The American Revolution was heavily influenced by European Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire. However, European intellectuals have long looked to America too for inspiration. And when they did so, it neither the conformist culture of the Puritan pilgrims, nor the aristocratic southern slave-holding culture was the source of inspiration, but the libertarian-egalitarian-fraternitarian (Philadelphia is the city of "brotherly love") mindset of a strange sect, the quirky Quakers, that inspired among others the French Revolution. In 1701, William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania and leader of the Quakers, signed the Fourth Frame, or Charter of Privileges, which granted citizens of Pennsylvania a number of basic freedoms — in particular, freedom of worship and the right of individuals to speak their mind.
Colin Woodard describes Midland culture that had its origin in Philadelphia in his 2011 book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America:
The most prototypically American of the nations was one of the last to be founded. From its inception in the 1680s, the Midlands was a tolerant, multicultural, multilingual civilization populated by families of modest means—many of them religious—who desired mostly that their government and leaders leave them in peace.
However, the culture that championed freedom of speech, women’s liberation and ultimately also the abolition of slavery wasn’t initially popular at all among other settlers:
Difficult though it may be to understand today, the Quakers were considered a radical and dangerous force, the late-seventeenth-century equivalent of crossing the hippie movement with the Church of Scientology. Quakers spurned the social conventions of the day, refusing to bow or doff their hats to social superiors or to take part in formal religious services of any sort. They rejected the authority of church hierarchies, held women to be spiritually equal to men, and questioned the legitimacy of slavery. Their leaders strode naked on city streets or, daubed with excrement, into Anglican churches in efforts to provide models of humility; one Quaker rode naked on a donkey into England’s second-largest city on Palm Sunday in an unpopular reenactment of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Overcome with rapture, they would fall into violent fits, or “quakes,” that frightened nonbelievers. Many embraced martyrdom, repeatedly marching into unfriendly neighborhoods or onto New England town greens to preach or challenge ministers, reveling in the imprisonment, whippings, tongue borings, and executions that followed. [...] These disruptive behaviors were the expression of deep-held religious convictions. The Quakers believed that each person had an “Inner Light” holding the Holy Spirit within him or her. They didn’t study and obey scripture to achieve salvation, but instead found God through personal mystical experience—meaning that priests, bishops, and churches were superfluous. All humans were thought to be essentially good and were to treat one another as they would wish themselves to be treated. All were equal before God, regardless of sect, race, or gender, and all earthly authority was ultimately without legitimacy.
And yet, those “weirdos'' managed to establish one of the most successful states that attracted immigrants from all over Europe, due to their egalitarianism and multiculturalism for which America has been admired. However, their peaceful anarchism and optimistic view of human nature turned out to be failures:
Early Pennsylvania was an economic success, but its Quaker-run government was a complete disaster. The Quakers’ ideals proved to be at odds with successful governance. Believing that all people were followers of Christ and innately good, the Quakers assumed citizens could govern themselves through mere self discipline and the application of the Golden Rule. This turned out not to be the case, as Quakers were also by nature inclined to challenge authority and convention at every juncture. The community’s leaders quarreled with one another over doctrinal questions while government fell into disarray, failing to maintain public records or to pass laws essential to the functioning of the court system. The governing council couldn’t manage to hold regular meetings, while the colony went through six governors in its first decade. The Dutch, Swedes, and Finns of the “lower counties” became so desperate for proper government that they broke away to form one of their own, founding the tiny colony of Delaware in 1704.
Whatever one may think of the Quakers, they left their mark on American culture and settlers north and south of them would have done right if they had treated Native Americans in a similarly egalitarian way as did the Quakers. What made those three early American cultures so different? Their values:
I have argued that differing values are at least partially due to evolutionary selection pressures in our past subsistence modes, with farmers being high in authority, security and conformism, herders high in liberty, status and self-expression and hunter-gatherer high in liberty and egalitarianism.
These quirky Quakers got along well with Native American hunter-gatherers because they had a very similar evolutionary programming. Puritans, on the other hand, show many more commonalities with farmer values and the southern gentry with herders.
Its settlements—a collection of mutually tolerant ethnic enclaves—served as a buffer between the intolerant, communitarian morality of Greater Yankeedom and the individualistic hedonism of Greater Appalachia, just as they had earlier on the eastern seaboard. New Englanders and Appalachian people often settled among them, but neither group’s values took hold. The Midland Midwest would develop as a centre of moderation and tolerance, where people of many faiths and ethnicities lived side by side, largely minding their own business. Few Midwestern Midlanders were Quakers, but they unconsciously carried aspects of William Penn’s vision to fruition.
Of course, hunter-gatherer types weren’t only to be found among Quakers and not all Quakers were hunter-gatherer types, but enough to create a dominant hunter-gatherer type culture. Plenty of other settlers escaped the American civilization and lived among Native Americans. The opposite was almost never the case, no matter how affluent and civilised, a culture that was not based on egalitarianism and self-direction was not attractive to the American natives.
If the US wants to survive as a united nation it urgently needs to revive the values of those people once considered heretics, crazy and even dangerous. It was those values that made America great in the first place and America can't be made great again with the opposite values of intolerance, inegalitarianism and a supremacist ideology.
For more on using the forager-farmer framework in analysing cultures check out my book:
The Three Cultures that Create Civilization
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BGF5P38J
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