Читать книгу Texas Got It Right! - Sam Wyly - Страница 28

In his 2011 book, American Nations, Colin Woodard

makes the case that America's political and cultural

landscape is not divided along red-state/blue-state or

even regional geographic lines, but along generations-

old cultural boundaries that can be traced to

migration patterns and belief systems dating to the

colonial era. Within those boundaries lie eleven

"nations," each with its own distinctive set of values

and political leanings. Out East you've got the cosmo-

politan mercantile culture of the New Netherlands

(originating with the Dutch settlements that would

become New York City) and the Calvinist civic-mind-

edness of Yankeedom. Farther down, you've got the

caste-oriented plantation culture of the Deep South;

out in the Rockies and beyond you've got the hard-

bitten, government-wary culture of the Far West; and

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so on. The frontiers where these nations meet can be

fault lines that breed sectarian division. They can also

make for dynamic convergences. Take a look at where

Texas is on that map. Here, the brawling, independent-

minded Scots-Irish of Greater Appalachia come up

against the Quaker-influenced apple-pie Americanism

of the Midlands and the deep-rooted democratizing

forces of El Norte, a region of Spanish heritage rooted

in the earliest missionary adventures in the New

World. Encroaching from the southeast are the aristo-

cratic ideals of the Deep South. It all makes for a

heady mix—progressivism and libertarianism min-

gling with old-school conservatism and even

revolutionary sentiment—that has no equal in North

America. Here, America’s old fiefdoms blend to

become something new, something purely Texan.