Guilt-wracked, self-hating Puritan?

The August 21, 1921, New York Tribune features a letter to the editor arguing against Prohibition in the following terms.
The towering Nordic race of physical and mental giants, comprising the Germans, Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons--the big-headed, broad-shouldered, big-eating, big-drinking and big-fighting sword-arm men of the north--were the architects of the modern world. They were the old Vikings who, before Columbus, ferried the Atlantic in an open boat. They were the conquerors of Imperial Rome. That race of men has civilized, enlightened and uplifted the entire world, banished the ages of darkness and savagery, and replaced them with this age of invention, discovery, enlightenment and human well-being. But that was a race of boozers, wine-bibbers and beer-drinkers.

During thousands of years the Norse giants, with the divine old brutality of the cave-man in them, had their nightly wassail and carousal around the oaken table, in the glare of the great fire and under the flare of the torches, where they drank to one another's health and well-being until they fell under the table; [. . .]

While the hard-drinking Nordics were molding the world into a thing of beauty in their great hands, what were the non-drinking races doing? What were the teetotaling Mohamedan Arabs and Turks and the Buddhist East Indians doing? What were the abstemious Chinese doing? What were four-fifths of the rest of the human race, who were abstemious in the use of alcohol doing, while these Nordic sots were conquering savage races, reclaiming wild domains and building empires? I, for one, am willing to risk for the sake of good fellowship and a good time, a little of the light alcoholic stimulants with which the great Nordic people soused themselves for thousands of years without apparent harm.
The author is Hudson Maxim, the brother of inventor Hiram Maxim, born in Maine of New England Puritan stock and a successful inventor in his own right.

7 comments:

Rob S. said...

This guy is a fine example for all of the northern race to look to. He does leave out the accomplishments of the French nation. (And no, I personally don't have any French ancestry at all).

It's sad that France became a source of decadence in recent centuries, after achieving so much early on.

Napoleon's empire probably would have been a good thing, if it had succeeded. It's much too late for that sort of thing, now.

France is neither southern nor northern.

Rob S. said...

n/a, do you think there are any bio-evolutionary processes at work in the amazingly consistent migration of peak civilization from SW to NE? First Sumeria had the greatest and most dominant culture. Then Egypt/Israel. Then Greece. Then Italy (Rome). Then Italy again (the medieval Florentine city-state, et al). Then France, and then England.

If there is any 'iron biological law' at work there, eugenics could probably break out of it.

There is another possible interpretation, though. Maybe the people always had more latent civilizational potential from SW to NE. And the slow adaptation of agricultural organisms, both animal and plant, may have had to max out before progressively more-northwestern peoples could in turn reach their full civilizational potentials. This would also explain why our northwestern ancestors practiced only rather low-intensity agriculture in early times such as the Roman period.

n/a said...

Rob,

"There is another possible interpretation, though. Maybe the people always had more latent civilizational potential from SW to NE. And the slow adaptation of agricultural organisms, both animal and plant, may have had to max out before progressively more-northwestern peoples could in turn reach their full civilizational potentials."

This is essentially what Michael Hart proposes in Understanding Human History.

Hail said...

It's interesting that he took such an explicitly Racialist stand.

Prohibition was backed, from my understanding, by most Colonial-Stock Protestants and most Scandinavians in the Midwest, with all other groups of more mixed feelings or opposed.

So, it was a Racialist proxy already, which could only be intellectually countered by further appeals to Racialism.

Anonymous said...

Prohibition was backed, from my understanding, by most Colonial-Stock Protestants and most Scandinavians in the Midwest

If this Hudson Max person was correct, the Scandinavians were turning against their great heritage of drunken conquest in supporting prohibition.

Hail, do you have any idea why the Scandinavians were so supportive of prohibition?

Seems weird when you consider that the Vikings were hardly a bunch of termperance league joiners.

And how come the founding stock Protestants supported it as well?

Was it just a petty anti-Irish thing where they decided to hit the mick where it would hurt?

Anonymous said...

That race of men has civilized, enlightened and uplifted the entire world, banished the ages of darkness and savagery, and replaced them with this age of invention, discovery, enlightenment and human well-being.

"Banished"? "Age of invention" etc? If we live in a world of banished savagery amidst an age of invention I must have missed it.

How absurd does this sound today? I mean, I know he didn't have a crystal ball or anything but here we are, not 100 years on from the time the quote was written, and it looks floridly over the top and wildly ahistorical.

This is the problem with romanticizing. It is wishful thinking. If the things he was claiming had truly come to pass, then the present would not look like it does today.

Anonymous said...

Laughably childish prattle. Do people really base their self-image on this kind of ahistorical nonsense?