I say this as one whose Mayflower ancestor was the one known criminal of the bunch, Stephen Hopkins.

He was framed!

Noah Webster did the dictionary. Daniel Webster did the oratory and legislation.

Gringo, thank you. It didn’t sound right when I typed it, but I had to leave and didn’t have time to reflect.

Thanks also for the reading suggestions, guys!

I say this as one whose Mayflower ancestor was the one known criminal of the bunch, Stephen Hopkins.

There is a great Kenneth Roberts novel that touches on the Federalist reversal and the enactment of the Alien and Sedition Acts: Lydia Bailey (1947). Set in 1800, it reads like it is ripped from today’s headlines, with toxic politics, Washington skullduggery, revolution and intervention in Haiti, problems in race relations, Barbary pirates, and coups in the Middle East. Highly recommended beach reading!

I think your analysis is entirely correct neo. Now, may we finally say BHO doesn’t love his country? At least as it is?

IMO, no one is a blueblood. No one. And the very notion is corrosive to democratic ideals. Regard for family history and lineage is great, until and unless it shades into imputing to oneself some benefit arising from such history. Chuck Battenberg singlehandedly puts paid to the notion that a prominent family history has any bearing on the merit of an individual.

During my sojourn in Boston I attended a gathering of one of the families commonly styled as God’s interlocutors, as defined above. The patriarch of the clan was a sharp cookie, no doubt, as was a grandson (great-grandson?). The rest: walking examples of regression to the mean. To the drive-up window born.

Speaking of family histories, the family of a friend of mine (of Mexican descent) has lived in California since before there was a United States. His daughter apparently qualifies to join the DAR! How much fun would that meeting be? /g I suspect that Mexican descent is not quite what the DAR had in mind.

I found this faintly offensive – a New England lineage and culture is a real thing, not “less than” anyone else’s.

I agree. No less – but also no more – than anyone else’s.

I always tell my British friends who complain about American accents – quacking and all – that we Yanks been keeping their language pure for them.

This is true. The present British accent is recent, postdating the Revolution. Brits used to speak pretty much as we (and the Canadians) do, until the Home Counties accent became the desirable one. Lecturing in the UK, when teased by students about my American accent, I used to inform them that Shakespeare spoke more or less as I do (according to colleagues in linguistics). BBC English is of relatively recent vintage.

Oblio, I stand corrected on my history.

(Are you sure about the Federalists being pro-British? Why were Tory sympathizers run out en masse after the Revolution? My impression was that the entire country was pretty anti-British (no time to Google), and that American political parties differed primarily in the primacy they sought for the federal government vis a vis the states.)

We can map the demographic history on to this fairly easily. The Irish became Democrats, since being against the overbearing Whig/Republican WASPs of New England was pretty similar to being against the overbearing Tory Anglo-Irish Ascendancy.

I think the major driver here was slavery/abolition, and later political patronage. New England was a hotbed of abolitionist sentiment, and therefore of the modern Republican Party, whereas the Irish were notoriously opposed on grounds of economic self-interest as the group above blacks. That is why, for example, the draft riots in New York in 1863 resulted in so many lynchings (ca. 50, IIRC) of freed slaves. So abolition on one hand, and on the other, the success of corrupt Democratic machines (of the Tammany Hall ilk) providing patronage were probably more important than identification of New Englanders with Britain.