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How Catholics Transformed America (What Colin Woodard's American Nations Gets Wrong about Yankees)
In this insightful video, Malcolm and Simone Collins delve into the profound influence of Catholic immigrants on American culture, particularly in reshaping the Yankee identity. Drawing from Colin Woodard's "American Nations" and contrasting it with David Hackett Fisher's "Albion's Seed," the Collins couple offers a nuanced perspective on how Catholic immigration waves transformed the cultural, political, and social landscape of America. This comprehensive analysis covers topics ranging from bureaucratic tendencies and voting patterns to the evolution of American arts and sports culture. Key points discussed: The misconception of Yankee culture's Puritan roots Catholic influence on American bureaucracy and politics The impact of Catholic immigration on urban centers The evolution of Catholic voting patterns Cultural differences between Catholic and Protestant traditions The role of Catholics in shaping American arts and education The future of Catholic influence in American politics
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. We were listening to the audio book for American nations by
Simone Collins: colin Woodard.
Malcolm Collins: . And we're likely going to do a series of episodes on them. This is a guy who divided America into 11 different populations with different histories. I'll put it on the screen here. I think he gets most things right. He wrote the book as a direct followup to another book that we mentioned all the time on the show called Albion's Seed that talks about the four founding cultures of America
Simone Collins: by historian David Hackett Fisher, which was written in either late eighties or early nineties.
So this answer is a much more modern take and quite interesting.
Malcolm Collins: Well, but it also does something quite different than Fisher's book. And I think it, it gets some things wrong. And one of the things that gets wrong, we're going to be talking about on this video, because I think he completely misunderstands the Yankee culture.
So first I'm going to talk a little bit about Albion Seed so you can get a little prep of this and, and why Albion Seed doesn't help us as much understand modern America as this [00:01:00] followup book does. Specifically, Albion Seed, they divide the original Americans into four Four distinct cultural groups, which is accurate.
The Puritans, the Quakers, the Backwoods people,
and the Cavaliers. Now what was interesting about these four groups is I remember I was talking to somebody about this, and they kept trying to guess. They were like, who are the Catholics? Which one is the Catholics?
And they go, like, I, I would go, so the first thing they go, oh, the next is the Catholic group. Or I mentioned the Cavaliers. And they go, oh, that must be the Catholic group. And I had to break to them something that is kind of, I think tough for a lot of Catholics today because they get this sort of retelling of American history that tries to include them in parts of American history that they just were not players in.
During the time of the American Revolution, only 1. 5 percent of America was Catholic. If you, and people are like, Maryland, Maryland was a Catholic colony, wasn't it? At the time of the revolution, less than 10 percent of the population in Maryland was Catholic. There was just no significant Catholic population in early America.
[00:02:00] However, that is not true of America today, even when we're talking about like significant declines in religiosity in America. You can look at something like Massachusetts, for example. And can you guess the percentage in 1990 of Americans , in Massachusetts, who identified as Catholics?
Simone Collins: 4%.
Malcolm Collins: 54%. Holy smokes. Do you, do you know what it was in 201
Published on 1 year, 4 months ago