Tom DiLorenzo on Yankees, public schooling and Prohibition

The word "Yankee" gained popularity in the early to mid nineteenth century to describe a particular brand of New Englander: arrogant, hypocritical, unfriendly, condescending, intolerant, extremely self-righteous, and believing that he and his were God’s chosen people.

Yankees have never shied away from using the coercive powers of the state to compel others to be remade in their image. That’s why compulsory government schooling originated in New England, as did prohibitionism.  It’s also why Stalinism took hold in the North (especially in New York City) in the twentieth century, as did its offshoot, neoconservativism, in more recent times. Indeed, many of the more notorious neoconservatives openly admit that they were Stalinists in their youth and have never fully abandoned those beliefs.

At the outbreak of the War to Prevent Southern Independence there was a vigorous secession movement in what were known then as the Middle States — Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, New Jersey. During the war there were thousands of Northern "peace Democrats" who opposed Lincoln and his Yankee cabal. These people, who were essentially Jeffersonians, had one thing in common with the Southern Confederates: they despised the arrogant, pushy, greedy, and insufferably self-righteous Yankees. They were ruthlessly censored and imprisoned by the tens of thousands by the Lincoln government. When they rioted over military conscription, the Yankee army shot them dead in the streets by the hundreds if not thousands (See Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots).

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "The Myth of the Morally Superior Yankee," LewRockwell.com, February 10, 2004