Woodard+Summaries

Woodard Summaries



PART ONE:

Part one and part two begin to answer the question of who we are by describing the origins of where we came from. We see this especially in part one as it is labeled “Origins”, and we learn the creation or “founding” of all of the different nations.

First, there is The Northern Alliance that is made up of Yankeedom, New Netherland, and The Left Coast. Yankeedom is referring to the New England states, some of New York, a lot of the Midwest all the way through North Dakota. Yankees believe in the good of people and want to expand their cultures and virtues to the rest of the world. According to the Star Tribune, the Yankees also believe that the successful people should make sacrifices for the common good. It is a dominant nation in the Northern Alliance and is one of the two “superpowers” among the American Nations. The second nation is New Netherland, which is New York City and its surroundings essentially. The people belonging to New Netherland are big advocates of diversity in regards to culture and people. The last nation is The Left Coast which is parts of California up to the Canadian border. The Yankees wanted their culture to stay here in order to save the area from Catholicism. That is the three nations that are part of the Northern Alliance talked about in the first part of the book.

The nations of Tidewater, The Deep South, and Appalachia all make up The Dixie Bloc. First, Tidewater was founded by wealthy and noble English families and they were not very interested in the public participating in politics and they had a sense of elitism to them. The Deep South had attitudes that reflected Tidewater very closely. Along with Yankeedom, The Deep South was the second of the two superpowers among the American Nations. The Deep South is also the most dominant nation in the Dixie Bloc. The last nation that was a part of this alliance was Appalachia. They were always ready to fight and didn’t agree or like authority.

The last three nations were considered The Swing Nations, which consisted of The Midlands, El Norte, and The Far West. The Midlands were first settled by German and Quaker farmers and they had the Quaker mentality of pacifism. The second nation, El Norte, is the second oldest nation and is very independent, adaptable, and work-oriented. Their culture consists of mainly Mexican and they are very work-driven. The Far West was the youngest of the nations and was not ready to be lived in because of the climate and soil condition. They needed the government’s money in order to get and use the natural resources of the land but then they hated the government interfering with their business. So, all of part one is basically just a history lesson regarding where all of the separate nations derived from in order to become who they are today. We found it very interesting how different all of the nation’s beginnings were and yet that they were all still a part of the United States.

PART TWO: Part two covers 1770 through 1815 and begins by talking about the American Revolution and how it was not fought by an united front but rather, a loose military alliance of nations each wanting to preserve its own culture and ideas and didn’t want to be bonded together. In this part, Woodard also talks about the “common struggle” between four nations especially; Yankeedom, Tidewater, Greater Appalachia, and the Deep South, they had very little in common except for the same goal. They all worked together because none of them wanted to lose their culture to an outside country. He goes on to explain that the American Revolution was 6 different revolutionary wars, one for each nation that was affected. His view also states that many of the wars were not even with the British, but with many American nations fighting each other. So as these chapters continue, he describes many of the different wars and battles fought on American soil in order to receive independence.

PART THREE:

In chapter 15, Woodard talks about Catholics- whether Irish, south German, or Italian- not appreciating the Yankees educational system. They realized that the schools were designed to assimilate their children into Yankee culture. The parents were very distraught over this and as you can imagine, they quickly pulled their children out of school and designed their own parallel system of parochial schools for their children to attend. They did this because the Yankees often reacted with violence and hostility. They also denounced Catholic immigrants as unwitting tools of a Vatican-directed conspiracy to bring down the republic. As you can tell, the Yankees were just irrational people. We believe that these parents are honorable for noticing the bad surroundings that their children were growing up in and meeting their needs by providing a better school environment that was based on more sound principles. Another main point from part 3 is about the group now recognized as the Seventh day adventist in which over 1 million people are a part of. John Humphrey Noyes, a Yale- educated Vermonter, declared himself perfect and free of sin in the year 1844. John led his followers to create a Utopian society in upstate New York where he intended to be a model for Christ’s millennial kingdom. Here, in the state of New York, the community featured a variety of interesting rituals. Things like, communal manufacturing, property ownership, and sexual relations with older men and postmenopausal women encouraged to deflower the virgins. We found this very disturbing and caused us to think less of this particular religion. Anyone that can be ok with this background and choose to be a part of this religion clearly has a misconceived view of what biblical morality really is.

PART FOUR:

Woodard doesn't seem to give religion hardly any credit and says things that are just hard to digest properly. He says things like, "the church was standing in the way of progress for the world to improve." If this world is going to improve there needs to be more religion, more churches, and more people standing up to do the right thing even when it’s hard. It doesn’t seem to settle with us the fact that he tries to give churches a bad name. Woodard also said things like how parents were teaching their children religious instead of scientific explanations for the origins and nature of the universe. This is frustrating because children need to be taught what is right and true. Evolution is not how this world came about. God made this beautiful world in six days and people need to realize the power of God. The fact that he wants children to know about evolution and believe that it’s true rather than believe the religious views is not ok. In chapter 24, governments decided to defend certain groups from criticism by state power. In the late nineteenth century early twentieth century, opposition to modernism, liberal theology, and inconvenient scientific discoveries occurred in pockets across the continent. These are the groups the state decided to back up and protect federally. This is a pretty big deal considering nothing else has ever been done quite like this. One thing that Woodard talks about in the end of the book is that the US should look toward the Canadian Nations if it hopes to survive as a unified nation. We do not believe that it is necessary to join with New France or any other nation to survive as a unified nation. We are not at war with New France. We believe that war is the only reason why we would need to join with any other nation. According to Juan Cole from CNN, war is the reason why we could be at risk for a unified nation being at stake. We agree with what he is saying and find it to be true mostly. We believe that America can be made up of separate nations, but we are all unified in certain fundamental ideas like; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for everyone, no matter what nation or state they belong to.

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