As Rhode Islanders prepare to vote in Wednesday’s primary elections, research shows the state’s commitment to pursuing the common good and creating a strong social fabric has endured over the years, even as demographics have changed since its founding in 1636.
To learn more, Ocean State Media morning host Luis Hernandez spoke to Colin Woodard, the director of Nationhood Lab at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy.
Interview highlights
On Rhode Island’s social and political values
Colin Woodard: Rhode Islanders all share in being part of a greater New England cultural space where there are a lot of commonalities that shape why the common good is prioritized and many other things about that region; the thing that immigrants assimilate into.
And yet, the history at a local level also matters a great deal. Rhode Island was founded in antithesis to many things about Massachusetts. There were common things. Town governments would be little republics under themselves, that somehow, as a people, we're on a mission to make society and the world better. That's kind of unique to the Yankee space compared to other regions of the country.
There's also distinctions. I mean, Rhode Island has the origins, in many respects, of the separation of church and state, the idea that civic authority should be secular so that peoples' individual religious beliefs can each proceed regardless of what they are. That was the novel contribution that Roger Williams was making. Rhode Island became the catcher's mitt — intentionally — for all the people that weren't conforming to the orthodoxy of Massachusetts, even as it shared in the broader cultural values and norms of, we're trying to create a better place.
On how Rhode Island maintains its political values despite demographic changes:
Woodard: That's the amazing thing about culture, generally. When culture and norms are established, a group of people come. They believe that this is what the good life is, that this religion and way of thinking about humans' place in the universe is the proper one; or the relationship between church and state or the allocation of power. Those things, once they're set in motion, they're in institutions. When you grow up in a family, you kind of get them by osmosis or subconsciously or not even realizing these unexamined dominant values often. In school, they get reinforced in the way that people talk about government and the rhetoric that's used. In all sorts of ways, human cultures are able to perpetuate themselves over generations, over massive time scales. The culture around you to a large extent, you assimilate aspects of it.
On the history of collectivism in Rhode Island
Woodard: The Rhode Island tradition was a tradition of a people working as a group in a mission to make the world a better place as they understood it, and they had to do it as a group. The Puritans believed they would be rewarded or punished as a group by God, literally, so the individual's proclivities or desire to become powerful were considered a threat, right? Humans are depraved. So when individual ambition and the needs of the community would come into conflict, they would go with the needs of the community. They would make investments in the community.
The moment they're on the frontier, they're not creating some isolated log cabins and wearing coonskin caps. The Puritans were going out, laying out a town pretty much, evenly distributing the land parcels between the founding colonists, creating a grazing commons in the middle, a taxpayer-financed compulsory public school and a public meeting house all at once deployed on the frontier. All of these public institutions with a shared idea of community investment in public goods, and that the goal of the community is to further the community, not to necessarily advance the autonomy and freedom of the individual.
On the rise of Donald Trump and the precariousness of democracy
Woodard: We live in a time that — and I will call him a demagogue — a demagogue like Donald Trump can achieve the presidency and get re-elected to the presidency. That's not a sign that your politics are healthy, that the status quo politics are doing well. The status quo situation in this country in recent decades (shows that) things aren't working for large numbers of people. They really aren't. In that environment, if you have somebody challenging the system threatening to, sort of, overthrow it and break it up… it can be very attractive in an environment where the way things are built right now doesn't seem to be working.
I think that that is going to be less so going forward because I think the excesses of Trump 2, the solutions that he has to our problems — I think people are discovering — aren't the ones that they want. I think that has probably seen the high water mark within New England.
