THE HIGH-MINDEDNESS OF THE BRITISH: NEW ZEALAND AND THE UNITED STATES

Abstract

I have to start off by saying that David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America 1 has shaped the way I see Ameri-can history and much else. He provides a compelling account of how the four main British-derived groups (Puritans, distressed Cavaliers, Quakers, and Scots-Irish borderers) differed and their struggle for dominance in America. To me as an evolutionist, a big part of the attraction is that Fischer roots these cultural differences in the distant past. Thus the tendencies of the two main groups, Puritans based in East Anglia and the Cavaliers in Southeast England, go back to the murky period of English prehistory. These types (Puritans relatively egalitarian, Cavaliers elitist and hierarchical) are very strong cultural differences and thus likely to be influenced by ethnic-genetic differences. Fairness and Freedom continues his comparative approach, this time comparing two different British-derived societies, New Zealand and the United States. The basic thesis is that New Zealand political culture is much more infused with " an abiding concern for fairness " (p. 14), while the U.S. is more focused on an ideology of individual freedom. Interestingly, until the mid-20th century and then doubtless because of Western influence, there are no words for fairness in languages apart from English, Danish, Norwegian, and Frisian. Moreover , the words for fair and fairness have no Greek or Latin roots, but are nevertheless traceable to an Indo-European origin where they appear only in the above group of Northern European languages (and 1 David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). The Occidental Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 3, Fall 2012 76 notably excluding German). The original Indo-European word meant " to be content, " later giving rise to the Gothic fagrs, meaning pleasing to behold and often connoting blond hair and fair complexion. It eventually came to mean something that could be agreed on by most par-ties—e.g., a fair price. Unlike Albion's Seed, where the focus is on deep, long-lasting and quite possibly ethnic-genetic differences in explaining cultural variation , Fairness and Freedom provides an entirely cultural explanation for the development of a universalist sense of ethics in the West: In early ethical usage, [words for fairness] tended to operate within tribes of Britons and Scandinavians, where they applied to freemen in good standing. Women, slaves, and strangers from other tribes were often excluded from fair treatment, and they bitterly resented it. The tribal uses of fair. .. were full of historical irony. These ideas flourished on the far fringes of northwestern Europe among groups of proud, strong, violent, and predatory people who lived in hard environments, fought to the death for the means to life, and sometimes preyed on their own kin. Ideas of fairness and fair play developed as a way of keeping some of these habitual troublemakers from slaughtering each other even to the extinction of the tribe.. .. Something fundamental changed in a second stage, when the folk cultures of Brit-ain and Scandinavia began to grow into an ethic that embraced others beyond the tribe—and people of every rank and condition. This expansive tendency had its roots in universal values such as the Christian idea of the Golden Rule. That broader conception of fairness expanded again when it met the humanist ideas of the Renaissance, the universal spirit of the Enlightenment , the ecumenical spirit of the Evangelical Movement, and democratic revolutions in America and Europe. (pp. 16–17)