Iii Cheers for the Wasps

By RICHARD BROOKHISER Richard Brookhiser is the author of The Way of the Wasp.

Three hundred fifty years ago, they sailed here on boats half the size of the Staten Island ferry. They burned witches, built railroads and wrote the Bill of Rights. They also fought wars -- against Indians, George III and (in the Civil War) each other. But now their elites are a desiccated remnant, trailing clouds of glory only in the Social Register, while the country cousins, mostly Southern, have energy without class. From George Washington to George Bush, from Henry Adams to Elvis (dead or alive): such is the decline of the Wasp.

The word Wasp -- white Anglo-Saxon Protestant -- conjures a thumbnail history such as this, compounded of memories of textbooks and shreds of slander. As thumbnail histories go, it is not inaccurate, except that it leaves out the Wasp's greatest legacy: the American character. Whether we like it or not, all the rest of us in becoming American have become more or less Wasps. Americanization has historically meant Waspification. It is the gift that keeps on giving.

The acronym, popularized in the early 1960s by sociologist E. Digby Baltzell, explains who Wasps are and -- more important -- were. White and Protestant are self-explanatory. Anglo-Saxon, a clumsy term, means English, plus English speakers from Northern Ireland and the Scottish lowlands. Wasps formed the vast majority of the early American population: 200 years ago, nearly all Americans were Protestant, and almost two-thirds were of "Anglo- Saxon" stock. First to come, first to serve: Wasps gave early America its first laws, religions and rhetoric, as well as a characteristic mental and personal style.

The Wasp style placed a high value on industry and success and a correspondingly low value on anything that was not useful. All the nose-to- the-grindstone maxims of Benjamin Franklin found eager Wasp readers. Unchallenged by medieval or socialist countermodels, the Protestant work ethic flourished here like an animal species without predators. Admiration for hard work and the expectation that hard workers would have something to show for it became the starlings of the American soul.

When Wasps thought of their duties as members of a group, the group they thought of was society as a whole. Families, social classes and their subunits took a backseat. Being realists, Wasps recognized that narrower loyalties existed, and James Madison built a constitutional theory on the balancing of "factions." But Wasps always viewed particularism with a certain distaste. Vendettas and blood feuds were considered the marks of yokels, while "special interest" has long been a political term of abuse.

When a Wasp thought of his duty to the moral law, the guide he consulted was his own conscience. The conscience was a stern interior monitor. "In Adam's fall/ We sinned all," began the New England Primer. (They weren't big on self-esteem in the 18th century.) Conscience has the added advantage of being portable. Many cultures rely on peer pressure to enforce their rules and regulations. The Wasp with a conscience could feel guilty all by himself. Conscience also reinforced the work ethic: if you made good, you -- and everyone else -- knew that you were good.

These psychic genes shaped the face of American life. The interplay of civic-mindedness and conscience has given us whatever we have enjoyed of liberty, while success and industry have fattened our GNP. On the downside, the worship of usefulness has impoverished American art; one takes the bad with the good. Italians invented the Renaissance -- and live in chaos. We produced the Ashcan school -- and Abraham Lincoln.

How did Wasp ways keep their hold over American life, even as Wasps slipped to minority status? As early as 1858, Lincoln noted that "perhaps half our people" were not descendants of the founding generation. "If they look back through ((American)) history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none." Their connection to America derived instead from a reverence for the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which was "the father of all moral principle in them," according to Lincoln. This was "the electric cord . . . that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty- loving men together." The Wasp at his best was defined by his acceptance of the Declaration and other touchstones -- the Constitution, certain attitudes toward the work of his hands and the workings of his soul -- rather than by extended family ties. Being a Wasp was a game anyone could play. Over the years, everyone has, including descendants of the people Lincoln freed.

The shrinkage of literal Wasps as a factor in the American mosaic is as inevitable as the multiplication tables, and a matter of little moment. What matters more is the shrinking of their values in the American mind. If Americans don't seem particularly hardworking or civic-minded these days, that is, at least in part, because the ways of the Wasp (now usually labeled "middle-class" or "Eurocentric") are such common targets of criticism $ and abuse. Anyone evincing them is apt to be labeled repressed, inauthentic, uptight or an "ice person."

The danger is not that a new post-Wasp personality will emerge. A nation's character is not so mutable; it takes major upheaval -- revolution, conquest -- to transform it. What is possible, however, is that the character America already possesses will slip into chronic malfunction. Most of us will keep behaving the way we always have, without knowing why, while the rest will act differently, simply for the sake of being different. It is a sad end for an ideal -- especially for one that has been as fruitful as the Wasp's.