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Reminds me of something my dad says at times about Brazilians. Basically, he works construction, and ran his own company back in Connecticut. There, he hired a lot of brazilians. Granted, there are a lot to hire- you get a lot of hispanics, both legal and illegal, there. But at the same time, he says that they, by and large, worked harder than your average white man. He could expect them to show up when he needed them, to work hard at the job, to not complain about it. The basic idea is, its not that brazilians work harder than americans. Its just that, however they got here, if they were willing to put in the work, to actually leave the place they were, to travel long distances and go through numerous obstacles, just for the sake of living in the US: well, then you are already going to have the cream of the crop there. Anyone who didn't want to work wouldn't have bothered through all of that. I think there is a bit of the same idea there.
scratching at .8, just hopin'
@De Marquis: But are those wealthy elites now predominantly Cavalier, or Borderer? With Citizen's United, the Republican "elite" has more or less lost control of the party, and Borderer elites can bring a lot of money to their pet candidates just as much as Cavalier elites can. What is the "cuckservative" meme but a revolt against business-doing, backroom-deals-tolerating Republicans (read: Republicans fine with aristocratic Cavalier attitures) by fight-at-any-cost, give-not-an-inch Republicans (read: Republicans in line with warlike Borderer attitudes)?
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.
"Borderer": yick. My family are from the Borders on both sides. Either you name your family, clan and the town you hail from then add "the Borders". That's it.
Or, you say you're Reiver. I've only ever heard this "Borderer" rubbish here. <_<
The Mod with the Migraine
Reavers are from South Africa?
I wasn't born in South Africa, and I don't live there now. And both my families have roots in the Border clans: I claim Scott from my dad's side... simply because if I claimed Campbell from my mother's, I'd reduce the number of pubs I could enter when I hop over the border (yep: feuds aren't dead — they've just taken different forms) . 
I don't live that far from where both sides came from, right now: I'm in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, not too far from Berwick-upon-Tweed. And, that town defines "Borders".
Also: Reivers
. Few families on either side of the border don't have Reiver blood in them. The clan system also didn't stop where the border is today, either. Even though it's not such a big thing on the English side now in either the Northumbrian or Cumbrian Marches, it once was huge.
The post-Jaccobite persecutions that led to a lot of the population dispersal you know of didn't just hit the Scottish side: it had long-term effects on the Marches, too.
Where do you think the word "reaver" comes from in the first place?
PS: The mega-Clan Campbell has a gift when it comes to long-lasting blood feuds. Scott... not so much: somebody has to act as the fence for all the stuff people nick off each other and need deniability about, right? And, wise fences don't go in for lasting feuds: bad for business. 
edited 5th Aug '15 11:58:48 PM by Euodiachloris
scratching at .8, just hopin'
@Euodiachloris: Blame David Hackett Fischer, author of Albion's Seed. He's the guy all those articles originally cite. Besides, technically your ancestors didn't have to share the borders with those guys for the past four hundred years - yours were the folks who didn't get kicked across the Atlantic.
We could use a more localized term for the broad demographic those settlers descendants have become today. "Confederates" is too political. "Appalachians"?
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.
Actually, mine were the folk who either couldn't afford the fare on the way to Liverpool or Carlisle, or got lucky finding trades in Tyneside, Durham and Nottingham.
They didn't stay where they'd been kicked from, either. -_- I'm betting I've got a fair few directly-related cousins of a long degree over the Atlantic I don't know about. The family suffered rifts during migration, and information has been lost.
What I do know: Borderers? Cousins o' mine: you can do better than that! Lowland Clans, Border Clans, Riever Clans, Marcher Clans... pick summit. And, while you're at it, take back the word "clan" from the idiots you guys let abuse it, too. Your fault, that one. :/
edited 6th Aug '15 6:18:01 AM by Euodiachloris
'Borderers'? 'Cavaliers'? 'Rievers'? What the heck are you guys talking about? I live in the U.S. and I've never heard of these 'cultures'.
The "Scottish" diaspora wasn't as entirely Scottish as people think. Nor as simple: the Isles, Highlands, Lowlands, Borders and Marches have always had links, but distinct cultures, as well.
Enclosure and the persecution of "Jacobins" exported a lot more than a single people. <shrugs>
I still dint understand. Are we taking about the Scotish now?
No longer a forum herald
The short version: this book posits a theory that U.S. cultural beliefs are defined by four broad sets of immigrants: the Borderers, the Cavaliers, the Puritans, and the Quakers. And that the modern U.S. conservative belief system is mostly the ideas of the Borderers, who primarily occupy the southern Appalachian region. (Many Borderers came from Scotland, so there's where that comes in.)
Like I pointed out before, it's an interesting theory, but it does have some holes. Especially if you look at the demographics as shown here. If people from that region are the most staunch conservatives, why does this study show the support at 58 percent?
edited 6th Aug '15 8:29:59 AM by TotemicHero
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)
We're talking where a lot of people's ancestors in parts of the US came from and the cultures which formed them. -_- If you don't recognise the terms... well, I'm not surprised. Stateside, people are writing a lot of what looks dumb on this side of the pond.
For example, that "Cavaliers" thing: Royalists weren't the same damn thing as Jacobite sympathisers. That was the previous generation (or two), for starters: that was part of the English Civil War — not a high point in successful foreign colonies and mass emmigration. -_- By the time of the Rebellions, it was a choice between monarchs and flavours of monarchy, between flavours of Kirk/Church (fractionalism within the northern Protestants was insane) and Catholicism, as well as national, regional, clan and family divides.
Ex-crofters turfed out of the Isles had a completely different dialect and culture to, say, a townie political dissenter from Kelso who got shipped out just after he hit journeyman. For all both shared more in common than they would with your average Londoner.
edited 6th Aug '15 8:51:23 AM by Euodiachloris
V
Who of course, had little in common or a similar dialect with the average Cornishman or Brummie.
Keep Rolling On
My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare
How American culture went nuclear — without us realizing it
It was designed in 1958 as the logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, formed after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, 70 years ago Thursday, followed three days later by the bombing of Nagasaki. Over time, the logo was appropriated — as symbols often are — and redefined.
The peace sign is actually a combination of semaphore signals (flag code) for the letters N(uclear) and D(isarmament). Trippy.
The U.S. ushered in the nuclear age when it dropped atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II. And the ongoing threat of those powerful weapons remains strong, as we heard Wednesday from President Obama when he made his public pitch to the American people to support the newly minted nuclear agreement with Iran.
Those macabre events of 70 years ago have permeated our everyday lives in ways we aren't always aware. It's there, often inconspicuously, in symbols, in language and in popular culture. The question is whether there are consequences for our obtuseness.
During the Cold War, nuclear culture, which embodied the daunting reality of nuclear weapons, was widely recognized ("duck and cover" drills). When the war ended, the nuclear threat didn't disappear. It just became less noticeable.
"The end of the Cold War and the end of the expansion of the nuclear reactor industry caused a sea change," said Spencer Weart, a physicist, historian and author of the book Nuclear Fear: A History of Images. "Nuclear culture is still there, but it's now part of the collective unconscious."
Has that made people less aware of the very real threat of a nuclear war?
At the start of 2015, nine countries — the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — possessed about 15,850 nuclear weapons, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Roughly 1,800 of these weapons are kept on high-alert status.
According to the Pew Research Center, Americans have become less concerned about a nuclear attack. A 2014 Pew report found 23% of respondents believe nuclear weapons are the greatest threat to the world. That's down from 25% in 2007 and 33% in 2002.
IMAGERY
The use of the nuclear disarmament logo by other social justice movements is an innocuous seizure. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which never copyrighted the symbol, is happy to see it widely used as a sign of peace, said activist Kate Hudson, general secretary for the organization.
But a discomforting nuclear image has also been appropriated by popular culture: the mushroom cloud.
After the atomic bombings, the mushroom cloud evoked a powerful, violent picture of enormous destruction. It took out two cities and killed thousands of people. It was serious imagery. Today, the mushroom cloud is sometimes used as a comedic tool. Kid annoys dad, trains crash, face goes red, mushroom cloud.
Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University's Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture, finds the mushroom cloud's omnipresence in comic montages bewildering.
"It would be like using the entry gate to Auschwitz," Thompson said. "I wouldn't think it would be trivialized, but it has been."
LANGUAGE
People use language every day that's inspired by nuclear technology. "Going nuclear" has become a common expression for the ultimate or extreme action you take when all else has failed.
The term "ground zero," now attached to the site of the destroyed World Trade Center towers, originally referred to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the point on the ground below the detonation of the bomb. Thompson said the term became "resacralized" after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
When you heat up something in the microwave, you "nuke it." Even though what's actually happening in your microwave has nothing to do with nuclear energy. It shows how people have domesticated the power of the explosion. Albeit, incorrectly.
TV/FILM
Back in the 1960s, Weart says, a psychologist gave people a word-association test as part of a study. The tester said "nuclear," and the subjects answered with words like "bomb," "laboratory" and "war." The question was asked again in the 1990s, with subjects repeating many of the same words, except adding a new term: "The Simpsons."
In The Simpsons, Homer works at a nuclear power plant, and the show is now a widespread reference for the nuclear industry. It demonstrates the power of pop culture to frame real-life concepts.
Since the nuclear age began, there's been an explosion of films and TV shows about the horrors of nuclear technology — some plausible (The Day After), some mythical (Godzilla).
But there's been a shift in how films deal with the nuclear equation.
Weart says the Terminator franchise is typical of this idea of the unconscious nuclear culture. "It shows very graphic images of nuclear war, but it's the background of the story. It assumes we understand it," Weart says. "It works its way into the subconscious because you never actually stop and think about it."
Yet 70 years ago, it was very real. The United States harnessed an almost unthinkable energy and used it to decimate two cities in Japan, destroying thousands of lives and helping end a world war.
"That's the story that I'm amazed hasn't been part of our daily thought," said Syracuse University's Thompson. "We have all these movies about bombs coming down, but there is surprisingly little talk that these bombs were used twice, not in fiction, in real life, on real human beings."
Haven't read the book/don't quite recall the article, but I wonder at the use of the term Cavalier. I know Southerners during the Antebellum Period liked to say that their ancestors were Royalists- either people who lost to Cromwell or younger sons from the Restoration period and afterward, but my sense was that this was kind of an exaggeration in most cases.
On a whim, I looked up George Washington's ancestry. To my surprise, the ancestor before the family moved to Virginia actually did have that Royalist connection, although it kind of seems like while some members of the family had aristocratic connections, many were just marrying in the merchant class.
The Civil War was like most: it divided along a number of lines. You didn't have to be a rich, land-owning aristocrat to be a Royalist; you were just as likely to be one if you were a tenant farmer's wife who was scared silly at the thought of God smiting the country for not keeping the divinely appointed king: even she wasn't Catholic and thought him an idiot.
The whole "we were Royalists" is likely an exaggeration by most who claim it: note that "most". Do you know where the majority of Catholic Royalists wound up if they emmigrated? France, Austro-Hungary, Poland, Romania and Russia: a much safer trip at the time than trusting the Atlantic.
edited 7th Aug '15 1:47:32 AM by Euodiachloris
No longer a forum herald
The Southeastern U.S. in the 19th century was determined to carry on the traditions of old-school British aristocracy (or at least what they thought those were), so it's no surprise that many of them made dubious claims like that to shore up their own idealized self-worth.
Not nearly as many people today parade around their own ancestry (feigned or real) in the U.S., which is partly because many of them don't know it and don't have time to research it. I do know mine, but only because some other members of my family did that work.
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)
Who Am I?
The way Fischer uses these terms, he isnt proposing a direct line of descent from specific immigrant families to voters today. He's referring to broad cultural values that have permeated large sections of the American public, even among people who can trace no roots back to England or the British Isles at all. You should look at the terms as a kind of shorthand for a reasoning style.
I think his conclusions are a little over-draw. It's not that "Borderer" thinking has somehow been preserved by "Borderer" people in the US, it's that a certain set of economic and political circumstances combine to trigger this style of thinking in anyone who experiences them. You can see more or less the same set of political values across the Middle East, or in Russia today. "In vs. Out Group, All or Nothing, Never Compromise" morality is actually an aspect of human nature, that comes out whenever the lifestyle of a tight-knit community seems threatened.
"Cavalier values"? Dont make me laugh. The rich have the values they have because those are the ones they need to get and keep their wealth. After all, the financial elite all over the world act pretty much the same, regardless of cultural background. It has little if anything to do with ethnic background.
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."
scratching at .8, just hopin'
@Euo:
@Totemic
Like I pointed out before, it's an interesting theory, but it does have some holes. Especially if you look at the demographics as shown here. If people from that region are the most staunch conservatives, why does this study show the support at 58 percent?
@De Marquis
"Cavalier values"? Dont make me laugh. The rich have the values they have because those are the ones they need to get and keep their wealth. After all, the financial elite all over the world act pretty much the same, regardless of cultural background. It has little if anything to do with ethnic background.
That said, I would question the idea that ethnic groups don't have significantly different correlations between value systems and socioeconomic status. The elites of Japan, in my experience, seem to show a lot more long-term self-interest than the wealthy of the U.S. and Canada, despite sharing similar levels of entitlement and landowner ancestry. Long-term resource stewardship is a more established cultural value in Japan, and many kaisha companies have business plans for more than a century out in advance. U.S. financial and industrial elites, on the other hand, seem more willing to slash and burn for immediate rewards. This does screw them over in the long term, although they seem better suited to making decisions quickly than the Japanese elites (who are still fighting workplace motherhood in some ways).
Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.
Fuck you, Fascist sympathizers
The question is if this form of liquidationist private equity is something relatively new. The Gilded Age corporations may have been many things, but they were not as willingly short-sighted as we can see these days.
True; they were even willing to bail out he market when the crash in the 1880s hit. J.P. Morgan did, at least.
Fuck you, Fascist sympathizers
Right, nowadays they would see that as an opportunity to buy up assets at fire-sale prices and knock all the workers back to base wages because they all got fired and re-hired when the business was restructured.
Then line their pockets with the extra capital or use it to expand their enterprise- overseas in third-world countries.
No longer a forum herald
Take the efficiency movement (link is Wikipedia), which became a heavy influence on modern business practices, especially in the United States.
Stir in investors and big business owners becoming increasingly "hair-trigger" (ready to dump their investments the moment they show the first hint of failing) following the financial and political instability of the Cold War period.
Add a pinch of the U.S. stock markets being run primarily by computer algorithms, which are based on the above factors.
Poof, you have a recipe for the current business culture.
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)
From Radical Taoists first article:
"...My hypothesis is this: Despite retaining some Cavalier-esque aristocratic attitudes toward wealth and privilege (and extramarital sex), the Republican Party — at least, its base of "movement conservatives" — has essentially become one and the same with Borderer culture. Its platform is Borderer in nature, its values are Borderer, its means of self-expression are Borderer. Yet the media continue to treat the party and the movement as if they represented approximately half the nation."
In my opinion this is true only up to a point. It's the wealthy elite who provide the lion's share of campaign contributions on the Right, and they expect the party to pursue a particular political strategy. That strategy is based on a platform superficially focuses on a small number of "hot-button" issues that appeal to the conservative populace, but once elected Republican officials concentrate on issues of interest primarily to wealthy constituents, like tax breaks.
"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."