Political Wokeism as a Long Cycle Reaction to Indigenous Political Liberalism (the classical liberal type)

 This week I ran into two idea threads that combine to produce a very novel theoretical lens to look at radically progressive political wokeism.

WOKEISM IS PURITANICAL YANKEEDOM

One thread comes out of American Nations by Woodard.  His book looks at the legacies of cultural groupings in modern north American culture.  It's no secret that the cultural groups of the north east coast and left coast are strongly influenced by Puritanical affinities and a desire for an environmental regulation of culture - i.e. an SNL "church lady" nanny state.  Scots-irish Appalachian culture and Deep South aristocratic culture were obviously against collectivist nanny states.  But while the Deep South was obviously inspired by self-rationalized notions of Greek aristocratic democracy, Appalachia was probably more inspired by Metis individualism.  The net result has been dynamic tension between American individualism and European collectivism (paternalism?).

CLASSICAL LIBERALISM IS AMERICAN INDIAN

The other idea comes from the archaeologist David Wengrow (see this podcast).  He supposes that societies have often purposefully given up supposedly necessary steps in stage-theoried civilization advancement.  He highlights the role Native American, especially Haudenosaune (Iroquois),y political thought may have played in establishing European political enlightenment theory.  Up here in Canada, k-12 spends a lot of time giving credit to this group for inspiring a lot of North American democratic thought.  Wengrow speculates that things like coffee house political bantering may have been biased by romanticized ideas of Native American fireplace cultural practices, and idealization about radical individualism, especially governance practices that would work with it.

THE CONJUNCTION

None of this is very revolutionary.  But, it made me wonder if the Woke turn away from classical liberalism toward quasi-religious collectivism and its attendant big state parochialism can't be seen as European governance ethos clawing back indigenous North American political leanings.  In other words, we have multi-century cycles of pacing and leading between European parochial governance culture-gens and North American indigenous libertarian culture-gens.  Political Wokeism is the latest version of European governance norms dominating things.  This is hugely ironic.  It emerges via the dominant state role old Yankee/post-Protestant culture has on institutions.  Protestants didn't rebel against Kingly states, they just wanted a Christ King.

To make the leap that political wokeism is Eurocentric governance, you have to disabuse yourself of the notion that today's remnant of Yankee / post-Puritan culture is Puritan god-fearingness.  Rather, what survived was minding-your-neighbours type behaviour: a belief that people and their government have a duty to tell people what to do so a respectable (safe/righteous) cultural and political environment can be produced.  

IMPLICATIONS

This implies that the limited democratic or authoritarian democratic leanings of today's left are a remnant of old European political culture (or culture-gens).  Therefore what we're seeing in today's politics is yet another round of European colonialism, this time trying to put under ground any pernicious remnants of indigenous North America's unique libertarian governance solutions.

In culture war terms, 1600's North America novel governance solutions engendered some out of the box thinking that either sparked the Protestant revolution or at least the 1700's/1800's enlightenment revolutions.  But since North America lost its expansionist potential (maybe around 1900), European culture has, in fits and spurts, been able to claw back individualistic-based governance in favour or Eurocentric collectivism.

SUPPORT

Without going into any great dives in academic literature, my sense is that this idea is supported by the recent emergence of the big 3 modern political worldviews

-European authoritarian democracy
        only the right sort of idea are permissable.  Anything else is deplorable. A very medieval Catholic approach.

-Chinese capitalistic communism
        capitalism can be used to drive innovation and provide funds, but every so often the State needs to claw things back to save equality and maintain proper power

-Russia libertarian authoritarianism
      You have lots of freedom, but you can only vote for a filtered set of oligarchs who have the right historic visions. This keeps the system away from technocratic capture

The individualism associated with golden-era America narratives is nowhere to be seen.  Russia libertarianism seems more like a forced solution to the Soviet's technocratic trap than a just-so adoption of American libertarian though.   Putin seems keen to avoid bureaucratic capture.  The West seems to embrace bureaucratic capture.  It also seems to miss the role of 1st estate - that pan national Catholic glue that put some limits of kingly action, largely via populist backed for the church and its moral guidance and role.  Marxism puts the arrow of history into much the same role.  It is what can cap dictatorial capture. It is what provides sufficient information flow with the laity.