0 comment Saturday, June 28, 2014 | admin
It seems to me that I recently wrote a post on this subject, but it never seems to go away.
Upfront, I will say that this is my definitive statement on the subject. If it is raised in the future, I will just refer readers to this post, rather than saying it all again.
Yet again, I am being challenged as to why I focus on Anglo-American or WASP roots on this blog.
The implication is generally that I am excluding others, and failing to foster general American unity by focusing on one group, even if that group is the founding stock and the creative force behind the Republic that was established here in 1776.
The argument is made that Americans are all mixed, deracinated people who identify only as Americans, and that to identify with any particular ethnicity is to be divisive.
To what extent that is true, I don't know. I know that the 'generic American' identity is embraced by many people of mixed European ancestry, and I know that in many areas people are rather hopelessly mixed so as to identify with no particular ethnicity. That's a problem.
Is it possible to identify as just American when everybody else, especially minorities, have a strong ethnic identity?
Do I have to bring up yet again that many people outside the U.S. sneer at us because we are 'a people of no race or identity'? That is a common view of us in Europe. To expect Europeans to acknowledge us as cousins or even distant kin is often to be disappointed and rebuffed, as they hold us in low regard in many cases, and consider us mongrels, compared to themselves. Yes, there are Europeans who are more welcoming of us, but there are also many who regard us with a blend of scorn and condescension -- because we are a mixed people of no fixed origin.
The word 'American' once meant something. I was quite happy to call myself just American for many years, although I have had a strong Southron identity too. But over the years, the American 'brand' has been cheapened and made meaningless for many people because we are told that the many alien peoples residing here, who speak not a word of English in most cases, are ''new Americans''. Being an American is just a geographical condition, just an address, which tells nothing about who a person is. Remember those 'Ad Council' spots that ran on TV after 9/11, with many foreign people saying 'I am an American'? That's what 'American' has come to mean: anybody who is occupying some spot on American territory.
If America consists of an idea or a proposition, what then are Americans? Just anybody who says they believe in 'freedom' or 'equality'? Is it just a matter of pledging allegiance to a flag or a political system, as many Republicans would have it?
People need more than that. People need roots. They need a sense of kinship and belonging, a sense of who they are in a biological sense, where their actual ancestors came from, how they lived, what they accomplished. They need a sense of their place in history and in the human family.
I put it to you that Americans who feel themselves to be of no particular race or ethnicity, identifying only with a flag or a geopolitical entity, are a people prone to be deracinated, to lack an anchor, to lack confidence. Deracinated and confused people are ripe to be colonized and subjugated, as is happening now.
Such a people, I believe, are also more prone to miscegenation, to want to lose their weak 'identity' by interbreeding or intermarrying with any exotic group of people with an aggressive sense of ethnicity and race, hence you have young people becoming 'wiggers', talking Ebonics, or intermarrying with Hispanics and raising their children as Hispanic. Hardly ever do intermarriages result in the transmission of any kind of White identity. I can think of many cases, and all of them result in Whites becoming renegades to their own race, and 'going native', along with their children.
I firmly believe that we are in a time of re-tribalization. The world will become more ethnically divided, with smaller groups asserting, or re-asserting, their tribal or clan identities. If 'America' in its present form falls apart, which many have predicted will happen, what, then, will be left of an 'American' identity?
People may choose to align with some kind of regional identity. The South has a strong regional identity, or has had, until the recent immigrant influx, along with an earlier migration of Yankees during the Reagan era.
And as to the South, the fact that it had, before the recent Latino invasion, received relatively few immigrants meant that the people of the South were far more homogeneous than those in most of the Northern states. The Northern cities in particular had received most of the Ellis Island immigrants, and the heartland North had many Northern European immigrants (German, Scandinavian, some Dutch) who later formed the sort of generic White European core group.
However, the South had experienced less demographic change than the North. Southron Whites were fairly cohesive, perhaps partly in reaction to the presence of many blacks, and because of the history involving the War Between the States and Reconstruction.
Most of the old-stock Southron people were of British Isles descent. Many colonial stock Southron people identified as Anglo-Norman or Anglo-Saxon. It was understood among most people that there was no racial division between those two groups of people; the Angl0-Normans were generally thought of by Southrons as being the more aristocratic strain, although now there is a negative image of Normans as being some sort of foreign interlopers, with whom few want to claim a connection -- much the same as with the WASP identity in America, ironically.
My particular family line is mostly Anglo-Norman, with some Huguenot French and Ulster Scots roots, but by far, mostly Anglo-Norman. In this, I think my family tree is quite typical of old-stock Southron families. The idea that all areas of these United States are equally mixed in terms of descent is erroneous. The South preserved its original makeup for considerably longer than the North.
The much-criticized New England WASP colonial stock was actually 'ethnically cleansed', to a great extent, from New England as the Ellis Island immigrants fanned out across the East Coast. Many of my Yankee family members went West, settling the vast wilderness that awaited. Some stopped in the Midwest, settling there, others went far West, as far as they could go. The idea that there is some powerful yet strangely invisible 'WASP elite' in New England is persistent but lacking in basis. The old WASP colonial stock moved West, for the most part, preferring not to live in an overpopulated Northeastern megalopolis as the immigrants kept arriving.
A commenter asked why I had alternately referenced and criticized 'Albion's Seed' by David Hackett Fisher. It is an interesting book with much good information, but I find fault with it because I think it has fostered an oversimplified view of Southern ethnicity. Fisher I think has done a great deal, along with writer Grady McWhiney, to popularize the unproven notion of the South as being mostly Scots-Irish. The Scots-Irish, it is claimed, gave the 'warrior spirit' to the South. And were the Anglo-Normans not likewise formidable warriors?
This kind of thing, this unwillingness to credit Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Norman people with any accomplishment or talent (other than 'oppressing' the victim groups of the world) is one of the things which prompts me to champion the Anglo-Saxon heritage of America. It's only fair to give credit where due.
And for some reason, perhaps because of media portrayals (Braveheart, for example) the Scots are seen as a glamorous, tough, admirable people, while the Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Norman is seen as sneaky, cold, ruthless, and vicious. That pattern is repeated time and again in movies and novels. The same kind of stereotype of the English was seen in another Gibson movie, The Patriot. That movie, like others, takes liberties with history.
For the record, quite a few of my ancestors lived in the area of Carolina where the story took place, and they were in the thick of the revolution. Some of my ancestors died fighting the British, but I don't accept the stereotype of the British as being evil and cold-blooded -- and foppish, as well.
It's no wonder that few Americans want to identify with any British ancestry they may have; who wants to be connected to the bad guys, the perpetual villains? We see similar stereotyping in recent PC movies in which White Americans are the villains: remember 'Dances With Wolves', with its ugly stereotypes of dirty, bloodthirsty American cavalrymen? The only good Whites were the renegade Whites who went native.
This kind of propaganda has led to Americans being so reticent to defend themselves in the face of relentless attacks by all and sundry. We are a demoralized people who have been schooled to think we have no defense to offer for ourselves and our ancestors; they were bad people who oppressed and plundered the poor weak peoples of the earth, and we are equally bad, because we have a unique kind of original sin called 'innate racism.'
It's 'racism', supposedly, for us even to feel an identification with our White kin group. All other groups can be aggressive in their identity, while we alone can only safely call ourselves ''Americans'', and even that is now considered hateful and 'nativist.' Latin American interlopers in our country tell us that they are just as 'American' as we are. Some liberal educators propose we call ourselves 'United Statesians' so as not to wrongly appropriate the label American, which belongs to everybody from the North Pole to Cape Horn.
Where to, America? Our identity is too exclusive, and it doesn't really belong just to us -- just as America 'belongs to everybody' as many immigrants brazenly claim.
And our European cousins tell us, as one European commenter haughtily told me on this blog, we are neither a race nor a people. We are nonentities. We are ciphers. It's no wonder many of us are eager to lose ourselves in some exotic new culture or identity.
Where to, in this re-tribalizing world, where ancestry and race will become more important in deciding where we stand? Those Americans who think they can sit it out by declaring that they are 'world citizens' or cosmopolitan planetary citizens, are mistaken. They will have to pick a side, and even if they decline to, they will be assigned a side in the conflict, based on their skin color.
Yes, I agree that White people should unite and feel kinship. We are a dwindling proportion of the world's peoples, and some predict our demise, one way or another. Were it not for my religious faith, I think I would predict that European-descended peoples would be blended away in a few generations. However I believe there is a reason why 'peoples, nations, kindreds, and tongues' were created, and it is not in the Divine plan for the Tower of Babel to succeed this time, or ever. The hubristic plan to create one mingled race will not succeed. That's just my personal faith, and I cannot prove it. I believe we, our kin group, will continue, but we are under siege as apparently our rulers want to eliminate all inequalities, including and especially innate racial inequalities.
I am all for uniting with all ethnic groups in the European family. However I cannot unilaterally make that unity happen. I don't have that kind of influence or power.
There are a great many people whose ethnic grievances against Anglo-Saxons make them hostile towards anyone who claims descent from that group. Just check out any message board where Irish, Ulster Irish, or English people congregate. There is an incredible amount of bitterness over the Irish 'troubles' and remote historical events. Irish-Americans in many cases who have never been to Ireland hold grudges and curse the English. That has got to stop if there is to be any unity.
If I am hard on the ethnic 'Ellis Island' descendants, it is because all too often they tend to be open-borders sentimentalists who identify with immigrants more than Americans. and in many instances they hold grudges towards old-stock Americans (which as I've said includes more than just English.)
If they are willing to stop accusing America I am willing to accept them as brothers. The animosity does not start with me; my animus toward grudge-bearers is defensive, not offensive.
So, do I, and this blog, have enough influence to 'unite' Americans or White people generally? This is not one of those mega-blogs which gets thousands and thousands of hits, and which wields considerable influence. What I write here is unlikely to 'divide' Americans (who are already quite divided, thank you) nor to unite Americans. I am just one isolated voice, and I don't particularly wish to be anything else. I write what I write for the few; you, the readers, decide if you are one of the few I write for. If my words speak to you, then this blog is for you. If my words antagonize you and irritate you, perhaps you are looking for something I don't provide.
This blog is my individual attempt to cry out against what I see happening to this country, and to my people, and as I seem to have to repeat often, 'my people' are all of you who identify with old America, and who hold dear what I hold dear, all of you who wish to defend the 'land where our fathers died.' I am a partisan of the South. because I feel that it embodies the real, original America best of all, and potentially may represent a resurgent 'America.'
Does that alienate my Northern readers? It should not. Because I prefer the South, having lived in both North and South, that does not mean I have animosity towards those of you from the North. So likewise because I write about the Anglo-American culture and heritage, which is neglected and despised by many people, that does not ''exclude'' those of you who have little commonality with that. I find this idea that particularism is somehow hostility towards others to be a curious, and rather liberal idea. It's the essence of political correctness, actually, this idea that we are to 'include' everybody and water everything down so as not to offend or 'leave anybody out.'
The nature of the world is that people group together in various ways, all of which include some and exclude others. That is also the essence of love: love excludes most, and prefers one, or the few, above the many.
Just because I love my particular heritage does not mean that I hate others' heritage.
I do find it hard to understand why my expression of my particular affinities is considered offensive. by anyone, unless it rubs salt in wounds based on past perceived resentments.
I write this blog partly for myself, because I feel compelled to write what is in my heart. This is one person's blog, not an attempt to speak to the whole world. This world, and even this country, is much too big and too complicated and too divided for me to be able to 'speak to' everyone or appeal to everyone. No doubt I offend some, but I cannot alter my message or my preferences because they 'turn away' some people. I cannot tailor my message to everyone.
Few people speak up for old-stock Anglo-Americans. Yet if this country ever succeeds in re-establishing any kind of unity, it will have to rally around a common heritage, and in old America, that common identity was the Anglo-based one. What else, pray tell, can we rally around? Like it or not, the Founding Fathers were Englishmen. English and male.
If any ethnicity or heritage deserves to be preserved as a cement which holds us together, the Anglo-Saxons heritage is the obvious choice. It served us well for many generations.
However, it looks as though a balkanized America is in the cards, with regions dominated by different peoples, but we will all have to decide to unite or separate. It is up to the other ethnicities, including the 'just Americans,' to decide with whom they will stand.
Upfront, I will say that this is my definitive statement on the subject. If it is raised in the future, I will just refer readers to this post, rather than saying it all again.
Yet again, I am being challenged as to why I focus on Anglo-American or WASP roots on this blog.
The implication is generally that I am excluding others, and failing to foster general American unity by focusing on one group, even if that group is the founding stock and the creative force behind the Republic that was established here in 1776.
The argument is made that Americans are all mixed, deracinated people who identify only as Americans, and that to identify with any particular ethnicity is to be divisive.
To what extent that is true, I don't know. I know that the 'generic American' identity is embraced by many people of mixed European ancestry, and I know that in many areas people are rather hopelessly mixed so as to identify with no particular ethnicity. That's a problem.
Is it possible to identify as just American when everybody else, especially minorities, have a strong ethnic identity?
Do I have to bring up yet again that many people outside the U.S. sneer at us because we are 'a people of no race or identity'? That is a common view of us in Europe. To expect Europeans to acknowledge us as cousins or even distant kin is often to be disappointed and rebuffed, as they hold us in low regard in many cases, and consider us mongrels, compared to themselves. Yes, there are Europeans who are more welcoming of us, but there are also many who regard us with a blend of scorn and condescension -- because we are a mixed people of no fixed origin.
The word 'American' once meant something. I was quite happy to call myself just American for many years, although I have had a strong Southron identity too. But over the years, the American 'brand' has been cheapened and made meaningless for many people because we are told that the many alien peoples residing here, who speak not a word of English in most cases, are ''new Americans''. Being an American is just a geographical condition, just an address, which tells nothing about who a person is. Remember those 'Ad Council' spots that ran on TV after 9/11, with many foreign people saying 'I am an American'? That's what 'American' has come to mean: anybody who is occupying some spot on American territory.
If America consists of an idea or a proposition, what then are Americans? Just anybody who says they believe in 'freedom' or 'equality'? Is it just a matter of pledging allegiance to a flag or a political system, as many Republicans would have it?
People need more than that. People need roots. They need a sense of kinship and belonging, a sense of who they are in a biological sense, where their actual ancestors came from, how they lived, what they accomplished. They need a sense of their place in history and in the human family.
I put it to you that Americans who feel themselves to be of no particular race or ethnicity, identifying only with a flag or a geopolitical entity, are a people prone to be deracinated, to lack an anchor, to lack confidence. Deracinated and confused people are ripe to be colonized and subjugated, as is happening now.
Such a people, I believe, are also more prone to miscegenation, to want to lose their weak 'identity' by interbreeding or intermarrying with any exotic group of people with an aggressive sense of ethnicity and race, hence you have young people becoming 'wiggers', talking Ebonics, or intermarrying with Hispanics and raising their children as Hispanic. Hardly ever do intermarriages result in the transmission of any kind of White identity. I can think of many cases, and all of them result in Whites becoming renegades to their own race, and 'going native', along with their children.
I firmly believe that we are in a time of re-tribalization. The world will become more ethnically divided, with smaller groups asserting, or re-asserting, their tribal or clan identities. If 'America' in its present form falls apart, which many have predicted will happen, what, then, will be left of an 'American' identity?
People may choose to align with some kind of regional identity. The South has a strong regional identity, or has had, until the recent immigrant influx, along with an earlier migration of Yankees during the Reagan era.
And as to the South, the fact that it had, before the recent Latino invasion, received relatively few immigrants meant that the people of the South were far more homogeneous than those in most of the Northern states. The Northern cities in particular had received most of the Ellis Island immigrants, and the heartland North had many Northern European immigrants (German, Scandinavian, some Dutch) who later formed the sort of generic White European core group.
However, the South had experienced less demographic change than the North. Southron Whites were fairly cohesive, perhaps partly in reaction to the presence of many blacks, and because of the history involving the War Between the States and Reconstruction.
Most of the old-stock Southron people were of British Isles descent. Many colonial stock Southron people identified as Anglo-Norman or Anglo-Saxon. It was understood among most people that there was no racial division between those two groups of people; the Angl0-Normans were generally thought of by Southrons as being the more aristocratic strain, although now there is a negative image of Normans as being some sort of foreign interlopers, with whom few want to claim a connection -- much the same as with the WASP identity in America, ironically.
My particular family line is mostly Anglo-Norman, with some Huguenot French and Ulster Scots roots, but by far, mostly Anglo-Norman. In this, I think my family tree is quite typical of old-stock Southron families. The idea that all areas of these United States are equally mixed in terms of descent is erroneous. The South preserved its original makeup for considerably longer than the North.
The much-criticized New England WASP colonial stock was actually 'ethnically cleansed', to a great extent, from New England as the Ellis Island immigrants fanned out across the East Coast. Many of my Yankee family members went West, settling the vast wilderness that awaited. Some stopped in the Midwest, settling there, others went far West, as far as they could go. The idea that there is some powerful yet strangely invisible 'WASP elite' in New England is persistent but lacking in basis. The old WASP colonial stock moved West, for the most part, preferring not to live in an overpopulated Northeastern megalopolis as the immigrants kept arriving.
A commenter asked why I had alternately referenced and criticized 'Albion's Seed' by David Hackett Fisher. It is an interesting book with much good information, but I find fault with it because I think it has fostered an oversimplified view of Southern ethnicity. Fisher I think has done a great deal, along with writer Grady McWhiney, to popularize the unproven notion of the South as being mostly Scots-Irish. The Scots-Irish, it is claimed, gave the 'warrior spirit' to the South. And were the Anglo-Normans not likewise formidable warriors?
This kind of thing, this unwillingness to credit Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Norman people with any accomplishment or talent (other than 'oppressing' the victim groups of the world) is one of the things which prompts me to champion the Anglo-Saxon heritage of America. It's only fair to give credit where due.
And for some reason, perhaps because of media portrayals (Braveheart, for example) the Scots are seen as a glamorous, tough, admirable people, while the Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Norman is seen as sneaky, cold, ruthless, and vicious. That pattern is repeated time and again in movies and novels. The same kind of stereotype of the English was seen in another Gibson movie, The Patriot. That movie, like others, takes liberties with history.
For the record, quite a few of my ancestors lived in the area of Carolina where the story took place, and they were in the thick of the revolution. Some of my ancestors died fighting the British, but I don't accept the stereotype of the British as being evil and cold-blooded -- and foppish, as well.
It's no wonder that few Americans want to identify with any British ancestry they may have; who wants to be connected to the bad guys, the perpetual villains? We see similar stereotyping in recent PC movies in which White Americans are the villains: remember 'Dances With Wolves', with its ugly stereotypes of dirty, bloodthirsty American cavalrymen? The only good Whites were the renegade Whites who went native.
This kind of propaganda has led to Americans being so reticent to defend themselves in the face of relentless attacks by all and sundry. We are a demoralized people who have been schooled to think we have no defense to offer for ourselves and our ancestors; they were bad people who oppressed and plundered the poor weak peoples of the earth, and we are equally bad, because we have a unique kind of original sin called 'innate racism.'
It's 'racism', supposedly, for us even to feel an identification with our White kin group. All other groups can be aggressive in their identity, while we alone can only safely call ourselves ''Americans'', and even that is now considered hateful and 'nativist.' Latin American interlopers in our country tell us that they are just as 'American' as we are. Some liberal educators propose we call ourselves 'United Statesians' so as not to wrongly appropriate the label American, which belongs to everybody from the North Pole to Cape Horn.
Where to, America? Our identity is too exclusive, and it doesn't really belong just to us -- just as America 'belongs to everybody' as many immigrants brazenly claim.
And our European cousins tell us, as one European commenter haughtily told me on this blog, we are neither a race nor a people. We are nonentities. We are ciphers. It's no wonder many of us are eager to lose ourselves in some exotic new culture or identity.
Where to, in this re-tribalizing world, where ancestry and race will become more important in deciding where we stand? Those Americans who think they can sit it out by declaring that they are 'world citizens' or cosmopolitan planetary citizens, are mistaken. They will have to pick a side, and even if they decline to, they will be assigned a side in the conflict, based on their skin color.
Yes, I agree that White people should unite and feel kinship. We are a dwindling proportion of the world's peoples, and some predict our demise, one way or another. Were it not for my religious faith, I think I would predict that European-descended peoples would be blended away in a few generations. However I believe there is a reason why 'peoples, nations, kindreds, and tongues' were created, and it is not in the Divine plan for the Tower of Babel to succeed this time, or ever. The hubristic plan to create one mingled race will not succeed. That's just my personal faith, and I cannot prove it. I believe we, our kin group, will continue, but we are under siege as apparently our rulers want to eliminate all inequalities, including and especially innate racial inequalities.
I am all for uniting with all ethnic groups in the European family. However I cannot unilaterally make that unity happen. I don't have that kind of influence or power.
There are a great many people whose ethnic grievances against Anglo-Saxons make them hostile towards anyone who claims descent from that group. Just check out any message board where Irish, Ulster Irish, or English people congregate. There is an incredible amount of bitterness over the Irish 'troubles' and remote historical events. Irish-Americans in many cases who have never been to Ireland hold grudges and curse the English. That has got to stop if there is to be any unity.
If I am hard on the ethnic 'Ellis Island' descendants, it is because all too often they tend to be open-borders sentimentalists who identify with immigrants more than Americans. and in many instances they hold grudges towards old-stock Americans (which as I've said includes more than just English.)
If they are willing to stop accusing America I am willing to accept them as brothers. The animosity does not start with me; my animus toward grudge-bearers is defensive, not offensive.
So, do I, and this blog, have enough influence to 'unite' Americans or White people generally? This is not one of those mega-blogs which gets thousands and thousands of hits, and which wields considerable influence. What I write here is unlikely to 'divide' Americans (who are already quite divided, thank you) nor to unite Americans. I am just one isolated voice, and I don't particularly wish to be anything else. I write what I write for the few; you, the readers, decide if you are one of the few I write for. If my words speak to you, then this blog is for you. If my words antagonize you and irritate you, perhaps you are looking for something I don't provide.
This blog is my individual attempt to cry out against what I see happening to this country, and to my people, and as I seem to have to repeat often, 'my people' are all of you who identify with old America, and who hold dear what I hold dear, all of you who wish to defend the 'land where our fathers died.' I am a partisan of the South. because I feel that it embodies the real, original America best of all, and potentially may represent a resurgent 'America.'
Does that alienate my Northern readers? It should not. Because I prefer the South, having lived in both North and South, that does not mean I have animosity towards those of you from the North. So likewise because I write about the Anglo-American culture and heritage, which is neglected and despised by many people, that does not ''exclude'' those of you who have little commonality with that. I find this idea that particularism is somehow hostility towards others to be a curious, and rather liberal idea. It's the essence of political correctness, actually, this idea that we are to 'include' everybody and water everything down so as not to offend or 'leave anybody out.'
The nature of the world is that people group together in various ways, all of which include some and exclude others. That is also the essence of love: love excludes most, and prefers one, or the few, above the many.
Just because I love my particular heritage does not mean that I hate others' heritage.
I do find it hard to understand why my expression of my particular affinities is considered offensive. by anyone, unless it rubs salt in wounds based on past perceived resentments.
I write this blog partly for myself, because I feel compelled to write what is in my heart. This is one person's blog, not an attempt to speak to the whole world. This world, and even this country, is much too big and too complicated and too divided for me to be able to 'speak to' everyone or appeal to everyone. No doubt I offend some, but I cannot alter my message or my preferences because they 'turn away' some people. I cannot tailor my message to everyone.
Few people speak up for old-stock Anglo-Americans. Yet if this country ever succeeds in re-establishing any kind of unity, it will have to rally around a common heritage, and in old America, that common identity was the Anglo-based one. What else, pray tell, can we rally around? Like it or not, the Founding Fathers were Englishmen. English and male.
If any ethnicity or heritage deserves to be preserved as a cement which holds us together, the Anglo-Saxons heritage is the obvious choice. It served us well for many generations.
However, it looks as though a balkanized America is in the cards, with regions dominated by different peoples, but we will all have to decide to unite or separate. It is up to the other ethnicities, including the 'just Americans,' to decide with whom they will stand.
Labels: American Heritage, Anglo-Americans, Anglo-Saxon Heritage, Balkanization, Divisiveness, Ethnic Division, Ethnic Identity, Ethnic Solidarity, Regional Differences, Secession, South