Could Texas' Gingrich-Based High School History Curriculum Go National?

Those are interesting questions. I'm not sure where the "Wild West"/"Conestoga Wagon" mythology originally came from, but it spread to the rest of America in the early mass media and especially in the form of potboiler dime novels as you said. The rodeo later went East as a form of traveling circus to take advantage of that publicity, even to Great Britain. Then the early development of that amazing mass cultural media phenomenon, the movies, picked up the myth and both developed and spread it. You've got that exactly right.

The exact relationship to the end of the frontier is not something I am familiar with, but that seems like it is also probably important. My guess is that the closing of the actual frontier accentuated the growth of the frontier myths.

I've read something about popular music that suggests that country music is the form of music that expresses the longing of people of rural culture for the older agricultural ways of life and expresses the many travails of living in an urban culture. Rock and Roll, then, would have been the music of the second generation of urban dwellers as they took advantage of the new technologies and abandoned the older traditional stories. That would fit with what I have read about rural traditional cultures being resistant to change and urban modern cultures both welcoming and enjoying change. It's a logical expression of the case of large numbers of rural residents having to move to big cities. I've never seen it written or nor have I heard it, but I'd bet that also explains the switch from mostly westerns on TV to mostly cop shows that occurred in the 60's and 70's.

As for how "freedom of religion" became freedom only for MY religion, that seems clear if you look at the history of both the Pilgrims and the Mormons. Both were oppressed by a dominant religion that owned the local government in their original locations. There they demanded freedom of religion but didn't get it. So they moved to somewhere else where they could practice their new religion. But they also took with them the cultural practice of government being controlled by one dominant religion, a practice which is typical of rural agricultural cultures.

When they got to the new location they set up their own government, established their own religion as the dominant one, and continued the traditional practice of oppressing competing faiths.

As for the gun-nut poseurs, I think that's a combination of things. Originally it was really significant politically, but after the civil war the importance of the militia declined. Then we came into the century of war – the twentieth century – in which we have fielded mass armies and had the draft for much of the century. Many, perhaps most, of the veterans I know prefer to own a firearm. They are simply more comfortable with them. I know that I am. Then the gun manufacturers took over the National Rifle Association after the Vietnam War and used it to spread the gun culture. It greatly expanded sales to civilians. It also got caught up in the fear of the Civil Rights Movement, so it became a politically conservative myth. So you have the myths spread by the media (watch the movies and TV. A character pulling out and cocking a gun kicks the adrenaline of the show into a higher gear automatically. It's a standard scene to change the tempo of the show and to define character.), the culture of firearms which is both rural and military, the business of firearms sales, and the political use of firearms as an issue. That's my best guess, anyway. As should be obvious from this answer, I have wondered about that question for a long time.

Your question on education and the myth of the gunslinger as hero is one that I think my traditional/rural modern/urban cultures largely explains. The most powerful source of authority in a traditional culture is person-to-person teaching and authority is the primary source of knowledge. If the authority disagrees with something that is merely written, the authority is generally considered primary.

Modern/urban culture is built on schools and books, and teaches that authority is to be questioned. A university is in fact a library and a set of social institutions around it designed to maintain that library and teach others to use it. The rest of the education system is in effect a farm system to the universities and a way of spreading the modern urban culture to society. That is a key to the flexibility of modern culture. That system of thinking and placing authority lower than what is in books and personal judgment is in fact one of the things the conservatives reject. The way of thinking in formal schools is what the conservatives consider 'Intellectualism.' It's why the social conservatives are trying to destroy the public schools.

The difference is likely at least in part because the two are not entirely equivalent, at least not in American usage. "Cunt" -- to me, anyway -- carries a connotation of nastiness that "prick" does not.

Good question. I'm not sure that it is more significant. But we are going through it now, and many of the European countries have already gone through it. The problems Germany is having merging West and East Germany are based in part in a similar rural/urban culture clash. This is the cultural explanation for the clash between agriculturally dominated societies and industrial societies.

Here in the U.S. your issue of granularity is important. It becomes a question of which culture is politically dominant because no society is culturally homogeneous.

I consider it important because it tends to explain who is ready for change and who is fighting it, as well as which states and congressional districts are going to send conservative or liberal Senators or Representatives. The fact that political institutions lag behind the cultural change also explains why the American health care solutions stall in the Senate. The British have had that same problem with the House of Lords, and they have neutered the Lords over the last century as a result. There is talk now, I have read, of changing the name from "Lords" to something else. The British Senate, maybe?

The question I have been trying to understand is why so many conservatives have been making public statements that seem utterly insane to me. The surface discourse simply does not adequately explain Sessions, DeMint, Inhofe, Coburn, and so on. A lot of the politicians (not all – some like Michelle Bachman are true believers) are playing to their base, but what explains the base? My conclusion is that there are two cultures here, currently clashing, and the conservatives feel they are on the losing side so that many of them are panicking.

The thing about culture is that it is something you learn as subtext from family, church, peers, and other social situations. Culture is not taught explicitly. You are learning what "feels" right and wrong rather than what is logically right and wrong. Cultural inputs to decisions you make are not logical, but they are very powerful. Those things that people are willing to fight over are rooted in the culture they have been socialized into. The very different norms and values that are required to make an urban industrial society work from those of a traditional agricultural society seem to me to explain both the heat of the conflict and many of the issues.

The thing is, universal health care causes a typical urban/rural split. The urban reaction to failure to get health care for a lot of people is to set up a rational system, finance it through and appropriate organizations, in this case government because smaller privately funded organizations have consistently failed to deliver for two generations, and apply rational scientific medicine within that system. The conservative reaction is to leave the issue of individual health care to the person and to God and don't expect others to be forced to assist.

The conservative approach is unworkable in large cities, and the population is becoming more urbanized. Which view will win? Framing the issue as a culture clash within a lagging political structure highlights the issues, their importance and who the players will be and why.

But the political structure was designed to put the rural elites into the stronger position (the Senate) and the Constitution is also designed to be changed only with the agreement of those rural elites. That's why this conflict has gone on so long (Since 1945) without resolution.

The violence, near violence and the Bachman-type insanity are occurring because the conservatives see the end coming, and they are losing. The city mice are overcoming the political barriers to change established by the country mice. The country mice feel frightened and threatened and they are lashing out irrationally. Since tradition and social constancy are more important to them than efficiency and rationality, they often seem insane (irrational) to the city mice. I suspect that is because they get the important information they use in decision-making from other people rather than from reading materials. That seems well-documented with George W. Bush (who is a very traditional aristocrat.)

At least that's how I see it from my mouse hole in the city.