Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The eleven nations of the United States and their cultures

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 107 posts

Re: The eleven nations of the United States and their cultures

#11

Post by iguy »

danans wrote: post #6
pjc50 wrote: post #5

It's interesting to see how canned phrases to represent certain concepts can become nonsensical when put together : > The Deep South was established by English slave lords from Barbados and was styled as a West Indies-style slave society, Woodard notes. It has a very rigid social structure and fights against government regulation that threatens individual liberty. Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Georgia, and So…

> The pro- slavery rigid society that somehow values individual liberty? Would anyone be able to explain how that works? It only valued individual liberties for free individuals, like slave owners. Slaves are by definition not free individuals, so the right to individual liberty by definition didn't apply to them. It's practically tautological if you substitute the word "liberty" with "freedom".

No, it's far from a tautology. A strong belief in individual liberty was a distinguishing characteristic of that society. And especially of that political society, which meant landowners. Having lots of slaves was another characteristic.

The useful comparison is just up the coast, Massachusetts was almost the opposite, a theocracy of busybodies. Where a town council could re-arrange people's living arrangements if they thought X was a bit of a loner wanting to be out in the woods. And of course enthusiasm for every detail of the approved religion was not optional.

Re: The eleven nations of the United States and their cultures

#12

Post by duelingjello »

There was a book and multipart PBS documentary by Robert MacNeil where he traveled and interviewed Americans about how they spoke and the evolution of accents.

Do You Speak American? (2005)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_You_Speak_American%3F

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443484/

Re: The eleven nations of the United States and their cultures

#14

Post by squiggleblaz »

American state boundaries clearly do not reflect these national regions. Federal states have boundaries that either serve to unite separate territories or to administer a united territory. It has probably a source of strength in the US, that states are either much too small or contain multiple different areas in them, since it fosters a broader, national US identity rather than an identity as a New Netherlander or a Far Westerner.

If Americans tried to reorganise their boundaries along the lines of the article's map, they would probably stop "coming together" and start "moving apart" in the course of a few generations. In the short term, though, it would probably ease a lot of the pressure currently felt.

Germany is another federal state made stronger by having internal boundaries that don't reflect historical identities (Bavaria being the weakness), and which has been able to foster a unified national identity in the past seventy years despite excluding Austria and losing much territory.

Canada's borders are more ... logical and accurate (visible in the map), and their federation is much weaker for it. The long border with the culturally similar US probably contributes to the weakness of Canada as a federal state.

Re: The eleven nations of the United States and their cultures

#15

Post by cowpig »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #14

American state boundaries clearly do not reflect these national regions. Federal states have boundaries that either serve to unite separate territories or to administer a united territory. It has probably a source of strength in the US, that states are either much too small or contain multiple different areas in them, since it fosters a broader, national US identity rather than an identity as a New Netherlander or a…

What do you mean by "weaker federal state" when describing Canada?

Re: The eleven nations of the United States and their cultures

#16

Post by [deleted] »

iguy wrote: post #11
danans wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The pro- slavery rigid society that somehow values individual liberty? Would anyone be able to explain how that works? It only valued individual liberties for free individuals, like slave owners. Slaves are by definition not free individuals, so the right to individual liberty by definition didn't apply to them. It's practically tautological if you substitute the word "liberty" with "freedom".

No, it's far from a tautology. A strong belief in individual liberty was a distinguishing characteristic of that society. And especially of that political society, which meant landowners. Having lots of slaves was another characteristic. The useful comparison is just up the coast, Massachusetts was almost the opposite, a theocracy of busybodies. Where a town council could re-arrange people's living arrangements if th…

[deleted]

Re: The eleven nations of the United States and their cultures

#17

Post by mola »

pjc50 wrote: post #5

It's interesting to see how canned phrases to represent certain concepts can become nonsensical when put together : > The Deep South was established by English slave lords from Barbados and was styled as a West Indies-style slave society, Woodard notes. It has a very rigid social structure and fights against government regulation that threatens individual liberty. Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Georgia, and So…

I think these people didn't care about individual liberties in general, but on their OWN individual liberties.

Re: The eleven nations of the United States and their cultures

#18

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

lordgrenville wrote: post #9
danans wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The pro- slavery rigid society that somehow values individual liberty? Would anyone be able to explain how that works? It only valued individual liberties for free individuals, like slave owners. Slaves are by definition not free individuals, so the right to individual liberty by definition didn't apply to them. It's practically tautological if you substitute the word "liberty" with "freedom".

I agree with you, but it's not a tautology. It's saying that free individuals (slave-owners) should have freedom to do stuff they want, e.g. own slaves, without having a government stop them from doing it.

That's the basis of the model - "I do what I want, and you also do what I want."

Obviously, it fails as a universal. Freedom that operates on the basis of economic, political, or physical coercion of others isn't freedom at all.

Which would be fine in a more mature system, because the basic question in any political organisation is where to place the trade-off between individual freedom and personal responsibility to others.

The US model is all for individual freedom, but has real issues with the concept of personal responsibility to others - which it fails to solve by pretending the problem has never existed, and is irrelevant.

Re: The eleven nations of the United States and their cultures

#19

Post by ptah »

pjc50 wrote: post #5

It's interesting to see how canned phrases to represent certain concepts can become nonsensical when put together : > The Deep South was established by English slave lords from Barbados and was styled as a West Indies-style slave society, Woodard notes. It has a very rigid social structure and fights against government regulation that threatens individual liberty. Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Georgia, and So…

slaves were seen as we see sheep and cattle now: property. would you apply "individual liberty" to farm animals in today's age?

Re: The eleven nations of the United States and their cultures

#20

Post by ImaCake »

pjc50 wrote: post #5

It's interesting to see how canned phrases to represent certain concepts can become nonsensical when put together : > The Deep South was established by English slave lords from Barbados and was styled as a West Indies-style slave society, Woodard notes. It has a very rigid social structure and fights against government regulation that threatens individual liberty. Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Georgia, and So…

>The pro- slavery rigid society that somehow values individual liberty? Would anyone be able to explain how that works?

This was apparently a really important question amoung European liberal democrats (which is a broad group ranging from constitutional monarchists all the way to social democrats) in the 19th century. Many of the more conservative liberals were really worried about balancing equality and order in a way where the state still made sensible decisions. I guess, pre-civil war America makes an interesting case study comparing North and South.

I listened to a BBC history podcast discussing this question with some depth, maybe you can find it useful as well [0].

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b09vyw0x

Post reply on HN