Daniel Elizar’s Subcultures and Texas Political culture is defined in our TX.GOV textbook as “A patterned set of ideas, values, and ways of thinking about government and politics.” (Pg. G-7) With this in mind, political scientist Daniel Elizar, who studied the American political culture, believed that the American political culture could be broken down further into three specific subcultures. He found these subcultures to be predominant in certain areas of the United States where history is traced to the first settlers and their goals in that era and place. The first of his subcultures is called a Moralistic Subculture. He called it “moralistic” because historically it was based in religious values from the puritans that lived