Arthur Schaper: The Real Reason New England is So Liberal

Friday, November 22, 2013

Arthur Christopher Schaper, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

The impulse for change, minus a respect for the divine, gives birth to an unrelenting progressivism, one based on the basic goodness of man and big government, believes Arthur Schaper.

I have shared my thoughts on what happened to the Northeast GOP (the national party’s fiscal conservatism fizzled, while a vibrant social conservatism alienated New England voters).

I have pleaded for the Massachusetts GOP to embrace their more libertarian side. Local legislators are focusing on the fiscal issues, not contending with the social stuff. Then a turncoat like Gabriel Gomez rises to the forefront, and voters get confused all over again about what the Mass GOP really stands for. Still, the Republican (kind of) put the Dems on the defense, forcing Markey to outspend his opponent. Who would have thought that any Republican, even a bluish one, would have the Democracy working so hard in an off-year election?

I have applauded the Bay State Republicans for stepping up against the computer tax cloud and Republican initiatives against the forever gas tax. “Mister Governor” Deval Patrick had to backtrack on the software, but remains hard on the taxpayers, but he will be leaving office next year, with Baker taking his place.

Liberalism’s New England Roots

Now I have to ask the more philosophical question: Why is New England so liberal in the first place?

Let’s look to the past.

The Puritans established Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonials as both radical and yet very conformist religious communities. In the strictest sense, these Pilgrims (or more specifically, Separatists) advocated a radical notion of self-governance, divorced from the British Crown, depending on the local religious authorities, with a stern adherence to the church hierarchy. Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson chafed at the excessive collusion of faith and governance, fled south and established ultra-tolerant Rhode Island. Religious toleration without the state-sponsored sainthood was as liberal a domestic policy as one could come by in those days.

Nevertheless, this penchant for rebellion and non-conformity would better fit the libertarian profile of “Live and Let Live and Leave Me Alone,” not the unfettered “I Bereave You of Your Money and Leave You Nothing” statism today.

Consider: from the Adams (Samuel and John) to the Boston Tea Party, to the American Revolution, New Englanders have been all about punching back at the powers that be, right? The TEA Party movement took its cues from the Boston merchants who liked making money, and resented the legal exploitation of parliament favoring one international company over the locals. To this day, Rhode Island remains in the Colonial history books as the first state to break away from England, the last to ratify the Constitution. New Hampshire gave us “Live Free or Die” and Maine has its own shore of stiff-upper-lip liberty. Ayuh!

Current State of Liberalism

So, did the former seeds of dissenting sectarianism sow the current trends of liberalism? Yes, because the impulse for change, minus a respect for the divine, gives birth to an unrelenting progressivism, one based on the basic goodness of man and big government.

If we understand liberalism in its basic form as an advancement of liberty, the Northeast certainly functioned as liberalism's epicenter. From the founding of the Republic to the Civil War, the most ardent (and strident) anti-slavery abolitionists hailed from New England, including William Lloyd Garrison, and Free Soil Republican Charles Sumner (who was beaten with a cane for excoriating a Southern, slave-owning Senator).

Yet championing the freedom of all men: how does that lead to a profligate government expansion as we see today?

The Decay of Limited Government

Beyond the initial compunction of activist religious fervor, New England’s academic impulse contributed to the decay of limited government and local control as the true liberal ideal. Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, and Brown Universities were originally founded as theological seminaries, yet these institutions, the epitome of liberal academic elitism, sponsored government centralizing ideas from Europe in the 1800’s, along with the bewildering man-centered philosophies of German philosopher-apologists for tyranny and their anti-theological iconoclasts. A Unitarian philosophy of “man is basically good” emerged, with Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his humanist protégé Henry David Thoreau, advocating a respect for freedom and nature, apart from a wholesome, or even marginal, appreciation for God.

In the same era, Massachusetts’ education reformer Horace Mann adopted Prussian ideals for collective control, including the arguments of the government as “End All and Be All”. This progressive movement not only disdained the United States Constitution, but advocated for a concentration of power away from the states toward the federal government, to the executive branch, and ultimately to a group of experts connected to this President.

These attitudes permeated to create a political culture which raises taxes to subsidize everyone else, which drives away businesses, a core conservative constituency. Geography has further played a liberalizing role, since urban centers dominate New England -- Boston, Providence, Hartford Connecticut -- drawing into their political core very liberal, dependent Democratic constituencies.

Combine the tradition of city machine politics of Boston Democrats, with the spreading of the “spread the wealth” mentality in one of the wealthiest regions in the country, plus the long departed religious culture of dissent in place of tradition, with an Ivy League educated elite, intensely secular and political: and you have the reason and results for the Northeast's heavily Democratic hegemony.

Thus the reason why New England is so liberal today.

Arthur Christopher Schaper is a teacher-turned-writer on topics both timeless and timely; political, cultural, and eternal. A life-long Southern California resident, Arthur currently lives in Torrance. Follow him on Twitter @ArthurCSchaper, reach him at [email protected], and read more at Schaper's Corner and As He Is, So Are We Ministries.

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Arthur Schaper: The Real Reason New England is So Liberal

Liberalism’s New England Roots

Current State of Liberalism

The Decay of Limited Government

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