I Repent

I have been critical of Colin Woodard and his American Nations, which describes his eleven regional cultures of North America.  I listened to an interview with him today and have decided I have been far too harsh.   My criticisms may have been accurate, but they are also inconsequential. He has been a bit rapturous about New Netherlands and its tolerance right from the start, which I thought was oversold, especially in light of the rest of Dutch colonial behavior over the centuries. Yet he does not shy away from that, noting that the difference in New York City may be a direct result of the other American cultures he likes less well, but interacted with it. When he described the borderland culture of northern Mexico and southernmost SW America, he quoted academics but was poor on what I would call data.  I did not dig deeply enough on that - he's got data.  EVen if not, I think he got it right, that the thin northernmost strip of Mexico is seen by other Mexicans as being something different, something not quite part of the rest of them.

Perhaps I was mostly put off because his number of regions are different from Joel Garreaus's Nine Nations and his boundaries are sometimes different from David Hackett Fischer's in Albion's Seed.  Those are my guys, I don't want them put down in any way.  Yet Woodard was quite clear that he attempting to build on Fischer, not contradict him. The last section of Albion's Seed traces the four British folkways through the American presidential elections.  Woodard regards that has merely an outline, and on reflection, he is correct.  That is his jumping off point, and he adds in the other regional cultures as they developed across North America, mostly the US.

Interestingly, though I could just sense behind his comments that he has much more sympathy with a modern liberal picture of how things should be seen and should be run, he would not go down that road in this interview, even though the more-liberal interviewer was trying to drive him there.  Woodard asserted quite strongly a couple of times that the American Definition had been a collaborative effort and he thought it would be dangerous to try and force anyone out. While giving full agreement to the idea that the Definition was artificial, often founded on myths, he laughingly counters that we cannot have no myths.  If we take away one myth because it is false, someone will simply come along and trick us into anew one, seldom any better.  CS Lewis said much the same about philosophies, dogmas, and theologies. Those who attempt to eliminate those are more dangerous than those who tried to sell us the old ones, however inadequate.  I found it refreshing. He seems to really believe that transitional post WWII American myth, founded on the sometimes ridiculous creations of the previous two generations.  Yes, we aren't who we pretend to be.  But that is who we should keep trying to pretend to be, subject to modification when we go seriously astray. All right, all right, we have gone seriously astray and need to be humble and change.  But what have you got that's better? That is just about my view, so I took to it happily.

Amazon tells me I have bought the book in 2013.  I wonder who I gave it to?