Some­thing that fas­ci­nates me is the sur­pris­ing glimpses of Quaker influ­ence in the wider world. Back in the Spring I drew out the pos­si­bil­ity of a Quaker con­nec­tion in Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s so-called “evo­lu­tion” on LGBTQ matters.

This week the New York Times Opin­ion­a­tor blog argues a Quaker con­nec­tion in the geog­ra­phy of “Red” and “Blue” states–those lean­ing Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­tic in gen­eral elec­tions. The sec­ond half of Steven Pinker’s “Why Are States So Red and Blue?” leans on David Hack­ett Fischer’s awe­some 1989 book Albion’s Seed. Sub­ti­tled “Four British Folk­ways in Amer­ica” it’s a kind of secret decoder ring for Amer­i­can cul­ture and politics.

Fis­cher argued that there were four very dif­fer­ent set­tle­ments in the Eng­lish colonies in the Amer­i­cas and that each put a defin­i­tive and last­ing stamp on the pop­u­la­tions that fol­lowed. I think he’s a bit over-deterministic but it’s still great fun and the the­sis does explain a lot. For exam­ple, the Scot-Irish lived in law­less region along the English-Scottish bor­der, where peo­ple had to defend them­selves; when they crossed the ocean they quickly went inland and their cul­tural descen­dants like law and order, guns and a judg­men­tal God. Quak­ers from the British mid­lands were another one of the four groups, coop­er­a­tive and peace-loving, the nat­ural pre­cur­sors to Blue states.

Now step back a bit and you real­ize this is incred­i­bly over-simplistic. Many Friends in the Delaware Val­ley and beyond have his­tor­i­cally been Repub­li­can, and many con­tinue as such (though they keep quiet among politically-liberal East Coast Friends). And the cur­rent Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­dent per­son­ally approves U.S. assassination lists.

You will be for­given if you’ve clicked to Pinker’s blog post and can’t find Quak­ers. For some bizarre rea­son, he’s stripped reli­gion from Fischer’s argu­ment. Why? Polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness? Sim­plic­ity of argu­ment. Friends are summed up with the phrase “the North was largely set­tled by Eng­lish farm­ers.” Strange.

But despite these caveats, Fis­cher is fas­ci­nat­ing and Pinker’s extrap­o­la­tion to today’s polit­i­cal map is well worth a read, even if our con­tri­bu­tion to the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the Amer­i­can map goes un-cited.