The traditional Southerner has always been wary of the do-gooder, seeking primarily to be free to live his life with his family and friends according to his values and at peace with God and the natural world. As MacDonald King Aston (author of Yankee Babylon) spoke about in a recent interview with SNN, what he has termed “the great inversion” saw the theocratic New England Puritans secularised into what we would recognise as the modern Yankee. Many of the Puritan values, including the burning need to “do good” were kept by the secularised Yankees. Probably the most famous (or infamous) of the Puritan do-gooders was Cotton Mather, an upper class Bostonian who was born in 1663. Mather implored his fellow Puritans to “fly into the matter” and “manage it with rapturous delight… as a most precious privilege” to do good. Any Southerner who has dealt with an influx of Yankees into his home town knows exactly how alive this do-gooder spirit still is in Yankee culture. It is easy for us to imagine the frustration and annoyance felt by those who had to bear the brunt of a Mather-inspired Bostonian in grasp of “incomparable pleasure” as he busied himself with the concerns of his neighbours and acquaintances. This imposing, snooping, meddlesome behaviour of the Yankees is the very spirit behind the 200,000 pages of Federal regulations which seek to control every aspect of your life today, forcing your compliance with the central plan. It is the spirit behind the agenda of Cass Sunstein‘s (who is the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration) book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, which argues for a paternalistic government that “nudges” you to make better decisions in your daily life. This same spirit is the one which seeks to “make the world safe for democracy” and force New England-style democratic-liberalism on Persians, Turks, Chinese, Somalis, Russians and the whole world. So many of us have seen it on the local level as gaggles of busy-bodies from the Northeast have descended upon us and agitated for higher property taxes, zoning regulations, the removal of “offensive” statues, speech and symbols and the rest of their totalitarian agenda. In shrill, loud voices they inform us of the righteousness of their ways and the backwardness of our own. Our culture and indeed the whole world must be re-made in the image of Boston, New York and Chicago.
Cotton Mather & Cass Sunstein: Do-gooders
For those of y’all who live in relatively isolated areas of Dixie where the local people have been so blessed as to not yet have to endure the meddlesome do-gooder from up North, count your blessings and be vigilant – for the do-gooder is out there and every-busy with his work of re-making things, as Cotton Mather wrote, “enabling him directly to answer the great End of his being.”
Is there no salvation from the do-dooger?!
Great piece Michael. Question, how do you distinguish between doing good and being a do gooder?
Do-gooder – in which the good that is done is to force a change in the person or group for the purpose of forcing conformity to the do-gooder’s expectations.
Doing good – a good which is done to serve a higher purpose and the person for whom the deed is done, not self-serving, as in the prior example.
AF, that’s a good question. I have honestly never considered it directly. I think the word “meddlesome” (which has been historically used now for over a century and a half by Southerners to describe Yankee behaviour) sums it up. In part it’s the manner in which it is approached and the motivation behind it. When a non-do-gooder helps someone it’s not because they are trying to manipulate the person (much less that’s person’s entire culture). There is more of an acceptance of the person for who and what they are by the non-do-gooder. Nor is there generally a “rapturous delight,” as Cotton Mather described it, in the person doing the action. I need to consider your question though. My reflexive response would be to say that it is generally a cultural product. I have met very few do-gooders who are non-Yankees or non-Yankee-ised Midwesterners.
I liked Kenneth’s answer. A person who does good is someone who helps someone in need, like serving at a soup kitchen or delivering turkeys to unemployed people, etc.
A do-gooder is someone who is trying to change someone or a group, either through legislation or coersion; i.e. like the so-called “War on Poverty”, which sounds good, but is responsible for the break up of many poor families, especially the black family, by replacing the father-figure with the central government. And that’s just one…as Michael said above, there are many more…
My father uses this term ALL THE TiME! I never heard it from anyone else so I thought he came up with it.
Some quotes from my father.
“Those damn do-gooder laws are taking jobs away from americans.”
“Those damn do-gooders in washington dont know nothin.”
“Those damn do-gooders have traded away the entire auto industy.”
“Those damn do-gooders have taken our rights away.”
“It will be your generation that has to deal with those damn do-gooders Dillin, I am curious to see how you deal with them.”
My father is my main buddy to discus government and and other topics with.
In shrill, loud voices
Mainly because the most of these types are women, and none too attractive ones at that.