Ed West blogs in The Telegraph about Romney's "Anglo-Saxon" gaffe:
But if this was dog-whistle racism, then Obama’s 2008 campaign was a blaring Klaxon horn of race. Forget the “post-racial candidate” (© the entire mainstream US and European media), Obama was in reality the “multi-racial” candidate, one who signified the end of white demographic dominance. That’s post-racial in the sense that the majority are becoming a minority, but it would be absurd to pretend that race was not a huge factor in the election of this not-very-experienced junior senator – illustrated by the fact that 96 per cent of African-Americans voted for him.
Obama’s underlining foreign policy narrative was that, being half-Kenyan and with an emotional attachment to people of colour, he would be able to form a better rapport with Africans, Arabs and the rest of the non-white world. But if that’s the argument, then logically Mitt Romney, who’s not just white but the whitest man in the world, will have the same appeal to Europeans. If non-whites are so basic and ethnocentric that it takes one of their own to make them see America kindly, isn’t it the same for everyone? And the fact is that, in his foreign policy, Obama has had a very cool attitude to Britain, which tends to suggest that the changing demographics of the US will influence its foreign-policy direction.
America’s vast contradictions and hypocrisies concerning race still rest on the idea that some groups are supposed to be post-racial, while others are encouraged to celebrate their identity, and to fight for the interests of their group. For example, lots of self-appointed Hispanic leaders want America to be more Hispanic, to have more of their countrymen. No one in the media accuses them of racism or chauvinism, and instead presents people wishing to maintain the status quo as hatemongers. Yet why is it necessarily more wrong for Anglo-Americans to want the country to be more full of people like them? Some people advancing the interests of their group are racists; some people advancing the interests of their group are anti-racists.
And why is it acceptable for every ethnicity in America to take pride in its roots, apart from the ethnic group that founded the 13 colonies, bequeathed it their language and laws, and established the political philosophy and liberal institutions? ...
Among the many English-Americans were almost all of America’s founding fathers, including its greatest, Thomas Jefferson, who used the Anglo-Saxons as a political model, and often (like many Whigs and proto-Whigs before) saw the conflict within the British world as one between latter-day Normans (Tories) and Saxons (Whigs).
Jefferson even traced the English (and so American) tradition of representative government back not just to the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot but to the forest councils of the Saxons on the continent (one of the many popular pseudo-historical ideas that sprung out of the Teutomania that followed the rediscovery of Tacitus in the 16th century). He was so obsessed with the idea that he even learned some Old English.
It is only in recent times, many years after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act made America a truly diverse society, that making such a statement has stopped being a bland statement of historical fact and become a virtual hate crime.
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130 comments:
It's our Anglo-Saxon political tradition that really counts. What is so hard about that?
but most brits uk to be like diverse us. look at the opening ceremony.
but most brits want uk to be like diverse us. look at the opening ceremony.
What about the rumor that Biden will step aside for Hitlery?
Also, what about the rumor that Michelle Obama will run for a Senate seat in a state with a large black population?
Another one of those ingenuous, "Gosh, why is it that...?" articles. This West guy must know the answer given by his opponents: that Anglo-Saxons were historically the dominant ethnie in America, and that Anglo-Saxon pride and solidarity have historically been instruments of large-scale injustice. That's in contrast to, for instance, Irish-American pride and solidarity, which most anti-racists have no problem with. Solidarity of those on the top is not the same as solidarity of those on the bottom. To acknowledge this view is not to accept it (I don't). But if you're writing a polemic in good faith, then you at least acknowledge your opponents' argument, right?
Not a virtual hate crime, but an actual hate crime.
The more we bend the knee,and go along with this, the more we will be punished and humiliated.
"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is
oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is
lost!"
Anon (quoting Kipling).
The bizarre thing about the opening ceremony was how undiverse it was. Where were all the Indians and Pakistanis? They are vastly more numerous than Afro-Caribbeans. Also Britain no longer even pretends to have freedom of speech. It's hard to say what Joe-average Brit really thinks. You shoot your mouth off in moments of stress and people quietly agree with you. Then you meet a PC enforcer and they intimidate you by screaming at you in public at the top of their voices and threatening to report you to the police.
It's our Anglo-Saxon political tradition that really counts.
Actually, it's your Anglo-Saxon genes that truly count. Without them, your political tradition would not be possible.
"But if you're writing a polemic in good faith, then you at least acknowledge your opponents' argument, right?"
Do those seeking to demographically transform Euro societies; take over Euro institutions; and transfer economic outputs out of Euro hands write'in good faith'?
Do those seeking to demographically transform Euro societies; take over Euro institutions; and transfer economic outputs out of Euro hands write'in good faith'?
Many do, many don't. But let's assume that good faith is for suckers. Isn't it more interesting to listen to your opponents, to think about what they actually say, than to put your hands over your ears like Ed West does?
It's our Anglo-Saxon political tradition that really counts. What is so hard about that?
The American Experiment was severely disrupted by early 20th century immigration from portions of Europe that supported theocracy during the Protestant Reformation and Enlightenment. This resulted in the centralization of powers during the 20th century replacing the laboratory of the States with strong central governmental control, in direct contravention of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution. This then resulted in the immigration liberalizations of the last half of the 20th century and the present condition in which massive amnesty programs for illegal immigrants are routinely proposed and passed as a means of importing not only labor but voters and activists from cultures that have no history of successfully resisting theocratic rule.
"and that Anglo-Saxon pride and solidarity have historically been instruments of large-scale injustice."
Anglo-Saxons are far from having any ethnic solidarity, and haven't had so for a long time, if ever. We Anglo-Saxon Americans waged a pretty nasty war against ourselves from 1861-1865 on behalf of people of an entirely different race, and 750,000 mostly Anglo-Saxcon Americans died as a result.
The truth is that Anglo-Saxon Americans lack a common economic interest - we run the gamut from the very well educated to mere high school graudates, blue collar to corner office high rise; we lack a common religious interest, being perhaps the most religiously diverse ethnic group in the country. We have been in this country so long - longer than all but the aboriginal peoples - that we lack any emotional or kinship ties to the homeland. "Family reunifiaction" immigration policies benefit us less than any other ethnic group. I met a woman from Scotland who shares my surname and she jokingly stated "Oh, we must be related," while I facetiously replied "Yes, we must be 12th cousins, at least."
"Solidarity of those on the top is not the same as solidarity of those on the bottom. To acknowledge this view is not to accept it (I don't). But if you're writing a polemic in good faith, then you at least acknowledge your opponents' argument, right?"
Which ethnic group is on top again? You know which. And yet they're allowed to have ethnic solidarity. A potential future president is in that ethnic-group's very own ethnostate right now endeavoring to kiss their ass while raising money for an American presidential race on foreign soil.
This man makes a point I've been trying to make for a very long time - that it isn't considered racist for Hispanics and Asians to want millions of more people in this country just like themselves, while it is considered racist for whites to want this country to continue to look like us.
Barack Obama just promised not to enforce the law against 1.4 million illegal Hispanic immigrants as a blatant attempt to boost his share of the Hispanic vote. On his campaign page, Obama has special pages for various ethnic/religious groups - Hispanics, blacks, Jews, etc. But hesn't one for whites, Europeans, Anglo-Saxons, or Christians. That, of course, isn't racist at all.
Ed West is a rising star and an obvious reader of Sailer and VDARE. He apparently has a book in the works about Britain's mass immigration/multicultural disaster. Long overdue I say.
If people here want Anglo-Saxon Americans or European-Americans to maintain demographic control of this country, the best way to do so is to go out and marry the best, smartest Anglo-Saxon/European girl you can find and have lots of kids with her. If you don't already have children, have one. If you already have children, have some more.
I used to stress about how hard it would be raising a child until I actually had one. Like so many other things, it isn't as hard or stressful as you think.
Politically, we can try to exert our influence. But while we're trying to exert our influence in the corridors of power don't forget that you also wield power in the bedroom.
It's inevitable that in the not too distant future, the USA will be a decidely non-European nation (in the cultural sense at least), what the USA eventually morphs into is a moot point, but in terms of physical phenotype, popular culture (the portent is here already with all that horrible, incessant black origin music crap such a s rap and r n b that is pumped out on an industrial scale), institutions, public and civic morals etc, it will diverge from Europe (the core states of central Europe will be conservative on this point, but England is likely to diverge after its own fashion as much as the USA will)in an ever accelerating way.
Suffice to say that in a century's or so's time (an eye blink in historical terms), the USA will be as alien to 'old Europe' as Puerto Rico is alien to Austria.
"But if you're writing a polemic in good faith, then you at least acknowledge your opponents' argument, right?"
Fair enough. It was more a case of brevity, this being a blogpost rather than an essay and I didn't want to get bogged down in the Marxist interpretation of race before I bored everyone to tears. I also think it's fair to say that in the UK the opponents' argument in this case has not exactly been starved of the oxygen of the publicity these past few years. Everyone's going to know 'why' in the same way everyone in a theocracy is going to know why you cant take the Lord's name in vain.
Matthew said: "This man makes a point I've been trying to make for a very long time - that it isn't considered racist for Hispanics and Asians to want millions of more people in this country just like themselves, while it is considered racist for whites to want this country to continue to look like us."
Canadian-Australian academic Andrew Fraser examines the failure of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant peoples in the United States and elsewhere to defend their own ethnic group interests in his book "The WASP Question".
Fraser writes:
"The defining characteristic of WASPs is that they are much less ethnocentric than other peoples; indeed for all practical purposes Anglo-Saxon Protestants appear to be all but completely bereft of in-group solidarity. They are therefore open to exploitation by free-riders from other, more ethnocentric, groups. It seems unlikely that nominally Americanized Changs, Singhs, and Gonzales are as committed in a practical sense to the anti-discrimination principle as Anglo-Saxon individualists. There is no shortage of evidence to suggest that the Changs, the Gonzales and the Singhs (not to mention the Goldmans with their well-known animus toward WASPs) still practice forms of ethnic nepotism strictly forbidden to Anglo-Protestants.
In these circumstances, an interesting question arises: are contemporary WASPs entitled to recognition as an historic people? If not, why not?"
http://www.amazon.com/The-WASP-Question-Andrew-Fraser/dp/1907166297
"If people here want Anglo-Saxon Americans or European-Americans to maintain demographic control of this country, the best way to do so is to go out and marry the best, smartest Anglo-Saxon/European girl you can find and have lots of kids with her. If you don't already have children, have one. If you already have children, have some more."
Rather than engaging in an ultimately futile breeding war, European Americans would be wiser to lobby harder for immigration restriction. European Americans have little chance of retaining majority status while the borders remain wide open to the Third World.
"Rather than engaging in an ultimately futile breeding war, European Americans would be wiser to lobby harder for immigration restriction. European Americans have little chance of retaining majority status while the borders remain wide open to the Third World."
We can't do both? I say we can. Have more children, and become more politically active. Engage in a reconquista of your own by buying a foreclosed home in a Latino neighborhood. Whites need to stop running, and start fighting and start breeding.
And besides, this is not a breeding war - this is race replacement, pure and simple. In this case, breeding whites to replace Hispanics. Job growth is barely keeping pace with population. In truth, with only some exceptions, employers would rather hire intelligent, English-speaking Americans over illiterate Latino peasants.
The massive growth in the Latino population projected to occur by 2050 won't happen, to a large degree. Declining economic prospects have slowed and even reversed migration. Massive government budget deficits ensure that welfare payments will have to end sometime very soon.
Many commenters have elided WASP into White. The majority of white Americans today are descended from immigrants whose ancestral culture was alien to American values, and let's not be PC, inferior to A-S culture.
Incidentally, Steve, have you ever discussed the 19thC Know Nothings?
What's missing in this quote:
"There is no shortage of evidence to suggest that the Changs, the Gonzales and the Singhs (not to mention the Goldmans with their well-known animus toward WASPs) still practice forms of ethnic nepotism strictly forbidden to Anglo-Protestants."
Why is it forbidden to mention that the most successful ethnic nepotism of all was practiced - indeed invented - by Irish-Americans? You have to admire the skill with which it was done. Subsequent immigrants just tried to copy the Irish.
It's our Anglo-Saxon political tradition that really counts. What is so hard about that?
The American political tradition is not the British one. We fought a war over that difference.
Why is it forbidden to mention that the most successful ethnic nepotism of all was practiced - indeed invented - by Irish-Americans?
You're a kook.
But then, Steve himself has given the green-light to the peculiar anti-Irish bigots, so I guess it's no surprise that they keep popping up here.
Anglo-Saxons are far from having any ethnic solidarity, and haven't had so for a long time, if ever.
Anglo-Saxons in America used to be very proficient at ethnocentrism. That's why they were able to retain political power long after they became a minority group.
"The majority of white Americans today are descended from immigrants whose ancestral culture was alien to American values, and let's not be PC, inferior to A-S culture."
In many ways German, Dutch and French culture was superior to A-S culture in the 18th and 19th centuries. The US became great because in the 19th century the "mixing pot" actually worked. Adding the German work ethic, Dutch business sense, some French creativity and a dash of Irish hatred of authority to an Anglo-Saxon political culture produced a culture that was far superior to the original Anglo-Saxon culture on the British Isles. However the recent additions of Jewish clannishness and love of legalisms, Italian sexual peacocking, and immigrants from low trust cultures of South America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East seem to be spoiling our cultural recipe fairly quickly.
Don't be coy. Which non-English white groups had an inferior culture?
To take the Irish, is it going to be suggested that they were genetically inferior to the English? Since the two groups are practically indistinguishable genetically, how is that supposed to work?
Why is the Irish achievement in music and literature inferior to the English achievement in science and technology? As a scientist myself, I admire the English achievement in science, but more people enjoy listening to Celtic ballads than performing Newtonian calculus.
And on the topic of theocracies, so-called, and the Enlightenment, so-called, why was it OK for the English to have the Church of England with a monarch as its head, but not for Catholic countries to have their clergy at the same time? And if you think human rights and egalitarianism have run amuck, maybe the problem lies with the Enlightenment, during which these ideas gained a great deal of power.
And of course we benighted Catholics held science back, didn't we? That, no doubt, explains those 35 lunar craters named after Jesuit scientists.
Finally, if WASPs can't get their womenfolk to bear children, partly thanks to the feminism and environmentalism they helped invent, and now find themselves overrun by "lesser breeds", whose fault is that?
But if you're writing a polemic in good faith, then you at least acknowledge your opponents' argument, right?
This is a very, very strange sentence.
Another one of those ingenuous, "Gosh, why is it that...?" articles. This West guy must know the answer given by his opponents: that Anglo-Saxons were historically the dominant ethnie in America, and that Anglo-Saxon pride and solidarity have historically been instruments of large-scale injustice. That's in contrast to, for instance, Irish-American pride and solidarity, which most anti-racists have no problem with. Solidarity of those on the top is not the same as solidarity of those on the bottom. To acknowledge this view is not to accept it (I don't). But if you're writing a polemic in good faith, then you at least acknowledge your opponents' argument, right?
Right. When the Anglo-Saxons pulled the Jews' asses out of the fire in Europe, that made it open season on the English and the Americans, as far as the Jews are concerned. When the Anglo-Saxons put an end to slavery around the world, that made it open season on the English and the Americans, as far as the blacks are concerned. When the Anglo-Saxons tolerated and respected the rights of tens of millions of Mexican illegal alien infiltrators "just looking for a better life" (and not reciprocating anything), that made it open season on the Americans as far as the Mexicans are concerned. When the Anglo-Saxons pushed the idea of human rights on the world, that made it open season on the English and the Americans, as far as the world is concerned.
How about when Jews formed the vanguard of the Red Terror? Doesn't that put Jewish pride on the chopping block? And Israel, for that matter? I mean, Jewish identity has historically been an instrument of large-scale injustice, right?
And as Matthew ably points out:
Which ethnic group is on top again? You know which. And yet they're allowed to have ethnic solidarity. A potential future president is in that ethnic-group's very own ethnostate right now endeavoring to kiss their ass while raising money for an American presidential race on foreign soil.
How about Spanish identity? Mongol identity? Chinese identity (probably the world's biggest body count)? Russian identity? Japanese identity? Arab identity?
But you make a good point: leftism is not at all governed by "universalism," as it claims, but by its reading of history, to which we must all ascribe. Cultural supremacy, not universalism, is the leftist watchword.
Many do, many don't. But let's assume that good faith is for suckers. Isn't it more interesting to listen to your opponents, to think about what they actually say, than to put your hands over your ears like Ed West does?
I find winning absolutely fascinating.
I also think it's fair to say that in the UK the opponents' argument in this case has not exactly been starved of the oxygen of the publicity these past few years.
Amen to that. It's not our job to jump through hoops for anyone. Let them carry their own water.
It seems unlikely that nominally Americanized Changs, Singhs, and Gonzales are as committed in a practical sense to the anti-discrimination principle as Anglo-Saxon individualists. There is no shortage of evidence to suggest that the Changs, the Gonzales and the Singhs (not to mention the Goldmans with their well-known animus toward WASPs) still practice forms of ethnic nepotism strictly forbidden to Anglo-Protestants.
Fortunately, other factors will drag the Anglo-Saxon, kicking and screaming, back to "racism." Namely, their love of freedom and justice. The Anglo-Saxons may not be interested in race, but race is interested in them, and the negatives will drag them back to the table.
Peter A, the western European multiculturalism paved the way for the European multiculturalism, which paved the way for the featherless biped multiculturalism. So in the full accounting, that part goes in with red ink. And I'm not sure there's any outweighing that one.
I think the lesson of history is to nip it in the bud - all of it. One people, one language, one culture, one nation.
The problem with paleoconservatives is thinking white. Its this reliance on fact and logic, as though minorities and white liberals who have made their careers and gotten free rides on anti-white discrimination will suddenly see the error in their thinking and do a 180 in their behavior.
They know they are wrong already (at least those on the right side of the bell curve). That's why they increasingly have to resort on bigger and bigger lies, creating 'Great White Defendants', etc.
What needs to be done is respond with protests, etc. like they do. Force the issue.
Peter A. nailed it
"However the recent additions of Jewish clannishness and love of legalisms"
Yeah, because Jews never contributed anything to the US. LOL.
"It is only in recent times, many years after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act made America a truly diverse society, that making such a statement has stopped being a bland statement of historical fact and become a virtual hate crime."
The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act is getting more mentioned by respected journalists today... Maybe Scotch-Irish power is waning?
"Among the many English-Americans were almost all of America’s founding fathers, including its greatest, Thomas Jefferson, who used the Anglo-Saxons as a political model, and often (like many Whigs and proto-Whigs before) saw the conflict within the British world as one between latter-day Normans (Tories) and Saxons (Whigs)."
Has Ed West read Heisman's suicide note, or is this history more commonly discussed than I had realized?
The point is this - Romney can get away with saying 'Anglo-Saxon', because it is associated in the public mind with such things as English common law and the enlightenment, the impulse of Edmund Burke, John Wilkes etc and other be-wigged 18th century personalities who more or less crafted the American notions of civility, rights, freedoms and democracy. So far, so good. But if Romney was really getting at the notion that he wants the USA to remain a white, European nation in terms of culture and outlook (as I think he is), then he can't really say that, so the image of be-wigged, rather pompous, wise 'jolly good chap', 18th century
beef-steak eaters and clubmen (who fulfill the role of legalistic super-heroes in the USA), is evoked.
I wonder if anyone has done research on how ethnic politics determines how well your government functions. My impression is that places where most people vote their race or ethnicity tend to have worse government. But it would be interesting to see if that is borne out by the data.
The obvious examples are black city governments and white rural governments, but you would have to try to account for the differences in situations to learn anything. (It would be no great shock to discover that, say, big city governments had more corruption than small town governments.).
I expect that in the next decade or two, the current prohibition on white ethinic organization will go away. Without a media monopoly to enforce it here in the US, it looks inhererntly unstable. Unlike many people here, I expect this to make things worse, not better, because I think organizing politics along ethnic lines is likely to give worse results. i think blacks would get better results from politics if they had a credible threat to vote Republican, for example.
But it would be nice to have data instead of speculation here.
Someone poisoned your well. Now you have so many willing executioners.
I watched Hitchcock's The Birds not so long ago. San Francisco looked so nice back then(despite all that pecking).
Anonymous 7/30/12 2:42 AM said...
It's our Anglo-Saxon political tradition that really counts. What is so hard about that?
The American political tradition is not the British one. We fought a war over that difference.
I wish you had commented under a pseudonym, so I would be able to recognize your future comments, assume they were as ignorant and false as this one, and ignore them.
"Anonymous Aaron in Israel said...
....and that Anglo-Saxon pride and solidarity have historically been instruments of large-scale injustice."
A mendacious lie. One could just as well say that jewish pride and solidarity have historically been instruments of injustice.
Anglo-Saxons in America used to be very proficient at ethnocentrism. That's why they were able to retain political power long after they became a minority group.
It seems to have been flushed down the memory hole, but a lot of the pre-WWII WASPs were pretty ethnocentric:
wasp-people
[. . .]Brewster [Sr.], described by one acquaintance as "a crustacean McKinleyite Republican," entertained many members of Congress at his Catoctin retreat. [. . .] Brewster's politics, however, were too extreme to be openly expressed in the mainstream GOP. His anti-Communism was so rabid and sweeping that his son remembered that "if I were considerate enough to visit him in Washington with a friend whose parents were somehow associated with the Roosevelt administration, it was natural that he should refer quite regularly to my 'Communist friends.'" [. . .] Brewster's political opinions and his business contacts with Germany led the FBI to start a file on him. While various information testified that he admired the Nazi system and claimed to have met personally with Hitler on visits to Germany, the FBI's investigation revealed little aside from the fact that "BREWSTER possessed a great hatred for Jews and regarded them with suspicion at all times."
Brewster's views on race and religion were perhaps most fully expressed in the works of his good friend the eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard, who believed that Anglo-Saxon civilization and America's ancestral purity were under threat from inferior races. Stoddard was, like Brewster, a Harvard Law School graduate and sometime resident of Brookline, Massachusetts. (Brookline was, not coincidentally, the location of the nation's first country club.) Stoddard's works included evocative titles such as The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy and The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace of the Under-Man.
American society, according to Brewster and Stoddard, was a racial aristocracy under threat [. . .] Many upper-class East Coast gentlemen shared the view that snobbery and racial exclusion were necessary to preserve their elite culture, even if they stopped short of Stoddard's conclusion that "race cleansing is the obvious starting-point for race betterment." Although Brewster's virulent racial opinions were welcome in polite society, most of his peers expressed themselves in more decorous terms. [. . .]
Kingman Sr.s paranoid racism, extreme anticommunism, and unbridled hatred of Franklin Roosevelt reflected an entire class's inability to cope with drastic change. [. . .]
"In many ways German, Dutch and French culture was superior to A-S culture in the 18th and 19th centuries."
Agreed. The Anglo-Saxons have usually had better political institutions, but their culture overall has never been superior to German or French culture.
leftie thing:
"Isn't it more interesting to listen to your opponents, to think about what they actually say, than to put your hands over your ears like Ed West does?"
ed west's opponents entered into this long-running soul war with their hands flattened firmly against their ears. the blank slate thesis is their creationism, their ear-plugging, and without its premise they would not be able to claim that anglo-saxon dominance was the *deliberate* instrument of unfairness or injustice. they would be forced to concede that anglo dominance was organically emergent, a property of the genetic heritage bequeathed it over the generations. such a concession would be the stake through the heart of modern multicult equalism, which is why they will never do so... by normal means of suasion.
Anon:
"The bizarre thing about the opening ceremony was how undiverse it was. Where were all the Indians and Pakistanis?"
They're not cool. White Leftists like Danny Boyle and the BBC are utterly obsessed with Afro-Caribbeans, just as many American Leftists are obsessed with African-Americans.
Hence Boyle's weird vision of Britain that goes from ca 35% Afro-Caribbean in the 18th century, to around 70-80% Afro-Caribbean in 2012. Of course anyone who points out how weird this is, like Tory MP Aidan Burley, must be destroyed.
white people are going down!
Why is Romney the whitest man in the world? What is this based on?
I am going to have to tackle Mitchell Heisman's "Suicide Note." I kind of sympathize with Heisman's conclusion that shooting himself in Harvard Square was easier than editing, proofreading, and promoting his 1900 page magnum opus about the History of the World ...
I really think the term "WASP" should be avoided. I hate to point out the obvious, but it is the name of a pestilent, unpleasant insect. No one minds if a wasp is killed, or a thousand of them, or a million... the effect of the term is to dehumanise, whether that's the speaker's intention or not.
How about "Anglo-American"? Slower to type, sure, but I think it's an investment worth making. It uses the same template as "Irish American", "Afro-American" etc, so force the listener to consider the Anglos as an authentic ethnic group, rather than some oddity with an ugly name.
And who ever heard of a non-white Anglo-Saxon? The term is a loaded, hostile one and has been since it was coined.
Boycott WASP.
"Anglo-American"
One issue is that Scots, especially Lowland or "Saxon" Scots (to use Sir Walter Scott's terminology," played a large role as captains of industry and in country clubs.
Maybe British-American?
Some use Old American to include Brits, Germans, and Dutch (e.g., the Roosevelts)
The Anglo-Saxon political tradition denotes what is common between Britain and U.S.., namely, representative democracy, economic liberty, trial by jury, rule of law, etc.. To equate it with ethnicity or everything English is simply a mistake. We will continue to be in the Anglo Saxon political tradition as long as our Constitution lasts and his honored, no matter our changing demography.
The point is there is not other term to denote this political tradition. Thus Anglo-Saxon is it by default. Otherwise our language is crippled.
Some people complain about use of the term 'Western liberal tradition' because it sounds Western; others complain about our 'Anglo-Saxon' political tradition because it sounds racist.
Everything has to start somewhere even if it has universal significance, which I (and most of the world) think our Western-style liberal institutions possess. Where these institutions developed is merely historical happenstance.
The whole idea of political correctness was born and grew in the old Soviet Union and was fostered in Maoist China. It is incompatible with the Western liberal idea.
AaroninIsrael:"Another one of those ingenuous, "Gosh, why is it that...?" articles. This West guy must know the answer given by his opponents: that Anglo-Saxons were historically the dominant ethnie in America, and that Anglo-Saxon pride and solidarity have historically been instruments of large-scale injustice. That's in contrast to, for instance, Irish-American pride and solidarity, which most anti-racists have no problem with"
Ah, yes, the blameless Irish-Americans....Well, blameless if one forgets things like the slaughter of Blacks by the Irish in the Draft Riots, the key role that Irish-Americans played in excluding Blacks from from blue collar jobs, etc.And, of course, the fact that the Irish did all this while pretending that they were being discriminated against (cf the mythical No Irish Need Apply Sign).
Syon
Simon in London:"Hence Boyle's weird vision of Britain that goes from ca 35% Afro-Caribbean in the 18th century, to around 70-80% Afro-Caribbean in 2012. Of course anyone who points out how weird this is, like Tory MP Aidan Burley, must be destroyed."
Yeah, the scenes depicting Britain during the Industrial Revolution were weirdly "Blacked up."Guess that Boyle wants people to think that Blacks have always been demographically significant in the UK and not a fairly recent addition.
Syon
anonymous:"The American political tradition is not the British one. We fought a war over that difference."
Actually, the American political tradition is entirely British, albeit with a decided emphasis on the Whig side of things.
Syon
Seems like no post around here these days is complete without some gratuitous Irish bashing.
That would not be a problem if the criticism was correct, but by and large it's crude, nasty, and stupid.
I notice that it was "Aaron in Israel" who injected mention of the Irish into the debate. A little preemptive diversion there, Aaron?
blameless if one forgets things like the slaughter of Blacks by the Irish in the Draft Riots, the key role that Irish-Americans played in excluding Blacks from from blue collar jobs
Gotta love the way you channel lefty-speak, Syon. What, no mention of the Catholic Church and its anti-woman bias?
The Anglo-Saxon political tradition denotes what is common between Britain and U.S.., namely, representative democracy, economic liberty, trial by jury, rule of law, etc..
That's an odd usage of "Anglo-Saxon political tradition", considering that at the time of the American Revolution, Britain did not have representative democracy. Representative democracy is a US import into Britain.
The American political tradition is not the British one. We fought a war over that difference.
I wish you had commented under a pseudonym, so I would be able to recognize your future comments, assume they were as ignorant and false as this one
You did comment under a pseudonym, but not one I've ever seen before or am likely to see again.
The American Revolution was fought very explicitly over differences in conceptions about how governments should work. Read the Declaration of Independence to see where the American side was coming from.
No matter what ethnic group you belong to, it always appears that other groups are clannish and cohesive while your own is wracked with strife. It's just human nature.
"Among the many English-Americans were almost all of America’s founding fathers, including its greatest, Thomas Jefferson, who used the Anglo-Saxons as a political model, and often (like many Whigs and proto-Whigs before) saw the conflict within the British world as one between latter-day Normans (Tories) and Saxons (Whigs)."
Has Ed West read Heisman's suicide note, or is this history more commonly discussed than I had realized?
It's more commonly discussed than you had realized.
I never heard of this Heisman character until a few days ago on this blog. (And what I've heard of him instills in me zero desire to read him) But I've been familiar with the Whig notion of history for a decade or more.
Noted Historian Forrest McDonald has written extensively on this topic.
Some of it is even even available free online. Link
@julian - "Why is the Irish achievement in music and literature inferior to the English achievement in science and technology? As a scientist myself, I admire the English achievement in science, but more people enjoy listening to Celtic ballads than performing Newtonian calculus."
well maybe 'cause an understanding of newtonian physics can help you get to the moon and back whilst a nice celtic ballad will get you ... maybe laid if you're the actual singer, but that's about it.
And who ever heard of a non-white Anglo-Saxon? The term is a loaded, hostile one and has been since it was coined.
WASP originally stood for "Wealthy Anglo-Saxon Protestant". At a time when the upper-class in America was wealthy, Anglo-American, and Protestant, the term had some utility.
White Anglo-Saxon is, as you say, a silly formulation.
"who ever heard of a non-white Anglo-Saxon?"
The President.
an understanding of newtonian physics can help you get to the moon and back whilst a nice celtic ballad will get you ... maybe laid if you're the actual singer, but that's about it.
Perhaps the day will come when the ability to get to the moon and back is more useful than the ability to get laid, but that day is not this one and I'm pretty sure it won't be tomorrow either.
Actually, the American political tradition is entirely British
The American political tradition is one of constitutional monarchy and hereditary peers?
It's one thing to express differing opinions about matters which are unclear, but you've gotten simple historical facts blatantly wrong. The American political idea diverged very sharply from that of the British in 1776. So sharpy that a war was waged over the differences. For the next 100+ years the US saw Britain as a menace and an enemy and the British despised the Americans. This business of the two countries being two peas from the same pod is recent historical revisionism.
I suspect that a lot of this stuff on this blog is coming from Brits eager to claim a share of credit for American success.
"Why is it forbidden to mention that the most successful ethnic nepotism of all was practiced - indeed invented - by Irish-Americans? You have to admire the skill with which it was done. Subsequent immigrants just tried to copy the Irish."
Haha...only on here would someone find something more alien and sinister about the Irish than 3rd world cultures....
Anon:
"I suspect that a lot of this stuff on this blog is coming from Brits eager to claim a share of credit for American success."
We are the wellspring from which you flow!
"'who ever heard of a non-white Anglo-Saxon?'
The President."
Steve that is the best descriptor I've ever seen regarding Obama. Makes me wonder how his relationship with Michelle works, since the few nerdy black intellectuals I've met tend to have a lot of trouble courting black women.
Anyway, this parsing over who is Anglo is probably about as fruitful as Indian tribes squabbling over the blood quantum of their members. I'm sure most people with Anglo blood have Scottish, Welsh, French Canadian or American Indian blood. Of course many WASPs who are the most genetically WASP are weird liberals who think WASPs are the cancer of the human race. So obsession over ancestry isn't gonna help this cause.
Gloria
only on here would someone find something more alien and sinister about the Irish than 3rd world cultures.
Only here would you encounter people who believe that the Irish are a 3rd world culture.
The seamy underbelly of HBD, exposed.
anonymous:"Gotta love the way you channel lefty-speak, Syon. What, no mention of the Catholic Church and its anti-woman bias?s"
Well, one when is engaged in a dispute with a left-leaning Irish nationalist who claims that his people are entirely lacking in the sins that bedevil other nations, a judicious deployment of left-speak can be rather effective.Oh, I neglected to mention RC policies towards women because my Hibernian antagonist has yet to make claims to the effect that Irishwomen were more emancipated than Englishwomen.
Syon
anonymous:"That's an odd usage of "Anglo-Saxon political tradition", considering that at the time of the American Revolution, Britain did not have representative democracy. Representative democracy is a US import into Britain."
Well, America wasn't a representative democracy at the time of the Revolution, either. That had to wait until the 1830s. Both the USA and the UK were on the path to representative democracy; the USA just got there first.
Syon
anonymous:"The American political tradition is one of constitutional monarchy and hereditary peers?
It's one thing to express differing opinions about matters which are unclear, but you've gotten simple historical facts blatantly wrong. The American political idea diverged very sharply from that of the British in 1776. So sharpy that a war was waged over the differences. For the next 100+ years the US saw Britain as a menace and an enemy and the British despised the Americans. This business of the two countries being two peas from the same pod is recent historical revisionism."
This is historically illiterate. The USA represents the triumph of the Whig-Liberal political tradition: Locke, Wilkes, Priestly, Milton, James Harrington, etc.Indeed, all of Britain's settler colonies (the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) can be viewed as the inheritor of this aspect of the British political tradition. One of the ways that Britain surpasses her progeny lies in the fact that Britain encompasses both halves of Anglo political thinking, the Tory and the Whig.The USA has only a partial inheritance.
Syon
Anonymous:"The American Revolution was fought very explicitly over differences in conceptions about how governments should work. Read the Declaration of Independence to see where the American side was coming from."
The Declaration of Independence is nothing more than a series of radical Whig commonplace sentiments.It is Anglo to the core.
Syon
many WASPs who are the most genetically WASP are weird liberals who think WASPs are the cancer of the human race. So obsession over ancestry isn't gonna help this cause.
Amen to that.
And by the same token, the strange obsession of certain Anglophiles with ancestral legends of the sub-humanness of the Irish isn't gonna help this cause either.
Like a great many Americans, I am both part English and part Irish. Set aside the fact that the attacks on the Irish are for the most part factually garbage - the even more pressing problem with them is that they are strategically suicidal. But if bigots could think rationally they would not be bigots.
"who ever heard of a non-white Anglo-Saxon?"
The President.
I can just see a real Anglo-Saxon going to a "GD America" White Liberationist church and getting elected...dog catcher.
The majority of white Americans today are descended from immigrants whose ancestral culture was alien to American values
Alien to American values, how, exactly?
Protestantism.
Gun ownership as a prerequisite of the citizen militia.
Capitalism.
Banking.
Corporations.
Absolute nuclear family.
Secularism.
County government system.
Trial by jury.
Modern/newtonian physics.
Separation of powers.
Suppresion of ecclesiastical authority.
Constitutions.
Enshrining govenment support of science and inventions.
Patent/intellectual property law.
Do you want me to keep going...?
I am mostly of German ancestry and I consider myself to be a WASP. I would include the rest of the Germanics (Scandinavians and Dutch) as well.
I find the Anglo-Saxon fetish of the white English speakers kind of childish.
All the Nations around the North Sea have basically the same genes, the same culture, the same laws and the same public institutions.
This does not mean that they have not fought wars and killed each other from time to time, but even the justifications were similar for both sides. Usually the motivation for both sides was that they fought for freedom and the rule of law.
One of the most brutal wars fought in Scandinavia, was the Swedish conquest of Scania, where cities were massacred, people were broken on the wheel, large areas were fire taxed etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_wheel
All this over minor details, as there really wasn't any major difference between Swedish or Danish rule, culture, institutions or language.
If the Geats had not been conquered by Swedes, Scania would probably have been Geatish rather than Danish. The identity we have is thus more or less random, but the history would probably have looked rather similar.
Instead of Swedes and the Danes holding the world record for most wars fought, it might have been the Jutes and the Geats, or the Scanians and the Angles.
To compare with Anglo-Saxons, it is accidental that you have this identity, but it is not accidental that you have rule of law, juries, individuality and personal freedom, as that is the case for all the nations around the North Sea.
If it is one good thing about the fall of the Anglo-Saxon from their dominant position, it is that they start taking an interest in their brother peoples the Scots, the Dutch, the Frisians, the low Germans(Saxons), the Danes, the Swedes and the Norwegians.
Ah, yes, the blameless Irish-Americans....Well, blameless if one forgets things like the slaughter of Blacks by the Irish in the Draft Riots, the key role that Irish-Americans played in excluding Blacks from from blue collar jobs, etc.And, of course, the fact that the Irish did all this while pretending that they were being discriminated against (cf the mythical No Irish Need Apply Sign)."
"
a\
Oh no, not this again. Is that you, Anonymous/irishman of the last thread containing psycho comments about Hibernians? Sure sounds like it. You become all teary about blacks, or any other group in the service of blasting the Irish. Were you one of the shooters on the grassy knoll, by any chance?
The "slaughter" of Blacks (I'll keep the cap since you started it.) Slaughter? The Irish resented being drafted to die in a war they had nothing to do with. Blacks were not being conscripted. Irish had no better off just at that time, but were supposed to fight & die for (in their minds) Blacks. I don't blame them for rioting. I doubt the "slaughter" was any greater than the "slaughter" of hundreds of thousands of whites by blacks in the years since. I know you're just itching to say the Irish genocided blacks, but even you know that's pretty ridiculous. Kept them out of blue collar jobs? It was every man for themselves, as we're finding today with hispanics ruthless pruning blacks from blue collar jobs. Maybe those jobs are just going to the people who do them better. Detroit didn't really improve when it became inundated with blacks.
I don't really care if the Irish are any more or less "racist" than any other whites, because I see the absurdity of the term these days. Blacks are not prey, they are predators, and if anything are privileged far beyond what they actually should get on merit alone. Years of AA has seen to that. I don't know a single one of my friends/acquaintences in my mid-Atlantic metropolis who has not experienced (or family members have experienced) serious crime by blacks, serious meaning murder, armed robbery, gross assault, rape, and extreme harrassment. We pay our taxes so they can breed more and we breed less. They are supported by our taxes (those who don't work, and they are legion) and they breed more. They bite the very hands that feed them.
Obviously I am not referring to those blacks who work, pay taxes, and are law abiding. But seeing as how more than 15% of any neighborhood or city going black means decline, I wouldn't hold my breath about high-functioning blacks being the majority of the race. They're not.
As far the Irish, who gives a crap.They are not that different from any other group. They just have better music. There are more similarities among the white ethnics who have inhabited the urban spaces in America than there are differences. Irish and Italians, Poles and Liths, Greeks and English and even Lebanese, have all married each other, and lived side by side with little fanfare. As far as their relationship with blacks, they have all been prey more often than predators, to judge from the crime stats and the white flight-for-their-lives that has characterized the cities for decades now.
I can't wait for the next hilarious thing to be said here about the Irish.
The Irish did little because of a Church intent on stamping out any science (the mainstream Church circa say 1500-1950 was very anti-Science). All that was left to them was language and literature. By contrast the nearly identical Scots by way of DNA, contributed much to the Scientific and Industrial revolutions. But then, the Church was a non-factor in lowland Scotland. As it was in the heart of Germany's industrial base. You can't have scientific advance if most of the Clergy and hierarchy condemn scientific experiments as blasphemy and amounting to Witchcraft. Even today the Catholic Church is often anti-Science, particularly wrt reproduction and other areas of human genetics.
But ... Thought Experiment.
Suppose most White guys were either Russell Brand, or your local tattooed bicycle messenger with dreads, or some goombah-type thug.
Just suppose.
How much support would most White women give to the proposition that Anglo-Saxons are worthless and thus forbidden from expressing their identity and pride in and of themselves? How much, really?
Women care about the sexy. They penalize not just individual men but groups of them that don't have the sexy dominance that they crave. That's as true as the female jurors flirting with John Edwards before acquitting him. Women forgive not only anything in a sexy man, but EVERYTHING in sexy, dominant, ahole men as a group. That means being dominant, socially, at all costs. Assertive, aholish, and above all not prone to abstract intellectualism which is as repellent to women as a Baseball Statistics Convention meeting in a Star Trek Museum.
The problem with giving white-advancement groups the same legitimacy as black-advancement (and lately Hispanic-advancement) groups is that the conflict is zero-sum. Any gain by whites is a dollar-for-dollar loss to blacks and Hispanics. TPTB have decided that nothing could be worse than allowing that dynamic to surface, so they have thoroughly demonized any hint of white pride.
They've been quite successful with that tactic. But I doubt they have a plan for dealing with the coming fight for spoils between blacks and Hispanics. That's going to be a lot uglier than anything this country has seen so far.
- A Solid Citizen
hbdchick
Part of my point was that genetically the Irish are very similar to the English. It was only an accident of history that made it impossible for the Irish to achieve at the same level as the Scots and the English.
People of (part) Irish descent do OK in science these days. In fact, hbdchick, if you check your recent archives, you will find that you cited the work of a bloke called Julian O'Dea.
It's more commonly discussed than you had realized.
I never heard of this Heisman character until a few days ago on this blog. (And what I've heard of him instills in me zero desire to read him) But I've been familiar with the Whig notion of history for a decade or more.
I wonder if that's why he blew his brains out. He had spent years writing thousands of pages about the idea and then found out one day that it had been thought about before.
In 1987, I spent a couple of weeks driving around southwestern England and southwestern Ireland, and it seemed pretty obvious why the English had conquered the Irish instead of the other way around. England has some great agricultural land, while much of the Irish soil is full of rocks, which is why Ireland is full of stone walls -- it gives farmers some place to put all the rocks that would otherwise break their plows. For a certain level of technology, the land of England can just feed a larger population, so if they could maintain political unity, they could push around the poor Irish.
Thank you for the Forrest McDonald recommendation, his work looks very interesting.
Sylvan:"The "slaughter" of Blacks (I'll keep the cap since you started it.) Slaughter? The Irish resented being drafted to die in a war they had nothing to do with. Blacks were not being conscripted. Irish had no better off just at that time, but were supposed to fight & die for (in their minds) Blacks. I don't blame them for rioting."
Rioting in the midst of war; treasonous behavior from immigrants. Interesting to see that the "blameless" Irish are as quick to butcher as any other group of people.
sylvan:" I doubt the "slaughter" was any greater than the "slaughter" of hundreds of thousands of whites by blacks in the years since."
Ah, but it does take the Irish down a peg or two, doesn't it?
sylvan:"I know you're just itching to say the Irish genocided blacks, but even you know that's pretty ridiculous."
Well, yeah, seeing as how no one in american history ever attempted to (in your words) "genocide" the Blacks.
sylvan:" Kept them out of blue collar jobs? It was every man for themselves, as we're finding today with hispanics ruthless pruning blacks from blue collar jobs."
Again, it merely shows that the Irish were no different from anyone else.They, too, killed and discriminated.
Syon
Whiskey:"The Irish did little because of a Church intent on stamping out any science (the mainstream Church circa say 1500-1950 was very anti-Science). All that was left to them was language and literature. By contrast the nearly identical Scots by way of DNA, contributed much to the Scientific and Industrial revolutions. But then, the Church was a non-factor in lowland Scotland. As it was in the heart of Germany's industrial base. You can't have scientific advance if most of the Clergy and hierarchy condemn scientific experiments as blasphemy and amounting to Witchcraft. Even today the Catholic Church is often anti-Science, particularly wrt reproduction and other areas of human genetics."
Yeah, it was all because of the Roman Catholic Church....after all, the Italians contributed nothing to science in the period 1500 to 1950.Guys like Galileo and Fermi must have been flukes...
Whiskey, old chap, please reconsider your position.
As I have pointed out the Church was not uniformly anti-science (those 35 craters on the moon named after Jesuits, remember?)
Second point. For most of the time period you mentioned, the masters in Ireland were the English, who had their own church, which was not Catholic. Catholicism was barely tolerated, and could hardly have exercised the level of control that you ascribe to it. The native Irish were simply too poor to do any science. Literature and music can be done cheaply, and with few resources.
Third point. It is a bit rich for people of English origin to keep the Irish immiserated for centuries, and then to complain that they were not great in science and technology.
Fourth point. Seriously, can you refer to an official Catholic Church document condemning scientific experiment as "witchcraft"?
Fifth point. Experimental science in Europe goes back to the time of Robert Grosseteste, in the 13th century. He was a bishop in the Catholic Church. See "Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science, 1100 to 1700" by AC Crombie. Knowledgeable people are aware that experimental science was being done at Oxford centuries before the Reformation and the Enlightenment.
Sixth and final point. Whiskey, it is almost as if you are two men. One who writes odd comments on blogs like this; and one who writes fascinating stuff on popular culture on his own blog. Maybe you could think about where your true talents lie.
The existence of Ireland as England's punching bag allowed the English the luxury of being more decent to each other. Think about protection of private property in England, for example. One reason that there weren't frequent massive expropriations of property within England, thus setting off long cycles of vengeance and counter-vengeance, was because the English could amicably settle violent disputes within England, as in the 1640s and 1688, by letting the victors grab land from the Irish instead of from other English. Not surprisingly, this meant the Irish weren't happy with the English, but rebellions over the sea in Ireland were a small price to pay for a settled distribution of property on the home island.
" England has some great agricultural land, while much of the Irish soil is full of rocks, which is why Ireland is full of stone walls -- it gives farmers some place to put all the rocks that would otherwise break their plows."
Scandinavia used to have stone fences too, but when the tractor arrived, they were used as foundations on the country roads. I am pretty sure this is the case for England as well.
Another use for them, is drainage of fields. One literally have underground stone fences where water can run away, and these are at least in Norway, the biggest investment of most farms.
That England have better soil than Ireland, does not explain why Scandinavia for a while dominated both Islands.
A far better non-genetical explanation, was that England and the lowland Scots were part of the North Germanic cultural sphere, and thus got to share any technology their brother peoples developed.
If one North Sea nation developed something, you could take this knowledge and emigrate, and make a good living in a nation that don't have it yet.
One example is the Ships the English used to build their empire, and another is the Norwegian oil-technology. The WASPs that came to Norway to teach us how to drill oil, integrated and became part of society, and their children are today Norwegians.
The Pakistanis that came around the same time as the oil-wasps, are still Pakistanis in both England and Norway.
A parallel to the English domination of Ireland, is the Swedish domination of Finland. Finland never had the chance to compete with the collective North Sea technology, as their language hindered integration, and the same is just as true for the Irish.
There is one difference though. Finland came under Russian rule for a century, and learned the hard way that there are worse things than Swedes, a lesson the Irish never got.
Whiskey's posts just get more and more absurd over time. He should take that show on the road and try to turn it into a paying gig.
A parallel to the English domination of Ireland, is the Swedish domination of Finland. Finland never had the chance to compete with the collective North Sea technology, as their language hindered integration, and the same is just as true for the Irish.
There is one difference though. Finland came under Russian rule for a century, and learned the hard way that there are worse things than Swedes, a lesson the Irish never got.
English rule of Ireland was far more similar to Russian rule of Finland (or even to German rule of Poland) than to Swedish rule of Finland.
People who have grown up watching movies in which the English are portrayed as decent, upstanding and honorable have trouble understanding this, but the English amassed the biggest empire on earth by being the biggest bastards around.
That England have better soil than Ireland, does not explain why Scandinavia for a while dominated both Islands.
That one group of people achives military domination over another does not necessarily mean that the first group was genetically or culturally superior. In the case of the Vikings, it's not the case that they ever "dominated" either England or Ireland.
Ah, but it does take the Irish down a peg or two, doesn't it?
I don't understand the utility of posting comments from self-confessed trolls.
Alien to American values, how, exactly?
Protestantism.
Gun ownership as a prerequisite of the citizen militia.
Capitalism.
Banking.
Corporations.
Absolute nuclear family.
Secularism.
County government system.
Trial by jury.
Modern/newtonian physics.
Separation of powers.
Suppresion of ecclesiastical authority.
Constitutions.
Enshrining govenment support of science and inventions.
Patent/intellectual property law.
Do you want me to keep going.
Protestantism is not an American value.
The other things you list, such as banking and physics, are not "values" at all, still less an American innovation.
So no, please stop with your absurd list of "American values" which are neither American nor values.
The USA represents the triumph of the Whig-Liberal political tradition
Strange how the "Whig-Liberal political tradition" has been so remarkably unsuccessful in Britain.
You are one of those Brits, mentioned up-thread, who wants to claim for his own failed state the successes of America. It's not working.
The Declaration of Independence is nothing more than a series of radical Whig commonplace sentiments.
Those "commonplace sentiments" were certainly not commonplace in Britain in 1776, to put it mildly. If anything they are even less commonplace today.
Using your logic, the Roman Catholic Church can clam credit for all the good things which Protestantism has achieved. Sure, the Church was implacably opposed to Protestantism when it first developed, but Protestantism itself was both an off-shoot of and a reaction against the Church.
Well, one when is engaged in a dispute with a left-leaning Irish nationalist who claims that his people are entirely lacking in the sins that bedevil other nations, a judicious deployment of left-speak can be rather effective
The only left-leaning person on this thread is you, Syon. Like all lefties, you have difficulty both with reading and with telling the truth. There is no commenter here arguing that the Irish are "entirely lacking in the sins that bedevil other nations", let alone any Irish commenter. You just made that up out of whole cloth. Your initial anti-Irish screed was in response to that well-known Irish nationalist, "Aaron in Israel"!
"The existence of Ireland as England's punching bag allowed the English the luxury of being more decent to each other."
Denmark is not that far away from England. Why didn't the English use them as their punching bag?
We have a lot of English surnames in Scandinavia, but because the English that came here integrated, we never had an English minority that could cry to the homeland for protection.
Norway was under Danish rule for centuries, but we were never used as the punching bag by the Danes.
The Danes that came here took up a Norwegian identity, and Norwegians were reckoned as the Danish Kings most loyal subjects. One example is that the life guards of the Danish Kings used to be Norwegians.
Another major difference was that the Dano-Norwegian union was voluntary. The Swedish-Norwegian union was however not, and was the result of war. A few years after this, the Swedish King continued the tradition of Norwegian life guards.
What the Swedes did in Scania is comparable to the atrocities the English did in Ireland, but you don't have the hate that is between the Irish and the English.
A Norwegian soldier could have fought the Swedes in war that they lost, his ancestors could have been broken on the wheel in Scania as a free shooter, but still he was expected to guard the Swedish King with his life.
Why is it that the Irish can not understand that this thirst for revenge over the English, makes it rational for the English to discriminate against them, as they just can not be trusted?
The Geats, Jutes, Scanians, Norwegians, Frisians, Scots, Finns or any of the other conquered landscapes, understood that only when they behaved as loyal subjects, could they demand equal treatment.
Demanding equal treatment and rights, without also giving your loyalty, is a recipe for becoming hated. The Jews never seem to learn this lesson, but I have a hope that the Irish will.
"Finland came under Russian rule for a century, and learned the hard way that there are worse things than Swedes, a lesson the Irish never got."
Except Finland was much better off under the union with Russia than under Sweden. No attempts at assimilation, no interference into religious affairs, freedom to speak Finnish, full self-government including constitution, parliament, own police, own currency, even real border with Russia itself with Finnish border guard controlling the coming and going. Ireland would've been so lucky to fall under Russian control.
O/T: Something new to me. I’m aware that NPR reporters have long been pronouncing all the Spanish-based names (and places in Latin America) with very Spanish accent, but this week I actually heard a reporter pronounce San Antonio with a Spanish accent…good lord.
Why is it that the Irish can not understand that this thirst for revenge over the English, makes it rational for the English to discriminate against them, as they just can not be trusted?
Thirst for revenge? What "thirst for revenge"? The Irish have never displayed any particular "thirst for revenge" against the English.
The Geats, Jutes, Scanians, Norwegians, Frisians, Scots, Finns or any of the other conquered landscapes, understood that only when they behaved as loyal subjects, could they demand equal treatment.
I don't know. Why is it that the Americans never learned that the only way to to be treated fairly by the English and be accorded equal rights and fair treatment was to submit and be loyal subjects?
The Irish, like the Americans, did not want "equal rights", they wanted their own county back.
What the Swedes did in Scania is comparable to the atrocities the English did in Ireland, but you don't have the hate that is between the Irish and the English.
You seem to have somehow missed this, but the "hate between the Irish and the English" is almost entirely English hate for the Irish and not the other way around. I never see Irish commenters popping up on this site to tell the world how much they hate the English. But hardly a week goes by (and lately, hardly a day goes by) without some English commenter spitting out his rage towards the Irish. "Syon" is merely the latest example.
the English amassed the biggest empire on earth by being the biggest bastards around.
Nah.
The Spanish, the French, the Belgians and the johnny-come-lately German Imperialists had better claims to being bigger bastards than us.
Not that I care.
I'd be quite happy if we were the biggest bastards around.
I just don't think this assertion factually correct.
Think of Gandhi. How would Hitler or Stalin have dealt with him?
As Mussolini said of the British pre WWII leadership "These men are not made of the same stuff as the Francis Drakes and the other magnificent adventurers who created the Empire. These, after all, are the tired sons of a long line of rich men, and they will lose their Empire."
Bigger bastards than anyone? Haha definately not. Thats one of the reasons we don't have an empire any more.
Why is it that the Irish can not understand that this thirst for revenge over the English, makes it rational for the English to discriminate against them, as they just can not be trusted?
Actually I have seen very little, if any, discrimination against the Irish amongst my fellow Englishmen.
However, I worked for a short time in Glasgow, Scotland and the Rangers/Celtic rivalry (which ultimately is a Scottish versus Irish ethnic clash) was quite an eye opener.
I think I can safely say that most Englishmen do not care and are not interested in the Irish and their complaints.
Anonymous said...
Alien to American values, how, exactly?
Protestantism.
Gun ownership as a prerequisite of the citizen militia.
Capitalism.
Banking.
Corporations.
Absolute nuclear family.
Secularism.
County government system.
Trial by jury.
Modern/newtonian physics.
Separation of powers.
Suppresion of ecclesiastical authority.
Constitutions.
Enshrining govenment support of science and inventions.
Patent/intellectual property law.
Do you want me to keep going.
Protestantism is not an American value.
The other things you list, such as banking and physics, are not "values" at all, still less an American innovation.
So no, please stop with your absurd list of "American values" which are neither American nor values.
I'll explain it to you. Because you "value" something, doesn't mean you have to have "innovated" it. Here's an example you can understand: Christianity was "innovated" in the Middle East, but still "valued" in Europe. When at the battle of Tours, the Europeans repel Muslims, it's because they are repelling "alien values". Hope you got that.
No, America didn't "innovate" everything on that list, but the Americans of the 18th and 19th centuries sure valued that list. I'm not trying to be offensive to, say, Mexicans, Poles, Haitians, or the Chinese, quite a few things on that list were alien to them. Does that mean that the immigrants from there are hostile to them? Not saying that.
And yes, for the first half of this country's history Protestantism and the society is produced was very much a value of over 90% of America. (See more on "suppression of ecclesiastical authorities" and you'll get it.) Do you have statistics that counter this?
I'd say "valuing" modern science is indeed something you can value. You're telling me that all societies in the world have done so? Got news for you. Many peoples and religions have been hostile to science.
Can you tell me what percentage of the world until a century ago had government with a separation of powers?
Or how about a divided church/state?
And on, and on...
I think your problem is confusing the meaning of words like "values". Hopefully, I cleared that up for you, kid.
In 1987, I spent a couple of weeks driving around southwestern England and southwestern Ireland, and it seemed pretty obvious why the English had conquered the Irish instead of the other way around. England has some great agricultural land, while much of the Irish soil is full of rocks
Although I run the risk of being wrong and contradicted, I am pretty sure that South West England was peopled by the Welsh. Whereas it is entirely possible that South East England was Germanic even before the Romans arrived (Ceaser wrote that the people on both sides of the channel were the same and Calais in the middle ages was Flemish) I am quite sure South West England was conquered from ethnic Welsh by the Saxons.
I seem to remember that DNA test show that the people of South West England have more in common with the Welsh than with the people of South East England and it is likely that the Saxons just became overlords and in time the local people adopted the Anglo-Saxon language.
So, its not that we had the better land, rather we took the better land.
What can I say? I'm sorry. We really are bastards.
I think I can safely say that most Englishmen do not care and are not interested in the Irish and their complaints
You must not spend much time on this blog, because 100% of the people who obsess about the Irish here are English, and it is they who have complaints about the Irish. If the Irish have complaints about the English, they seem to keep them to themselves.
The Spanish, the French, the Belgians and the johnny-come-lately German Imperialists had better claims to being bigger bastards than us.
You don't know much English history.
Can you tell me what percentage of the world until a century ago had government with a separation of powers?
Or how about a divided church/state?
Not Britain, that's for sure. I think its fine that you value separation of powers and a separation of church and state. I just don't understand why you think that these are British concepts. They are not. The desire for these things arose in America precisely because they did not exist in Britain.
I'd be quite happy if we were the biggest bastards around.
I just don't think this assertion factually correct.
Think of Gandhi. How would Hitler or Stalin have dealt with him?
How did England end up in possession of India in the first place? They won it in a game of cards? The argument made was not that the English of the 20th centuries were the biggest bastards in the world, but that the ones who built the Empire were. Building that Empire meant killing, robbing, displacing, and oppressing large numbers of people in places around the globe. This is how all empires worked.
Can you tell me what percentage of the world until a century ago had government with a separation of powers?
Or how about a divided church/state?
Not Britain, that's for sure. I think its fine that you value separation of powers and a separation of church and state. I just don't understand why you think that these are British concepts. They are not. The desire for these things arose in America precisely because they did not exist in Britain.
Uhh, can you point to me where I thought that these were "British concepts"? Having trouble finding where I said that.
The argument made was not that the English of the 20th centuries were the biggest bastards in the world, but that the ones who built the Empire were. Building that Empire meant killing, robbing, displacing, and oppressing large numbers of people in places around the globe. This is how all empires worked.
From Disraeli to Reuters to Oppenheimer to Sassoon, the British empire was largely a Jewish project.
Climate may help explain the relative economic success of Catholic and Protestant countries:
http://julianodea.blogspot.com.au/2007/10/catholic-countries-warm-and-lazy-recent.html
"I think its fine that you value separation of powers and a separation of church and state. I just don't understand why you think that these are British concepts. They are not. The desire for these things arose in America precisely because they did not exist in Britain."
Nonsense.
The desire for them arose in Britain (among other places) but they were blocked in Britain hence the move to America.
The War of Independence was a rematch of the English Civil War. The latter (in this context) was a three-way fight between royalists, parliamentarians and dissenters which the parliamentarians won.
The rematch aka war of independence, was between parliament (Britain) and emigrated dissenters (America).
"You must not spend much time on this blog, because 100% of the people who obsess about the Irish here are English, and it is they who have complaints about the Irish."
How do you know who these posters are?
I doubt half the people who make a particular point of their ethnicity are who they say they are especially given the particular efficacy of Irish vs Anglo and Catholic vs Protestant trolling.
This thread is like two men in a wooden building strangling each other while a third man is pouring gasoline everywhere and getting ready with a match.
You must not spend much time on this blog,
Actually, this is by far my favourite blog.
because 100% of the people who obsess about the Irish here are English,
How can you know that?
and it is they who have complaints about the Irish. If the Irish have complaints about the English, they seem to keep them to themselves.
I think you have this sort of back to front. Generally speaking Englishmen only complain about Irishmen in response to Irishmen complaining about Englishmen.
Why would Englishmen complain about Irishmen unless provoked?
The Irish have no place in English identity.
Whereas it seems many Irish need the English to define themselves.
You don't know much English history.
You think so?
I suspect you are making a simple error.
English history, as far as imperialism goes, ended with the Act of Union between England and Scotland in 1707.
After that, as far as the empire is concerned, it is British history - of which the Scots and the Irish participated proportionately to a far greater extent than the English.
How did England end up in possession of India in the first place? They won it in a game of cards?
Well we did acquire Bombay from Portugal as part of Charles II's dowry when he married Catherine of Braganza in 1661.
The argument made was not that the English of the 20th centuries were the biggest bastards in the world, but that the ones who built the Empire were. Building that Empire meant killing, robbing, displacing, and oppressing large numbers of people in places around the globe. This is how all empires worked.
Yeah, we were pretty hard bastards back then, but no more so than the French, Spanish Portuguese or Dutch. I think you would have difficulty proving that the English were bigger bastards than the Spanish.
But in any case, apart from the North American colonies and a few islands in the Caribbean we stole from the Spanish, we didn't have much of an empire prior to 1707.
It became known as the British Empire for a reason - and the Scots and the Irish were very enthusiastic imperialists.
The argument made was not that the English of the 20th centuries were the biggest bastards in the world, but that the ones who built the Empire were.
Here is an example of one the greatest and biggest bastards in the empire - before it became the British Empire:
Captain Henry Morgan - an Admiral of the Royal Navy, a privateer, and a pirate. One of the most notorious and successful privateers in history, and one of the most ruthless who worked in the Spanish Main.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morgan
Henry Morgan - Welshman.
But in any case, apart from the North American colonies and a few islands in the Caribbean we stole from the Spanish, we didn't have much of an empire prior to 1707.
And, you know, Ireland. But sure, apart from the North American colonies, a few islands in the Caribbean, and Ireland, you didn't have much of an empire prior to 1707.
the Scots and the Irish were very enthusiastic imperialists
This word "imperialist" does not mean what you think it does. But as you are a "working class Englishman" I suppose we can't expect you to be familiar with the subtleties of language.
Here is an example of one the greatest and biggest bastards in the empire - before it became the British Empire
The empire already existed at the time of Henry Morgan.
"You must not spend much time on this blog"
Actually, this is by far my favourite blog.
"because 100% of the people who obsess about the Irish here are English"
How can you know that?
Because they tell me they are. You, for example, chose to give yourself the name "Working Class Englishman". Using this thing called "logic" I can say with a high degree of accuracy that you are English and not Chinese.
"You must not spend much time on this blog, because 100% of the people who obsess about the Irish here are English, and it is they who have complaints about the Irish."
How do you know who these posters are?
I doubt half the people who make a particular point of their ethnicity are who they say they are especially given the particular efficacy of Irish vs Anglo and Catholic vs Protestant trolling.
I'm speechless. So would you also say that the self-identified Jewish posters here cannot be said to be Jewish? Perhaps sabril is just somebody trying to make Jews look bad?
And what's this "Irish vs Anglo and Catholic vs Protestant trolling"? All the trolling between these groups which takes place on this blog is of the "Anglo vs Irish and Protestant vs Catholic" sort.
I doubt half the people who make a particular point of their ethnicity are who they say they are especially given the particular efficacy of Irish vs Anglo and Catholic vs Protestant trolling.
This thread is like two men in a wooden building strangling each other while a third man is pouring gasoline everywhere and getting ready with a match.
If these people were mobys seeking to cause trouble, then I'd expect that at least half of them would be making blistering attacks on the English while claiming to be Irish. But that never seems to happen. It's always the other way around.
And it's not something which just happened recently. I've been reading this blog for years and there's always been a persistent anti-Irish tone. Some of it comes from Steve himself.
If people of European descent (including Jews) can't stop pointless arguing with each other there is little chance of any stopping the onslaught of Mexicans, etc. I find this very depressing to read.
If people of European descent (including Jews) can't stop pointless arguing with each other there is little chance of any stopping the onslaught of Mexicans, etc. I find this very depressing to read.
Actually, it isn't pointless. It has real ramifications on a national and international scale. It's been very clever how the Francophone and Hispanophone world have managed to make this canard that the "Anglo-Saxons" (U.S., Britain, etc) something akin to the Mongols or the SS. How this pans out:
1) The A.S.'s are supposed to be somehow guilty that the long roll call of failure that runs from the Rio Grande to the Terra del Fuego is somehow their responsibility, rather than that of Spain and its descendents.
2) France gets to use America and Britain as a punching bag in international discourse, excusing their own sorry Colonial/Imperial history.
3) NATO continues to be a damned if you do/damned if you don't exercise for my country.
If your read French newspapers, you have the expression "Anglo-Saxon" tossed around to describe everything the French intelligentsia (supposedly) hates: "Communitarianisme", globalisation, capitalism, imperialism, etc.
You are complaining about Irishmen
...complaining about Englishmen. FTFY.
The fact that this one blog has the English giving better than they get, contra the whole rest of the universe, doesn't mean much.
Some of these issues (Catholics and Protestants) were discussed at Taki's Magazine recently:
http://takimag.com/article/the_holy_roman_church_of_football_nicholas_farrell#axzz22Lh8nkZJ
This thread is dead, but I can't leave this:
"Except Finland was much better off under the union with Russia than under Sweden. No attempts at assimilation, no interference into religious affairs, freedom to speak Finnish, full self-government including constitution, parliament, own police, own currency, even real border with Russia itself with Finnish border guard controlling the coming and going. Ireland would've been so lucky to fall under Russian control."
At first the Finns tried to be loyal subjects, so that they could have some forms of autonomy. This worked well in the beginning, but later the Russians started their suppression.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification_of_Finland
As I said, the Finns learned that the Swedes weren't so bad, when they were compared to the Russians.
It is the same with the Baltic states, that see the Swedish rule as a time of liberty, when compared to the other rulers they suffered.
" It is also colloquially known as the "good old Swedish times"[2] (Estonian: vana hea Rootsi aeg) by Estonians, but this expression was not used before the following Russian rule, in the beginning of which the situation of Estonian peasantry declined rapidly (to gain support of German nobility, Russia gave them more power over peasantry)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Estonia
"You, for example, chose to give yourself the name "Working Class Englishman". Using this thing called "logic" I can say with a high degree of accuracy that you are English and not Chinese."
Online in a political context, and especially in a political context where ethnicity is discussed, i'd say the opposite is equally likely i.e. 50% chance they're not what they claim to be.
the English amassed the biggest empire on earth by being the biggest bastards around.
Are you sure you are not Scottish?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkDYo-78rqA
And, you know, Ireland. But sure, apart from the North American colonies, a few islands in the Caribbean, and Ireland, you didn't have much of an empire prior to 1707.
Oh yeah, Ireland.
I forgot about that place.
Its easily done.
Ire-Land - a country well named?
Perhaps Whineland would have been better.
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