The Roundheads and Cavaliers fought it out in the 1640s. Another take on the similarities to America today...
Red, Blue and . . . So 17th Century
washingtonpost.com
By Joel Kotkin
Sunday, March 28, 2004; Page B01
LOS ANGELES
Ideological and theological divisions running deep. Opposing factions so far apart they no longer seem to respect one another. A breakdown in communication. The elites of each side, neither able to appeal to the other, poised like opposing armies ready to do battle.
America 2004? Actually, no. This was the lamentable state of affairs in mid-17th century England, as it teetered on the brink of civil war. But there certainly is something disturbingly familiar about this description of a body politic dividing into two unbreachable camps.
Like England under Charles I, when the Cavaliers -- the royalist supporters of the king -- and the Roundheads -- Puritan upstarts led by Oliver Cromwell -- went at it for seven years of war, the United States today is becoming two nations. This is not merely the age-old split between income groups, as Sen. John Edwards kept suggesting in his unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, but something even more fundamental -- a struggle between contrasting and utterly incompatible worldviews.
Some describe the conflict as one between the "red" and the "blue" states, the right and the left, conservatives and liberals. But even though no one is about to behead our ruler and overthrow the government, as Cromwell's forces did when they captured Parliament in 1649, I find the parallel of the Cavaliers and the Roundheads to be the most apt. They grew to hate each other so much that they could no longer accommodate a common national vision. "I have heard foul language and desperate quarrelings even between old and entire friends," wrote one Englishman on the eve of conflict. Much the same could be said of us today.
The questions in our own uncivil war are: Is anyone winning? Which America most likely represents the future of our country?
The political division has grown wider in recent years. Now a clear geographic and cultural divide is emerging as well. Demographic trends suggest that Republicans and Democrats are less likely to live next door to each other, attend the same churches or subscribe to the same media.
America's Roundheads cluster in the South, the Plains and various parts of the West, while the Cavaliers inhabit the coasts, particularly the large metropolitan centers of the Northeast and Pacific Northwest. Each side has its own views, confirmed by its favored media. Fox TV, most of talk radio, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Sean Hannity speak for the Roundheads, supporting President Bush and America's global mission. The mainstream media, the universities and the cultural establishment, including most of Hollywood, are the voices of the Cavaliers, whose elites, like many of England's Cavaliers and Charles I's French wife before them, are most concerned with winning over continental opinion and mimicking the European way of life.
As in 17th-century England, where the Roundheads disdained the Cavaliers' embrace of what John Milton called "new-vomited Paganisme," the most obvious divisions between the two groups are contrasting views of moral and religious issues. Our Cavaliers are the secular nation, whose spiritual home is in those places that yearn to join San Francisco at the same-sex-marriage altar. Contemporary Roundheads, like Cromwell's Shakespeare-hating Puritans, possess a fundamentalist sensibility; they seek to stop gay marriage and abortion, and bemoan other manifestations of our secular culture.
On the economic and demographic levels, America's Roundheads seem to have the long-term advantage in this struggle. For more than a generation, the U.S. population has been shifting not only to the "red" states of the once declassé South, but also generally to the suburbs, particularly the outer rings, and to smaller cities, where Roundheads tend to congregate. These outlying districts, and especially certain states -- Nevada, Utah, Georgia, Texas and North Carolina -- are gaining residents, representatives and electoral votes, giving the Roundheads growing clout.
These regions are also, of course, attracting some Northeastern sophistos and poor immigrants -- accounting for Los Angeles's shift from the land of Reagan to a liberal bastion -- but most have remained solidly Roundhead in culture and inclination. Areas such as the Atlanta suburbs or California's interior are apparently becoming, if anything, more Republican today than in the past.
The shift is particularly notable in terms of religious affiliation. It is largely Roundhead evangelical churches, including those of immigrants, that are rising above the suburban landscape. In the coastal cities, such as San Francisco, both mainstream Protestant and Catholic houses of worship, old Cavalier bastions, are emptying out and, in some cases, simply closing up shop.
This changing picture rests on basic economic trends. Roundhead America thrives on the basic Bush economic policy of low taxes, low interest rates and military spending. The Cavalier economy struggles with overpriced housing, the fizzling of the dot-com boom, and the shifting of jobs, including skilled ones, overseas. If firms and jobs are not going to other countries, the increasing lack of affordable housing and high levels of taxation and environmental regulation in most key Cavalier locales are sending companies to less expensive and less heavily taxed and regulated places, where people can buy homes and businesses can operate most profitably.
For these reasons, the South and the Great Plains, as well as suburbs in general, have emerged from the Bush-era recession with surprising momentum. Although accelerated by new factors, this shift is not a short-term fluke. Since 1998, the fastest-growing metropolitan economies, as measured in a survey I conducted with economist David Friedman for the current issue of Inc. magazine, have overwhelmingly been located in Roundhead areas -- including No. 1-ranked Atlanta, a host of Florida and Texas locales, and Great Plains meccas such as Sioux Falls, S.D., and Fargo, N.D.
These areas are not only gaining "McJobs" -- low-wage, low-skill, non-union employment -- but are also boosting their share of employment in high-end sectors such as technology, business and financial services. Tampa, Charlotte, and California's Riverside-San Bernardino and Fresno are adding bankers, consultants and software writers, while areas such as New York, San Francisco, Boston and San Jose have been losing theirs.
The Roundhead regions are also big winners from the new high military spending, which is shifting high-tech growth from "creative" centers around Boston or San Francisco to military-oriented economies such as Atlanta, San Antonio and Orlando. These, along with southern California, also have major concentrations of retired military officers, many of whom are expert in the new high-tech weaponry and security systems.
At the bottom, our survey found the poorest record in job creation not only among the usual industrial-age suspects -- places such as Kalamazoo, Mich., and Toledo -- but also such high-priced "new economy" bastions as New York City, Portland, Seattle, San Jose, San Francisco and Boston. In recent years, particularly since 2000, these cities have experienced not only negative job growth but also stagnant or even declining populations.
There are some bright spots in the "blue states" of the East and California, according to our survey. For the most part, they are in outer counties ringing New York, Washington, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. If you're looking for new population and job growth anywhere near the coasts, it's more likely to be found in Cherry Hill, N.J., Dutchess County, N.Y., Richmond and Petersburg, Va., or Bakersfield, Calif., than within the city limits of Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles. Still, while these places may be in nominally "blue" states, they often vote Republican; California's surging inner counties played a critical role, for example, in electing Arnold Schwarzenegger governor last year.
Like the booming cities of the Southeast and desert Southwest -- Jacksonville, Fla., Phoenix, Las Vegas -- the far ends of the coastal urban periphery have benefited greatly from the flight of businesses and middle-class people from the coasts to more affordable locales. "It's Econ 101," observes Bart Hill, president of San Joaquin Valley Bank, a fast-growing financial institution in booming Bakersfield. "This move is driven by the cost side of the profit equation. It's just much cheaper to do business here than on the coast."
Like true Roundheads, these entrepreneurs often link their success -- and that of their regions -- to a set of family-oriented moral values. They see their regions as better places to raise families and participate in a faith community. Even technology executives in these areas often do not see any conflict between faith and science, and consider their conservative cultural values to be attractive to many younger technology workers. "I think the technologies are of God," says Mike Chambers, president of Aldevron, a successful biotech firm in Fargo, N.D., while "man has been given the ability to decipher" them.
Fortunately for the Cavaliers, such blessed economies are still just about balanced by some Roundhead locales that are not yet doing well. If things are popping in Fargo or San Bernardino, they are decidedly weak elsewhere, including some southern industrial areas such as Columbia and Greenville, S.C., and scores of older industrial areas in the critical Midwest states. Even though many voters in these places are Roundhead in their cultural tastes, economic pain could cause them to support a Cavalier restoration.
The Cavaliers could ally these regions with their base in the coastal metropolises for a possibly winning strategy. But Cavalier attitudes about wealth creation and an increasingly elitist economic perspective might get in the way. Many Democrats, including such emerging stars as Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, seem to have bought into the notion that the road to a region's economic success lies not in reviving blue-collar and middle-management opportunities, but in catering to what Carnegie Mellon economics professor Richard Florida has designated the "creative class." Providing more visas for elite workers or more amenities for artists is fine in and of itself, but this approach is a long way from the old working-class politics that made the Democrats the dominant party of the late 20th century. And dubbing working-class communities in the heavily Roundhead South and the heartlands "the economically lagging hinterlands," as Florida oddly does, doesn't seem like a way to rally blue-collar voters to the Cavalier banner.
All Americans have a stake in improving the quality of the political discourse on both sides. Issues such as the war on terrorism, the role of the state in private life, the nature of marriage and the fear of obsolescence are the issues that divide Roundhead and Cavalier America today. And they are weighty enough to be treated with something more than dueling hyperbole. The best thing would be for the political, university and media classes to begin reestablishing a civil dialogue and the kind of politics where debate and tolerance for opposing views are respected. America's strength has been an ability to adapt to changing conditions as a result of such open discussion.
This happy state of affairs eventually resumed in 17th-century England after the bloodshed of the Civil War. Gradually, civility and a rational balance were restored to the political system, with results that turned England into the world's most important country and mother to this one. Back in 1688, the English called this return to common sense their Glorious Revolution. May we look forward to our own.
Author's e-mail:jkotkin@pacbell.net
Joel Kotkin is a senior fellow with the Davenport Institute for Public Policy at Pepperdine University. He is finishing a book on the history of cities for Modern Library. |
