Who is America For?

Should probably have been Whom, but that looked odd.

West From Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America After the Civil War

Heather Cox Richardson, 2007

Political and social change in the middle of the 19th century was driven by conflict over ideas about individuals and their proper relationships with government. The Frontier and (especially) the mythical cowboy become icons and emblems of Americanism, that echoed in events as recent as the 2004 presidential election. This thesis was essentially a continuation and extension of Heather Cox Richardson’s argument in her previous books. The book began and ended, in fact, with a discussion of the “red and blue states” and of George W. Bush, who had “promised to be a cowboy president.” The issues of the past were still with us, she said. During the middle-19th century, “American individualists came to depend on government support while denying it to others.” Closer to the present, we heard “anti-government rhetoric from the South and western plains, regions that receive far more in federal aid than they pay in taxes.” Richardson saw in this a continuous, developing tradition of defining the middle class as “true Americans” and privileging them alone with access to government intervention; combined with a national myth that “idealized the rural West as the opposite of the urban Northeast.”

One of the most interesting elements of Richardson’s argument in West From Appomattox was that she found the origins of this middle class ideology in both the North and the South. From the Union, she drew on a tradition of “Lockean individuals” and “republican government based on the votes of economically independent” property owners. From the Confederacy, the culture of “Planters who modeled themselves on European aristocrats.” But unlike Eric Foner’s formulation of the free labor ideal, neither tradition was completely open. Northern republicanism was predicated on “independence,” and nineteenth century Americans considered wage labor a “dependent” social relationship. As a result, Richardson concluded, “From the North, Americans had taken the idea of equal opportunity; from the South, they had taken the idea that not all men could rise. From the racial and industrial troubles of the 1870s, they had taken the idea that those unable to rise and those at the top of society must not be permitted to harness the government to their own interests...From the strikes and the business consolidation of the 1880s, they had taken the belief that the federal government must be used to protect American individualism.” While they claimed to be protecting the rights of individuals, “mainstream Americans had come to believe that many would fail, that this was their own fault, and that they should be isolated from power before they destroyed society.” So it was only a very particular set of individuals they wanted to protect. They were in, so it was time to bar the gates. The big, difficult-to-explain problem in this story is the middle class’s apparent inability to recognize the insane hypocrisy of their position.

Richardson carefully balanced the middle against both the bottom and the top as she analyzed this ideology, but were the results really balanced on the ground? How significant was the middle class’s attack on trusts and the very rich, compared to its abandonment of southern blacks, condemnation of striking workers, and denunciation of rural Populists? On the one hand, a few millionaires had to reorganize the way they controlled their industrial empires; while on the other, black men were lynched, workers were shot and forced to accept starvation wages and absurd working conditions, and farmers were pushed to the political margins where they found it impossible to organize effectively against rapidly consolidating markets and the railroads. So was it fair to say that the middle class really occupied the middle ground? Or was it possible to see them as patsies for the elite, making occasional rhetorical forays against the rich but really and very effectively taking the poor out of the social equation?

In addition to the overwhelmingly negative results of this middle class ideology on the class below them, which I think suggest that the middle class were always (perhaps unwittingly) on the side of the rich, there’s also the way these traditions manifest themselves today. First, as Richardson said, in the anti-big-government rhetoric of Southern and Western red states, which regularly receive much more from government than they pay to it (this is a point made previously by Partricia Limerick). But what if the people who were paying weren’t the people who were benefiting?

Much of the "federal money" going back into western states probably doesn't easily trickle down to the rural main street economy (even if airbases and ICBM silos aren't included). So the average westerner paying his federal taxes could easily (and honestly) feel he was financing lazy eastern welfare moms. Even if he doesn't know whether federal or state taxes are paying their benefits, he's pretty sure they aren't paying their way like he is. Which means, he's paying their way. Population disparities probably throw salt on the wound. While urbanites are unhappy that sparsely-populated states still have their two Senators, Joe-the-rancher in Wyoming (pop. 544,270) hears about "welfare mothers" in Massachusetts (pop. 6,593,587) and goes ballistic. There are roughly 50,000 female-headed single-parent households getting "welfare" in Massachusetts. There can't be more than about 100,000 families in all of Wyoming. And what about the criminals? There are more inmates in California and Texas alone than the whole Wyoming population!

But even more suspicious, in my opinion, is the overwhelming tendency of middle class spokespeople to attack “special interests,” even when the majority of government intervention (and economic gain) is clearly directed elsewhere. Isn’t it a little strange, how much easier it is to find sensible, working people bashing Unions and small social programs and calling for tax relief? Is this because it’s easier to visualize a “Union guy” than a credit-default-swap arbitrageur? A “Union guy,” after all, is almost the same as the rest of us, except that he’s one of those “special interests” that are always trying to get something for nothing from the government. Is it because people are being practical and choosing their battles and they’ve concluded that the fight against the big corporations is hopeless? Are we reduced to fighting over the crumbs the giants have left behind? Is this the culmination of the rhetorical tradition Richardson identifies in West from Appomattox? Underneath it all, isn’t the effect of all this rhetoric that it divides and confuses, and thus conquers the people who should be standing together against the real special interests, like Goldman Sachs and Pfizer?