Last week's election demonstrated, once again, that America's most abiding divisions are not between red states and blue states, conservatives and liberals, or even the faithful and the secular. They're cultural, the result of differences that can be traced all the way back to the rival colonial projects established on our continent three and four centuries ago.
Our political divisions are rooted in 11 disparate regional cultures, as I explained in a recently published book. These regions -- separate nations, really, including Yankeedom, Tidewater, New Netherland, New France, Deep South, Greater Appalachia, the Midlands, First Nation, the Far West, the Left Coast, El Norte -- have been hiding in plain sight throughout our history. You see them outlined on linguists' dialect maps, and maps of religious regions and political geography.
The fault lines could be seen throughout this year's presidential contest. Although both nominees happened to hail from Yankeedom, they presented competing interpretations of the American dream rooted in regional philosophies.
President Obama explicitly embraced the notion that we are all in the same boat, that the successful ought to make sacrifices for the common good. He presented these as American ideals, and they are, in the sense that they are the central founding principles of Yankeedom, the section of the country colonized by the early Puritans and their descendants.
The Puritans believed they were God's chosen people and, as such, would be rewarded or punished collectively. They came to this continent to create a godly community to serve as an example for the world. Ever since, Yankees have had faith in their ability to engineer a more perfect society through public institutions.
Many other, equally American cultures look upon this philosophy with skepticism, even revulsion, and none more so than the people of Greater Appalachia. This nation was founded in the early 18th century by wave upon wave of rough, bellicose settlers from the war-ravaged borderlands of Northern Ireland, northern England and the Scottish lowlands, whose culture included a warrior ethic and deep commitments to individual liberty. Here, "freedom" is broadly understood to mean having the fewest possible encumbrances on individual action.
In this clash of values, the other American nations fall on a spectrum between Yankee and Appalachian poles. The Yankee view is embraced on the Left Coast (partially founded by Yankee missionaries), and is begrudgingly accepted within New Netherland, the densely populated, Dutch-founded region around New York City, a competitive, commercial trading society that long ago accepted that it can function only with a considerable amount of shared enterprise.
The Appalachian view is subscribed to in the Deep South (a stratified, oligarchical society founded by English slave owners from Barbados) and the Far West (whose 19th-century colonists had, almost by necessity, a libertarian streak). Two other significant nations -- the Midlands and El Norte -- are more ambivalent and have often served as kingmakers.
