Have you read Michael Knox Beran's book? I believe he identifies Vietnam (i.e. fumbled political legitimacy) as the end of the WASPS rather than the expansion of immigrant communities (and subsequent machine politics and organized crime) from Southern and Eastern Europe.
Alternatively, Adrian Wooldridge argues WASPs largely voluntarily surrendered political power by creating the modern meritocracy.
I think your thesis here believes too much in the inter-ethnic conflict and the relationship between traits and ethno-cultural groups. WASPs themselves, as an American phenomenon, are themselves an ethnogenesis that isn't only British and there were of course substantial regional differences between WASP elite. For isntance, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun were all dissimilar WASP elite.
I'm open to the idea that Vietnam was a part of the downfall of WASP authority, and also that there was a voluntary surrender. But what precipitated these later events was certainly the immigration of alternative elites.
I agree that all ethnicities, not just WASPs, arise from ethnogenesis, and were composed of Angles, Saxons, Normans, with Celtic and Germanic roots, influenced by Hebrew, Greek, and Roman traditions. And there was a huge difference between Anglicans and Quakers, northern industrialists and southern planters.
John Calhoun was Scots-Irish, however. It's not accurate to call him a WASP under the strict definition, where 90% of the founders were non-Irish WASPs. The south was much more Scots-Irish than the north. Albion's Seed is useful as a reference here -- peak WASP is south-east England, between London and Cambridge.
I think a working definition of WASP which excludes Calhoun is too narrow. Hackett Fischer would point out that the Scotch-Irish label is a bit of a misnomer and the the fourth migration of borderlanders were still white mostly English Protestants.
However, i do think it's correct to draw a distinction between the stereotypical WASP sensibility, and the regional culture(s) of America South of the Mason-Dixon.
I'm also not sure we can say that immigration was the sole major driver when different parts of the settler/deep root effects persist while others decay. Or I guess the immigration itself doesn't reveal why the WASP regime became so brittle. It's a complex social process that we can hence tell a lot of different plausible/persuasive narratives about.
I liked the piece - provocative. Just offering a hopefully useful critique.
Like most forms of identity, there are a series of concentric circles around a very narrow and limited group of people. Most of the Founders were Freemasonic WASPs, and distinct from the Puritans and even the Quakers. There were also ideological disagreements between founders, like Franklin, Hamilton, Paine, and Jefferson. A lot of the mythology of the WASP elite is retroactive and retrospective. Washington could have established a monarchy, but he seems to have been infertile. Things could have gone very differently, but mythology imagines that "things were always destined to be this way."
I think an analysis of WASP downfall would benefit from Machiavelli's writing on Rome:
"From the readiness wherewith the Romans conferred the right of citizenship on foreigners, there came to be so many new citizens in Rome, and possessed of so large a share of the suffrage [voting rights], that the government itself began to alter, forsaking those courses which it was accustomed to follow, and growing estranged from the men to whom it had before looked for guidance. Which being observed by Quintius Fabius when censor, he caused all those new citizens to be classed in four tribes, that being reduced within this narrow limit they might not have it in their power to corrupt the entire state."
Really enjoyed the article, however I think your analysis may overlook the subtle but ongoing influence and endurance of established old money WASP families like the Rockefellers, Du Ponts, Mellons, etc.
Unlike today's celebrity politicians and super-billionaire tycoons like Musk and Bezos, who dominate headlines, these older lineages have cultivated a patrician style of wealth and influence dispersed across many foundations, trusts, political and corporate boards, and policy networks.
Their approach to power has always been more understated and diffuse, circulating through high-level policy organizations (Council on Foreign Relations), philanthropic entities (Rockefeller Foundation), premier cultural institutions (museums, universities, think tanks), and centuries-old social networks. You are correct that over time, these institutions have partially “de-ethnicized,” diluting any overt identification with an ancestral Protestant lineage, yet the underlying influence mechanisms and connections remain very much intact.
This more understated, institutional approach means the old WASP elite retains significant behind-the-scenes influence—just not in a way that’s as publicly visible or tied to individual celebrity.
The Mellons were Ulster Scots, not WASP proper. Du Pont is French. Rockefellers were of German, Ulster Scot, and Huguenot ancestry. The name was originally *Roquefeuille*, which was then Germanized when they moved to Germany. The Rockefeller Foundation was not founded by WASPs, and it still is not WASP run.
The actual WASP aristocracy were descended from the Mayflower passengers, Quakers, and Episcopalians. They made up a majority of Freemasons and Founding Fathers of the Constitution.
Only 8/56 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Irish or Scots Irish. Charles Carroll was the most prominent among them; being the only Catholic, he was crucial in diplomatic efforts with the French Canadians.
The decline of Freemasonry after 1945 was a significant blow to WASP cultural, political, and financial influence. In my article, I point to the financial scandals of the 1960s-1980s as the nail in the coffin for WASP financial dominance. This doesn't meant that all WASPs were killed or put into poverty, but that they are no longer the undisputed dominant financial power that they were for 300 years prior.
Ulster Scots are Scottish Presbyterians, not Anglican/Episcopalian/Congregationalist. This sounds like a petty difference in view of racialization (black vs white), but it matters in terms of lineage, history, and pedigree. WASPs were dominant through 1848, at which point they started to encounter competition from French, German, Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants. Elite immigration of Germans in 1848 significantly impacted the Civil War, in that left-wing agitators from Germany promoted abolitionism and led the Union Army as generals.
The Ulster Scots (Scots-Irish) were disproportionately represented in America's military and populist movements. Andrew Jackson is a good example of the difference between WASP and Ulster Scots. Despite racial narratives retroactively applied that "these were all just white people," America has never been entirely WASP or ethnically homogeneous. Jackson was disruptive and conflicted with the Supreme Court as a symbol of WASP respectability. But despite losing control of Jackson's genocidal excesses, the WASPs were always in control of America's finances. This isn't a narrative about who is "better or worse," but an analysis of real ethnic and identitarian differences.
The Walton family aren't WASP proper, since they are Presbyterians, meaning Scottish or Ulster Scots descended. None of the Mayflower passengers were Presbyterians, although many of the later Puritans were Presbyterians. It's sort of confusing, and perhaps too pedantic in a post-WASP era to make these kind of distinctions. But most presidents have had real WASP ancestry. Even Obama was descended from WASP Mayflower passengers. Trump is exceptional in having no WASP Mayflower ancestry.
Here's the board of the CFR: Rubenstein, Effron, Miscik, Froman, Beim, Mashayekji, Brennen, Burwell, Chenault, Coles (black), Conde, Flournoy, Fraser, Freidheim, Gorman, Hadley, Hamburg, Hurd (black?), Kaye, Manyika, McRaven, Muzinich, Napolitano, O'Sullivan, Parekh, Phillips (black?), Plepler, Porat, Jobs (wife of steve?), Reif, Silver (Asian?), Taiclet, Townsend, Travis (Black?), Zakaria, Zegart, Greenberg, Gaass, Hills, Rubin.
I'm not going to count the number of WASPs, but they are clearly not a majority:
Regarding institutions, yes, the Constitution is a WASP document, and most of the structures, laws, corporations, customs, traditions, traditional music, and cultural hallmarks of America are WASP in origin. I am not concerned about blood purity, but identity. There are very few people at the top who identify as purely WASP anymore; this was not the case in 1847, however. The decline was slow, and took around 120 years for WASPs to be relegated to the sidelines. Dilution is the correct term. It was a very different process from a kinetic war where the winning side just kills the losers, like the Romans taking Carthage.
Timeline:
from 1776 to 1847, the country was largely divided between a WASP aristocracy and an Ulster Scots minority, with the addition of some Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, Dutch, Swedish, and German Protestants. There was some immigration from Catholics, which led to the founding of the Know Nothing Party in 1844, but this immigration was not yet affecting elite composition.
After 1848, leftist German elites founded newspapers and lent militant political support to abolitionism, which exacerbated the tensions leading to Civil War. After the war, Jewish and Catholic immigrants began to dominate the Democratic Party in northern cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Detroit, and New York.
As this occurred, the KKK reformed itself from a Democratic institution of the South into a national-populist identitarian movement of all WASPs. In Indiana, 15-25% of adult white men were members of the KKK. The Klan lent its support to elite anthropologists like Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant, who helped pass the 1924 Immigration Act.
The Klan was destroyed in 1925 by the murder and rape scandal surrounding DC Stephenson. It rapidly declined, and the Republican Party was destroyed in 1929 by the Great Depression. This allowed FDR to rule for 12 years unopposed. Although FDR was a WASP, he was sympathetic to communism and the Northern Democratic coalition between Catholic and Jewish immigrants. The WASPs appointed by FDR to the Supreme Court were selected for their ideological leanings against segregation.
Brown v. Board was directed against black segregation, but the ultimately achievement of Civil Rights was to ban discrimination against Catholics and Jews, which was practiced by WASP country clubs. Catholics and Jews stood firmly behind Civil Rights legislation for this self-interested reason. From 1965-1985, WASPs were overtaken in the banking sector. John Paul Stevens was the last WASP to serve on the Supreme Court, in 2009.
Thank you for that historical detail which is interesting indeed.
I do, however, think the categorization of families like the Rockefellers and Mellons as definitively "non-WASP" oversimplifies the complex patterns of marriage and cultural assimilation that has characterized America's traditional upper class.
Looking at the Rockerfellers - while John D. Sr.'s paternal line had German and French Huguenot roots as you state, he married Laura Spelman, who came from a prominent Puritan New England family. Their children were thus as much Puritan-descended as they were German/Huguenot. The family thoroughly integrated into WASP social networks, educational patterns, and institutional structures. By the second generation, they were practically indistinguishable from "pure" WASP families in terms of cultural practices, social connections, and institutional affiliations.
John D. Jr., who founded the Rockerfeller Foundation along with his father and a family business associate, married Abby Aldrich, of solid New England Anglo stock who descended from John Winthrop, William Wickenden, and Roger Williams, and had 6 children. By the third generation, we are already seeing >50-75% WASP admixture for this line of the Rockerfellers.
This pattern of assimilation through strategic marriages and cultural adoption was common among successful "non-WASP" Protestant families in the 19th century. Rather than maintaining rigid ethnic distinctions, these families often blended into and reinforced existing WASP networks and institutions. The Mellons and Du Ponts, despite their Ulster Scots and French origins, similarly married into established WASP families and adopted their cultural and institutional patterns.
The distinction between Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and other Protestant denominations, while historically significant, became increasingly fluid among the upper class through intermarriage and social integration. What emerged was less about strict ethnic or denominational identity and more about participation in shared institutions, social networks, and cultural practices that has characterized America's Protestant establishment.
While I agree that the post-WWII era saw significant changes in the composition of American elites, particularly in finance and entertainment, I think it's important not to underestimate the resilience and adaptability of these old-money elite WASP networks. Their power may have become more diffuse and less explicitly ethnic over time, but the institutional structures and social networks they built have and continue to exercise significant influence, often incorporating and assimilating successful families from various Protestant backgrounds (and more recently Jewish and Catholic) into their fold.
I would argue this pattern of assimilation, through marriage and cultural adoption is actually a source of American WASP elite resilience rather than decline, allowing for the incorporation of new wealth, blood, and vigor while maintaining institutional continuity, cultural patterns, and genetic quality.
The shift away from overt WASP identity might be seen not as decline but as tactical adaptation by presenting as "neutral" institutions rather than explicitly WASP ones, these power centers may actually increase their effectiveness and longevity. This suggests that rather than a straight decline of WASP power, we might be seeing its evolution into more subtle but still significant forms of influence - less visible but still deeply embedded in America's institutional framework.
I agree that the upper class, including Catholics and Jews, assimilated into WASP norms, and in many cases they continue to do so. The business suit was invented by WASPs, and everyone wears it. My point is to contrast the ethnic lineage of the founders, which was unambiguously WASP, with the mixed and complicated heritage of later elites. I am trying to demonstrate that this mixing was stage #1 of a gradual process of ethnic dilution, and that norms are distinct from ancestral identities. People will fight for their Fatherland; they do not fight for the business suit as a "norm." The adoption of norms is evidence of a legacy of power; but it is not a source of continued power.
I don't see evidence of secret WASP elites, but I've heard these anecdotal claims. Millionaire networks aren't effective in terms of leadership. They can live nicely without having to work at all, as the Southern Planter aristocracy did, but that kind of useless elite is always overpowered by an energetic and ambitious elite. A millionaire, historically, would be considered a "petty noble." If this petty nobility was 90% of the nobility, as it was in Norman England, it would have significant weight. But when it is divided against 30% Catholic and 30% Jewish and now new Asian competitors, it is negligible in political effect.
There are probably studies which have been conducted demonstrating the WASP percentage of various sectors of the economy, including boards and trusts, and I'd be interested to see them. My prediction is that WASPs account for less than 30% of these networks. I would not be surprised if WASPs account for less than 10% of some sectors of the economy, such as American billionaires, tech companies, bankers, and financiers.
It's not accurate to equate all Protestants with WASPs. The best measurement would be Episcopalian adherence, which in 1981, was only 14% of congress:
I checked with Grok for the top 100 billionaires: 5% Episcopalian, 3% Presbyterian, and 1% Methodist, with 10% total being mainline (WASP adjacent) Protestant. For all Protestants, it's 20%. Well under my 30% estimate. Jews and Catholics are much more organized and important for determining America's direction.
My second argument is that this "increasing fluidity" you describe is what destroyed the WASP and made mass immigration more tolerable. If there's no distinction between WASP and Scottish, what's the difference between WASP and German? And between a German Protestant and a Catholic? Between a Catholic and a Jew? When an ethnicity cannot clearly distinguish itself, and it becomes intermixed, it loses its identity. The same is recounted in the Tanakh, where the prophets warn Israel against intermixing. And I am convinced that it is the same in the history of Rome.
Where my point gets confused is with those white nationalists who believe that WASP identity has been diluted to the point of being "whiteness," and that this whiteness has achieved the utility and function of the original WASP identity. But that's not how dilution works. Identities are formed not by dilution, but through ethnogenesis. Ethnogenesis requires the trauma of war or religious conversion, but these are not sufficient conditions. Rome had both war and religious conversion, but this did not result in the strengthening of the diluted Roman identity.
This kind of coping also occurred with the Roman Catholic church electing Italian nobility to the papacy, so that Rome continued to exert a "subtle influence." You're making a similar kind of argument, but there is a real and measurable difference between a self-confident ethnicity which rules from the front and a subtle cabal which rules "implicitly." When Rome was united, it expanded the use of Latin, for example. The Catholic Church did not spread the use of spoken Latin into Russia, or Greece, or Germany. In fact, the use of Latin declined from where it had previously been spoken, with the Balkans being invaded by Slavic speakers. Where Latin did flourish was in the upper classes as an international language and the language of science, although it was displaced by French after 1539.
We are not yet at that point of Roman collapse in America; these are processes which occur over centuries. But a tactical retreat is really just an unambiguous loss of power. The most ascendant ethnicity in America right now is the Indian, and I think that will accelerate over the next 20 years. Not a WASP renaissance.
Patrilineage is important. Names matter. So Augustus took the name Caesar, he adopted it. If Vivek changes his name to Victor... Explicit cultural power is meaningful. The Spartans were Spartan; ruling by subtle methods entirely changes the structure and nature of the state, which limits and in some cases destroys its expansive ability. This is spoken of by Machiavelli, in his discussion of the centrality of religion, custom, ancestry, and colonies. There is a difference between leading from the front and back-deals from the shadows. One is clearly preferred -- ask the Jews who have been subject to endless persecutions, despite always performing at an elite level economically, which is preferred.
First, your statistics about individual billionaires highlight an important methodological issue: focusing on individual wealth rather than family wealth can significantly distort our understanding of elite power structures. Old Protestant establishment wealth is often distributed across extended family networks through complex arrangements of trusts, family offices, foundations, and holding companies, rather than concentrated in highly visible individual fortunes. This structure of distributed family wealth rather than individual fortune is itself an elite WASP cultural pattern, emphasizing long-term stewardship over individual accumulation.
These families may not appear prominently on individual billionaire lists, but their aggregate family wealth, distributed across multiple branches and generations, remains substantial and in the many billions.
Additionally, statistics about Episcopalian representation undercounts WASP influence by not accounting for other Protestant denominations (but certainly not all as you state) that became integrated into the WASP establishment and misses how many of these elites have become secular while maintaining their cultural identity. Many elite families who are technically "none" or "unaffiliated" still attend traditional prep schools, join historically WASP social clubs, participate in debutante traditions, summer in traditional WASP communities, maintain family foundations, and serve on cultural institution boards.
Regarding the "dilution" leading to downfall argument, your comparison to Rome might actually support the opposite conclusion. Rome's remarkable longevity and resilience as an empire came in large part from its sophisticated ability to assimilate foreign elites into Roman cultural, political, and social networks - the "circulation of elites."
As mentioned in your article, consider how Rome successfully integrated Gallic nobles into the Senate. absorbed Greek intellectual and cultural traditions while maintaining Roman institutional frameworks, had emperors from Hispanic (Trajan, Hadrian), African (Septimius Severus), and Arabian (Philip the Arab) backgrounds who thoroughly adopted and championed Roman identity and interests, and maintained cultural and institutional continuity even while incorporating new blood and talent into its ruling class.
This integration and circulation of elites was a source of Roman strength and adaptability, not decline I would argue. It allowed Rome to tap into new sources of talent and energy while maintaining its core institutional and cultural identity.
Similarly, the American Protestant establishment's ability to selectively incorporate talented families from various backgrounds (like the Rockefellers) while maintaining institutional and cultural continuity can be seen as a source of resilience rather than weakness. The fact that John D. Rockefeller married into Puritan stock (Laura Spelman) and his son married Abby Aldrich (descended from John Winthrop) shows how new talent was systematically integrated into existing networks and bloodlines. Descendants from that line (Justin and Wyatt Rockerfeller) sit on the board of trustees for the Rockerfeller Brothers Fund to this day.
Far from diluting Roman power, this ability to selectively assimilate foreign elites while maintaining Roman cultural and institutional patterns was crucial to Rome's extraordinary longevity and I would argue is similarly the case for American WASP power in the present day even if it is no longer explicitly ethnic.
Your assessment of Indian ascendancy, while noting an important trend, seems premature. While Indians have achieved impressive success in certain sectors, particularly tech and medicine, this may represent more of a diversification of certain elite circles rather than a wholesale displacement of existing power structures. Consider that much of this success has come through established channels - elite universities, traditional professional paths, and existing institutional frameworks created and maintained by the Protestant establishment. Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy have largely operated within these traditional institutions rather than new ones.
I will agree the WASP elite has tactically retreated from the public eye in recent decades, that is for certain, particularly during the rise of populist and reactionary politics. Clearly, the goal is to maintain power and influence while avoiding public backlash from the masses. My position is that this is a sophisticated adaptation to changing political conditions rather than a sign of decline and weakness, but ultimately I think the effectiveness of this strategy remains to be seen.
1. Mars, Walton, and Koch are the top three, and they aren't WASP. It's a quantitative question. The way to settle this question is just to come up with a list of names and label each one's heritage. I am open to the idea that 10% to 30% of these families are WASPs, depending on whether you define WASP strictly or loosely. I was working on this project and it is part of my 30 drafts but you have to spend at least 5 minutes on each person, and there are hundreds of people to research, so it's quite monotonous and takes hours... ChatGPT has been very inaccurate so far in providing me the lists I need.
2. Regarding "none" and "unaffiliated" just as many of these are Jewish or Catholic descended. I don't know if you went to a prep school, but they are colonized by Catholics, Jews, and Asians. There's a difference between institutionalism which you describe and ethnic identity.
3. Rome's expansion came under Roman leadership. The adoption of foreign elites slowed and halted territorial expansion. The integration of Gallic nobles had benefits and costs. It wasn't an unmitigated success.
4. Machiavelli denounces sending three excellent generals into battle vs one mediocre general. The principle is that singular mediocre leadership is more efficient than excellent divided leadership. This is game theory. This applies directly to the problem of divided identity. No empire with multi-cultural or multi-religious elites expands or survives. Generative cultures have singular leadership.
5. Ethnic colonization of Rome by North Africans, Middle Easterners, Celts, Germans, and Thracians occurred by taking up positions within existing institutions, not creating new ones.
I arguing against the dissident right position, which is that America is going to collapse in 20 years because of mass immigration of Mexicans. I don't believe that a minority white America will collapse. But I also argue that elite diversity is harmful:
Like Rome, America is not capable of making the severe adjustments needed. It is only useful insofar as it can help create a new global religion to succeed Christianity, or to introduce a new technological paradigm.
1. While the Mars, Walton, and Koch families aren't traditionally WASP and come from somewhat newer wealth, it's likely they have integrated into the WASP establishment both culturally and genetically to varying degrees through marriage and social assimilation, much as I have demonstrated with the Rockefellers. Without access to detailed family trees and marriage records of every family on the list, it's nearly impossible to quantify with any exactness the percentage of WASP heritage, particularly if we use a more loose definition that accounts for the high degree of assimilation and strategic intermarriage of successful families in adjacent Protestant groups that has been common among the American upper class. If we use a rigid definition of WASP as being only 100% Puritan-descended stock, then yes, the number may be much closer to what you suggest or even lower.
2. Your observation about prep school demographics is valid, but misses crucial aspects of institutional control - who manages the endowments, who sits on the boards, and who maintains the donor networks. These mechanisms of institutional power often remain more stable than student body demographics.
3. Regarding Rome's ability to expand under foreign elite leadership, consider Septimius Severus. Born to a Roman mother and a father from a wealthy Punic family in North Africa, Severus is considered the first provincial emperor as he was the first not only born in the provinces but from a provincial family of non-Italian origin. The borders of the empire expanded under his rule, adding Macedonia as a new province. This contradicts the assertion that Rome couldn't expand territory under integrated foreign elite leadership.
The typical dissident right position is that non-white immigration will inevitably lead to American collapse. The dissident right often simplistically attribute Rome's fall to "multiculturalism" without consideration for various other factors and theories. While your elite diversity argument is more nuanced, it doesn't seem to be completely at odds with this position.
My argument is that America has maintained a united elite with a WASP cultural and genetic core that has developed sophisticated mechanisms to integrate and assimilate new talent and energy - much as Rome did to avoid elite stagnation.
It was several centuries between Septimius's rule and the fall of the Western Empire. The ultimate effects, both negative and positive, of integration of foreign elites into Rome during that time remain open to interpretation and is an interesting historical question. I am open to different theories, but the popular reactionary conclusion that it was importation of foreigners (be it elite or slave) that brought down the empire is not overly convincing.
I argue that this selective and sophisticated integration of talented foreign elites allowed Rome to maintain its power and institutional continuity far longer than may have been possible otherwise and that America is doing the same.
Loads of interesting stuff in this article, but I think that it is dogged by a failure to define what you really mean by WASP. You write that 'the two biggest WASPs in America [are] Elon Musk and Donald Trump' but neither are WASPs according to the definition you use. Similarly, you write that the 2nd KKK was a WASP identity movement, but part of the point of the KKK was to efface the ethnic/cultural distinction between WASPs and Scot-Irish, and many of the most WASPy WASPs despised them and preferred Catholics/Jews. Thus, it's not really clear what WASP dominance means, or whether WASPs every conceived of this as an ideal or reality.
> This may seem irrelevant (who cares about a bunch of mountains? who even lives up there?)
Lord Shiva entered the chat. 🔱
> This belief was wrong. It was an error, a mistake on the part of WASPs. WASPs thought they were so smart that poor Italian, Irish, and Jewish day laborers would never threaten their supremacy. That was incorrect. The consequences of that inaccurate assessment was the death of the WASP elite. The “suicide” hypothesis can be thrown out.
What is your proposed solution for immigration? Should we just close the borders entirely for 40 years? That's something I've loosely advocated for before. Would that cripple the USA?
> I’m not referring to some kind of William Piece-style black vs. white vs. Hispanic race war, but rather an elite-level conflict between Catholics, Jews, and WASPs (and now Indians and Chinese).
Pretty sure that WASPs could pretty much win this conflict hands-down, if they tried a little bit (put some effort into a collective consciousness).
Well I don't consider Jews to be a different race than WASPs -- I think splitting humanity into more than 12 "races" loses meaning and you're speaking of ethnicity, not race. Jews, Irish, Italians, and WASPs all share the same North-East Eurasian ancestry, and very little differentiation existed between these groups existed 4,000 years ago. Jews didn't exist, and Indo-Europeans had only just began to establish themselves in western Europe. Early Jews were neighbors of the Hittites, and Esau (Jacob's brother) married Hittite women, and this is reflected in the R1b haplogroup. These populations have been mixing for a very long time.
Differentiations between Subsaharan Africans, Europeans, East Asians, Australian Aboriginals, and Native Americans existed 20,000 years ago, and in some cases perhaps even as early as 80,000 years ago. By confusing ethnicity and race, you are liable to blame biology for what is better explained by sociological, cultural, or religious factors. If all behavior were biologically fixed in this way, I would expect Palestinian Christians, Maltese, and Turks to occupy the same niche as Jews, since they all occupy a similar intermediary between European and Middle Eastern populations.
Yeah, he self-identifies as Christian, but is not Catholic. Thiel was raised Evangelical, and extensively studies Girard (who is Catholic), but himself is not.
I think the intermarriage thing is a huge reason for the WASP die-out ... the WASPs, by the end of the 1800s, were very interbred, which likely depressed intelligence and health at least somewhat. Many WASPs married ethnic whites, as you note, and it seems that these children were very likely to do well. Genetic diversity is an asset when it comes to health and intelligence; if you look at animal breeding, mutts tend to be a bit scrappier than purebreds. (My bias here is that I am a Southern Italian, Scots-Irish, and WASP mutt with a sprinkle of MENA and Jewish -- but in my family, the Italians, Scottish, and Irish started poor and within a couple generations everyone was middle class or higher, whereas the WASP lineages were downwardly mobile).
I think the mutts will continue to rise. This gets interesting though, because I've wondered if mixed ethnicity / mixed race people would tend more toward individualism and less toward family values and group loyalty (for a variety of reasons).
The glorification of the Italian mob is kind of insane.
I haven't seen any evidence of cousin marriage being high among American WASPs. If anything, the rate of cousin marriage among America WASPs was probably the lowest rate in recorded history. American WASPs were an extremely anti-nepotistic culture within the Hajnal Line. Describing WASP declining in terms of "inbreeding depression" is too biologically deterministic, and ignores the real phenomenon of outbreeding depression.
My Southern Italian grandfather and WASP grandmother ended up running away together and eloping because her parents freaked out that she was dating an Italian. When my grandmother tried to reason with them ("Aren't we all children of God?", my great-grandmother apparently said, "Yes, but you don't see a sparrow mating with a crow."*
*My mom was adopted so these are the adoptive grandparents. By birth, she's half Southern Italian and half Irish.
Religious endogamy doesn't cause inbreeding depression to the extent that pure WASPs have a lower IQ than non-pure WASPs. There is an effect called "brain drain," which explains why white populations in rural areas tend to have a lower IQ than whites in urban areas, but this isn't due to inbreeding depression on the part of rural whites. Correlation, not causation.
Africa is the most genetically diverse continent on the planet, but that doesn't correlate very well with intelligence or health. Ashkenazi Jews undergo genetic testing in Israel to avoid diseases like Tay Sachs, which proves that Ashkenazim are more inbred than WASPs. But Ashkenazim also have a higher IQ than average. Additionally, the Brahmin class of India are genetically segregated from the rest of Indian society, and they have higher academic performance than the rest of the more "genetically diverse" population.
America was founded by a group of WASPs who rejected the concept of "royal bloodlines," which made them much less likely to marry their cousins than the Italian or Spanish Catholic nobility.
The article you linked, by Jewish author Samuel Goldman, doesn't cite any sources for the claim that WASPs were all fucking their cousins. The idea that WASPs didn't work hard is contradicted by Max Weber's observation of the Protestant work ethic. The wealthiest country in history wasn't founded by being lazy. It also wasn't founded by black slaves performing manual labor, or Haiti would be much wealthier.
Samuel Goldman's thinly-veiled hatred of WASPs proves the point of my article: that non-WASPs resent WASPs for historical ethnic discrimination. They seek to moralize and blame the WASP for his own decline, saying that he deserves to be dethroned. Maybe this is so, but I don't think it was cousin fucking that took the WASP down. An objective conversation cannot be had while ignoring the real historical context and seething inter-ethnic hatreds and intergenerational conflict.
Biological claims should be backed up with data, especially when the claim being made is derogatory.
We are allowed to collectively shit on WASPs without any hesitation or fear of retribution. This is because WASPs are a defeated class, but also because they are polite and patient.
The WASP is not afforded the mystical moral protection of victimhood status. The success of the WASP, that he never allowed himself to be victimized by others, is attributed purely to luck, or inherited privilege. I don't think that the Mayflower passengers, the soldiers of King Philip's War, the Pioneers, or the Founders were just lucky or privileged.
Sorry for the delayed response, with a new baby I find it hard to find time to form a coherent thought let alone type one out.
I agree re correlation and "brain drain." I think that's probably a bigger factor than "genetic diversity" but genetic diversity is still a factor. I also agree it wasn't inbreeding that brought the WASPs down ... though by inbreeding I don't mean marrying one's cousins so much as affluent WASPs tended to marry other affluent WASPs (until recently) and so were fairly closely related. But marrying within groups, to extended family, was the norm for most of human existence across cultures. I can't recall where I read this right now, but I saw someone argue on Substack that the highest fertility rates were seen among people who were married to something like 3rd or 4th cousins. Someone implied that this was because this is genetically optimal, but I suspect it's more that this is roughly where the balance is struck between enough genetic diversity to produce healthy offspring, while still being more likely to be embedded in an extended family and culture that supports parents. A negative effect of high migration (which produces more mixed marriages and genetically diverse offspring) is that parents are more likely to raise children without the benefit of extended family tradition and support.
Regarding Africa, I believe that the "genetic diversity" there mostly describes the significant diversity between groups, in part because many groups were / are very isolated. So there wouldn't (necessarily) be a significant amount of genetic diversity within individuals.
I think it's a bit more useful to look at the WASPs as an extension of Germanic and Nordic cultures. At some point in the West, parenting practices kind of went haywire. It became not-unusual for wealthy Europeans (especially from within or descended from within the Hajnal Line) to off-load parenting onto poorer people (e.g. the practice of using slaves or poor women as wet nurses and nannies), who were often of a different ethnic background than the parents. I suspect this disrupts attachment, and it makes intuitive sense to me that in at least some children, these parenting practices (known loosely as "poisonous pedagogies", see Alice Miller's body of work) would increase out-group preferences and decrease family closeness. In addition, the colonies would disproportionately attract people who are not close to their families, place a lower value on family and culture, are ambitious, individualistic, adventurous etc (obviously this would not apply, or apply as much, to refugees and those fleeing severe poverty etc). As well, certain traits are selected for over many generations of wealth (and the ability to offload everyday tasks onto other people) and comfort -- the sort of hyper-focus that lends itself to incredible accomplishments in the sciences, for example, is more likely to develop when people don't have to worry about constant threats or their basic needs. Going back to Badcock and McGilchrist, "mechanistic" cognition and the left hemisphere are more likely to dominate under conditions of privilege, whereas "mentalistic" cognition and the right hemisphere are more necessary for survival. This could be a reason why wealth is associated with lower religiosity (spirituality lateralizes to the right hemisphere). IQ testing, academic success, and many white collar jobs all disproportionately skew toward mechanistic cognition.
A dysfunctional right hemisphere is associated with various mental illnesses (as well as autism spectrum disorder), poorer social connections, and dissociation from the body. I believe -- and have presented evidence on my Substack -- that various parenting practices that became popular in the Western world (going back to at least the 1600s, probably earlier) result in right hemisphere dysfunction because of what amounts to emotional neglect in the first three years of life.
I do think the decline of the WASP was largely a suicide. This isn't to say that there aren't things to admire about the WASPs, but I don't think it was a very healthy culture (in particular the attitude toward mothers and children) and it makes sense to me that WASPs would be drawn to other cultures, and to marrying non-WASPs.
Regarding "mutts" -- while I do think there's at least a slight average advantage of genetic diversity, correlational factors probably play a larger role. Either way, it seems we're trending toward a global elite of mixed-culture / race individuals. I'm a bit wary of this.
I'd love to go into this subject more but holiday and baby brain are draining me. Jewish history fascinates me (I'll just note that there seem to be a lot of very successful half or quarter Jews). I don't know nearly enough about the Brahmins.
We can measure genetic similarity via FST values and also via recessive diseases. The Amish, for example, had a small founding population, and have higher rates of blindness, 6-fingered babies, and other expressions of recessive diseases. WASPs have a large founding population and there's no indication that WASPs have a higher rate of recessive diseases than average.
I've also seen that people who are more ethnocentric (marry within their group) tend to have higher fertility, although WASPs today have a higher birth rate than Africans and Asians in America, despite reporting lower levels of ethnocentrism.
Within Subsaharan Africa, groups are not as isolated as Europeans or Asians because there are less mountain barriers than in Asia or Europe. The Bantu expansion means there is a continuous gene flow between Nigerians and South Africans without any barriers. By contrast, Europeans are isolated from North Africa by the Mediterranean, and the Caucasus mountain range limits gene flow between the Middle East and Europe. The Himalayas and Gobi Desert separate Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent from Southwest Asia and China. So Europeans and East Asians are much more genetically isolated than Subsaharan Africans, within individuals.
Somalians, for example, are extremely genetically mixed, with 40% of their ancestry from the Middle East, and 60% of their ancestry from SS Africa. Ethiopians are similar to Somalians in that they have a fairly even mixture of Middle Eastern and Subsaharan ancestry. The Malagasy people of Madagascar are an almost 50-50 split of Asian and African ancestry. Yemenis in the Middle East have the greatest percentage of SS ancestry. In Eurasia, the Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, and Turkmen peoples are a mix between European and Asian populations. None of these groups exhibit greater levels of health predicted by the "hybrid vigor" or "outbreeding vigor" hypothesis.
In fact, one of the most healthy people in the world are the Icelandic people, who are extremely genetically isolated. They are disproportionately overrepresented in academic achievement, weightlifting, powerlifting, and height. The average lifespan in Iceland is 82, which is much higher than any of these more genetically diverse countries. Japan, similarly, has a greater degree of genetic similarly, yet has great health and longevity. There is just no evidence for hybrid or outbreeding vigor. It does not create greater health, and all the studies on mixed race individuals show higher rates of physical disease and mental illness.
Hybrid vigor is pseudo-science derived from early Mendelian agricultural experiments, where different variations of plants mixed together produced better crops. Science discredits it, but it persists as "modern folk wisdom" and superstition. Of course, traditional peoples have never accepted the hybrid vigor as an actual piece of "folk wisdom," since they practice endogamy and caste systems.
Regarding the WASP American cognitive bias toward mechanistic cognition, I would think that cultures which granted social status according to test scores, like China, would think more mechanistically. I don't think WASPs had a more intense "nanny culture" than any other aristocratic culture in the world. In general, European peoples place a high value on the father-son relationship (Aeneas and Anchises, Telemachus and Odysseus). The father-son relationship is also depicted in Mahabharata in the relationship between Arjuna and his sons, Iravan and Abhimanyu.
By contrast, Islamic harem and Asian or African polygamy culture meant that rulers would have potentially hundreds of sons and be unable to care for each of them individually. The Jewish practice of monogamy and the importance of patrilineal succession between Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob also indicates that Jews share the European value of the father-son relationship. I don't agree that Europeans, or WASPs, are more distant from their children than other aristocratic cultures.
I also don't agree that WASPs have the highest levels of mental illness when compared with Africans or mixed race individuals. Europeans and Jews are probably more neurotic on average than Asians and Africans, but neuroticism is not the only form of mental illness. I am currently working on a 10 part series on mental health to explain neuroticism as a mental strategy, rather than as a mental illness.
Okay, you've convinced me! With the exception of the WASP parenting thing -- I have an essay about that which I'll drop below. The issues would have been primarily in the first three years and between mothers and extended family members and children, so your point about the importance of father-son relationships still holds up.
Funnily, when I was a kid I had a sense that my genes were in conflict with each other, which I attributed at the time to Southern Italian and Irish not getting along with the rest. Southern Italians are another good example of a genetically diverse population (ancestry mix includes Greek, Roman, Viking/Norman, Arab/MENA, Jewish, and more) who were very poor and, well, mafia-ridden. Though the reasons for both may have more to do with the area being historically highly colonized and resources extracted from the region.
"WASPs were mostly descendants of colonial-era merchants and professionals. If not so rich as Gilded Age industrialists, they inherited sufficient wealth to live in comfort without working too hard.
These roots were often sprung from New England, where WASPs faithfully sent their children to boarding school and college. Yet their headquarters was not Boston, by the late 19th century a mere provincial capital. WASPs pursued their ambitions in New York and Washington, where the real decisions were made.
This was a literally inbred society, whose core members were more or less cousins. Despite their reputation for snobbery, though, WASPs did not reject democracy. Instead, they aimed to help popular government reach its highest possibilities. Their ideal wasn't European nobility but aristocracy in its ancient Greek sense, meaning rule by the truly best."
Yes, I realize that cousin marriage was banned in Europe because of the Church, but I was under the impression that WASPs in the colonies were more inbred.
The Europeans within the Hajnal line (WEIRD populations) seem to be on average more mechanistic and "autistic" (using the term loosely) than the rest of the globe. (There's a handful of good books about this). My suspicion is that WASP + something else gives an edge. (Ashkenazi Jews are kind of a unique case here though).
While I think I've observed this in the people I know, it's also just possible that more educated / internationally inclined / open-minded / skilled people are more likely to marry out (*shrugs*).
I see ethnogenesis as the most likely outcome based on my observations of the upper middle class. Whites, Jews, Indians, and Chinese are all intermarrying in various amounts, and the distinct Asian racial identities are pretty much held up by immigration alone.
As an American who is descended from both William Bradford and Brewster. As well as a Confederate Captain who was most likely of Ulster Scots ancestry and from Protestant Savoyards who settled in the Carolinas during the 1690s I appreciate this. The Dissident Right resent my ancestors for not being heckin Basederino TradCaths.
Fantastic article. I always emphasize the difference in ethnic homogeneity between Canadians and Americans in my work, and this in my view is one reason reason Canadian heritage is worth preserving. An unintentional consequence of Canada’s inherently reactionary and conservative nature, is that it never properly adopted liberalism. It’s half-assed implementation of multiculturalism combined with the later statehood and historically stricter immigration towards white ethnics ended up preserving it.
I dont buy all "the wasp are dead" narrative. Certainly they arent as influential as a century ago, but they seem to still be highly overrepresented in politics, business, etc. Its hard to know exactly how much because nearly all statistics lump all whites together, but there certainly is a different between the average polish-american and anglo-american.
Also, the KKK was not wasp at all. Their base of support was southern (scott-irish) evangelical whites.
Not the second Klan in the 1920s. It had a heavy base of support among the beleaguered working class anglos of the mid-west. Michigan and Indiana still have the highest rates of Klan membership of any state in the country.
Have you read Michael Knox Beran's book? I believe he identifies Vietnam (i.e. fumbled political legitimacy) as the end of the WASPS rather than the expansion of immigrant communities (and subsequent machine politics and organized crime) from Southern and Eastern Europe.
Alternatively, Adrian Wooldridge argues WASPs largely voluntarily surrendered political power by creating the modern meritocracy.
I think your thesis here believes too much in the inter-ethnic conflict and the relationship between traits and ethno-cultural groups. WASPs themselves, as an American phenomenon, are themselves an ethnogenesis that isn't only British and there were of course substantial regional differences between WASP elite. For isntance, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun were all dissimilar WASP elite.
I'm open to the idea that Vietnam was a part of the downfall of WASP authority, and also that there was a voluntary surrender. But what precipitated these later events was certainly the immigration of alternative elites.
I agree that all ethnicities, not just WASPs, arise from ethnogenesis, and were composed of Angles, Saxons, Normans, with Celtic and Germanic roots, influenced by Hebrew, Greek, and Roman traditions. And there was a huge difference between Anglicans and Quakers, northern industrialists and southern planters.
John Calhoun was Scots-Irish, however. It's not accurate to call him a WASP under the strict definition, where 90% of the founders were non-Irish WASPs. The south was much more Scots-Irish than the north. Albion's Seed is useful as a reference here -- peak WASP is south-east England, between London and Cambridge.
I think a working definition of WASP which excludes Calhoun is too narrow. Hackett Fischer would point out that the Scotch-Irish label is a bit of a misnomer and the the fourth migration of borderlanders were still white mostly English Protestants.
However, i do think it's correct to draw a distinction between the stereotypical WASP sensibility, and the regional culture(s) of America South of the Mason-Dixon.
I'm also not sure we can say that immigration was the sole major driver when different parts of the settler/deep root effects persist while others decay. Or I guess the immigration itself doesn't reveal why the WASP regime became so brittle. It's a complex social process that we can hence tell a lot of different plausible/persuasive narratives about.
I liked the piece - provocative. Just offering a hopefully useful critique.
Like most forms of identity, there are a series of concentric circles around a very narrow and limited group of people. Most of the Founders were Freemasonic WASPs, and distinct from the Puritans and even the Quakers. There were also ideological disagreements between founders, like Franklin, Hamilton, Paine, and Jefferson. A lot of the mythology of the WASP elite is retroactive and retrospective. Washington could have established a monarchy, but he seems to have been infertile. Things could have gone very differently, but mythology imagines that "things were always destined to be this way."
I think an analysis of WASP downfall would benefit from Machiavelli's writing on Rome:
"From the readiness wherewith the Romans conferred the right of citizenship on foreigners, there came to be so many new citizens in Rome, and possessed of so large a share of the suffrage [voting rights], that the government itself began to alter, forsaking those courses which it was accustomed to follow, and growing estranged from the men to whom it had before looked for guidance. Which being observed by Quintius Fabius when censor, he caused all those new citizens to be classed in four tribes, that being reduced within this narrow limit they might not have it in their power to corrupt the entire state."
Really enjoyed the article, however I think your analysis may overlook the subtle but ongoing influence and endurance of established old money WASP families like the Rockefellers, Du Ponts, Mellons, etc.
Unlike today's celebrity politicians and super-billionaire tycoons like Musk and Bezos, who dominate headlines, these older lineages have cultivated a patrician style of wealth and influence dispersed across many foundations, trusts, political and corporate boards, and policy networks.
Their approach to power has always been more understated and diffuse, circulating through high-level policy organizations (Council on Foreign Relations), philanthropic entities (Rockefeller Foundation), premier cultural institutions (museums, universities, think tanks), and centuries-old social networks. You are correct that over time, these institutions have partially “de-ethnicized,” diluting any overt identification with an ancestral Protestant lineage, yet the underlying influence mechanisms and connections remain very much intact.
This more understated, institutional approach means the old WASP elite retains significant behind-the-scenes influence—just not in a way that’s as publicly visible or tied to individual celebrity.
The Mellons were Ulster Scots, not WASP proper. Du Pont is French. Rockefellers were of German, Ulster Scot, and Huguenot ancestry. The name was originally *Roquefeuille*, which was then Germanized when they moved to Germany. The Rockefeller Foundation was not founded by WASPs, and it still is not WASP run.
The actual WASP aristocracy were descended from the Mayflower passengers, Quakers, and Episcopalians. They made up a majority of Freemasons and Founding Fathers of the Constitution.
Only 8/56 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Irish or Scots Irish. Charles Carroll was the most prominent among them; being the only Catholic, he was crucial in diplomatic efforts with the French Canadians.
The decline of Freemasonry after 1945 was a significant blow to WASP cultural, political, and financial influence. In my article, I point to the financial scandals of the 1960s-1980s as the nail in the coffin for WASP financial dominance. This doesn't meant that all WASPs were killed or put into poverty, but that they are no longer the undisputed dominant financial power that they were for 300 years prior.
Ulster Scots are Scottish Presbyterians, not Anglican/Episcopalian/Congregationalist. This sounds like a petty difference in view of racialization (black vs white), but it matters in terms of lineage, history, and pedigree. WASPs were dominant through 1848, at which point they started to encounter competition from French, German, Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants. Elite immigration of Germans in 1848 significantly impacted the Civil War, in that left-wing agitators from Germany promoted abolitionism and led the Union Army as generals.
The Ulster Scots (Scots-Irish) were disproportionately represented in America's military and populist movements. Andrew Jackson is a good example of the difference between WASP and Ulster Scots. Despite racial narratives retroactively applied that "these were all just white people," America has never been entirely WASP or ethnically homogeneous. Jackson was disruptive and conflicted with the Supreme Court as a symbol of WASP respectability. But despite losing control of Jackson's genocidal excesses, the WASPs were always in control of America's finances. This isn't a narrative about who is "better or worse," but an analysis of real ethnic and identitarian differences.
The Walton family aren't WASP proper, since they are Presbyterians, meaning Scottish or Ulster Scots descended. None of the Mayflower passengers were Presbyterians, although many of the later Puritans were Presbyterians. It's sort of confusing, and perhaps too pedantic in a post-WASP era to make these kind of distinctions. But most presidents have had real WASP ancestry. Even Obama was descended from WASP Mayflower passengers. Trump is exceptional in having no WASP Mayflower ancestry.
Here's the board of the CFR: Rubenstein, Effron, Miscik, Froman, Beim, Mashayekji, Brennen, Burwell, Chenault, Coles (black), Conde, Flournoy, Fraser, Freidheim, Gorman, Hadley, Hamburg, Hurd (black?), Kaye, Manyika, McRaven, Muzinich, Napolitano, O'Sullivan, Parekh, Phillips (black?), Plepler, Porat, Jobs (wife of steve?), Reif, Silver (Asian?), Taiclet, Townsend, Travis (Black?), Zakaria, Zegart, Greenberg, Gaass, Hills, Rubin.
I'm not going to count the number of WASPs, but they are clearly not a majority:
https://www.cfr.org/board-directors
Regarding institutions, yes, the Constitution is a WASP document, and most of the structures, laws, corporations, customs, traditions, traditional music, and cultural hallmarks of America are WASP in origin. I am not concerned about blood purity, but identity. There are very few people at the top who identify as purely WASP anymore; this was not the case in 1847, however. The decline was slow, and took around 120 years for WASPs to be relegated to the sidelines. Dilution is the correct term. It was a very different process from a kinetic war where the winning side just kills the losers, like the Romans taking Carthage.
Timeline:
from 1776 to 1847, the country was largely divided between a WASP aristocracy and an Ulster Scots minority, with the addition of some Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, Dutch, Swedish, and German Protestants. There was some immigration from Catholics, which led to the founding of the Know Nothing Party in 1844, but this immigration was not yet affecting elite composition.
After 1848, leftist German elites founded newspapers and lent militant political support to abolitionism, which exacerbated the tensions leading to Civil War. After the war, Jewish and Catholic immigrants began to dominate the Democratic Party in northern cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Detroit, and New York.
As this occurred, the KKK reformed itself from a Democratic institution of the South into a national-populist identitarian movement of all WASPs. In Indiana, 15-25% of adult white men were members of the KKK. The Klan lent its support to elite anthropologists like Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant, who helped pass the 1924 Immigration Act.
The Klan was destroyed in 1925 by the murder and rape scandal surrounding DC Stephenson. It rapidly declined, and the Republican Party was destroyed in 1929 by the Great Depression. This allowed FDR to rule for 12 years unopposed. Although FDR was a WASP, he was sympathetic to communism and the Northern Democratic coalition between Catholic and Jewish immigrants. The WASPs appointed by FDR to the Supreme Court were selected for their ideological leanings against segregation.
Brown v. Board was directed against black segregation, but the ultimately achievement of Civil Rights was to ban discrimination against Catholics and Jews, which was practiced by WASP country clubs. Catholics and Jews stood firmly behind Civil Rights legislation for this self-interested reason. From 1965-1985, WASPs were overtaken in the banking sector. John Paul Stevens was the last WASP to serve on the Supreme Court, in 2009.
Thank you for that historical detail which is interesting indeed.
I do, however, think the categorization of families like the Rockefellers and Mellons as definitively "non-WASP" oversimplifies the complex patterns of marriage and cultural assimilation that has characterized America's traditional upper class.
Looking at the Rockerfellers - while John D. Sr.'s paternal line had German and French Huguenot roots as you state, he married Laura Spelman, who came from a prominent Puritan New England family. Their children were thus as much Puritan-descended as they were German/Huguenot. The family thoroughly integrated into WASP social networks, educational patterns, and institutional structures. By the second generation, they were practically indistinguishable from "pure" WASP families in terms of cultural practices, social connections, and institutional affiliations.
John D. Jr., who founded the Rockerfeller Foundation along with his father and a family business associate, married Abby Aldrich, of solid New England Anglo stock who descended from John Winthrop, William Wickenden, and Roger Williams, and had 6 children. By the third generation, we are already seeing >50-75% WASP admixture for this line of the Rockerfellers.
This pattern of assimilation through strategic marriages and cultural adoption was common among successful "non-WASP" Protestant families in the 19th century. Rather than maintaining rigid ethnic distinctions, these families often blended into and reinforced existing WASP networks and institutions. The Mellons and Du Ponts, despite their Ulster Scots and French origins, similarly married into established WASP families and adopted their cultural and institutional patterns.
The distinction between Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and other Protestant denominations, while historically significant, became increasingly fluid among the upper class through intermarriage and social integration. What emerged was less about strict ethnic or denominational identity and more about participation in shared institutions, social networks, and cultural practices that has characterized America's Protestant establishment.
While I agree that the post-WWII era saw significant changes in the composition of American elites, particularly in finance and entertainment, I think it's important not to underestimate the resilience and adaptability of these old-money elite WASP networks. Their power may have become more diffuse and less explicitly ethnic over time, but the institutional structures and social networks they built have and continue to exercise significant influence, often incorporating and assimilating successful families from various Protestant backgrounds (and more recently Jewish and Catholic) into their fold.
I would argue this pattern of assimilation, through marriage and cultural adoption is actually a source of American WASP elite resilience rather than decline, allowing for the incorporation of new wealth, blood, and vigor while maintaining institutional continuity, cultural patterns, and genetic quality.
The shift away from overt WASP identity might be seen not as decline but as tactical adaptation by presenting as "neutral" institutions rather than explicitly WASP ones, these power centers may actually increase their effectiveness and longevity. This suggests that rather than a straight decline of WASP power, we might be seeing its evolution into more subtle but still significant forms of influence - less visible but still deeply embedded in America's institutional framework.
I agree that the upper class, including Catholics and Jews, assimilated into WASP norms, and in many cases they continue to do so. The business suit was invented by WASPs, and everyone wears it. My point is to contrast the ethnic lineage of the founders, which was unambiguously WASP, with the mixed and complicated heritage of later elites. I am trying to demonstrate that this mixing was stage #1 of a gradual process of ethnic dilution, and that norms are distinct from ancestral identities. People will fight for their Fatherland; they do not fight for the business suit as a "norm." The adoption of norms is evidence of a legacy of power; but it is not a source of continued power.
I don't see evidence of secret WASP elites, but I've heard these anecdotal claims. Millionaire networks aren't effective in terms of leadership. They can live nicely without having to work at all, as the Southern Planter aristocracy did, but that kind of useless elite is always overpowered by an energetic and ambitious elite. A millionaire, historically, would be considered a "petty noble." If this petty nobility was 90% of the nobility, as it was in Norman England, it would have significant weight. But when it is divided against 30% Catholic and 30% Jewish and now new Asian competitors, it is negligible in political effect.
There are probably studies which have been conducted demonstrating the WASP percentage of various sectors of the economy, including boards and trusts, and I'd be interested to see them. My prediction is that WASPs account for less than 30% of these networks. I would not be surprised if WASPs account for less than 10% of some sectors of the economy, such as American billionaires, tech companies, bankers, and financiers.
It's not accurate to equate all Protestants with WASPs. The best measurement would be Episcopalian adherence, which in 1981, was only 14% of congress:
nytimes.com/1981/04/28/us/the-episcopalians-an-american-elite-with-roots-going-back-to-jamestown.html
I checked with Grok for the top 100 billionaires: 5% Episcopalian, 3% Presbyterian, and 1% Methodist, with 10% total being mainline (WASP adjacent) Protestant. For all Protestants, it's 20%. Well under my 30% estimate. Jews and Catholics are much more organized and important for determining America's direction.
My second argument is that this "increasing fluidity" you describe is what destroyed the WASP and made mass immigration more tolerable. If there's no distinction between WASP and Scottish, what's the difference between WASP and German? And between a German Protestant and a Catholic? Between a Catholic and a Jew? When an ethnicity cannot clearly distinguish itself, and it becomes intermixed, it loses its identity. The same is recounted in the Tanakh, where the prophets warn Israel against intermixing. And I am convinced that it is the same in the history of Rome.
Where my point gets confused is with those white nationalists who believe that WASP identity has been diluted to the point of being "whiteness," and that this whiteness has achieved the utility and function of the original WASP identity. But that's not how dilution works. Identities are formed not by dilution, but through ethnogenesis. Ethnogenesis requires the trauma of war or religious conversion, but these are not sufficient conditions. Rome had both war and religious conversion, but this did not result in the strengthening of the diluted Roman identity.
This kind of coping also occurred with the Roman Catholic church electing Italian nobility to the papacy, so that Rome continued to exert a "subtle influence." You're making a similar kind of argument, but there is a real and measurable difference between a self-confident ethnicity which rules from the front and a subtle cabal which rules "implicitly." When Rome was united, it expanded the use of Latin, for example. The Catholic Church did not spread the use of spoken Latin into Russia, or Greece, or Germany. In fact, the use of Latin declined from where it had previously been spoken, with the Balkans being invaded by Slavic speakers. Where Latin did flourish was in the upper classes as an international language and the language of science, although it was displaced by French after 1539.
We are not yet at that point of Roman collapse in America; these are processes which occur over centuries. But a tactical retreat is really just an unambiguous loss of power. The most ascendant ethnicity in America right now is the Indian, and I think that will accelerate over the next 20 years. Not a WASP renaissance.
Patrilineage is important. Names matter. So Augustus took the name Caesar, he adopted it. If Vivek changes his name to Victor... Explicit cultural power is meaningful. The Spartans were Spartan; ruling by subtle methods entirely changes the structure and nature of the state, which limits and in some cases destroys its expansive ability. This is spoken of by Machiavelli, in his discussion of the centrality of religion, custom, ancestry, and colonies. There is a difference between leading from the front and back-deals from the shadows. One is clearly preferred -- ask the Jews who have been subject to endless persecutions, despite always performing at an elite level economically, which is preferred.
First, your statistics about individual billionaires highlight an important methodological issue: focusing on individual wealth rather than family wealth can significantly distort our understanding of elite power structures. Old Protestant establishment wealth is often distributed across extended family networks through complex arrangements of trusts, family offices, foundations, and holding companies, rather than concentrated in highly visible individual fortunes. This structure of distributed family wealth rather than individual fortune is itself an elite WASP cultural pattern, emphasizing long-term stewardship over individual accumulation.
Instead, consider the list of America's Richest Families: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2020/12/17/billion-dollar-dynasties-these-are-the-richest-families-in-america/
These families may not appear prominently on individual billionaire lists, but their aggregate family wealth, distributed across multiple branches and generations, remains substantial and in the many billions.
Additionally, statistics about Episcopalian representation undercounts WASP influence by not accounting for other Protestant denominations (but certainly not all as you state) that became integrated into the WASP establishment and misses how many of these elites have become secular while maintaining their cultural identity. Many elite families who are technically "none" or "unaffiliated" still attend traditional prep schools, join historically WASP social clubs, participate in debutante traditions, summer in traditional WASP communities, maintain family foundations, and serve on cultural institution boards.
Regarding the "dilution" leading to downfall argument, your comparison to Rome might actually support the opposite conclusion. Rome's remarkable longevity and resilience as an empire came in large part from its sophisticated ability to assimilate foreign elites into Roman cultural, political, and social networks - the "circulation of elites."
As mentioned in your article, consider how Rome successfully integrated Gallic nobles into the Senate. absorbed Greek intellectual and cultural traditions while maintaining Roman institutional frameworks, had emperors from Hispanic (Trajan, Hadrian), African (Septimius Severus), and Arabian (Philip the Arab) backgrounds who thoroughly adopted and championed Roman identity and interests, and maintained cultural and institutional continuity even while incorporating new blood and talent into its ruling class.
This integration and circulation of elites was a source of Roman strength and adaptability, not decline I would argue. It allowed Rome to tap into new sources of talent and energy while maintaining its core institutional and cultural identity.
Similarly, the American Protestant establishment's ability to selectively incorporate talented families from various backgrounds (like the Rockefellers) while maintaining institutional and cultural continuity can be seen as a source of resilience rather than weakness. The fact that John D. Rockefeller married into Puritan stock (Laura Spelman) and his son married Abby Aldrich (descended from John Winthrop) shows how new talent was systematically integrated into existing networks and bloodlines. Descendants from that line (Justin and Wyatt Rockerfeller) sit on the board of trustees for the Rockerfeller Brothers Fund to this day.
Far from diluting Roman power, this ability to selectively assimilate foreign elites while maintaining Roman cultural and institutional patterns was crucial to Rome's extraordinary longevity and I would argue is similarly the case for American WASP power in the present day even if it is no longer explicitly ethnic.
Your assessment of Indian ascendancy, while noting an important trend, seems premature. While Indians have achieved impressive success in certain sectors, particularly tech and medicine, this may represent more of a diversification of certain elite circles rather than a wholesale displacement of existing power structures. Consider that much of this success has come through established channels - elite universities, traditional professional paths, and existing institutional frameworks created and maintained by the Protestant establishment. Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy have largely operated within these traditional institutions rather than new ones.
I will agree the WASP elite has tactically retreated from the public eye in recent decades, that is for certain, particularly during the rise of populist and reactionary politics. Clearly, the goal is to maintain power and influence while avoiding public backlash from the masses. My position is that this is a sophisticated adaptation to changing political conditions rather than a sign of decline and weakness, but ultimately I think the effectiveness of this strategy remains to be seen.
1. Mars, Walton, and Koch are the top three, and they aren't WASP. It's a quantitative question. The way to settle this question is just to come up with a list of names and label each one's heritage. I am open to the idea that 10% to 30% of these families are WASPs, depending on whether you define WASP strictly or loosely. I was working on this project and it is part of my 30 drafts but you have to spend at least 5 minutes on each person, and there are hundreds of people to research, so it's quite monotonous and takes hours... ChatGPT has been very inaccurate so far in providing me the lists I need.
2. Regarding "none" and "unaffiliated" just as many of these are Jewish or Catholic descended. I don't know if you went to a prep school, but they are colonized by Catholics, Jews, and Asians. There's a difference between institutionalism which you describe and ethnic identity.
3. Rome's expansion came under Roman leadership. The adoption of foreign elites slowed and halted territorial expansion. The integration of Gallic nobles had benefits and costs. It wasn't an unmitigated success.
4. Machiavelli denounces sending three excellent generals into battle vs one mediocre general. The principle is that singular mediocre leadership is more efficient than excellent divided leadership. This is game theory. This applies directly to the problem of divided identity. No empire with multi-cultural or multi-religious elites expands or survives. Generative cultures have singular leadership.
5. Ethnic colonization of Rome by North Africans, Middle Easterners, Celts, Germans, and Thracians occurred by taking up positions within existing institutions, not creating new ones.
I arguing against the dissident right position, which is that America is going to collapse in 20 years because of mass immigration of Mexicans. I don't believe that a minority white America will collapse. But I also argue that elite diversity is harmful:
https://deepleft.substack.com/p/elite-immigration
I argue that multi-identity states are only sustainable under a united elite:
https://deepleft.substack.com/p/spartan-arabia-and-filipino-helots
Like Rome, America is not capable of making the severe adjustments needed. It is only useful insofar as it can help create a new global religion to succeed Christianity, or to introduce a new technological paradigm.
1. While the Mars, Walton, and Koch families aren't traditionally WASP and come from somewhat newer wealth, it's likely they have integrated into the WASP establishment both culturally and genetically to varying degrees through marriage and social assimilation, much as I have demonstrated with the Rockefellers. Without access to detailed family trees and marriage records of every family on the list, it's nearly impossible to quantify with any exactness the percentage of WASP heritage, particularly if we use a more loose definition that accounts for the high degree of assimilation and strategic intermarriage of successful families in adjacent Protestant groups that has been common among the American upper class. If we use a rigid definition of WASP as being only 100% Puritan-descended stock, then yes, the number may be much closer to what you suggest or even lower.
2. Your observation about prep school demographics is valid, but misses crucial aspects of institutional control - who manages the endowments, who sits on the boards, and who maintains the donor networks. These mechanisms of institutional power often remain more stable than student body demographics.
3. Regarding Rome's ability to expand under foreign elite leadership, consider Septimius Severus. Born to a Roman mother and a father from a wealthy Punic family in North Africa, Severus is considered the first provincial emperor as he was the first not only born in the provinces but from a provincial family of non-Italian origin. The borders of the empire expanded under his rule, adding Macedonia as a new province. This contradicts the assertion that Rome couldn't expand territory under integrated foreign elite leadership.
The typical dissident right position is that non-white immigration will inevitably lead to American collapse. The dissident right often simplistically attribute Rome's fall to "multiculturalism" without consideration for various other factors and theories. While your elite diversity argument is more nuanced, it doesn't seem to be completely at odds with this position.
My argument is that America has maintained a united elite with a WASP cultural and genetic core that has developed sophisticated mechanisms to integrate and assimilate new talent and energy - much as Rome did to avoid elite stagnation.
It was several centuries between Septimius's rule and the fall of the Western Empire. The ultimate effects, both negative and positive, of integration of foreign elites into Rome during that time remain open to interpretation and is an interesting historical question. I am open to different theories, but the popular reactionary conclusion that it was importation of foreigners (be it elite or slave) that brought down the empire is not overly convincing.
I argue that this selective and sophisticated integration of talented foreign elites allowed Rome to maintain its power and institutional continuity far longer than may have been possible otherwise and that America is doing the same.
Loads of interesting stuff in this article, but I think that it is dogged by a failure to define what you really mean by WASP. You write that 'the two biggest WASPs in America [are] Elon Musk and Donald Trump' but neither are WASPs according to the definition you use. Similarly, you write that the 2nd KKK was a WASP identity movement, but part of the point of the KKK was to efface the ethnic/cultural distinction between WASPs and Scot-Irish, and many of the most WASPy WASPs despised them and preferred Catholics/Jews. Thus, it's not really clear what WASP dominance means, or whether WASPs every conceived of this as an ideal or reality.
> This may seem irrelevant (who cares about a bunch of mountains? who even lives up there?)
Lord Shiva entered the chat. 🔱
> This belief was wrong. It was an error, a mistake on the part of WASPs. WASPs thought they were so smart that poor Italian, Irish, and Jewish day laborers would never threaten their supremacy. That was incorrect. The consequences of that inaccurate assessment was the death of the WASP elite. The “suicide” hypothesis can be thrown out.
What is your proposed solution for immigration? Should we just close the borders entirely for 40 years? That's something I've loosely advocated for before. Would that cripple the USA?
> I’m not referring to some kind of William Piece-style black vs. white vs. Hispanic race war, but rather an elite-level conflict between Catholics, Jews, and WASPs (and now Indians and Chinese).
Pretty sure that WASPs could pretty much win this conflict hands-down, if they tried a little bit (put some effort into a collective consciousness).
What killed WASP? It was RAID - Racially Aggravated Internationalist Diaspora.
Well I don't consider Jews to be a different race than WASPs -- I think splitting humanity into more than 12 "races" loses meaning and you're speaking of ethnicity, not race. Jews, Irish, Italians, and WASPs all share the same North-East Eurasian ancestry, and very little differentiation existed between these groups existed 4,000 years ago. Jews didn't exist, and Indo-Europeans had only just began to establish themselves in western Europe. Early Jews were neighbors of the Hittites, and Esau (Jacob's brother) married Hittite women, and this is reflected in the R1b haplogroup. These populations have been mixing for a very long time.
Differentiations between Subsaharan Africans, Europeans, East Asians, Australian Aboriginals, and Native Americans existed 20,000 years ago, and in some cases perhaps even as early as 80,000 years ago. By confusing ethnicity and race, you are liable to blame biology for what is better explained by sociological, cultural, or religious factors. If all behavior were biologically fixed in this way, I would expect Palestinian Christians, Maltese, and Turks to occupy the same niche as Jews, since they all occupy a similar intermediary between European and Middle Eastern populations.
DeepLeftAnalysis asks, Who killed the wasp?
It was Orkin.
On what planet is Peter Thiel Catholic?
(The sexy gay planet.)
Yeah, he self-identifies as Christian, but is not Catholic. Thiel was raised Evangelical, and extensively studies Girard (who is Catholic), but himself is not.
I think the intermarriage thing is a huge reason for the WASP die-out ... the WASPs, by the end of the 1800s, were very interbred, which likely depressed intelligence and health at least somewhat. Many WASPs married ethnic whites, as you note, and it seems that these children were very likely to do well. Genetic diversity is an asset when it comes to health and intelligence; if you look at animal breeding, mutts tend to be a bit scrappier than purebreds. (My bias here is that I am a Southern Italian, Scots-Irish, and WASP mutt with a sprinkle of MENA and Jewish -- but in my family, the Italians, Scottish, and Irish started poor and within a couple generations everyone was middle class or higher, whereas the WASP lineages were downwardly mobile).
I think the mutts will continue to rise. This gets interesting though, because I've wondered if mixed ethnicity / mixed race people would tend more toward individualism and less toward family values and group loyalty (for a variety of reasons).
The glorification of the Italian mob is kind of insane.
I haven't seen any evidence of cousin marriage being high among American WASPs. If anything, the rate of cousin marriage among America WASPs was probably the lowest rate in recorded history. American WASPs were an extremely anti-nepotistic culture within the Hajnal Line. Describing WASP declining in terms of "inbreeding depression" is too biologically deterministic, and ignores the real phenomenon of outbreeding depression.
My Southern Italian grandfather and WASP grandmother ended up running away together and eloping because her parents freaked out that she was dating an Italian. When my grandmother tried to reason with them ("Aren't we all children of God?", my great-grandmother apparently said, "Yes, but you don't see a sparrow mating with a crow."*
*My mom was adopted so these are the adoptive grandparents. By birth, she's half Southern Italian and half Irish.
Religious endogamy doesn't cause inbreeding depression to the extent that pure WASPs have a lower IQ than non-pure WASPs. There is an effect called "brain drain," which explains why white populations in rural areas tend to have a lower IQ than whites in urban areas, but this isn't due to inbreeding depression on the part of rural whites. Correlation, not causation.
Africa is the most genetically diverse continent on the planet, but that doesn't correlate very well with intelligence or health. Ashkenazi Jews undergo genetic testing in Israel to avoid diseases like Tay Sachs, which proves that Ashkenazim are more inbred than WASPs. But Ashkenazim also have a higher IQ than average. Additionally, the Brahmin class of India are genetically segregated from the rest of Indian society, and they have higher academic performance than the rest of the more "genetically diverse" population.
America was founded by a group of WASPs who rejected the concept of "royal bloodlines," which made them much less likely to marry their cousins than the Italian or Spanish Catholic nobility.
The article you linked, by Jewish author Samuel Goldman, doesn't cite any sources for the claim that WASPs were all fucking their cousins. The idea that WASPs didn't work hard is contradicted by Max Weber's observation of the Protestant work ethic. The wealthiest country in history wasn't founded by being lazy. It also wasn't founded by black slaves performing manual labor, or Haiti would be much wealthier.
Samuel Goldman's thinly-veiled hatred of WASPs proves the point of my article: that non-WASPs resent WASPs for historical ethnic discrimination. They seek to moralize and blame the WASP for his own decline, saying that he deserves to be dethroned. Maybe this is so, but I don't think it was cousin fucking that took the WASP down. An objective conversation cannot be had while ignoring the real historical context and seething inter-ethnic hatreds and intergenerational conflict.
Biological claims should be backed up with data, especially when the claim being made is derogatory.
We are allowed to collectively shit on WASPs without any hesitation or fear of retribution. This is because WASPs are a defeated class, but also because they are polite and patient.
The WASP is not afforded the mystical moral protection of victimhood status. The success of the WASP, that he never allowed himself to be victimized by others, is attributed purely to luck, or inherited privilege. I don't think that the Mayflower passengers, the soldiers of King Philip's War, the Pioneers, or the Founders were just lucky or privileged.
Sorry for the delayed response, with a new baby I find it hard to find time to form a coherent thought let alone type one out.
I agree re correlation and "brain drain." I think that's probably a bigger factor than "genetic diversity" but genetic diversity is still a factor. I also agree it wasn't inbreeding that brought the WASPs down ... though by inbreeding I don't mean marrying one's cousins so much as affluent WASPs tended to marry other affluent WASPs (until recently) and so were fairly closely related. But marrying within groups, to extended family, was the norm for most of human existence across cultures. I can't recall where I read this right now, but I saw someone argue on Substack that the highest fertility rates were seen among people who were married to something like 3rd or 4th cousins. Someone implied that this was because this is genetically optimal, but I suspect it's more that this is roughly where the balance is struck between enough genetic diversity to produce healthy offspring, while still being more likely to be embedded in an extended family and culture that supports parents. A negative effect of high migration (which produces more mixed marriages and genetically diverse offspring) is that parents are more likely to raise children without the benefit of extended family tradition and support.
Regarding Africa, I believe that the "genetic diversity" there mostly describes the significant diversity between groups, in part because many groups were / are very isolated. So there wouldn't (necessarily) be a significant amount of genetic diversity within individuals.
I think it's a bit more useful to look at the WASPs as an extension of Germanic and Nordic cultures. At some point in the West, parenting practices kind of went haywire. It became not-unusual for wealthy Europeans (especially from within or descended from within the Hajnal Line) to off-load parenting onto poorer people (e.g. the practice of using slaves or poor women as wet nurses and nannies), who were often of a different ethnic background than the parents. I suspect this disrupts attachment, and it makes intuitive sense to me that in at least some children, these parenting practices (known loosely as "poisonous pedagogies", see Alice Miller's body of work) would increase out-group preferences and decrease family closeness. In addition, the colonies would disproportionately attract people who are not close to their families, place a lower value on family and culture, are ambitious, individualistic, adventurous etc (obviously this would not apply, or apply as much, to refugees and those fleeing severe poverty etc). As well, certain traits are selected for over many generations of wealth (and the ability to offload everyday tasks onto other people) and comfort -- the sort of hyper-focus that lends itself to incredible accomplishments in the sciences, for example, is more likely to develop when people don't have to worry about constant threats or their basic needs. Going back to Badcock and McGilchrist, "mechanistic" cognition and the left hemisphere are more likely to dominate under conditions of privilege, whereas "mentalistic" cognition and the right hemisphere are more necessary for survival. This could be a reason why wealth is associated with lower religiosity (spirituality lateralizes to the right hemisphere). IQ testing, academic success, and many white collar jobs all disproportionately skew toward mechanistic cognition.
A dysfunctional right hemisphere is associated with various mental illnesses (as well as autism spectrum disorder), poorer social connections, and dissociation from the body. I believe -- and have presented evidence on my Substack -- that various parenting practices that became popular in the Western world (going back to at least the 1600s, probably earlier) result in right hemisphere dysfunction because of what amounts to emotional neglect in the first three years of life.
I do think the decline of the WASP was largely a suicide. This isn't to say that there aren't things to admire about the WASPs, but I don't think it was a very healthy culture (in particular the attitude toward mothers and children) and it makes sense to me that WASPs would be drawn to other cultures, and to marrying non-WASPs.
Regarding "mutts" -- while I do think there's at least a slight average advantage of genetic diversity, correlational factors probably play a larger role. Either way, it seems we're trending toward a global elite of mixed-culture / race individuals. I'm a bit wary of this.
I'd love to go into this subject more but holiday and baby brain are draining me. Jewish history fascinates me (I'll just note that there seem to be a lot of very successful half or quarter Jews). I don't know nearly enough about the Brahmins.
We can measure genetic similarity via FST values and also via recessive diseases. The Amish, for example, had a small founding population, and have higher rates of blindness, 6-fingered babies, and other expressions of recessive diseases. WASPs have a large founding population and there's no indication that WASPs have a higher rate of recessive diseases than average.
I've also seen that people who are more ethnocentric (marry within their group) tend to have higher fertility, although WASPs today have a higher birth rate than Africans and Asians in America, despite reporting lower levels of ethnocentrism.
Within Subsaharan Africa, groups are not as isolated as Europeans or Asians because there are less mountain barriers than in Asia or Europe. The Bantu expansion means there is a continuous gene flow between Nigerians and South Africans without any barriers. By contrast, Europeans are isolated from North Africa by the Mediterranean, and the Caucasus mountain range limits gene flow between the Middle East and Europe. The Himalayas and Gobi Desert separate Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent from Southwest Asia and China. So Europeans and East Asians are much more genetically isolated than Subsaharan Africans, within individuals.
Somalians, for example, are extremely genetically mixed, with 40% of their ancestry from the Middle East, and 60% of their ancestry from SS Africa. Ethiopians are similar to Somalians in that they have a fairly even mixture of Middle Eastern and Subsaharan ancestry. The Malagasy people of Madagascar are an almost 50-50 split of Asian and African ancestry. Yemenis in the Middle East have the greatest percentage of SS ancestry. In Eurasia, the Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, and Turkmen peoples are a mix between European and Asian populations. None of these groups exhibit greater levels of health predicted by the "hybrid vigor" or "outbreeding vigor" hypothesis.
In fact, one of the most healthy people in the world are the Icelandic people, who are extremely genetically isolated. They are disproportionately overrepresented in academic achievement, weightlifting, powerlifting, and height. The average lifespan in Iceland is 82, which is much higher than any of these more genetically diverse countries. Japan, similarly, has a greater degree of genetic similarly, yet has great health and longevity. There is just no evidence for hybrid or outbreeding vigor. It does not create greater health, and all the studies on mixed race individuals show higher rates of physical disease and mental illness.
Hybrid vigor is pseudo-science derived from early Mendelian agricultural experiments, where different variations of plants mixed together produced better crops. Science discredits it, but it persists as "modern folk wisdom" and superstition. Of course, traditional peoples have never accepted the hybrid vigor as an actual piece of "folk wisdom," since they practice endogamy and caste systems.
Regarding the WASP American cognitive bias toward mechanistic cognition, I would think that cultures which granted social status according to test scores, like China, would think more mechanistically. I don't think WASPs had a more intense "nanny culture" than any other aristocratic culture in the world. In general, European peoples place a high value on the father-son relationship (Aeneas and Anchises, Telemachus and Odysseus). The father-son relationship is also depicted in Mahabharata in the relationship between Arjuna and his sons, Iravan and Abhimanyu.
By contrast, Islamic harem and Asian or African polygamy culture meant that rulers would have potentially hundreds of sons and be unable to care for each of them individually. The Jewish practice of monogamy and the importance of patrilineal succession between Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob also indicates that Jews share the European value of the father-son relationship. I don't agree that Europeans, or WASPs, are more distant from their children than other aristocratic cultures.
I also don't agree that WASPs have the highest levels of mental illness when compared with Africans or mixed race individuals. Europeans and Jews are probably more neurotic on average than Asians and Africans, but neuroticism is not the only form of mental illness. I am currently working on a 10 part series on mental health to explain neuroticism as a mental strategy, rather than as a mental illness.
Oops forgot to include the link:
https://thecassandracomplex.substack.com/p/the-dangers-of-reading-too-much-part-df8
Okay, you've convinced me! With the exception of the WASP parenting thing -- I have an essay about that which I'll drop below. The issues would have been primarily in the first three years and between mothers and extended family members and children, so your point about the importance of father-son relationships still holds up.
Funnily, when I was a kid I had a sense that my genes were in conflict with each other, which I attributed at the time to Southern Italian and Irish not getting along with the rest. Southern Italians are another good example of a genetically diverse population (ancestry mix includes Greek, Roman, Viking/Norman, Arab/MENA, Jewish, and more) who were very poor and, well, mafia-ridden. Though the reasons for both may have more to do with the area being historically highly colonized and resources extracted from the region.
"WASPs were mostly descendants of colonial-era merchants and professionals. If not so rich as Gilded Age industrialists, they inherited sufficient wealth to live in comfort without working too hard.
These roots were often sprung from New England, where WASPs faithfully sent their children to boarding school and college. Yet their headquarters was not Boston, by the late 19th century a mere provincial capital. WASPs pursued their ambitions in New York and Washington, where the real decisions were made.
This was a literally inbred society, whose core members were more or less cousins. Despite their reputation for snobbery, though, WASPs did not reject democracy. Instead, they aimed to help popular government reach its highest possibilities. Their ideal wasn't European nobility but aristocracy in its ancient Greek sense, meaning rule by the truly best."
https://theweek.com/politics/1003258/the-wasps-died-out-as-a-distinctive-class
Yes, I realize that cousin marriage was banned in Europe because of the Church, but I was under the impression that WASPs in the colonies were more inbred.
The Europeans within the Hajnal line (WEIRD populations) seem to be on average more mechanistic and "autistic" (using the term loosely) than the rest of the globe. (There's a handful of good books about this). My suspicion is that WASP + something else gives an edge. (Ashkenazi Jews are kind of a unique case here though).
While I think I've observed this in the people I know, it's also just possible that more educated / internationally inclined / open-minded / skilled people are more likely to marry out (*shrugs*).
I see ethnogenesis as the most likely outcome based on my observations of the upper middle class. Whites, Jews, Indians, and Chinese are all intermarrying in various amounts, and the distinct Asian racial identities are pretty much held up by immigration alone.
As an American who is descended from both William Bradford and Brewster. As well as a Confederate Captain who was most likely of Ulster Scots ancestry and from Protestant Savoyards who settled in the Carolinas during the 1690s I appreciate this. The Dissident Right resent my ancestors for not being heckin Basederino TradCaths.
As an Anglo-Québécois, I feel Lovecraft level horror and have never been more grateful to not be an American
Fantastic article. I always emphasize the difference in ethnic homogeneity between Canadians and Americans in my work, and this in my view is one reason reason Canadian heritage is worth preserving. An unintentional consequence of Canada’s inherently reactionary and conservative nature, is that it never properly adopted liberalism. It’s half-assed implementation of multiculturalism combined with the later statehood and historically stricter immigration towards white ethnics ended up preserving it.
Are Anglo Americans overall wasps to modern people or just rich whites in the northeast?
I dont buy all "the wasp are dead" narrative. Certainly they arent as influential as a century ago, but they seem to still be highly overrepresented in politics, business, etc. Its hard to know exactly how much because nearly all statistics lump all whites together, but there certainly is a different between the average polish-american and anglo-american.
Also, the KKK was not wasp at all. Their base of support was southern (scott-irish) evangelical whites.
Not the second Klan in the 1920s. It had a heavy base of support among the beleaguered working class anglos of the mid-west. Michigan and Indiana still have the highest rates of Klan membership of any state in the country.