& BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2021-12-30 Th: First: English has a really big advantage over Latin. English has—and Latin lacks—both the indefinite article a and the definite article the. The existence of these is an enormous aid to quickly saying exactly what one means. But it is also a great aid to creating strawmen that you can then light on fire. Here Sean Wilentz uses this linguistic feature. He says not that Holton and Taylor say that white supremacy has been a driving force of American history, but that they say it has been the driving force. Hijinx ensue...
I have to count it as an astonishing change that the "Virginia style" would-be-pirate-lord nationalist types have lost their majority in Virginia itself.
The Massachusetts-style "role model" nationalism has always been dominant in most of New England, upstate NY, and Philadelphia's environs.
(Though it took longer to take root in Connecticut and New York City than you might think -- take a look at the troublemakers from Connecticut at the Constitutional Convention, who left us with the disastrous Senate which is still ruining everything. Those Connecticut delegates were very much following the Virginia "pirate lord" model of nationalism, which was also popular in mercantile New York City. Frankly, a bunch of our bucaneering CEOs today still have the same attitude.)
It turns out the Virginia "pirate lord" nationalism is incompatible with public health and safety, incompatible with transportation planning, incompatible with sewer and water systems, and so basically incompatible with modern cities. This has driven the change in Virginia itself, as well as in North Carolina, Georgia, and so on.
The Kentucky "blood and soil" style of nationalism is also incompatible with large cities, which is probably somewhat more obvious.
Of the three, only the Massachusetts model of nationalism works for effective government of cities.
(There are other, less idealistic models which do work for city government -- the patronage / feudal or clan allegiance model is very durable and does get the sewer systems working, and is quite visible in machine politics in the US. Somehow it has rarely been considered part of American nationalism. This is a very transactional model -- your clan may not be "one of us", but we have a deal. Chinatown may keep to itself and Little Italy may keep to itself but we all support the Polish mayor who keeps the sewer system running.)
I have to count it as an astonishing change that the "Virginia style" would-be-pirate-lord nationalist types have lost their majority in Virginia itself.
The Massachusetts-style "role model" nationalism has always been dominant in most of New England, upstate NY, and Philadelphia's environs.
(Though it took longer to take root in Connecticut and New York City than you might think -- take a look at the troublemakers from Connecticut at the Constitutional Convention, who left us with the disastrous Senate which is still ruining everything. Those Connecticut delegates were very much following the Virginia "pirate lord" model of nationalism, which was also popular in mercantile New York City. Frankly, a bunch of our bucaneering CEOs today still have the same attitude.)
It turns out the Virginia "pirate lord" nationalism is incompatible with public health and safety, incompatible with transportation planning, incompatible with sewer and water systems, and so basically incompatible with modern cities. This has driven the change in Virginia itself, as well as in North Carolina, Georgia, and so on.
The Kentucky "blood and soil" style of nationalism is also incompatible with large cities, which is probably somewhat more obvious.
Of the three, only the Massachusetts model of nationalism works for effective government of cities.
(There are other, less idealistic models which do work for city government -- the patronage / feudal or clan allegiance model is very durable and does get the sewer systems working, and is quite visible in machine politics in the US. Somehow it has rarely been considered part of American nationalism. This is a very transactional model -- your clan may not be "one of us", but we have a deal. Chinatown may keep to itself and Little Italy may keep to itself but we all support the Polish mayor who keeps the sewer system running.)
I wouldn't care so much about what happened in 1776 if the Civil War weren't still being fought today.