It’s the residual Puritanism. Foreign-facing federal agencies like the CIA were the last bastion of American WASPs. I grew up around these people because my dad worked for a contractor for USAID, which was at times a front for the State Department, and was similarly WASPy culturally. They’re lovely people. Soft-spoken, orderly and rule-following, public service-oriented, intellectually curious. But they also have this cultivated detachment from baser emotions that enable them to pursue abstract ideas to their logical conclusions without normal gut feelings and common sense getting in the way.
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It’s the residual Puritanism. Foreign-facing federal agencies like the CIA were the last bastion of American WASPs. I grew up around these people because my dad worked for a contractor for USAID, which was at times a front for the State Department, and was similarly WASPy culturally. They’re lovely people. Soft-spoken, orderly and rule-following, public service-oriented, intellectually curious. But they also have this cultivated detachment from baser emotions that enable them to pursue abstract ideas to their logical conclusions without normal gut feelings and common sense getting in the way.
Yes, WASP are attracted to universal moral principles. A major WASP institution (namely, a religious denomination) is literally named "Universalism".