I came relatively late to Jim Webb’s Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. Indeed, I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that I knew very little of Webb at all until I watched him from time to time during the 2006 Senatorial campaign in Virginia. From the first time I saw him speak, however, I was hooked. There was something about the gritty, plain spoken demeanor that was comfortably familiar to me.
After hearing me talk about Webb ceaselessly after his election, and after watching me do endless imitations of him, Bonnie threw her hands up and bought me a copy of Born Fighting, hoping, I think, to either get me over my fascination or to not have to listen to me during the times when I was reading. It didn’t work. Each night I read the book and would shout out lines in an almost giddy fashion. For one born and raised in the South, especially close to the highlands in North Carolina, this book did so much to affirm me—perhaps to a fault—that I’ve only gotten louder.
For those not in the know, Webb claims to offer, in 343 pages, a wide ranging history of the Scots-Irish people, focusing specifically on their immigration to what would become the United States and on the ways in which their “acute individualism, dislike of aristocracy” and their military tradition, over time defined “the attitudes and values of the military, of working-class America, and even of the peculiarly populist form of American democracy itself” (that’s directly from the cover, for those counting). The pace of the book is necessarily quick and the writing style—a mix of Webb’s family stories, vernacular folktales, and textbook history—keeps one tied to both the overall argument Webb is building as well as to the local heroes and family favorites. Like his speaking style, Webb’s words combine the voice of the scholar with the wisdom of the rustic. (Why aren’t we drafting him to run for President?)
In such a book, with such a powerful and overarching argument (Webb comes close to making the argument that all of the things we admire about “America" are really characteristics of our collective Scots-Irish heritage), there are bound to be mistakes. Indeed, I can almost hear my buddy Dan typing up a list of Webb’s overgeneralizations and misguided claims already. But I’m neither interested in writing a review of the book nor of defending Webb’s claims. No, I’m more interested in disclosing the powerful rhetorical effect it had on me and of wondering about the value(s) of that effect.
In the briefest possible terms, Webb has provided—no, created—an ethnic identity I can choose to take up, an identity in some ways that I have a difficult time refusing. Don’t get me wrong—there have always been Scots-Irish people. And it’s always been true that my mother’s side of the family were proudly and loudly Scots-Irish folks who settled in North Carolina early on (indeed, some of the earliest elements of the Hawkins family are buried on land that is now part of the Biltmore estate). So, I’ve always “genetically” been at least half “Scots-Irish,” so it’s not genetics or bloodlines that Webb has provided. It’s an identity that he has crystallized in print regardless of the accuracy of its “material” existence.
It’s like this: while my mother’s family was Scots-Irish, my father’s line was a messy mix of German, English, Cherokee, Jew, and so forth. A motley crew was his family. And I liked that. Throughout my life, I’ve enjoyed being a mutt, a pure American mutt. I’ve enjoyed finding others fairly goofy when they attempt to claim a particular ethnic identity (e.g., Irish, German). The whole idea seemed to me rather ridiculous. If you grew up here with the rest of us, I always thought, you’re as mutt as I am. Be proud of your mutt heritage; it’s what makes us family.
Then along comes Webb; along comes this book. While Webb begins by tying Scots-Irish to a bloodline (and dangerously moves back to this logic from time to time throughout the book), he makes it clear that Scots-Irish is more of a powerful ideology, crafted by Scots-Irish people, that is capable of assimilating people of a variety of ethnicities and belief structures.
My glee in reading the book—and Bonnie could confirm this while rolling her eyes—was in repeatedly and powerfully identifying with a lot of the logic, the personality, of the people he described. These were all people I knew; these were all people I loved. These were all people who had been made fun of in the common sense logic of mass mediated books, films, and television for years, but these were people I knew to be better than their representations. As a result, by the end of the book, I found myself wanting to thrust away my mutt identity and to acknowledge the multiple, hard headed, blue collar work ethic ways that I am Scots-Irish. Webb’s discourse, in other words, might not have made me Scots-Irish in terms of heritage, but his words gave me a way to grab ahold of that identity.
There are always costs and benefits to taking on any identity, of course. As the late Kenneth Burke noted, to identify with is also to differentiate from. That is, to choose to take up one identity is also to differentiate yourself from other identities. To identify strongly with the type of ideology Webb draws forth here is to, at least in part, to give up other ways of being.
Ultimately, then, this is why I make this post: I’m writing at least in part in the hopes that Dan, or others, will force the issue a bit by challenging elements of the “ethnicity” Webb draws forth (I use Dan as my example only because I’ve spoken with him about this before). I welcome such challenges because I’m so amused and so amazed at how much I want to identify with the characters Webb draws for me. In my mid-40s, I find myself oddly seduced by an idea that used to give me chills
I, too, found an unexpected and seductive pull in Born Fighting. As John says, these ARE the people I know and love. Both sides of my family are Scots-Irish, recent genealogy research proved this more true than we even imagined.
Being a big believer in the power of DNA and pre-birth proclivities (I recommend James Hillman's The Soul's Code) it was powerful to think that dispositions and attitudes were a legacy as much as curly hair and a turned-up nose.
There are so many bits of personality, certainly in my own life, that I cannot ascribe to personal experience. I was just born that way. It's a bit of a relief, frankly, to think that my sometimes ridiculously belligerent first-response is based on a genetic predisposition lovingly bequeathed by my ancestors.
Can one take this too far? Of course. Natural tendencies aren't an excuse for bad behavior and an unwillingness to change. We can all choose.
Is it a bit much to ascribe all that's good about America to one cup of DNA soup? Probably. Most people who left a motherland to come here would have shared many of Webb's Scots-Irish characteristics. You didn't come to America because you were a sheep. Even those forced to come had to be strong and resilient to make it.
And while Webb does give examples of where these characteristics become less than charming, I do think he's little wide-eyed in his assessment.
When my dad, whose Scots-Irish forebears settled in the SC mountains in the 1800s and never left, was pitching Webb's premise to my mom (who is more Irish than Scot), she rolled her eyes a la Bonnie and fired back "These are the meanest people in the world."
And she's got a point: There are some very ugly sides to such traits as stubborness, hostility to authority, and a distrust of outsiders. Read Bushwhackers by William Trotter for a glimpse of just ugly. His recounting of incidents during the Civil War in North Carolina's mountain hollows will haunt you.
Any information one receives should be played with and rolled around and held upside down and shaken before being integrated. For me, the book gave me the ability to appreciate where I came from and understand myself and my family a little better. It gives me things take pride in and be wary of.
If Webb's book goes a little Vaseline-and-cheesecloth in its portrayal of the Scots-Irish as the intrepid salt-of-the-earth prototype American, so what? It's a nice counter image to that of pop culture's all-too-prevalent brawling, backwoods redneck.
Posted by: Janet | Sunday, January 27, 2008 at 11:28
I enjoyed Born Fighting a great deal. As an Irish-Catholic I never quite understood who the Scots-Irish were (are).
And Jim Webb, should be SecDef in either a Republican or Democratic administration.
Posted by: Martin Kennedy | Monday, January 28, 2008 at 10:51
I learned a lesson about the power of this myth last year when Janet learned that my greatgrandmother, Bessie McElroy, was pure Scots-Irish. Because even though I already mistrusted "Born Fighting," the proof of that connection brought me the sweet rush of belonging (a rare feeling, if you know my history).
You can't be a white Southerner and read this book and not feel a sense of validation. You can't watch the bad-ass warrior-poet Jim Webb and not feel like a wise bad-ass yourself.
But this isn't the full picture. The great power of Webb's book is the way that it connects the dots of identity and history into a mythology that is validating and uplifting and inspiring. The great problem that I have with Webb's book is that the dots are only loosely connected, and the mythology is exactly what we wanted to believe all along.
What do Southerners -- even liberal Southerners -- want to believe? That we're the salt of the Earth. What do blue-collar people want to believe? That we're the yeoman heroes who made American civilization possible. What excuse comforts us when we look around us at the failures of our "culture" and the disillusion of our dreams? That we were betrayed by weak men who secretly fear our strength and innate superiority.
Salt of the Earth. Heroes. Betrayed. It's a great mythology. Tough, courageous men and women of conviction and will, punished throughout the centuries for being too strong and too independent and too brilliant and too principled and too talented. That's what Webb says his people are, and in doing so he turns American history into a shadow theater. The Scots-Irish are the actors -- our history is the shadow of that action, disintermediated, dishonest, obscured. Everything good about America -- America itself, if you follow the narrative -- is a Scots-Irish invention.
Webb's book tells belligerent, violent Southerners that we're not only right, we're heroic. "Born Fighting" glorifies the military. It is, in a sense, distilled martial kitsch, concentrated and then writ large.
And brother, do I feel it.
I dislike this book because it whispers seductively to all my dark corners -- the chip-on-my-shoulder redneck, the betrayed blue-collar class warrior, the enlisted soldier who looks down with epic disdain on the "chickenhawk" patriots and armchair generals who collect all the perks of war. I get huge cultural validation when I embrace these distortions. I get cultural ambivalence -- even hostility -- when I embrace the other, non-violent, peace-seeking, side of my heritage and personality. So I have to fight back against it. It's too easy for me to hide behind my sometimes combative male identity and pretend that nothing else really matters. That everything else is basically pussy intellectual wimp-talk.
There is much truth in this book, but also great distortion. It's a brilliant book, but it isn't brilliantly true. It is brilliant in discerning what we wish to be true. And what we wish to be true, but isn't -- not quite -- is exactly what we should treat with ginger care. Because such distortions contain the seeds of our own beautiful failure. And I'm done with celebrating failure.
Posted by: dan | Monday, January 28, 2008 at 22:32
Oh lighten up, Dan. You completely forget the power of myth: It inspires us to be our best selves. There is always a place in life for what we wish to be true and it's separate from rationalization.
I didn't take the book that seriously, certainly not as a manifesto on "distilled martial kitsch," just as a different perspective - albeit all Joseph-Campbelled-up - on traits I've seen in my family and myself for as long as I've been conscious.
All virtues can be made vices when taken to the extreme. Time and place have a lot to do with which qualities are valued and valuable and which aren't. There was a time when being aggressive and violent kept you from being 6 feet under. But 19th century frontiersmen on a hostile Indian border aren't the guys you want refereeing Saturday morning soccer. I took from the book a clear understanding that traits don't always wear well through the centuries.
Yeah, some people are going to read into it an excuse to be assholes, but they hardly needed a book for justification.
You need to trust that people can read a book, take what's good from it and move on. It's not a manifesto for Scots-Irish violence (see paragraph above.) It's just a nice story that allows room for pride and identity and a belief that we are more than the here and now.
You don't have to like it; you're entitled to your opinion, of course.
But I am right.
Posted by: Janet | Tuesday, January 29, 2008 at 22:18
Nuh-uh.
Posted by: Daniel | Tuesday, January 29, 2008 at 22:20
I'm going to kick your ass, you bald-headed Dutchman.
Posted by: Janet | Tuesday, January 29, 2008 at 22:21
When you get right down to it--I mean, past all the silliness and the posturing--well, it turns out that Janet is completely right and Dan is completely wrong.
Again.
Go figure.
Posted by: jmsloop | Tuesday, January 29, 2008 at 22:26
On the more serious side . . . after reading the last section of Dan's first response, I'm reminded of a conversation I had with Dan back in 1983 or so on the campus of Appalachian State. We were looking at a group of pseudo-hippies talking about peace, and Dan looked at me and said, "Sometimes I miss some of the Quakers I knew when I was growing up. They were for peace, but they were warriors for peace."
I always liked that image and that sentiment. The entire idea of being an angry forceful warrior for peace was a seductive one.
Posted by: jmsloop | Tuesday, January 29, 2008 at 22:39
Wait... we're supposed to get PAST the silliness and posturing?
Posted by: Daniel | Wednesday, January 30, 2008 at 09:05
"Born Fighting" is also a bit of pushback against images of the rednecked, uneducated, uncultured "salt-of-the-earth." The Irish in America certainly were discriminated against, and the mountain Southerners felt their share too. That stuff sticks in families' memories, I'm sure. It's not a stretch to see this book as a retort against snobbery and elitism.
It's key to note that this book comes from a man steeped in Washington culture, where, at least in the last few years, millionaires are running the show and a man is judged by who he is rather than the content of his character.
Sloop, you might want to read "How the Irish Saved Civilization" by Thomas Cahill. A different type of book but very well done.
Posted by: Janet | Wednesday, January 30, 2008 at 09:43
Come on folks, when have Southerners ever let the truth get in the way of a good story?
Janet's always right.
Posted by: Jean | Thursday, January 31, 2008 at 22:12