Albions Seed-

4 folkways, - a really good framework for beginning to think about USA culture.

Seems to suggest that the extreme individualism of the USA actually comes from conceiving 'liberty' in terms of slave society. Hence any sort of curtailment is almost a form of rule over another reminiscent of slavery.

After a week in Texas I can say the frontier has pretty much remained unchanged.

Notes

• albions seed

• Germ theory
• frontier thesis
•  migration model

• 1629 -1640 puritans to MASSACHUSETTS (E. ANGLIA)– “ordered liberty”
• public liberty w constraints on individual – freedom to be in community
• specific liberties from prior constraint
• soul liberty – religious freedom
• collective obligation – freedom from want/fear/circumstance fundamentally
• 1642 – 1675 royalist elite and indentured servants to virginia – ANGLICAN hegemonic liberty
• liberty as dominion over others (slaves) and over ones self
• power to rule vs subject to ruled over (slavery)

• 1675 – 1725 english midlands and wales to DELAWARE
• Quakers
• universal liberty , extended to all esp. religious freedom of conscience. cf religious persecution
• rights of englishmen: right and title to own life, liberty and estate; representative government; trial by jury
• became antislavery after first decade

• 1718-1775 nth britain and nth ireland to appalachia backcountry- border idea of natural liberty
• against constraint and anti law and order
• natural freedom – want the wild
• not transgressors
• european folk culture (british border country of anarchic violence – already libertarian) with american environment
• patrick henry – minimal govt, light taxes, armed resistance
• border culture
• william cotesworth
• doesn’t tolerate dissent or deviance; opposition met with force
•  opponent = enemy; intolerant
• “elbow room”