As I see it, since this nation included peoples from the British Isles -- English as well as Scottish, Welsh, and later, Irish, it could not be a strictly Anglo-Saxon nation. Different Christian denominations made it necessary to guarantee that no one form of Christianity was to be an established state religion, as the Church of England was, or the Catholic faith in Ireland. The result was the 'separation of church and state', although as we know, it is nowhere mentioned in our founding documents, only in a private letter from Thomas Jefferson to a citizen.
The colonists from the British Isles were not the only inhabitants of the colonies at the time of the founding; as we know, there were Swedes, descendants of original Swedish colonists, Dutch descendants of New Amsterdam colonists and Huguenots of French descent. John Jay was the son of such, as was Paul Revere.
Even here we can see how multiculturalism was incipient in our country.
So from the beginning this country was majority Anglo-Saxon but as more colonists from Scotland and Ulster began to enter in the 18th century and later, the character changed somewhat, and later waves of immigration altered the character further. Still, the majority of immigrants assimilated to the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture, and the animosities that today mark the relations between the descendants of the Irish, say, and the English, were not so pronounced. I would say that the mid-20th century marked a change for the worse, with various ethnic groups stepping up the conflict; old grievances (battles fought in Ireland and Scotland in the 17th century, the 19th century Famine in Ireland, etc.) were stirred up anew.
Dr. Fraser says
''Unfortunately, most American WASPs continue to lie to themselves about who they are, where they came from, and where they are going. They cling to the hope that “Americans” (or at least “white Americans”) can still unite as a tribe.
But the bitter truth is that the American Republic has never been, is not now, and never will be an ethnonation.
America is a nation of nations.
For centuries, however, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants pretended to be the sole avatars of homo Americanus. In recent decades, Jews, Negroes, and Hispanics (with a good deal of help from WASP women) have stripped bare that constitutional conceit.
Old-stock Americans must acknowledge as well that the novus ordo seclorum created by their ancestors delivered a fatal blow to the unity of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. The American Adam was tainted by original sin.''
If the meaning is that the less-than-homogeneous mixture which existed at the founding was ultimately a death sentence to the old-stock Anglo-Saxon, I will agree to that, although I think that, had inflammatory rhetoric not worsened relations later among the various British Isles peoples, there might be a more cohesive society here now -- if we had not Ellis Island-ized the country and then opened the floodgates in earnest in 1965. I think I've expressed the view before that the initial seeds of our multiculturalism were sowed early on, long before the mid-20th century. It would have been better had more homogeneity had been maintained, though many people will object loudly to a statement like that.
Dr. Fraser recommends that Anglo-Saxons can and should re-invent themselves as a global confederation -- something that I could get behind, but before such a thing is even a possibility, Anglo-Saxons need to discover their identity as such. I've described White Americans generally as sleepwalkers or amnesiacs, too often out of touch with their origins. Too many of us have only the vaguest notion of our ancestry, or worse, have mistaken and garbled 'oral traditions' about who their ancestors were. Witness the popular 'Cherokee princess' story which is especially prevalent in the South. Ironically, the South is probably the area, even now, where the greatest concentration of Anglo-Saxon Americans live.
Some Anglo-Americans don't know their genealogy, many don't want to know. Being an Anglo-Saxon American has no cachet, no social desirability for many people, perhaps because of the popular stereotype of the 'rich WASP blueblood' who lives in some lily-white enclave with other rich WASPs. Such people probably exist though they are few and far between. Still, most people do not want to identify with such a group.
In his book The WASP Question, Dr. Fraser refers to a phenomenon I've alluded to before; he refers to the 'social decrease' of WASPs in America. He notes that, according to estimates of descendants of Anglo-Saxons, according to 'natural increase' should mean that there are many more millions of WASP descendants than there actually appear to be, while the numbers of German-descended and Irish-descended Americans seem over-inflated, based on past immigration plus natural increase. The reason? Many Americans have a mixture of different ancestries, and when one of those ancestries is English, the modern-day descendant is drawn to identify with a more socially popular group, like the Irish or the Germans. Or the Scots-Irish. Or almost anything else. English-Americans are seen as being people of no ethnicity, hence the phrase that a hostile European commenter on this blog used to describe White Americans: 'a people of no race and no culture.'
Mind you, I am embellishing on what Dr. Fraser said, not citing him directly in that last paragraph. I don't want to misrepresent his statements in the book, which I don't have at hand just now.
In any case, for Anglo-Saxon Americans to rally and form some kind of confederation with our kinsmen worldwide -- which I would heartily support, should it be feasible -- we first have to remember who we are, and reaffirm the worth of our identity. We have to start to speak up when people malign our ancestors and our culture and history. Every other ethnicity -- especially those with historical animosities against the English -- speak up for themselves, while we meekly pass up our chance to speak for ourselves. We let everybody, including our enemies, define us, and to define us mostly as the bad guys who wronged their sinless ancestors.
Again, though, so many Americans are a mixture of different ancestries. I once posed the question on this blog: if you are of mixed ancestries, whose side do you take? If you are half-Irish and half English or some other combination, do you hate your English side? It seems many do; it's so much more socially desirable to identify with Professor Mel Gibson's view of history a la Braveheart, or The Patriot, where the English were the foppish and effete villains, or treacherous tyrants.
So we have a problem with rallying and uniting with our brethren. Even our cousins in England are not all conscious that they are English, not 'British.' If only we could get the world to distinguish between those two terms, that would be half the battle.
And now that I've written this piece as my small contribution to the discussion started at SWB, this post will probably receive a few comments only, because most of my posts on WASPs draw little comment. I've been told such posts are 'divisive', when in fact the divisions have already been drawn by others.
So if the three or four of you out there who identify with your Anglo-Saxon ancestry comment, I will consider this post somewhat worthwhile.
Meantime, for those who are not Anglo-Saxon, is it possible to see how the fate of Anglo-Saxons might be pivotal to the future of the West, or at least the Anglosphere? Even if you are not English by blood, this should matter to anybody who cares about the future of 'our' flawed America.
But I definitely believe that while we should focus on our closest ethnic ties, we can -- and must -- still ally ourselves with our more distant kinsmen.
