The new, richer, Northern Virginia

Howard Sutherland writes:

Within its limits, a fairly frank, but still mendaciously incomplete, article at the Washington Post about the ever-growing divide between Washington’s ever-growing Virginia suburbs and the rest of the Old Dominion. The unspoken irony is that “born fighting” Southerner Jim Webb got elected by those Yankees and other aliens who are repopulating northern Virginia. Also unspoken is the word immigration. If you didn’t know better, you would think the changes in the Commonwealth are due only to enlightened Yankees moving in. Clever, too, of the WaPo writers to use their end quote to draw any sting the story might have for traditionally minded Americans.

- end of initial entry -

Gintas J. writes:

It’s been like that for a long time. I grew up in Northern Virginia, right near D.C. When I went off to Virginia Tech (near Roanoke) I found out I was basically from another state. My sister, who lives in Fairfax, Va, says NoVa is crawling with lawyers and is overrun with McMansions.

Howard Sutherland writes:

Gintas J. is right that Northern Virginia has long been crawling with non-Virginians, if the non-Virginians we’re talking about are Americans. The Washington Post hides that Northern Virginia is now one of the most illegal alien and immigrant-inundated places in America.

Rachael S. writes:

I don’t think I have anything to add to the discussion, except to say that I lived in Northern Virginia, and immigration seemed to be a huge problem to me (example: as part of my conversion process into the Catholic Church, I had to attend a service at the Arlington Cathedral, where the proceedings were partly in Spanish; I can only assume so as to accommodate all the immigrants in the community). It is depressing to see a great state go to waste like this.

Ron K. writes:

I always like Howard Sutherland’s comments, but I have to take issue with his calling Northern Virginians “Yankees”— oh, really? Do they speak with broad A’s, eat pie for breakfast, reek of lobster boat, and memorize their genealogies back to the Winthrop fleet and beyond?

Leaving aside the question whether Yankeedom begins at the Rappahannock, the Rio Grande, or the Piscataqua, Mr Sutherland’s use of the word obscures the core of the problem.

A Yankee, like him or not, is a real person with real roots and ties. A typical resident of Dullesland is not. He is the perfect “rootless cosmopolitan”. He is the “tranzi” often brought up by posters in the comments days at VFR. Nothing connects him to anything, except his peers.

David Lebedoff has written two books, a quarter-century apart, on this class of people. He nails them: you can’t define these people by their roots, as the only thing that every member of this class has in common is that he has betrayed whatever roots produced him.

Here is Michael Barone letting the cat out of the bag, in a different state: “The Connecticut primary reveals that the center of gravity in the Democratic Party has moved, from the lunch-bucket working class that was the dominant constituency up through the 1960s to the secular transnational professional class that was the dominant constituency in the 2004 presidential cycle. You can see the results on the map.” (Lieberman won the Kennedy towns, Lamont the Nixon ones. Republicans left.) Potomac Virginia is only undergoing its first transformation. Most cities in the north are well into their second. First by ethnics, now by transnationals, or postnationals. Boston hasn’t been Yankee in over a century.

Incidentally, this is hardly Virginia’s first flirtation with this kind. I note that in pre-Eisenhower days, Virginians tended to give about 60% of their votes to the Democratic presidential candidate. But when offered the most transnational candidates of all, Wilson and FDR, the Commonwealth’s Democratic vote shot up to near 70%. (Though give them credit for being one of only two Confederate states to reject the 16th Amendment, the other being Florida.) Webb may talk like an FDR voter; his voters talk like FDR.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 16, 2006 09:20 AM | Send