Liberty Expose: Reviving Northern (Yankee-Midlander) Conservatism

KeithBinns

In addition to providing a new paradigm for interpreting American history and politics, Colin Woodard’s work in American Nations (2011) and American Character (2016) offers a compelling resource for the upcoming generations as they work to forge the coalitions of the future. By delving beneath the spectacle of Party politics and unpacking the older cultural dynamics that have united and clashed during different historical moments, he helps us appreciate the malleability of our political coalitions and categories, and imagine new combinations of forces that the present moment might rule out as fantastical, or impossible. 

A Revised Map of the american nations, by colin woodard

I have already taken the opportunity to apply Woodard’s paradigm in an analysis of the Republican Party. In that piece, I argue, with the help of Michael Lind, that the Republican Party’s primary economic interests reflect the values of the oligarchic Deep South, and that these values stand at odds with the democratic, libertarian constitution of its Appalachian constituencies. In consequence, the hold of the Republican Party on the South may prove more tenuous than expected, and will depend on its ability to forward a genuine nationalist program that addresses the yearning of working people across the country for greater self-possession.

Two essential implications follow from this view. First, the South, though home to some of the most anti-democratic forces in American politics, is not only far from homogenous, but imbued with powerful democratic energy rooted in its Appalachian traditions—an energy that has sided (and may again in the future) against the Deep Southern ruling class in the interest of freedom, fuller political representation, and broader economic opportunity for working and middle-class Americans. Should this coalition come to recognize its common interests with working and middle-class constituencies across the country, Left and Right, they would prove the key to Southern liberation—the indispensable warriors needed in the fight. 

Second, in the midst of a Party system that proves increasingly unable to respond to the needs of most Americans, what is most promising about the South is perhaps not its “conservative” identity, but its dogged, libertarian populism (which, if properly directed, can be profoundly democratic and patriotic). Indeed, the Deep Southern conservatism that nominally represents them should be recognized as an antithetical force to be overcome, not its badge of honor. 

Southern Conservatism vs. Northern Conservatism

One of the difficulties in discerning this dynamic is that conservative identity often gets muddled by its diverse influences. While the lineage of southern conservatism can be traced back to the hierarchical, oligarchic slave orders of the Deep South, and linked to an elitist conception of liberty (the liberty of the few to govern the many), conservative leaders tend to incorporate the rhetoric of a very different tradition when called to articulate their political vocation, a tradition we might call “northern conservatism.”

Where southern conservatism protects the liberty of the southern elite class to govern a confederate order independent from the regulatory strictures of the federal government, northern conservatism affirms the moral errand of the American nation as a Union committed to democratic liberation. Where the nationalism of the former seeks regional autonomy in the name of liberty and states’ rights, the latter aims to conserve the integrity of a national democratic project committed to the dignity and self-government of all people, regardless of background or geography. 

Northern conservatism represents the enduring lineage of our federalist, Whig, and old Republican predecessors, including John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson (who, though a Democrat, incorporated much of this tradition). Whether faced with state interests reluctant to accommodate a new constitutional order, or elite-driven secession and civil war, or the consolidation of dangerous oligopolies during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, all of these figures saw the role of government through a profoundly moral, though realist, lens. For them, it was the agency tasked with guarding the nation’s promise as a site where republican and democratic principles could be proved, no matter what sort of divisive forces they might face. 

All of them came to recognize that such a vocation often requires the rebuttal of narrower group interests whose aggrandizement would eventually prove lethal to the experiment itself. As conservatives of the northern cast, their political callings demanded a mastery of power in order to prevent power from ruling the day. They were to become hardened, yet broad-minded, realists, ever wary of the stifling influence of factional overreach, yet fiercely protective over the nation's democratic integrity, so that those interests that transcend power—the moral ones—would not evaporate out of sight.

Though largely hidden in today's political landscape, this potent combination of ideas has deep roots in what Woodard would call the Yankee and Midlander nations. From Yankeedom, it derives a strong national familism that sees the moral errand of the Union as inseparable from the preservation of strong institutions that can mediate special interests:

“Founded on the shores of Massachusetts Bay by radical Calvinists as a new Zion, since the outset the nation I call Yankeedom has put great emphasis on perfecting earthly society through social engineering, individual self-denial for the common good, and the aggressive assimilation of outsiders. It has prized education, intellectual achievement, community (rather than individual) empowerment, and broad citizen participation in politics and government, the latter viewed as the public's shield against the machinations of grasping aristocrats, corporations, and would-be tyrants...Indeed, Yankees would come to have faith in government and public institutions to a degree that was unimaginable to the people of other regions.” (American Character)

From the Midlands, northern conservatism derives a moderating influence that tempers Yankee idealism and faith in government with a more hopeful, pluralistic, and middle-class sensibility:

“The Midlands, America’s great swing region, was founded by English Quakers, who believed in humans’ inherent goodness and welcomed people of many nations and creeds to their utopian colonies on the shores of Delaware Bay. Pluralistic and organized around the middle class, the Midlands spawned the culture of Middle America and the heartland, where ethnic and ideological purity have never been a priority, government has been seen as an unwelcome intrusion, and political opinion has been moderate, even apathetic...Here was a community-minded society distrustful of strong government, a nation where people assumed the best in people and therefore could do without one.” (American Character)

Taken together, these regional influences could, if properly re-activated, come together to revive the grand, though largely inaudible, inheritance of northern conservatism. Communal, but not coercive; nationalist, but simultaneously pluralistic; idealistic, yet cautious of over-prescription; realist, but still affirmative of the genius of the people when freed to direct their own lives—such is the latent conservatism of the Yankee and Midlander nations.

A coalition of this sort would bring together patriots from both sides of the aisle that remain disillusioned by our government’s lack of responsiveness to the felt needs of working and middle-class Americans. Neither content with the faux nationalism and increasingly radical tendencies of the Republican Party, nor inspired by the faux progressivism of a Democratic Party that speaks to liberal social values while avoiding any meaningful populist agenda, these Americans await a movement that will protect the promise of the nation they love by addressing the standing economic issues that continue to tear us apart. Irritated by the stagnant gridlock between southern conservatives and their nominal enemies, coastal liberals, they await a movement that will overcome this gridlock by uniting southern democratic populists with their old 19th century allies: the northern, conservative defenders of the Union.