For Queen and Country and Anglospheric Culture

Great news from yesterday evening, as the British people (at least the English and Welsh ones) voted to secede from the Second Belgian Empire.

“British voters chose to ‘leave’ the European Union on Thursday, defying the polls — and President Barack Obama, who had urged Britain to ‘remain’ in the EU. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had also urged Britain to stay in the EU. Only Donald Trump had backed the campaign to leave.

“Republican strategists had panned Trump’s decision to travel to the UK in the midst of campaign turmoil, and in the wake of his blistering attack on Hillary Clinton earlier this week.

“Now, however, it looks like a risk that paid off handsomely, in the currency of foreign policy credibility.”

As you can imagine, there is an incredible amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth from all of the usual suspects – the globalists, the Muslim deep-cover jihadists, the cuckservatives, and the rest.  Before I get to what I’d really like to talk about with this post (how the vote reflects centuries old patterns of division in the Anglo-Saxon world, and thus demonstrates the enduring legacy of culture), here are a few brief thoughts on the referendum:

First, Breitbart’s analysis is spot on that this is a “win” for Trump.  Trump was pretty much the only major American political figure who openly supported the Brexit.  Obama, Sanders, and Hillary – of course – were all against it.  But notably, prominent Republican politicians (who criticised Trump for going to Scotland today to open a new golf course) were at best silent on the referendum.  Trump demonstrated that he has a better grasp of what foreign policy ought to be than does the entire establishment cabal in Washington D.C.  Further, Trump’s statement in response to the results of the referendum bears repeating,

“The people of the United Kingdom have exercised the sacred right of all free peoples. They have declared their independence from the European Union, and have voted to reassert control over their own politics, borders and economy. A Trump Administration pledges to strengthen our ties with a free and independent Britain, deepening our bonds in commerce, culture and mutual defense. The whole world is more peaceful and stable when our two countries – and our two peoples – are united together, as they will be under a Trump Administration.

“Come November, the American people will have the chance to re-declare their independence. Americans will have a chance to vote for trade, immigration and foreign policies that put our citizens first. They will have the chance to reject today’s rule by the global elite, and to embrace real change that delivers a government of, by and for the people. I hope America is watching, it will soon be time to believe in America again.”

“The sacred right of all free peoples.”  There is so much YES! there.  This man gets it.

Second, the globalists and EUrocrats took a huge egg to the face with this.  Given that there had already been rumblings in nations as diverse as France, Sweden, Italy, and Holland that they might consider their own exits if the UK left, the globalist elite are in panic mode.  As a consequence, they will probably not make the same mistake again of allowing any more member states to hold referenda on this subject.  The UK has shown that you just can’t trust the little people to make the right choices, eh?

Third, don’t be surprised if a combination of Labour, SNP, and CuckTory MPs combine to invent a way to monkey-wrench the implementation of Brexit and keep Britain in.  There have already been some whispered objections that it is “illegal” for a member state to leave the EU, despite the fact that the EU’s charter provides for no legal mechanism to prevent it from happening.

So, in honour of the British people exercising that sacred right of all free peoples to self-determination, I present this tribute to the British Empire.

And now to the meat – the roast beef, if you will – of this post.

Recently, I’ve been reading The Cousins’ Wars: Religion, Politics, and the Triumph of Anglo-America, by Kevin Phillips.  Excellent book, by the way.  I hope to review it soon here on the NCT.  Anyhow, the premise of this work is that modern Anglo-American history (from the 17th century onward) can be most rationally explained as a series of conflicts between two sets of Anglo-Saxons whose differences (often open warfare, hence the wars between cousins of which the title speaks) have defined the direction of the United Kingdom and the United States, the two predominant powers within the Anglospheric world.  While factors such as economics play a role in these conflicts, the primary determining factor is religion, and its continued influence on the descendants of those originally divided by it, even after the religious sensibilities of those descendants has evolved, or even weakened.

On the one side, you have what could be loosely defined as the “Whigs.”  These started out as the Puritans and other non-conformists during the English Civil War of the 1640s, as well as their closely related theological brethren, the Covenanters and other Presbyterians of southwestern Scotland and Ulster.  This group was also supported by moderate Anglicans who were likewise leery of bishops and other trappings of “high church” hierarchy.  These formed the Parliamentary side in that civil war.  Their later descendants were the Whigs of the 1770s who opposed coercion of the American colonies during the Revolution, as well as those whiggish American colonists who were rebelling.  These were still generally Protestant, either Congregationalists in the northern colonies or Presbyterian or “vestry Anglican” (Anglicans who supported local control of churches and opposed bishops) in the middle and southern colonies.  During the American Civil War, the North was made up of Yankee Congregationalists (descended from the Puritans who settled Massachusetts and Connecticut) as well as other Protestants and Evangelicals who formed the Republican Party and were opposed to both the slave power and immigration by Irish Catholics.  This side was also generally amenable to the Presbyterian and Baptist descendants of the Presbyterian Borderers who settled Appalachia, and who formed a thorn in the sides of the secessionists during the war.  The North was supported by the same set of non-conforming Evangelical shopkeepers and small farmers in Britain as had been friendly to the American colonists during the Revolution.

On the other side, you have what could loosely be defined as the “Tories.”  During the English Civil War, these were largely Catholics and “High Church” Anglicans who supported the Stuart kings and were supporters of the feudal order, as well as Catholic Scottish highlanders.  During the American Revolution, their same Catholic and High Church Anglican descendants formed the ranks of the Loyalists in America (especially in the southern and middle colonies), and the supporters of king and coercion in Britain.  The American Civil War and its prologues in the 1850s found this side made up of Democrats who were supporters of the slave power (or at least were not supportive of its abolition), and who appealed disproportionately to both the Irish Catholics in the North and to the wealthy and deep-rooted slave-holding class in the southern cotton states, who were more likely than not to belong to high church Episcopalianism or some other form of “liturgical” church.  In Britain, high-church Anglican conservatives and the nobility generally tended to support the South and potential British intervention on the side of the South (a possibility in 1862 and 1863, but much less so after Gettysburg and the Emancipation Proclamation).

Patterns of support for and opposition to the Parliamentary side in the English Civil War, coercion of the colonies, and support for the North versus South during the American Civil War show a remarkable stability in county-by-county assessments of the United Kingdom.  The “Whig” side has generally found its strongest bases of support in the old Puritan areas of East Anglia, around London, and in the West Midlands region.  Conversely, the “Tories” have been strongest in the southern parts of England (where the Norman feudal system was implanted most effectively), in the Upper Midlands, and in the rest of Scotland excluding the extreme southwest.

It is with this in mind that I present the following map of the Brexit vote from yesterday,

Notice any patterns emerging?  The strongest areas of support for leaving the EU were found in East Anglia, the rural regions immediately surrounding the city of London itself, and in the western Midlands near the Welsh border.  Conversely, the strongest support for remaining in the EU were found in Scotland (overwhelmingly), as well as in the south and in the upper Midlands.  Note that the least “remain” supportive part of Scotland was the extreme southwestern region made up of Wigtonshire, Dumfriesshire, and Kirkcudbrightshire.

This shows us just how enduring culture really is, even when we’re talking about cultural subclades within a more or less homogenous cultural zone.  This should not surprise us.  Culture is not something that people simply shuck like a pair of socks when they want to put a new one on.  As I’ve noted elsewhere, groups of people and the culture they’ve carried with them for centuries (or possibly even millennia) are largely inseparable.  While it is possible for individuals and very small groups to be assimilated to a new cultural milieu, it is pretty much unthinkable that this would happen when large numbers of cultural aliens are introduced into a foreign land.  This is why American cuckservatives who desperately hope that “(American) family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande” will be sorely disappointed, and it is why importing large numbers of Muslim savages into Europe and North America is an extremely bad idea.

The two general divisions of the Anglosphere – Whigs and Tories, the one generally favouring freedom and individual religious conscience, the other favouring royalism and religious conformity – are still alive and well in the UK, despite the fact that the Christian religion itself has become increasingly defunct in Great Britain.  In this case, the “Whigs” voted to leave the EU, the “Tories” voted to stay.

Interestingly, the rise of Donald Trump to the Republican nomination (barring any party-breaking shenanigans by the cuckservative Never Trumpers at the convention) seems to follow the same sort of division.  Trump finds his strongest base of support among working and middle class Whites in “Greater Appalachia” consisting of the Appalachian core plus the highland areas that spread out on both sides of the Ohio River valley into Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma (Trump won the primaries in every one of these states except for Oklahoma).  Likewise, he seems to run surprisingly well among this same socio-economic class of Whites in “Greater New England” – the old New England core plus upstate New York, much of Pennsylvania, Indiana, northern Ohio, and Michigan (Trump won every one of these states as well, except for Ohio – won by its own governour – and Maine, which had a weird set of caucusing rules in play).  Trump also won among the largely Evangelical and Baptist states of the deep South – again winning every state.

Conversely, Trump did least well in the upper Midwestern tier forming an arc ranging from Wisconsin to Kansas, as well as among the Mormon states of the mountain West.

Even here, we can see that religion seems to have played a role.  Now keep in mind that in the 150 years since the 1860s, there has been some significant evolution of religion in America.  The Presbyterians, for instance, are now pretty much “high church” and liturgical.  Episcopalianism practically doesn’t exist anymore.  Catholicism has seen its own divisions into “vestry” versus “high church” wings.  This being said, we can see that the division of Trump-supportive versus Trump-opposing areas still follows the same type of division as seen in previous inter-Anglo conflicts, even if the denominational labels have somewhat switched up.

Take the areas where Trump runs strongest.  In Greater Appalachia, there are lots of Baptists, Pentecostals, and other groups which emphasise individual religious conscience and experience.  In Greater New England, you find either vestry Catholicism (New England proper) or calvinistic and Evangelical groups (Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan).  In the Deep South, Baptists and Evangelicals dominate, often forming large majorities in some districts.  So even though many Evangelical leaders (who have, let’s face it, sold their souls for the coin of political power and influence in Washington, DC) deplore Trump and supported the safe, DC-friendly choice of Ted Cruz, the majority of rank-and-file Baptists and Evangelicals appear not to have followed them.

Conversely, look at the areas where Trump ran the weakest.  In the upper Midwest arc, the three predominant religious groups are Methodism (a clerical group which has bishops), Lutheranism (which is liturgical and “high church” for the most part), and a more conservative and hierachical form of high-church Catholicism.  Likewise, in the Cruz-friendly regions of the Mountain West, Mormonism (also a clerical, hierarchical religion) predominates.

Essentially, we still see the same sort of Whig versus Tory divisions, based upon the same sort of religious divide between individualistic, anti-clerical, anti-liturgical groups on one side and hierarchical, liturgical, conformist groups on the other.  This force of religion is still – even in increasingly secular America – more powerful that any other single factor relating to economics or geography.

This ought to be considered good news for Trump and his supporters, considering that in each of the four previous Whig versus Tory conflicts I’ve discussed above (English Civil War, American Revolution, American Civil War, and now the Brexit), the Whigs won.  Every single time.  If history is a guide, then the odds seem to favour him.  And even if he doesn’t win in this year’s election, the cultural and social forces in play since the 17th century point to an eventual triumph of the sort of nationalistic “sacred right of all free peoples” that is represented in Trump’s campaign.