I do dispute, though, that the S-I only think of themselves as Americans if they are descended from Unionists in the Civil War. I’ve always been bemused that the descendants of the rebel southerners think of themselves as Americans, while people in most other parts of the country seem to be hyphenated, one way or another. But after reading this stuff, it looks to me like the S-I immigrants to this country probably didn’t think of themselves in terms of nationality before arriving here, and then, arriving during and after the Revolution, absorbed the intense patriotism of the time. Southerners even thought of the Civil War as the Second American Revolution.

Elites fight one another for domination A good example of this , using the example of the Scots Irish is the glencoe massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Glencoe
The lowland scotish elite sided with the english and helped perptrate the massacre of the MacDonalds by the cambells.
K Macdonald, a distant ancestor has taken up the theme of treachery by a hostile elites on his work on those who may not be mentioned the you know who’s as a hostile elite. It is less that the scots Irish have contributed totheir own demise and rather they have been displaced by a hostile elite who regards them with disdain.

I’m not aware of any studies on point, but unless the genologies are grossly wrong, the putative places of origin of the Scots-Irish are far more Celtic than Germanic given studies that have been done of the population genetics of regions within the British Isles.

I’ve been involved over the years in genetic genealogy, and especially that of R-M222, the alleged Ui Neill descendants. Most worldwide live in this “American” region of the US South. There is a lot of contention over who is and who isn’t of Scottish descent. But researchers have pointed out that for from the earliest days in the colonies till the mid 1800′s, most Native Irish were without their priests and over time became Presbyterians, and assimilated to a Scots-Irish identity.

Certainly the traditional population of Ireland was about 6X that of Scotland, and so you would expect far, far more Irish people to have descendants in the US than Scottish, and increasingly as DNA reveals it’s evidence, that’s what we are finding.

Quite.

The recurring conflict between farmers and herders seems to me to be one of the main drivers of world history.

The leading version of the theory argues that this is a cultural rather than genetically transmitted propensity in which case the kind of analysis that you suggest wouldn’t follow.

Culture of honor studies have demonstrated physiological differences in Southern v. non-Southern stress chemical responses to provocation. But, as far as I know, no one has done a serious scientific study to identify potential genes or to try to isolate hereditary genetic affects associated with this ethnic culture from cultural ones (e.g. via adoption out of area of young children). It is easy to understand why. The hypothesis is not a good fit with the disciplinary paradigm and not P.C. in the least.

Culture of honor type distinctions between herding and farming cultures are at least as old as the oldest known writing, Sumerian epics, where they are prominent features of the stories.

@#7 and #8

“I am not sure they really exist as a separate ethnic group anymore, having been assimilated into a generic white American mix with other British folk and Germans. ”

The lack of a distinct self-identity label and the homogenization of American culture is giving rise to a generic white American mix. I don’t think that we are there yet, but the differences in General Social Survey type opinions between these populations and other American white ethnicities among Millenials and those of the Greatest Generation and earlier have trended materially towards homogeneization. The differences in identity between American Catholics and American Protestants, and on WASP v. non-WASP lines is also greatly diminished from what it was say, sixty years ago. This is probably a result of both exogamy and cultural factors like the sustained impact of mass media, the impact of elite educational institutions in creating a national culture, and more.

One the other hand, political opinion is very stable geographically over long time frames. The county by county election results in 1860 and 2008 are virtually identical on the liberal v. conservative line, and the regional divides on foreign policy now are almost the same as they were in the days of George Washington in states that were around in both eras.

If pastoralism relatively encourages raiding because it’s easier to rustle a cow than a field then you have a physical environment leading to a man-made environment that selects for traits suited for a more violent raiding culture. (And the opposite in the fertile farming valley down below.) Wouldn’t a relatively but noticeably more honor based culture then persist as long as the original raiding population retained a higher proportion of pro-violence traits even after the original selection pressure was lifted?

A 40%-45% rate would exceed that of any European or European derived Roman Catholic population in the world today (African Catholic churches do better). Modern British, French, Spanish and German Catholics have church attendance rates on the order of 5%-20%, although the Italians and Irish Catholics have church attendance rates above the European baseline.

There is also some historical case for Irish participation in Catholicism being enhanced as an institution of cultural preservation all of the way back to the point at which the English occupation of Ireland began, much earlier than the famine years.

As an aside, much of Northern Europe was Christianized by missionaries eminating from Ireland in successive waves outward from that epicenter in Middle Ages, rather than by missionaries more directly traceable to Rome in the classical era.

@48 “Has there ever been a genetic analysis done to establish if the Scots-Irish are more Celtic or more Germanic? Or are they just too diverse to be categorized in either group?”

I’m not aware of any studies on point, but unless the genologies are grossly wrong, the putative places of origin of the Scots-Irish are far more Celtic than Germanic given studies that have been done of the population genetics of regions within the British Isles.

One hypothesis in anthropology is that particular kinds of People’s white and non-white the world over (Greek and Sardinian and Chechnyian herders are other “white” examples), exhibit this cultural pattern, which is often described as a “culture of honor” after its most prominent feature to outsiders. Proponents of the theory argue that it is a natural response to the demands of a pastoralist society in places with a weak governmental authority, because credible threats of force are necessary to protect flocks in a largely lawless land. This theory then argues that the culture then persists from one generation to the next culturally even when the functional justification for this cultural pattern is long gone. Results of empirical efforts to test that part of the theory in the American context have been mixed.

A broader version of this hypothesis also associates particular cultural hallmarks with hoe based and plough based traditional forms of food production, respectively. For example, societies that traditionally had plough based horticulture are more patriarchal because a man’s physical strength is crucial to household survival in those economies. Crude large scale comparisons of cultural features globally with traditional forms of agriculture show a corrolation.

FWIW, while this has a lot of attractiveness to it, another quite plausible theory out there which doesn’t require such efficient multigenerational transmission of culture, that is discussed as a competitor to the Scotch-Irish heritage point, is that a lot of the cultural distinctiveness of this white ethnicity in the U.S. is traceable to the uniquely American ethnogenesis of this culture from a combination of the religious ideas of the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century in the American South (it was previously the most secular region in the U.S.), and the spillover effects of an African-American substrate culture’s influence on a white superstrate.

All of these theories are fascinating but hard to pin down and prove.

yes,agreed esp. if you go beyond humor the difference is huge. there is no limit to how vicious the “hillbilly” portrayal can be, in a movie for example.

KZ can you give an example of a non-Jewish stand-up comedian who makes jokes about Jews? Simply discussing Jews at all is considered anti-semitic by some, in my experience anyway.

In any case think having to be a member of the group is a general rule, with a few exceptions who are well known to skewer all groups (not sure exactly how these break down, but usually the joker comes from one of the ‘minority’ backgrounds, as with South park). But I think anyone can joke about whites, and most of the humor does end up aimed at the lower SES end. Less cost for mocking them perhaps, or the rich are boring?

There’s of course South Park’s numerous jokes too, “Jew gold” most notoriously. Of course, Matt Stone is Jewish, so maybe he gets a free pass as a writer, even though the jokes are usually set up by gentile characters.

Now you mention it the Klingons are the Star Trek version of this type of culture.

“Craic believe it or not is actually a loan word in Irish language, been derived from middle-english Crack, which has same meaning. Thence you hear the term used in North of England, Scotland as well”

As in Wallace from Wallace and Gromit and “a cracking piece of cheese.”

Seriously? Aren’t you forgetting something?

i don’t think this is true, though you are correct that comedians have a field day with the scots-irish. you can make fun of WASPs, upper midwesterners (fargo, prairie home companion), asians (apu, the guy on 2 broke girls). you can’t make fun of blacks unless you are black. that’s about the only hard and fast rule that i know of.

This explains some contradictions such as the overrepresentation in the Tea Party, but also in the sergeants who keep the Army running. The strong sense of personal dignity with an ability to make fun of themselves. It’s the only ethnic group that it’s permissible to make fun of, and several comedians have made careers of doing so.

There’s a theory that some of these traits have a genetic component, and the Borderlands may have had some assortive in- and out-migration that intensified the character and culture. This is testable, because we will know the genes that affect the behaviors and there are controls in the other populations of the British Isles. The really interesting study will be of groups like the Pashtuns and Hmong.

It my be that the Borderlands features will have adaptive value, if industrial society declines and we have to make do with simpler supply chains and levels of social organization.