How the WASPs won by losing

Even though their accents and rituals have become punchlines, the WASPs' legacy is still with us

A WASP.
(Image credit: Illustrated | iStock)

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The United States once had a ruling caste. They reigned for about a century, from Reconstruction to the Nixon administration, but only in the final years of their ascendancy were they given a name: White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, or WASPs.

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Samuel Goldman

Samuel Goldman is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, where he is executive director of the John L. Loeb, Jr. Institute for Religious Freedom and director of the Politics & Values Program. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard and was a postdoctoral fellow in Religion, Ethics, & Politics at Princeton University. His books include God's Country: Christian Zionism in America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) and After Nationalism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021). In addition to academic research, Goldman's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.