cultural but the military victor, in which the defeated Southern culture or rather cultures white and black subsequently lived apart for the rest of the nation for three quarters of a century. So there you get a sense of Brown's writing. It's very interesting. But did you happen to catch that nugget of wisdom when he says these migrations were motivated not only by a desire to establish safe havens for each of these two colonial American cultures, but were increasingly aimed at extending their cultural influence beyond their regional basis To ultimately shape the national character in their own image, and this collision produced the Civil War. Now, moving on past the Civil War, there was other big migrations that we all have time to talk about in this short mojo minute, but quick. Examples are the Irish and the Germans in the 1840s and 50s, and then the internal migrations of folks from the East Coast to the West Coast and to the Southwest. Ultimately, as you read this book, we come to a great nugget of wisdom which is often overlooked. Let's go back to the book for that. Barone writes. Great wars change nations. The Revolutionary War transformed the seaboard colonies into one culturally diverse nation heading westward across the continent, but vexed by the increasingly irresolvable issue of slavery. The Civil War resolved that issue but split the nation, with the South largely walling itself off from the rest of the nation for three generations and the North content to leave that wall mostly unbreached. World War II, as unforeseen and undesired as the Civil War, did something like the opposite it welding together a nation flying apart from the centrifugal vectors of successive surges of migration and of the Great Migration. That did not happen. Three-quarters of blacks lived in the segregated South. Ethically identifiable neighborhoods were the role rather than the exception in the Great Cities of the North, while the vast tide of Ellis Island immigration barely touched the vast American countryside. History books miss these big nuggets, these golden nuggets of wisdom, especially in the shaping of our country and its attitudes and its distinct regional cultures. The Civil War resolved the deep issue of slavery, but the nation remained split for another three generations. Only with time and the slow drip, drip, drip of economic infusion from the North did the South come back to the Union as the country grew and shaped itself, with yet different migrations to the West and the Southwest, which was ultimately helped greatly by a newly completed transcontinental railroad. Only the unforeseen outbreak of World War II did the country fully reunite again? Michael Barone, the author, gets help in this area, telling the story from the perspective of Thomas Bascino in his book A Nation Forged in War. How World War II taught Americans to get along. That could be a fascinating subject for us to explore in its own right. But what about our times? I'm sure it's your question, your thinking of. We have difficult times right now. So what about our times? How's migration sounding for us? It's an important question. Let's go back to the book, because Barone has some interesting insights. The post 1970 surges of migration, like surges of migration in the past, have led many to question whether and how Americans with diverse cultural, religious and political beliefs can live together. This is a question Americans have always had to grapple with, not one that has suddenly and for the first time been posed by the transformation of a long homogeneous country to one with cultural and racial diversity. The framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights had to deal with similar problems. They were well aware of the different religious and cultural backgrounds of their different states. They had seen that the colonies were unable to come together in response to a proposed plan of the Union at the Albany Conference in 1754. They learned to their dismay that the federal government set up by the Articles of Confederation lacked the power to effectively tax and protect its citizens. They were determined to create a stronger federal government, but one whose powers would be limited in order to reduce cultural conflict and preserve zones of autonomy. So this is the question that Americans have always had to grapple with how do we create a very big expanse of country into one with cultural and racial and even now deeply religious and ethnic diversities? And here Barone cites a word of caution for our times. Let's go back to the book for this important and, dare I say, overlooked trend that we see happening today. But the 1970, the cultural uniformity of World War II and early post-war America was being replaced by a cultural diversity more typical of the nation in the long run of its history. As a result, many Americans, in deciding where to live their adult lives and where to retire, set out places compatible with their lifestyle. This was particularly true of professionals and others in a position to choose where they live. Liberals gravitated to the cities New York, los Angeles and San Francisco, university towns and ski resorts while conservatives gravitated to Dallas, houston and Atlanta, retirement towns in the Smokies or the Ozarks. The result is what journalist Bill Bishop is called the big sort, with liberal areas becoming more liberal and conservative areas more conservative. The surges of migration in these four decades have produced an America that seems to be flying apart. It may not be headed to a collision as dramatic as the Civil War, which was the result of surges of migration in the first 60 years of the 19th century, though cultural wars. Political rhetoric sometimes gives that impression, but it can seem sorely in need of some less than total war equivalent of the annealing experience of World War II, just when the centripetal forces seemed at their maximum. The recession and the financial crisis of the late 2000s produced a sudden halt in the surges of migration that had been occurring for the last quarter century Now. This book was written in 2013. So, even though there was a stoppage of sudden or a sudden surges of migration, michael Barone and Bill Bishop are still alive, so I hope they will update their book or perhaps write a new book to talk about the last five, six, seven years of migration. The big deal and the big sort which author Bill Bishop talks about in his book by the same name is the same self-selection we were talking about earlier, the same self-selection we saw happening before the Civil War. Now, next month, we will revisit and dig deep into this notion of the big sort. But the quick thesis these sees is that the red and blue maps of the states are misleading, because the real differences in American politics is happening at a deeper and local and community level. Americans are increasingly sorting themselves into their own camps and the important point is not just politically but socially and economically as well. So there's more to come on this dark outlook for the country, but for today's Mojo Minute let's end on a hopeful note. Let's go back to the book. The framers formula of limited government and individual rights has not always been applied faithfully in American history, and it was not enough to prevent the outbreak of a civil war. But it has provided a ready and useful template for the accommodation of a diverse peoples, even as the nation has been peopled by successive and culturally diverse surges of migration. And I completely agree about the framers formula. And yet, even though America's founding documents are quite remarkable in the history of the world, it seems that half the country could care less to study them anymore. Whose documents are dismissed and put off to the side not to be consulted with, and these trends, coupled with the big sort which we just talked about, makes the horizon for this voting day in the year 2023 a distressing one. But in today's Mojo Minute, let us pray for our republic. Today, americans all over the country, of all colors, backgrounds, cultural attitudes and diverse religions, will go and exercise their right as a citizen to vote. America is the largest functioning representative republic in the history of the world. It has continued, despite being the largest multi ethnic and more diverse than any other empire. It's more diverse than any other empire in the history of the world. It is the greatest experiment democracy ever undertaken the world has seen nothing like the United States of America. If we had real leadership that reminded us of our story our real story, not the rubbish about 1619, but the real story of the growing up of America and how our country has been shaped and molded over the years to form, in the words of our greatest president, abraham Lincoln, a more perfect union Perhaps, just perhaps, we would exhibit that universal golden rule to do on to others as you would have done on to you and, most importantly, we would be a better country for it. America is the largest country in the world.