Very good book. The four English groups are: Puritan, Cavalier (Va.), Midlands/Quaker, Scots-Irish. I have ancestors from all four groups. The Puritan ancestors turned Quaker while still in Massachusetts, and got out of Mass. when William Penn established the Pennsylvania colony. Instead of “I wasn’t born in TX but got there as soon as I can,” my ancestors had this bumpersticker: “I was born in Mass. but got out as soon as I could.”

I was born and raised in New England. My parents were from flyover country, but moved to New England for my father’s job. I disliked the racism of my flyover grandmother (who had no problem with her daughter-in-laws’ mixed race -part Indian- background). While still in high school I concluded that I similarly disliked the “our shit doesn’t stink” attitude of many in New England. Many in New England believed that racism was something confined to the South, but courtesy of a lifelong friend whose father was a Tuskegee airman, I was quite aware at an early age that racism was found everywhere- not just in the South.

I recommend Joseph Bottum’s An Anxious Age: the Post-Protestant Ethic and Spirit of America. He points out that many secular Americans have retained from their religious grandparents the desire to belong to the elect. Instead of a religious creed, the secular today define belonging to the elect by adherence to the social narratives of the day- call it wokeness. The Depolorables are the damned, because they don’t believe the wokeness creed- nor do they change their beliefs according to the “wokeness” narrative de jour.

It must have been astonishing (not to mention hard) to be among the first English settlers in the New World.

Every five or ten years I check if there has been any news on the “Croatoan” mystery in which the entire colony on Roanoke Island (North Carolina) had disappeared the next time a ship came to check on them.

They still don’t know whether the colonists were massacred or the colony failed and they were absorbed into the Algonquin tribes or a giant UFO came and took them away.

This notion of art having a quasi-religious purpose has persisted in America (as opposed to, say, France), translated into the push for propagandistic novels of the Left during the 1930s to today’s domination of New York publishing by female editors who only want novels with “strong female protagonists” and/or books by black or multicultural authors — who will never see a discouraging or bad review.

And so, we now have a situation in which females buy 75% of all hardcover books. Young male writers are pushed into the genres, but even there successful male writers who put out a book a year are turning to female heroines — one prime example being Michael Connelly, who now features a ridiculous female cop to largely supplant his aging Harry Bosch.

I saw the beginnings of this in the 1990s, when I was reviewing books for the L.A. Times. A novel by a lesbian had to be reviewed by another lesbian, a book by a black reviewed by another black. Which meant these were all, automatically, positive reviews. Because it was all in service of the Struggle.

Back in 1959, in his influential essay, “A Look at the Talent in the Room,” Norman Mailer surveyed all the other prominent novelists in America, and said that he couldn’t find any woman writer to include. Well, he was overlooking Flannery O’Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, Carson McCullers and Mary McCarthy, all of whom were certainly as good as some of the male nonentities he included on his list.

So the pendulum has swung. Hard.

But not the cops, the occasional victim, who had no record, had no parking tickets, and would have only gotten a ticket. But thought in some way, they could run, and rather than pay a little get away and pay nothing – but instead, ended up with a prison sentence for a list of offenses.

You may recall a deranged liberal, at the time a city councilwoman for the Houston suburb of West University Place, who gained her 15 minutes of fame in 2018 by yelling “Grab ’em by the pussy” at teen girls, one of whom had the effrontery to wear a Trump T-shirt. Houston Area Councilwoman Slapped With Misdemeanor for Berating Trump Shirt Wearing Teenage Girl. (Charges were later dismissed.)

Four teenage girls were standing in line at Tiny’s Milk and Cookies in West University Place, a tiny municipality nestled within the Houston city limits. They were waiting to buy cookies for kids at their church. One of the teenaged-girls was wearing a Trump t-shirt that said, “Make America Great Again.”
While waiting, West U Councilwoman Kellye Burke walked up to them and screamed, “Grab em by the p*ssy girls!” They tried to laugh it off, but Burke kept on.

Again, she screamed expletives at the girls, who were then frightened. Burke then yelled “MAGA!” repeatedly while shaking her fist, according to one of the girl’s fathers, who accompanied them to the bakery.
The girls never responded and left without saying a word, one fearful this woman might hurt her.
None of them were aware Burke was a councilwoman until after the fact.
The families and the girls spoke to local news under the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
Burke was charged with a Class C misdemeanor for disorderly conduct. Burke apologized to one family. They accepted her apology.

Guess what? Kellye Burke is an Aggie.TDS Hits West U in Houston.

Anyone know her from A&M?

Kellye (Bowman) Burke
Class of ’90
Marketing major
Lived in Clements and Legett

The lefty insanity has hit all universities, A&M included- though A&M is less affected than Harvard.

Cicero: I blame Emily Dickinson!

Not really. But it is an interesting question — what makes New Englanders different? My guess is the early settlement of Puritans in Massachusetts.

It’s not hard to see the New Left and Feminism as kinds of 20th C. puritanism.

New Englanders’ political and moral thinking make me viscerally ill.

Theirs is always the way of the truth and the light, even when it is the voice of the oft-re-elected murderer Ted Kennedy, may he roast in Hell. Or they are moral cowards and refuse to say NO. Sorry, Neo; you live among them.

I would sooner have a grandchild attend Texas A&M than Harvard, even with a full scholarship only to H. There is a decency among the Aggies that does not exist at the H place.

Cue Glenn Reynolds: If you assume the media figures are Democratic operatives with bylines and chyrons, it all makes sense.