The Northerner

Parallel societies suit him well.

Of all the regions of the United States, perhaps the most poorly understood is the American North. While most Americans have a well defined mental image of a Southerner, or a Westerner, the Northerner is seen as the generic American, or indeed hardly perceived at all. Therefore, this article is devoted to describing his unique culture and character. The North is largely responsible for the development of the American iteration of the industrial revolution, and perhaps reached its zenith in the century spanning from the middle of the nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth. This land is not an easy land, where it is not littered with the granite leavings of Ice Age glaciers, the more fertile plains are torrid in the summer and frigid in winter. In all places it has temperatures more extreme than those prevalent in Old Europe. If it was not the land which made the North great, it was the Northerners themselves. Therefore, we must ask ourselves the questions: Who is the Northerner? There is no trivial answer, as the North can be typically divided into three notable regions. The Great Lakes states, which I have previously described as the Fordlands, the Agricultural Midwest, covered in the same article as the Cornlands and New England, the oldest region of them all. It could also be said that the North includes the northern Mid-Atlantic region, if one includes New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The populace of all of these regions may appear at first glance to bear few common traits, as their livelihoods and origins are quite divergent. This article shall explain the ethos of this region.

The first Northerners are very well known; they were the Pilgrims who landed in Massachusetts in the early seventeenth century. While not the first Western settlers in the New World by a long shot, they were the first to enter based on purely Utopian motives. There is no way one could characterize them as adventurers. The bulk of their population hailed from the solid yeomanry of East Anglia, and they had much to lose. There are several characteristics that defined these early Northerners. Perhaps their most significant attribute was their keen desire to build independent institutions. Education developed rapidly in Massachusetts Bay, with Harvard University being founded in 1636, only fifteen years after the landing of the Mayflower. They held few slaves, and became masters of nature rather than man. While the current location of the Bible belt might suggest otherwise, the religious impulse is far stronger in the Northerner than in the Southerner. As we shall see, this religious impulse can sometimes manifest itself in peculiar ways.

For several centuries, immigrants to the North shared many traits in common with the original founding population. They were typically religious dissidents of one variety or another, the vast majority hailing from northern Europe. Hence, Northern European Religious Dissidents, or NERDs* for short, became the founding population of the north. Such NERDs, whether they were Quakers, Irish Catholics, or Orthodox Jews, were some of the most Utopian minded people on the planet. All of these groups had profound dissatisfaction with the majority culture in whatever land they hailed from. For this reason they were keen to found parallel institutions. From this instinct stemmed the American impulse for civicmindedness. This Utopian drive is not without its drawbacks. In the Puritan era, it sometimes resulted in such unfortunate atrocities as the cropping of Quaker ears, or the infamous execution of alleged witches at Salem. In more recent times, it has led in many Northern states to the enforced adoption of Progressivism as the reigning civic religion. For this reason, I am grateful that our nation is balanced by the pragmatic morality and tribal loyalty of the Southerner, and to the many Southern descendants currently living throught the North. This Southern resistance to the Utopian impulse within the Northern States is often the only barrier to complete Progressive totalitarianism.

While other colonists were busy overseeing the extraction of such resources as cotton, mineral wealth or the pelts of fur-bearing mammals, the Northerner wrested a hard-won living from the stony ground in small towns and farmsteads. In the nineteenth century, as America became increasingly prosperous, this spirit of industry soon translated into a predilection for invention. By the time of the Civil War, the North had vastly outpaced the south in industrial development, making the outcome of the war all but a foregone conclusion. The thrifty habits of the early settlers soon lead to the first fortunes in American history, and after several centuries to the success of such figures as Carnegie and Ford. And so as the great factories, railroads and shipping lines grew across the lakes and the prairies, the Northern values of thrift, education and industry enabled the development of American science and engineering. In time, this culture resulted in such men of science as Percival Lowell and Robert Goddard. Contemplating his achievements, the Northerner grew proud, certain that his morality and social institutions were the highest attainable by mankind.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, the methods of the American North were exported around the world for the first time in history. The work of such thinkers as W. Edwards Deming was used to engineer the technological development of Japan. However, as nations around the world adopted limited pieces of the Northern ethos, the resulting industrial competition began slowly to take its toll upon the American economy. For the far lands adopted the Northern drive for efficiency without any conception of liberty or independence, freedom remained beyond their comprehension.

In recent decades, it has become clear that this globalism and centralization have delivered a grave threat to the Northern way of life. Northerners have been forced into direct competition with those empires of the Orient in which the elite prefer a life of opulence generated by a servile underclass to one of industry and innovation. Such is not new, this nation almost met its destruction by the rash actions of a similar class of Southerners almost two centuries ago.

Yet we Northerners no longer have cause to look down on them. The Age of Industry has become to the Northerner what the Antebellum Era was to the Southerner. Any attempt to restore the technological glory we once built is dismissed by countless elites as the Lost Cause of the North. It is one Northerners are reminded of every time they venture into the hollowed out shells and ruins of their once great cities. For far too long we believed that we could mould the world in our image, and that our economic and industrial system could be replicated with ease in any human society. The key lesson that the Northerner must learn is that his values are exceptional, found in few other places in the world. For this reason there must be concerted efforts to advance the unique cultures of the North. Therefore, Northerners must rebuild their land into independent societies, and so establish the New Cantons.

*Pun intended? You be the judge.