The Migration that Made America’s Fanatical Individualism
By: Ted Wade
Tags: Psychology, Libertarianism, History, Politics

The Migration that Made America’s Fanatical Individualism

Some cultural roots of the American Right

Borderer reivers raiding for cattle: Wikipedia

American individualism is ingrained and goes way back. Social media are just an amplifier.

The Emigrants

Once there was a planet with people on it. It was on the verge of that stage where kingdoms would disappear, so that any tyrants remaining would need an ideology to get and hold their power.

But, in these turbulent times, there was a land where the rulers of North and South fought again and again. The people who lived on the lowlands between these two kingdoms (call them the Borderers) were accustomed to being tormented and slaughtered by the contending armies, and so developed a habit of deep suspicion of outsiders and an utter distrust of any authority beyond their families or clans.

We are talking generations of oppression and hardship here. Borderers lacked their own nobility to fight for them. They never had the resources of the Kings’ armies, so their independence was only of the spirit; not political. They rarely owned their own land, even though, as history rolled on, a middle class was emerging in the kingdoms. In fact, the Borderers were enough trouble that one of the Kings moved a bunch of them to the far tip of a neighboring country, using the Borderers to control a people with whom they had common ancestry, but a different religion.

But during all of this time, the planet’s burgeoning civilization was pouring itself into an entirely new continent. Settlers were needed, and passage to the new place could be obtained with a life savings, or perhaps a pledge to toil for years for some rich person. Over a period of decades, some 250,000 Borderers went to the New Place.

Life was hard on the frontier, but a lark compared to back home. If they left the coastal agricultural and commercial areas, land was free for the taking. All they had to do was fight the natives for it. History shows that the Borderers moved into the uplands, a long chain of mountains between the natives and the “civilized” colonists on the coast. Already self-reliant, the Borderers became self-sufficient. They were viciously tough and eye-for-an-eye vengeful. They were good with weapons and fierce enough to prevail over the natives.

As the New Place developed into a country of its own, the Borderers maintained their fractious ways. The new country’s love of self-governing independence from the kingdoms was transmuted by the Borderers into love of personal independence. The main culture took advantage of this attitude by marginalizing many of the Borderers, both socially and economically. And why not: the Borderers were crude, uncivilized, and well … scary. Once in a while, though, a Borderer descendant would gain high office in the new country.

This was a paradox because Borderers hated any kind of government. But, they would line up behind a charismatic leader who had real fight in him, even if that leader only paid lip service to their interests.

Revenge for the Borderers was how their cultural beliefs expanded beyond the ethnic group that came from the old country. Way beyond — to the bulk of working class people and, beyond that, to many who had ascended from that class. The core belief was that personal freedom to care for “me and mine” was the highest good, and any other stance was, well, just evil. As time went on, one of the new country’s political parties cultivated these “freedomists” into a solid base of support.

Combative Immigrants

Which brings us to here and now.

During the 2016 election season, The WaPo and The Atlantic both ran stories about a historical hypothesis that explained the peculiar culture of the eventual winner’s voting base. The culture’s origin was described in a 1989 book by Brandeis historian, David Hackett Fischer.

Albion’s Seed says that early British settlers of North America came from four strongly different cultural groups in Britain. He argued that each culture took root and sustained their distinct character while they became enduring factions in the developing politics and folkways of the United States.

One of these groups was the so-called “borderers”, from northern England, the southern lowlands of Scotland, and later, the northern part of Ireland called Ulster. A quarter-million of them emigrated to the American colony from 1717 to 1775 “in search of material betterment.”

“King, peers and gentry all grew richer, while a landless tenantry sank deeper into the slough of poverty and degradation.” — Albion’s Seed

Before they could find their own land, some borderer immigrants had to labor for the big planters, evoking a memory of tenant farming misery back in Britain. They settled wherever they could find land for the taking, which turned out to be the “back country” Appalachian highlands from Pennsylvania down to the Carolinas. This was land that was hard to farm, and so it was unclaimed by other settlers.

settling the backcountry: Virginia Tech

There was another reason to move into the mountains: their abrasiveness rankled other early colonists.

“The formidable attempts of Satan and his Sons to Unsettle us.” “The most God-provoking democrats on this side of Hell.” — Contemporary criticism of early colonial Scotch-Irish

Back in Britain, the borderers had been clannish. Armed gangs called reivers raided cattle from other clans. They claimed allegiance to one king or another only as the moment dictated. Feuds lasted for generations. This practical ferocity followed them to America.

There they became known as “Scotch-Irish”, retaining for generations their fiery temperament, speech patterns, political attitudes, and a host of cultural traits from family life, to music, and religion. They were used to being shunned, but in America they had the liberty to live as they wished, resorting to force when they felt abused. And “abuse” included anyone telling them what to do.

Historians and social theorists argue about what is cause and what is effect in the borderer culture. Most say that social class oppression causes the behaviors of the group. There is indeed a progression of exploitation all the way back: by Scottish and English Kings, militias, landlords, and outlaws; by colonial aristocrats and authorities; and in more modern times, mine and factory owners.

But others argue that habitual borderer behaviors contribute to their continued poverty and isolation. Among these is J.D. Vance, a Yale-educated lawyer who grew up poor and Scotch-Irish in Ohio and Kentucky.

His 2016 book about his rise from poverty, Hillbilly Elegy, was a big seller. The stories of his relatives’ violent exploits are a lot like the eye-popping (indeed, eye-gouging) tales of the early borderer immigrants in the Appalachian uplands, as collected in Albion’s Seed.

Vance succeeded in reporting the continued existence of the cultural pattern whose roots Albion’s Seed traced so far back. The pattern is still correlated with poverty. But the meme of preferential isolation, fondness for guns and violence, and hatred of authority and outsiders also persists in people who have a decent living and are able to afford newer pickup trucks, big TVs, and collections of pricey guns.

The borderers’ cultural ethos is attractive enough that it has spread beyond those of Scotch-Irish descent and into many other kinds of people who are now working class or came from it. It’s a large group, having a strong overlap with those who voted for the new president in 2016.

Expansion of the Cultural Pattern

“So the Borderers all went to Appalachia and established their own little rural clans there and nothing at all went wrong except for the entire rest of American history.“ — Scott Alexander “Elevate those guns a little lower.” — General Andrew Jackson

The borderer ethos has contributed many players on the stage of American politics. The first borderer president of many was Andrew Jackson. Their ethos was both fuel for, and reinforced by, multiple “Isms”: isolationism, exceptionalism, nationalism, capitalism, libertarianism, and sometimes overt racism.

All across the USA today are people (no longer just the “Scotch-Irish”) captured by a cultural pattern that started centuries before emigration to America. They feel their values to be under siege in a bigger, more crowded world.

Many must secretly understand that, in order to survive, this world needs collective action that current capitalist practices cannot provide. This just increases the cognitive dissonance with their values. Evidence contrary to their values is ignored, twisted, and transformed to support their belief system.

Self-righteous to a fault, they are therefore enraged by rampant self-righteousness on the left. The more volatile among them are taking up arms against the rest of us, with a few berserkers even advocating civil war. Most of them worship a sociopathic narcissist as their clan leader.

Borderer reivers ride to the Apocalyse?

“Fiery the angels fell. Deep thunder rolled around their shores, burning with the fires of Orc. … Yes, questions.” — the character Roy Batty in Blade Runner, 1982

In this case, there are two questions: one easy, one portentous. (1) Does the historical origin story have legs? And, (2) What does knowing this story do for us citizens of the New Place?

Question One. The conditions in the relevant regions of Britain, the massive (for the time) migration to America, and the settling in Appalachian highlands are well-established using historical evidence. The distinct cultural separation of backwoods people from the rest of early America is likewise pretty clear.

So the real question is whether that early start with a particular ethnic and geographic group necessarily led to a core belief set that today is shared by anti-government anarchists, cowboys, working-class conservatives, button-down scholars, redneck hippies, unrepentant civil war confederates, “don’t tread on me” firebrands, and bunker recluses.

Might the borderer story be overstated? After all, many different oppressed groups have come to America. Many of the borderer character traits are just common ones in human beings. And it seems like every culture has its conservative side. The counter-argument is that the core focus on fanatical defense of personal liberty is recognized worldwide as an Americanism. Something unique happened here, and the borderer origin story is a tight fit.

Question two. Can knowing that story help solve any of our corrosive internal conflicts?

“They were relentless, revengeful, suspicious, knowing neither ruth nor pity; they were also upright, resolute, and fearless, loyal to their friends and devoted to their country. In spite of their many failings, they were of all men the best fitted to conquer the wilderness and hold it against all comers”. — Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West, Volume 1

Perhaps Roosevelt was right about the borderers back in the day. Today, though, we are reaping the whirlwind of “conquering” nature. At the same time, the narrow pursuit of corporate profits has given a lot of latter-day borderers an economic kick in the teeth. But conservative messaging tying capitalism to personal liberty falls on fertile ground that was first plowed in the eighteenth-century borderlands of Britain.

There are some humongous environmental and social problems that need collective action beyond what can be organized by a profit motive. For today’s “borderers” to join in they will need to see how collective action specifically improves their lives and the prospects of their descendants, while also preserving their thin-skinned dignity. The current culture wars can’t and won’t have this effect.

Malevolent media manipulators have gotten borderers to believe some absurd lies and conspiratorial ideas. And their leader parrots these after hearing them on TV. The response from the other side has been to ridicule the ideas and the credulity of those who believe in them. Hardly any person responds well to ridicule.

Some few people might change their overt behavior to avoid future mockery. But attack a borderer’s dignity, and you only stiffen their position. A single word, like “deplorable”, can start one of those endless feuds, in this case with their fellow citizens.

However, it might be too late for reconciliation and fixing big stuff. The politicians locked in a sticky embrace with the borderer faction are hinting darkly about civil war, coming soon to a country near you. We need a peacemaker more than anything else. Consider that when you vote.