New England political culture: WASPs/Yankees, Catholics, and diversity

[All Along The Watchtower]

Kinda a long thread title, but...

Anyway...for a few centuries, from the 1600s to the 1800s, New England's culture was pretty monolithic (relative to contemporary times); its population was of mostly English ancestry, with some French Canadian in the Northern part but otherwise, pretty homogenous.

Obviously, the 1800s changed that, with the arrival first of large numbers of Irish Catholics and later, in the late 1800s/early 1900s, many immigrants from Italy, Poland, and other Southern and Eastern European countries. Many of these immigrants were also Catholic, as well, in contrast to the native Yankees, who were descended from the Puritans and other colonial English who had arrived in the 1600s and 1700s, and had been almost entirely Protestant-Congregationalists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, as well as some Unitarians and Quakers among them.

For a few centuries, New England's culture was dominated by these Yankees or "WASPs". By the late 1800s, this meant, politically, that New England was very much a stronghold of the Republican Party (which had emerged, above all else, as the Yankee/WASP party). Most of the Catholic immigrants, especially the Irish, were attracted to the Democratic Party's laissez-faire attitude towards religion, compared to the more distinctly moralistic, Protestant GOP, which had not-insignificant hostilities among certain segments towards Catholicism (particularly immigrant Catholicism). No, the Republicans were certainly not nearly as bad as the Know-Nothings in this regard, but it can't be denied that these was a general attitude of hostility towards the Irish and other Catholics from many Republican-voting Yankees, in New England and elsewhere, that the Catholic immigrants and their children definitely picked up on.

OK, so the basic, general political divide in  New England  by the early 1900s was between Republican Yankees and Democratic Irish Catholics (and others). However, that historical divide is obviously not reflective of current reality, as the population of Yankees/WASPs in New England has dwindled (proportionally, and probably in raw numbers too), the "mainline" Protestant churches (which have also shrunk dramatically) have become more liberal politically, and the Catholic Church is a huge cultural presence as well (though many New England Catholics aren't really religious anymore. ) Furthermore, the old religious and ethnic lines have mostly crumbled, as it is now (and has been, for some time) pretty common for Catholics and Protestants (or more likely, their secular descendants) to marry each other, for example, and live in the same neighborhoods or go the same schools. In addition, there's also a fairly significant Jewish population in certain parts of New England, which, as they are often (mostly) secular Reform Jews, have contributed to a multi-ethnic, religiously diverse, and overall much more secular culture than in the past. Furthermore, whether they're secular or religious, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish, or something else entirely, New Englanders, as a group, are pretty well-educated (perhaps, the most well-educated regional population in America?), which makes sense, considering the long history of education in the region.

With all that being taken into account: which of these cultural attributes makes New England (and maybe more broadly, the Northeastern US) pretty overwhelmingly Democratic in contemporary times, especially relative to much of the rest of the country?

Whew, that was a long post.

[Indy Texas 🇺🇦🇵🇸]

I think you could argue that the Northeastern liberal emphasis on regulating personal behavior - Nanny Bloomberg's soda laws, environmental regulations not simply on industrial activity but on personal household things like light bulbs and kitchen appliances, forbidding the use of plastic bags - is simply a continuation of the early Puritan culture, which ultimately gave us things like blue laws and the temperance movement. Compare it to Western liberalism which is more about freedom to do things (like smoke pot and have abortions and get gay-married), and to Midwestern liberalism which was more economic in nature and concerned about the rights of farmers and laborers.

[seanNJ9]

No way the west is more liberal than the northeast on gay marriage.

[pbrower2a]

No way the west is more liberal than the northeast on gay marriage.

It depends upon the part of the West. Utah or Arizona? Of course not!

Cultural patterns for the areas west of the Cascades and Sierras at least as far south as the Monterrey Bay Area are derived from New England and New York. Likewise Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, Greater Cleveland, and Greater Chicago.

David Hackett-Fisher  has established the pattern -- and it holds even for later ethnic groups who turned the early institutions to their own purposes. In a way, New England has been transformed from a WASP preserve to a pace of Irish Catholic dominance -- but the institutions shaped education and politics since then.

I once made a Freudian slip in referring to the San Francisco area as the "Gay Area".

Oh, by the way -- once the Tea Party pols get knocked out in Michigan and Wisconsin those states will quickly endorse gay rights including same-sex marriage. Count on that.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The Puritan influence has always been moralistic, communitarian, and also relatively egalitarian.  Why New England doesn't look what most people would think of as "Puritan" today is because of the transformation from Calvinism to theological liberalism that happened here more than elsewhere, but those values remain in other forms to a great extent.  For example, something like gay rights then becomes a matter of importance for a more equal and moral community. 
The emphasis on educational pursuits goes back a long way too - colonial New England was possibly the most literate society in the world at its time.   More openness to social transformation over tradition has often gone along with that.

Why has the West side of the Connecticut River has switched so far to the Democrats - and apparently to the Left - in so short a time?  Why has New Hampshire always swam against the flow?   I'm not quite sure.

[pbrower2a]

The Puritan influence has always been moralistic, communitarian, and also relatively egalitarian.  Why New England doesn't look what most people would think of as "Puritan" today is because of the transformation from Calvinism to theological liberalism that happened here more than elsewhere, but those values remain in other forms to a great extent.  For example, something like gay rights then becomes a matter of importance for a more equal and moral community. 
The emphasis on educational pursuits goes back a long way too - colonial New England was possibly the most literate society in the world at its time.   More openness to social transformation over tradition has often gone along with that.

Why has the West side of the Connecticut River has switched so far to the Democrats - and apparently to the Left - in so short a time?  Why has New Hampshire always swam against the flow?   I'm not quite sure.

New Hampshire has not gone against the flow; it has been slower to fit the pattern of the other states.

It could be that New Hampshire is more conservative than Maine, Rhode Island, or Vermont because it has so much of the exurban fringe of Greater Boston -- and exurban areas tend to have the most conservative people connected to cities. Areas going suburban still have some rural character that older suburbs no longer have -- low real estate costs, less crowding, newer infrastructure with lower needs for high-cost maintenance, and more libertarian attitudes toward development and environmental degradation. 

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I'd be surprised if Massachusetts would vote against marijuana legalization, based on how strongly they voted for medical marijuana and decriminalization.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

I wouldn't really call New England super partisan. It's the most politically elastic area of the country. In fact all but CT are more elastic than any other state in the lower 48.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/swing-voters-and-elastic-states/

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The Puritan influence has always been moralistic, communitarian, and also relatively egalitarian.  Why New England doesn't look what most people would think of as "Puritan" today is because of the transformation from Calvinism to theological liberalism that happened here more than elsewhere, but those values remain in other forms to a great extent.  For example, something like gay rights then becomes a matter of importance for a more equal and moral community. 
The emphasis on educational pursuits goes back a long way too - colonial New England was possibly the most literate society in the world at its time.   More openness to social transformation over tradition has often gone along with that.

Why has the West side of the Connecticut River has switched so far to the Democrats - and apparently to the Left - in so short a time?  Why has New Hampshire always swam against the flow?   I'm not quite sure.

New Hampshire has not gone against the flow; it has been slower to fit the pattern of the other states.
 

It's more than that.  During the 19th century NH was routinely much more Democratic than it's neighbors - especially Vermont.  Even in the early-mid 20th century, as Maine goes, so goes Vermont . . . New Hampshire not as much.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Why has the West side of the Connecticut River has switched so far to the Democrats - and apparently to the Left - in so short a time?

Similar reasons to Vermont, with the addition, in the Berkshires and parts of Franklin County, of a traumatic collapse of industry in the eighties that led to a radical reorientation of the local economy to revolve around artistic/cultural/educational/touristic pursuits and a quasi-agrarian left-communitarian impulse. Places like Pittsfield, North Adams, Greenfield, and to some extent even Northampton are in some ways like much smaller versions of Youngstown if Youngstown had decided to turn itself into Taos.

[greenforest32]

I'd be surprised if Massachusetts would vote against marijuana legalization, based on how strongly they voted for medical marijuana and decriminalization.

That's what I'm thinking too but I was surprised to see the 'Death with Dignity' initiative fail in 2012.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Death_with_Dignity_Initiative

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'd be surprised if Massachusetts would vote against marijuana legalization, based on how strongly they voted for medical marijuana and decriminalization.

That's what I'm thinking too but I was surprised to see the 'Death with Dignity' initiative fail in 2012.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Death_with_Dignity_Initiative

Note that on the map in that article the rural areas, which were historically more Protestant and are now generally very secular, were mostly in favor, as were southern Middlesex County, the Outer Cape and Islands, and less strongly the North Shore and MetroWest, whereas with the exception of Boston and its immediate vicinity the traditionally Catholic major cities were against (and Boston was practically tied; Suffolk County as a whole actually went against the question by nine thousand votes). Eastern Massachusetts, outside the areas I mentioned which are mostly considered fairly upscale and home to a lot of people who aren't originally from 'round these parts, is still strongly culturally Catholic, in a way that's for whatever reason proven easier to mobilize against things like this than against, for example, gay marriage.  Moreover, even some people who were supportive of the idea in theory had problems with the legislation as proposed. The Massachusetts Medical Society coming out against assisted suicide even on a conceptual level also didn't help. People take the opinions of groups like that seriously here, for better or for worse. Also keep in mind that despite all this it failed very narrowly. Absent even one of the above factors it probably would have passed.

This is, frankly, an entirely separate issue from marijuana legalization, which I have few doubts my state would vote in favor of, if not necessarily as strongly as one might initially expect. The Church isn't terribly concerned with it, it's not the sort of thing that admits of being so questionably written that supporters vote against it, and I don't think the MMS really cares very strongly either.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The Puritan influence has always been moralistic, communitarian, and also relatively egalitarian.  Why New England doesn't look what most people would think of as "Puritan" today is because of the transformation from Calvinism to theological liberalism that happened here more than elsewhere, but those values remain in other forms to a great extent.  For example, something like gay rights then becomes a matter of importance for a more equal and moral community. 
The emphasis on educational pursuits goes back a long way too - colonial New England was possibly the most literate society in the world at its time.   More openness to social transformation over tradition has often gone along with that.

Why has the West side of the Connecticut River has switched so far to the Democrats - and apparently to the Left - in so short a time?  Why has New Hampshire always swam against the flow?   I'm not quite sure.

I think the story of the region is one of declining religious fervor over the course of three centuries, but especially in the later part of the 20th century. I think that the changes in various groups at different points served to move them to the left. Like the Unitarians and Universalists moved to left as a result of the influences of the Transcendentalists for instance. They had initally been founded during the First Great Awakening, as a rejection of the fervor espoused by the mainline congregationalist puritans. They hadn't moved that far in general terms until the 1830's or so, when that influence began to have its effect. As far as I am aware both were small churches. The Unitarians were more elitist and the Universalists had a more lower class appeal, but both were rather small and the vast majority of New England Protestants were rather Conservative for the most part until the 20th Century.

It has been over a year since I looked into the matter in depth as part of a College American History course and I lack the time to delve much deeper unfortuantely, than this.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Why has the West side of the Connecticut River has switched so far to the Democrats - and apparently to the Left - in so short a time?

Similar reasons to Vermont, with the addition, in the Berkshires and parts of Franklin County, of a traumatic collapse of industry in the eighties that led to a radical reorientation of the local economy to revolve around artistic/cultural/educational/touristic pursuits and a quasi-agrarian left-communitarian impulse. Places like Pittsfield, North Adams, Greenfield, and to some extent even Northampton are in some ways like much smaller versions of Youngstown if Youngstown had decided to turn itself into Taos.

looking at the maps again, I see Western Massachusetts has been pretty Democratic for several decades.  It's just that more recently it's become even more Democratic than the state as a whole. Do you think much of the recent political transformation of Vermont can be considered "countercultural"?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Why has the West side of the Connecticut River has switched so far to the Democrats - and apparently to the Left - in so short a time?

Similar reasons to Vermont, with the addition, in the Berkshires and parts of Franklin County, of a traumatic collapse of industry in the eighties that led to a radical reorientation of the local economy to revolve around artistic/cultural/educational/touristic pursuits and a quasi-agrarian left-communitarian impulse. Places like Pittsfield, North Adams, Greenfield, and to some extent even Northampton are in some ways like much smaller versions of Youngstown if Youngstown had decided to turn itself into Taos.

looking at the maps again, I see Western Massachusetts has been pretty Democratic for several decades.  It's just that more recently it's become even more Democratic than the state as a whole. Do you think much of the recent political transformation of Vermont can be considered "countercultural"?

It depends on what you mean by 'countercultural', but I think there are ways that term could fit, yes.

[greenforest32]

I'd be surprised if Massachusetts would vote against marijuana legalization, based on how strongly they voted for medical marijuana and decriminalization.

That's what I'm thinking too but I was surprised to see the 'Death with Dignity' initiative fail in 2012.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Death_with_Dignity_Initiative

Note that on the map in that article the rural areas, which were historically more Protestant and are now generally very secular, were mostly in favor, as were southern Middlesex County, the Outer Cape and Islands, and less strongly the North Shore and MetroWest, whereas with the exception of Boston and its immediate vicinity the traditionally Catholic major cities were against (and Boston was practically tied; Suffolk County as a whole actually went against the question by nine thousand votes). Eastern Massachusetts, outside the areas I mentioned which are mostly considered fairly upscale and home to a lot of people who aren't originally from 'round these parts, is still strongly culturally Catholic, in a way that's for whatever reason proven easier to mobilize against things like this than against, for example, gay marriage.  Moreover, even some people who were supportive of the idea in theory had problems with the legislation as proposed. The Massachusetts Medical Society coming out against assisted suicide even on a conceptual level also didn't help. People take the opinions of groups like that seriously here, for better or for worse. Also keep in mind that despite all this it failed very narrowly. Absent even one of the above factors it probably would have passed.

Yeah that is interesting, especially as Vermont is poised to pass a similar bill but through the legislature: http://connecticut.cbslocal.com/2013/05/13/vermont-becomes-first-state-to-give-legislative-backing-to-assisted-suicide/

You must be logged in to read this quote.