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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

> It highlights how the original white anglo saxon Protestant population of americans had the same fears as you mentioned with catholic italian and irishmen coming in and changing the culture of the country.

But they did change it, into something completely different. America was supposed to be like what you might still see in some small New England towns, with decentralized power and an actively engaged, self-governing citizenry. If you were someone in 1920 who thought WASP culture was a good thing, your fears were completely validated. That country doesn't exist anymore.

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I live in one of those New England towns where everyone piles into the gym at the high school to argue about whether we really need a new fire engine. It’s not clear to me who you think lives here, but from what I can see it’s mostly Irish, Italian, Polish, and Indian. To meet someone whose four grandparents were born here is rare. Something like 30% of the population of Massachusetts was born in another country. Whatever else happened in history to make it this way, it sure wasn’t keeping out immigrants.

If you sort the states by percentage of British ancestry, it’s pretty much a list of places that are “the way the American republic was designed to be”: Utah, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Oregon.

I suppose it's a matter of opinion. I would not have guessed that your list of US states governed “to spec” would include Idaho and Montana (weaker municipalities? Not sure), but not Massachusetts or Rhode Island (New England towns).

I'd only reiterate that if the question is whether there can be high-trust societies with a lot of local self-governance, that also have a lot of immigration, then Massachusetts proves that the answer is yes.

Rhode Island is just a couple of spots below Montana on the list of places with the highest British ancestry. Massachusetts is a good example of how mass immigration can make a place very different: https://www.grunge.com/1199030/chilling-details-about-the-bo...

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