5 ms·

When I moved to California some years ago, I also found the default combination of political positions weird. The best half-serious description I could come up

When I moved to California some years ago, I also found the default combination of political positions weird. The best half-serious description I could come up with was that California is a country of conservative libertarian social democratic hippies. Those words don't make sense together, but neither does California. At least to someone from the left/green end of the European political spectrum. I don't know if I buy the explanation in the article, but at least it's an explanation for the weirdness.

alephnerd 2y ago
The article is fairly off and overindexes Anglo-Saxon influence in a state where the largest influences tended to be Hispanics, working class central/southern/eaatern European settlers, Okies during the Dust Bowl, Asians of all walks of life, and post-WW2 immigration globally. California is just "California", and an "Anglo-Saxon" tradition or lens just doesn't track back west - be it California, Texas, Washington, etc. Just think about it - Kearny Street is named after a racist Irish immigrant. Levi and Haas were the most prominent businessmen in that era and were German Jews. Gold was found in Sutter Fort - a hacienda owned by a Swiss German. Much of the settlement in Central California was farmers from Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Asia, Armenia, etc. Chinatowns and Japantowns dotted much of California, and Filipino, Chinese, and Japanese fishermen were overrepresented.
- murrayb 2y ago
  Further to your point the Scots and Irish aren't even Anglo-Saxon. You could make the argument for calling them Anglo-Celtic now but not so much at the time of the settlement of the US.
  - skissane 2y ago
    > Further to your point the Scots and Irish aren't even Anglo-Saxon. Both are a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic influences. In Scotland, the Celtic ancestry is stronger among Highlanders, the Anglo-Saxon stronger among Lowlanders – but neither are purely descended from one as opposed to the other. The English conquered Ireland in the 12th century, which was followed by successive waves of Anglo immigration down the centuries. Many of the earlier waves of Anglo settlers ended up assimilating into a Celtic identity (summarised by the famous quip that they became "more Irish than the Irish themselves"), some of the more recent waves less so (which is one of the causes of the still only partially resolved conflict in Northern Ireland). > You could make the argument for calling them Anglo-Celtic now but not so much at the time of the settlement of the US. I find it interesting (as an Australian) that in Australia the term "Anglo-Celtic" is preferred much more than in the US. I think that's because, while both countries have been significantly influenced by Irish Catholics, proportionately the influence was more significant in Australia's case.
    - arethuza 2y ago
      I think the actual historical genetic makeup of the UK is considerably more complex than you are implying: https://oumnh.ox.ac.uk/settlers https://oumnh.ox.ac.uk/settlers
      - ttyprintk 2y ago
        Interesting statistic: before the Norman conquest, a typical person was 10-40% Anglo-Saxon. We seem to overuse that term even though the Norman conquest radically reshuffled the prevailing ethnic group and language.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- wahern 2y ago
  Anglo-Saxon in the sense of the article is principally referring to a political and cultural tradition that can be traced back to a certain place and time, the original dynamics of which continue to reverberate and resonate. Its association with any distinct ancestral ethnicities (i.e. something like "race") is in an important sense merely coincidental. Contemporary liberal politics is strongly essentialist in its discourse, so much so that people are starting to forget that such terms like Anglo-Saxon have alternative, more nuanced meanings (albeit not exclusively--there's also a race-essentialist history, to be sure). The essence of identity politics is to fuse and fix, e.g., ethnicity and culture. It's why the American left assumed for decades that the growing demographics of minority groups with strong Democratic affinities would naturally result in ever growing Democratic majorities. The notion that, e.g., Latinos would begin to adopt "white" social and political viewpoints with different historical roots was incomprehensible. I think it's difficult to dispute that the principal political and social structures of the US, including California, are primarily derivative of the Anglo-Saxon model and its various facets, both in its core structures (e.g. how its democratic institutions function, economic life is organized, etc) but also in its relationship with oppositional groups (e.g. the Irish experience that continued to unfold in North America, and which also shaped how new groups assimilated into oppositional positions). This is most obvious in the context of our legal systems, but you can see it in both national and local political and social structures. Germans, Jews, Native Americans (to the extent they chose to engage), and everybody else assimilated into this system. They shaped it, to be sure, but the essential outlines remain distinctly identifiable as derivative of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the British Isles going back to before William the Conquerer (most periods of which also involved clashes of culture and synthesis of foreign and domestic!). Could you persuasively argue that California politics is more like Mexican politics than it is the politics of other so-called Anglo-Saxon systems like the U.K., Ireland, Canada, Australia, or even South Africa? Also, don't forget that in most ways Californian politics is indistinguishable from that of Washington and Oregon, neither of which have strong Spanish or Mexican legacies that have persisted into the present day. That said, I think the author overstates the explanatory power of Anglo-Saxon cultural heritage. It's impossible to understand contemporary American politics without understanding the contribution of mid 20th century French deconstructionists, or early 20th century Jewish intellectual immigrants, on both the left and right. Or even that of the American experience--when it comes to the prevalence of endemic societal violence, for example, North and South America altogether stand out distinctly from the rest of the world, for a multitude of reasons rooted in shared historical phenomena (e.g. slavery, frontier ethos, etc), few of which relate back in a distinctive, useful way to the particular history of the British Isles. Likewise, many countries, including Mexico, also saw similar French and Eastern European Jewish influences. And at this point there's an argument to made that it's more productive to set a new fixed point rooted in 19th and 20th century Western modernity, and US cultural hegemony that filters disparate influences as they take hold elsewhere in the world.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
  Yeah but from a policy perspective, which specific influences do you see from those groups on California politics? Even if Anglo-Saxons are now a minority, as a founding population they can exert disproportionate influence. New immigrants want to fit in to their new home, so they adopt majority views, thereby reinforcing those majority views for subsequent immigrant waves.
  - alephnerd 2y ago
    > Even if Anglo-Saxons are now a minority They were never a majority in California. Take a look at census data as well as reading basic California history. The largest ethnic groups in California have always been Hispanics and Germans. Albion's Seed is a good book, but Fischer's analysis was limited to Appalachia, New England, the Delaware Valley, and Virginia. He did mean for it try to be a generalized explanation for the entire US. Furthermore, if you look at the history of legislation in the West and Midwest, it's also fairly distinct in comparison to the East Coast. Abolitionism, trade unions, Humboldtian ideal, women's suffrage, etc all had extremely strong support across much of the West and Midwest, and this itself was due to post-1849 immigration from Central Europe following the failed revolutions of 1849. Just think about it in general - almost everything that you think is "American" is actually German. Hot dogs, Hamburgers, Budweiser, Chrysler, Rockefeller, Disney, the New York Times, Christmas Trees, Lutheran congregations, Mennonite congregations, etc.
  - no_time 2y ago
    >New immigrants want to fit in to their new home Post 2015 Europe would like to have a word with that.
    - defrost 2y ago
      It can wait in line until every pre-2000 country colonised by Europeans has had their say.
      - no_time 2y ago
        I suppose this is what is happening. What bothers me is that it’s not ought to be this way. Would be trivially easy to put a stop to this if we weren’t being rotten from the inside.
pj_mukh 2y ago
"I don't know if I buy the explanation in the article" Yea I don't know if the writer has ever talked to a progressive activist. Drug enforcement isn't poo-poo'd out of some Libertarian ideal (let alone a Scottish one). It's poo-poo'd because it's seen as an ineffective fix for addiction. This is largely true, but the activists forgot that a lack of drug enforcement can ruin city centers. Reform should start in our incarceration system not in crime enforcement but I digress.
- vlovich123 2y ago
  City centers are being ruined even with places with stricter drug enforcement. I’m not entirely convinced the two are linked. If anything cost of housing and wealth of an area are better predictors.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    Untrue. You don’t see these kinds of problems in Singapore, Tokyo, or even Bangkok, where drug enforcement is pretty strict. Likewise, if you don’t want people to poop on the sidewalk, make that a law and then strictly enforce it. It does work, it’s just that Americans are not very committed to the enforcement aspect, even in tough on crime red states (at least compared to Asia).
    - acchow 2y ago
      It is clear when looking at the history of policing in America, whenever you let the police be “tough on crime”, they abuse their power and particularly against certain minority groups. America is unable to figure out its systematic prejudices, therefore cannot adopt “tough on crime” policies (like Singapore’s)
      - lazide 2y ago
        Huh? Do you really think Singapore doesn’t have systemic prejudices?

alephnerd 2y ago

The article is fairly off and overindexes Anglo-Saxon influence in a state where the largest influences tended to be Hispanics, working class central/southern/eaatern European settlers, Okies during the Dust Bowl, Asians of all walks of life, and post-WW2 immigration globally. California is just "California", and an "Anglo-Saxon" tradition or lens just doesn't track back west - be it California, Texas, Washington, etc. Just think about it - Kearny Street is named after a racist Irish immigrant. Levi and Haas were the most prominent businessmen in that era and were German Jews. Gold was found in Sutter Fort - a hacienda owned by a Swiss German. Much of the settlement in Central California was farmers from Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, Asia, Armenia, etc. Chinatowns and Japantowns dotted much of California, and Filipino, Chinese, and Japanese fishermen were overrepresented.

murrayb 2y ago
Further to your point the Scots and Irish aren't even Anglo-Saxon. You could make the argument for calling them Anglo-Celtic now but not so much at the time of the settlement of the US.
- skissane 2y ago
  > Further to your point the Scots and Irish aren't even Anglo-Saxon. Both are a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic influences. In Scotland, the Celtic ancestry is stronger among Highlanders, the Anglo-Saxon stronger among Lowlanders – but neither are purely descended from one as opposed to the other. The English conquered Ireland in the 12th century, which was followed by successive waves of Anglo immigration down the centuries. Many of the earlier waves of Anglo settlers ended up assimilating into a Celtic identity (summarised by the famous quip that they became "more Irish than the Irish themselves"), some of the more recent waves less so (which is one of the causes of the still only partially resolved conflict in Northern Ireland). > You could make the argument for calling them Anglo-Celtic now but not so much at the time of the settlement of the US. I find it interesting (as an Australian) that in Australia the term "Anglo-Celtic" is preferred much more than in the US. I think that's because, while both countries have been significantly influenced by Irish Catholics, proportionately the influence was more significant in Australia's case.
  - arethuza 2y ago
    I think the actual historical genetic makeup of the UK is considerably more complex than you are implying: https://oumnh.ox.ac.uk/settlers https://oumnh.ox.ac.uk/settlers
    - ttyprintk 2y ago
      Interesting statistic: before the Norman conquest, a typical person was 10-40% Anglo-Saxon. We seem to overuse that term even though the Norman conquest radically reshuffled the prevailing ethnic group and language.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
wahern 2y ago
Anglo-Saxon in the sense of the article is principally referring to a political and cultural tradition that can be traced back to a certain place and time, the original dynamics of which continue to reverberate and resonate. Its association with any distinct ancestral ethnicities (i.e. something like "race") is in an important sense merely coincidental. Contemporary liberal politics is strongly essentialist in its discourse, so much so that people are starting to forget that such terms like Anglo-Saxon have alternative, more nuanced meanings (albeit not exclusively--there's also a race-essentialist history, to be sure). The essence of identity politics is to fuse and fix, e.g., ethnicity and culture. It's why the American left assumed for decades that the growing demographics of minority groups with strong Democratic affinities would naturally result in ever growing Democratic majorities. The notion that, e.g., Latinos would begin to adopt "white" social and political viewpoints with different historical roots was incomprehensible. I think it's difficult to dispute that the principal political and social structures of the US, including California, are primarily derivative of the Anglo-Saxon model and its various facets, both in its core structures (e.g. how its democratic institutions function, economic life is organized, etc) but also in its relationship with oppositional groups (e.g. the Irish experience that continued to unfold in North America, and which also shaped how new groups assimilated into oppositional positions). This is most obvious in the context of our legal systems, but you can see it in both national and local political and social structures. Germans, Jews, Native Americans (to the extent they chose to engage), and everybody else assimilated into this system. They shaped it, to be sure, but the essential outlines remain distinctly identifiable as derivative of the Anglo-Saxon conquest of the British Isles going back to before William the Conquerer (most periods of which also involved clashes of culture and synthesis of foreign and domestic!). Could you persuasively argue that California politics is more like Mexican politics than it is the politics of other so-called Anglo-Saxon systems like the U.K., Ireland, Canada, Australia, or even South Africa? Also, don't forget that in most ways Californian politics is indistinguishable from that of Washington and Oregon, neither of which have strong Spanish or Mexican legacies that have persisted into the present day. That said, I think the author overstates the explanatory power of Anglo-Saxon cultural heritage. It's impossible to understand contemporary American politics without understanding the contribution of mid 20th century French deconstructionists, or early 20th century Jewish intellectual immigrants, on both the left and right. Or even that of the American experience--when it comes to the prevalence of endemic societal violence, for example, North and South America altogether stand out distinctly from the rest of the world, for a multitude of reasons rooted in shared historical phenomena (e.g. slavery, frontier ethos, etc), few of which relate back in a distinctive, useful way to the particular history of the British Isles. Likewise, many countries, including Mexico, also saw similar French and Eastern European Jewish influences. And at this point there's an argument to made that it's more productive to set a new fixed point rooted in 19th and 20th century Western modernity, and US cultural hegemony that filters disparate influences as they take hold elsewhere in the world.
0xDEAFBEAD 2y ago
Yeah but from a policy perspective, which specific influences do you see from those groups on California politics? Even if Anglo-Saxons are now a minority, as a founding population they can exert disproportionate influence. New immigrants want to fit in to their new home, so they adopt majority views, thereby reinforcing those majority views for subsequent immigrant waves.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > Even if Anglo-Saxons are now a minority They were never a majority in California. Take a look at census data as well as reading basic California history. The largest ethnic groups in California have always been Hispanics and Germans. Albion's Seed is a good book, but Fischer's analysis was limited to Appalachia, New England, the Delaware Valley, and Virginia. He did mean for it try to be a generalized explanation for the entire US. Furthermore, if you look at the history of legislation in the West and Midwest, it's also fairly distinct in comparison to the East Coast. Abolitionism, trade unions, Humboldtian ideal, women's suffrage, etc all had extremely strong support across much of the West and Midwest, and this itself was due to post-1849 immigration from Central Europe following the failed revolutions of 1849. Just think about it in general - almost everything that you think is "American" is actually German. Hot dogs, Hamburgers, Budweiser, Chrysler, Rockefeller, Disney, the New York Times, Christmas Trees, Lutheran congregations, Mennonite congregations, etc.
- no_time 2y ago
  >New immigrants want to fit in to their new home Post 2015 Europe would like to have a word with that.
  - defrost 2y ago
    It can wait in line until every pre-2000 country colonised by Europeans has had their say.
    - no_time 2y ago
      I suppose this is what is happening. What bothers me is that it’s not ought to be this way. Would be trivially easy to put a stop to this if we weren’t being rotten from the inside.

pj_mukh 2y ago

"I don't know if I buy the explanation in the article" Yea I don't know if the writer has ever talked to a progressive activist. Drug enforcement isn't poo-poo'd out of some Libertarian ideal (let alone a Scottish one). It's poo-poo'd because it's seen as an ineffective fix for addiction. This is largely true, but the activists forgot that a lack of drug enforcement can ruin city centers. Reform should start in our incarceration system not in crime enforcement but I digress.

vlovich123 2y ago
City centers are being ruined even with places with stricter drug enforcement. I’m not entirely convinced the two are linked. If anything cost of housing and wealth of an area are better predictors.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  Untrue. You don’t see these kinds of problems in Singapore, Tokyo, or even Bangkok, where drug enforcement is pretty strict. Likewise, if you don’t want people to poop on the sidewalk, make that a law and then strictly enforce it. It does work, it’s just that Americans are not very committed to the enforcement aspect, even in tough on crime red states (at least compared to Asia).
  - acchow 2y ago
    It is clear when looking at the history of policing in America, whenever you let the police be “tough on crime”, they abuse their power and particularly against certain minority groups. America is unable to figure out its systematic prejudices, therefore cannot adopt “tough on crime” policies (like Singapore’s)
    - lazide 2y ago
      Huh? Do you really think Singapore doesn’t have systemic prejudices?