"Americanisms" that Brits hate

Oooh those socialist capitalists. Donchya hate 'em?

The question is whether this is just gibberish or not. Is there anything coherent here at all? I mean its so rambling - liberals invent termonology to hide their true nature from...other liberals? Is this just a wandering irrational rant?

I think it may be something slightly more than peurile abuse of people you don't like...

Can't you see how this just sounds like fascism: capitalism is OK as long as it is run by people who share your prejudices? This is the panacea of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and the whole clamjamfrie.

Yet again the US extreme right is exposed for what it really is. Enemies of capitalism now. It's the crude basis of the reason they call Hitler a socialist, because he was against "liberal" capitalists, even as he lined up conservatives behind him to bankroll his rise to power. They make the crude accusation that Hitler is a socialist and then they go and join Hitler with the same inane rambling. It's so brazen you can taste the hypcorisy.

 

I won't take anyone's word for it. In some ways I speak American myself as in business many terms are now best understood in American. I do however seem to be often changing English usage by former colonial subjects into American. They prefer the traditional English terminology.

In terms of numbers of English speakers in the world, this is definitely a legacy of the British Empire. This would cover India, Pakistan and large parts of Asia (and of the course the USA itself).

Should you wish to be more nuanced and suggest why English is the international language in Europe, you may have a point that this is (strangely when you think about it) due to American economic dominance. The French and Germans would not give up their own language for a fellow European rival and Britain hasn't dominated them since the early nineteenth century. As the name suggests the lingua franca in Europe was traditionally French - probably why I speak it.

Not disputed. Was it American vanity that made you post such an irrelevant response?

Not really. You probably miss a lot of the irony. Self deprecation is our national pastime. Americans find this very hard to follow.

Britain made the modern world, good or bad. The USA is a case in point - a British dominated, European project. The rest of this churlishness is just a massive quod erat demonstrandum of the points I make above. So vulgar...so crass...so utterly devoid of panache, subtlety and style. But big on shouty grunting. Well done, cousin.

 

I think you will find genetically we are pretty much the same. It's not about remnants. The UK has had immigration from celts, slavs, Jews, Africans, asians...just as the USA has since 1776. We can argue about the mix, but its the same melting pot just the same. We were always a nation of immigrants from the time when we were all Welsh (Britons), got taken over by Italians and their imperial subjects (at one time a black African was Roman Emperor and Head of State), who rolled over to Germans (the angels, as the pope said), mixed in with a few Picts (Scots) and Scots (Irish), added to by Vikings, who succombed to Normans who were only half French themselves, followed by freed slaves, Jews fleeing slav pogroms, Irish in droves, slavs themselves, asians from Africa, africans from the Carribean, Indians, Pakistanis, Poles, serbians, bosnians....

And we always will be.

 

Britain has a very interesting history of immigration. It's truely a melting pot of cultures going back over 3000 years.

Looking into ancient history, one rarely finds who and where the ancient Britons were or came from. Celts (who immigrated twice), Romans, Saxons (and other Germanic tribes like Angles, Jutes) Norsemen, including Danes then finally the Normans in 1066.

The Normans were very interesting. They brought with them a large Celtic army from Breton. These Celts were displaced by the Romans, then later by the Saxons and settled in modern day northern France, just across the channel from Britain (Celtic languages are still spoken in Breton). The Normans promised these Celts their ancestral lands back, which didn't happen. The Saxons were defeated at the battle of Hastings in 1066 and Britain for the most part became French.

 

Let's let our respective bards settle this...

RAP BATTLE! GO!

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knzxQYLZkus&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knzxQYLZkus&feature=related[/ame]

 

I've never argued otherwise.

If you could be bothered to read a few pages back, you'll note that has already been discussed. Discussed in great detail, no less.

You stated that in the 19th century Britain was far more powerful than the US. This is simply untrue -- "far more" implies a great divide, which there was not. By the mid to early latter half of the 19th century the two were on about even footing, and by the 1880s and 1890s the United States was clearly leading the UK.

So, not irrelevant at all, as you now no doubt see. As for American vanity, I'm not one to buy into the exceptionalism dogma. However, I'm also not one to suffer Englishmen's sanctimony or their unfounded boasts. I'm no strong fan of your homeland, and I'll not see it steal an inch more credit than it deserves.

I miss nothing; and, indeed, your claims of self-deprecation fall especially flat in light of your signature.

Quite wrong. That honor belongs to America and Germany.

You've raised this point before, and it remains as ludicrous now as when you first so foolishly spat it forth.

To say that the United States was a British project is about as fallacious a claim as one may make, for reasons obvious to the informed observer of history. As I know you know (but simply are loathe to admit), England fought a war in an attempt to destroy the colonial independence movement. While I know you would love to snatch our revolutionary accomplishments out from underneath us and perch them as plumes in your envious caps, your country was in no way a benevolent patron of American republicanism.

As for the Europeans, their elite detested what occurred in the States. While the movement was no doubt the result of the Western Enlightenment, specifically centered in and originating from France, there was just as much literature and just as many ideas floating around on our side of the Atlantic that propagated revolutionary sentiments. To attribute that movement and its implications to one continent or the other is, plainly, very silly.

This is, of course, absurd -- as you well know. If there's one thing I detest more than a pedant, it is a pedant who peddles ignorance.

There is a multitude of well-educated Americans who are perfectly skilled in the qualities you list. Equally, there is a multitude of Englishmen and women who are little more than sniveling neanderthals, scraping their knuckles all the way to their preferred tavern each Friday night, whilst scarcely able to keep their hoods atop their sloping skulls. (Your recent riots being case-in-point.) Whatever host of empty insults you wish to sling about -- as that is exactly what they are: empty; you've simply a predisposition for calling something vulgar and uncouth if it ruffles your feathers -- doesn't change that fact.

Now, it is a well-known fact that your successive governments have utterly and dutifully prostrated themselves before the United States for decades. If you've an issue with this, take it up with your MP. Indulging in the churlishness you so bemoan by way of flinging hollow pejoratives won't change anything.

Really, ad hominems aren't necessary. Mercifully, the majority of the American population is not of Anglo-Saxon stock. Indeed, as an individual of German and Irish lineage, I can happily say that we in no way share any sanguine likenesses.

 

Liberals like to make money but don't want other socialist-liberals to identify them as capitalists. This is another clue that liberalism is a mental disorder.

I have no problem with capitalism I'm not trying to hide the fact that I like to make shameless profits and I do not use useless, fake touchy feely phrases either.

Oh God....here come the Nazis... Hitler was a tyrant, all tyrants are socialists because the feel they 'know what's best' for their people. Capitalism and free enterprise were certainly not the hallmarks of the 3rd Reich.

 

Actually the Normans were not French. Which is why 1066 is known as the Norman Invasion, and not the French Invasion.

http://www.historyonthenet.com/Normans/whowere.htm

We learnt in primary school that the Vikings who lived in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden were essentially Germanic tribes, so the Norman invasion was simply one largely Germanic tribe replacing another (the Saxons).

 

I realise this Leo. What I meant to say was that for a few centuries after 1066 the was a long line of "French" (as across he English Channel) monarchs.

 

True, bloody foreigners! But they did bring a beautiful language (and nice cakes) with them, n'est-ce pas?

 

Yes I know, I was agreeing with you. Sometimes you know it is possible to agree with a certain part of what you say, whilst disagreeing with the overall conclusion. Of course to those who think debate is just a set piece battle of boorish abuse, this socratic approach to ideas will go right over their heads.

Yes your post is like a big American car. Looks good at first glance. You got me here. I didn't read the thread diligently enough.

Apart from the pedantry - in the grand sweep of history the 19th Century will be seen as the British century and the 20th Century as the American, it is bollocks. The USA started to take off after the railroads covered America and this led to industrial power towards the end of the century. The British Empire was a collosus throughout the nineteenth century, British seapower was dominant and the British and imperial economy dominated the globe. British decline came in the twentieth century following WW1 as imperialism declined and finally in WW2 where the US made sure that bankruptcy was the price of its support for a Britain that stood against tyranny.

It's good of you to admit your anglophobia.

Yes the American car starts to fall to pieces. I gave you a heads up here as well. I told you my "patriotism" was often self deprecatory and ironic but you walked straight into this one:

My signature is from HMS Pinafore where we English indulge in an orgy of self abuse. This is the opera where the line :"so take my advice, and never go to sea, and you may be the ruler of the Queen's navy" describes the first lord of the Admiralty and belittles the most powerful navy in the world as a bureaucrats plaything.

And the Englishman song in my signature is clearly a parody of boneheaded nationalism. The whole point is to ridicule his "pride" in being English by pointing out that he never had any choice in the matter. This is done ironically by saying that he could have chosen another nationality, which of course is absurd. An Englishman is an Englishman. There is no "temptation" to be anything else. It's a massive (*)(*)(*)(*)-take on the concept of "being proud to be English".

Britain made the USA. The modern world starts in 1776.

Wow, this car doesn't even go round corners.

Why is it that American conservatives cannot - even when it is patiently explained to them - define a country by anything other than its government? You would think they would know better.

That America is a European project, primarily British, is patently obvious. What else would it be? Something that fell from the sky? Was the US Constitution something handed down by God on tablets of stone? Did it come from the water or the soil? It came from Europe, as Americans did. It was a continuation of processes and thinking that had been developing in Europe for centuries.

The American Revolution was the first enactment of the principles of the European Enlightenment which sought to challenge the power of Kings with the power of reason. When the first cry for no taxation without representation was raised this was far from a cry for independence - read your history, I have. It was to implore the English monarch to yield the same rights of representation to his American subjects as he had to his English subjects. Americans were demanding their rights as freeborn Englishmen had before them. When the monarch rejected these demands, it was an Englishman - credited as such by John Adams who was no great fan - who led a campaign of subversion against the Crown that turned America into a revolutionary hotbed that would challenge the very monarchy itself. Where did Tom Paine learn his ideas - in England and France of course, him being a Norfolk boy fully educated in the ideas of English liberalism. When the founding fathers looked to how they would govern, they chose the system of English law, with its reliance on precedent and tradition that protected the common people from the tyranny of royal prerogative, a system that had been established in England over the centuries by struggle and sacrifice. The US Constitution and Bill of Rights was also a document written firmly in the tradition of Anglish radicalism. It was John Lilburne who introduced the concept of natural rights for freeborn men and the US Supreme Court in the 20th Century would refer to his Agreement of the People of England as an authority in American law and as a precursor of the US Bill of Rights. On top of this the whole ideological age was one of Locke and Hume and other rationalists who inspired the Founding Fathers.

What is silly is your assertion that this is something that is an "either/or" question. What was Tom Paine then? He was clearly an freeborn Englishman, who became the prime mover of the American Revolution, and then was later a member of the French parliament (and thus a member of the French elite - you do write some bollocks don't you?). Clearly he was American. But he also was European and he was created and educated in Europe whence his ideas came. America is a continent peopled mainly by Europeans. It is therefore a European project.

Even American Presidents know this:

"What a prodigious growth this English race, especially the American branch of it, is having! How soon will it subdue and occupy all the wild parts of this continent and of the islands adjacent. No prophecy, however seemingly extravagant, as to future achievements in this way [is] likely to equal the reality." Rutherford Hayes.

Even if this is an example of imperialist genocide in America it underlines the European nature of the American project.

The car's engine is now steaming.

Yes, the exceptions always prove the rule.

Calm down, calm down.

This is American vulgarity. The shouty bit. Those who really are on top don't need to say so.

Now it is you who should read the thread. We have been through this. You say you are German. Like the angles and the saxons (where do you think "saxony" is then?) perhaps? You say you are Irish - like 40% of the British population (including me)? Cousins. Whether you like it or not.

Your big shiny car has proved to be a pile of cheap plastic and metal with a big engine which has now span off the road and crashed into a tree. Try a BMW next time (best not talk about British cars eh?).

 

Ahh the Brits. I love them simply because they have the best comic that has ever lived... quite literally. Stephen Fry.

 

Stephen Fry is awesome, though I think to call him a comedian is to sell him short. He is a brilliant, interesting, thoughtful, and funny man. He is much more than a comedian.


PS. I also love David Mitchell, if you are a fan of Stephen Fry's work, you probably know who he is as well. He has been on QI a number of times.

 

David Mitchell is very good as well. You are right, Stephen Fry is more than a comedian, but I say comedian because he makes me laugh more than anyone else ever. A bit of Fry and Laurie was the best pure comedy show I've ever seen.

 

And it's the kind of thing Gilbert made his whole career on. Utopia, Limited is very much along the same lines of parody on the 'superiority' of England that was evident in the Imperial atmosphere of Victorian England, Pirates of Penzance has similar ridiculous themes about the English sense of honour and loyalty, Trial by Jury parodies the court system, The Sorcerer village life and social hierarchy, and Iolanthe, of course, pulls apart the system of government, and House of Lords in Particular:

For example (two favorite quotes of mine):

and:

Such themes continue throughout the Savoy Operas, and Gilbert takes every opportunity he can to poke fun at the English establishment (and people), sometimes pretty directly (as with the First Lord of the Admiralty, who was at the time a certain WH Smith), and sometimes with a more subtlety - everyone knew what he was doing, though. The works were obviously hugely popular in their day, and still are over a century later.

Of course, he was only one in a very long line of perveyors of such sarcasm, irony, parody and satire that continues to this day. It's probably the biggest single theme in English (and British, for that matter) humour, but often seems to be the one that others find hardest to 'get'.

There are even those around the world who believe it is illegal for people in the UK to openly 'criticise' the royals. It isn't - it's more or less compulsory!

 

But you clearly do have a problem with capitalism. You've written it. It goes like this:

Capitalism is run by liberals and socialists who pretend not to be liberals and socialists but because they use touchy feely praises we know they are liberals and socialists. They have a mental disorder.

It's not a point of view that many people will be taking seriously RPA. But it's one you are entitled to .

 

Some of the main dialect differences between American and British English that matter do tend to figure concepts like 'socialism' (total censorship in the US since McCarthy has produced some wild nonsense), 'liberalism' - (everywhere else the normal ideology of capitalism, in the US a term of abuse amongst primitive tribes) and above all 'middle class' which Americans seem to use where we would say 'working class'. I've found that these terms, plus the strange idiomatic expression 'race' make sensible discussion between speakers of these dialects difficult.

 

I was simply making a comment. As you clearly hadn't been bothered to go back and read the majority of this thread, I was simply ensuring that you were made aware that I had never argued otherwise.

You're certainly one to speak of irrelevant and unseemly grunting...

Well, feel free to sit there perennially mumbling to yourself the same nonsense. Repeating a falsity indefinitely will not suddenly and inexplicably turn it into a truth.

You're assumptive, pedantic nature and its subsequent refuse prove especially absurd here. I am certainly not an American conservative and I suffer from no inability to characterize nations by their people rather than by their government.

I'm not sure what you found especially difficult about my previous post, but as I said the US was influenced by the European Enlightenment -- a movement which primarily originated from and was based in France. Further, I've never denied the influence of Locke and Hume and so on. But there were just as many (indeed, more) French and American philosophers who kindled the fires of revolution.

Now, if you were to say, "The Enlightened British intellectuals of the 1700s played a decisive role in the formation of the ideology which inspired the founding of the United States," you would find no argument whatsoever coming from me. But, Britain, as a national entity, had nothing to do with it.

You're promoting a disgustingly Anglo-centric agenda, and I'll have none of it.

I, of course, fully acknowledged that the United States' founding ideology was rooted in Europe. It is the absurd notion that America is a "British project" that I wholly rebutted. The founding fathers were keen on looking to the Roman modes of government, not the to the English forms, for their inspiration.

As for that absurd comment from the repugnant and, most importantly, the wholly irrelevant Rutherford B Hayes, well... for every repulsively Anglophillic president the United States has been so unfortunate as to have as its leader, there have been equally Anglophobic ones.

Thomas Paine was not a member of the traditional French elite, either (obviously...). When he was elected, the monarchy had already been deposed and aristocrats' heads filled the streets of Paris. What a ridiculous point to raise.

"The shouty bit?" I do believe you mean the factual bit. No doubt truthful statements which do not precisely align with a biased observer's world view often prove to be rattling.

Of course, the notion that the British governments are subservient to their American counterpart doesn't need to be said, as it is blatantly obvious to any onlooker. Nevertheless, it is always good to remind one of his rightful place if he becomes to cocky -- especially if that "one" is an Englishman.

The Irish are not English. There may be Irish in England, but that does not make their stock any less Irish.

My German ancestors hail from the Southern part of the country, which is a ways removed from Old Saxony.

I prefer public transport.

 

That's a personal attack. I made up nothing. You posted completely inarticulate contradictory gibberish in your weak endeavour to insult and hate. In your eagerness to attack "corporates" you wrote that capitalism is run by socialists. Anything you don't like or that irritates you, it would seem, is to be dismissed as liberal or socialist.

It's utter garbage, extremely embarassing and is essentially the crap quality of post that we are used to get around here from the right who post endless hate filled diatribes against muslims, liberals and anyone else they hate, day after day after day, without reason, logic, argument or wit....

 

Yes, see how I acknowledge where I fell short but your total misreading of my signature, coupled with an ad hominem attack, is now not mentioned. This is the difference between those who are self confident enough to acknowledge their shortcomings and those who, when their writing is exposed as a misjudgement, prefer to pretend it didn't happen.

Your point?

It's not a falsity. It's a matter of opinion, a proposed definition of the scope of discussion, to be subject to judgement, not logic. It proposes that modernity be judged in this context from 1776. That is perfectly reasonable. Why do you not comment on that instead of windy high handed vacuous dismissal? The date is a key point here in my rebuttal. Germany didn't even exist in 1776.

Horrible English! "Subsequent refuse"? Aaaargh!

I understand your desire to distance yourself from the Right. Noted. As to how you characterize nations you continue to do this by referring to the rulers of countries, even in this post where Britain is defined by the actions of its government, rather than the writings of its philosophers and the struggles of its people...both of which led directly to the establishment of the United States of America.

There are indeed. All American philosophers are in the tradition of the European Enlightenment which overwhelmingly was the ideological basis of the American Revolution. You know this really.

There you see, you are agreeing with me. You just want a fight, that's all. "Britain as a national entity" means everything and nothing. You define it as the government apparently, despite your protestations above. I prefer to just say "British" project (you are right that "European" would be more accurate, but the British people are the main European group responsible). When Britain's philosophers play "a decisive role" (your very words, than-you), then that tends to give a project a "British" characteristic. "Decisive" means "cannot happen without". My language may be provocative and irritating to you. But it is accurate, isn't it?

Do you bang your cane into the ground and puff your cheeks out at the end of that meaningless sentence?

Yes, you are no longer trying to demonstrate the absurd. We agree.

T

The rebuttal was very weak.

That is a confusion of form over substance. Looking for Roman and classical inspiration in form was also a British thing. The form of government in the USA in 1776 is largely as laid down by English revolutionists in the previous two centuries (as I pointed out). The legal system is English law. The parliamentary system is a bicameral system. The tradition is wholly British.

Now this is very silly. You make bigotry into a virtue in your praise of anglophobia. I acknowledged Hayes's repugnance in my post, so you have no argument with me there. But the quote still demonstrates that the USA was seen historically as an English creation. Even Churchill saw the USA as the continuation of British civilization. If we examine the genocides committed by the British Empire and the American expansion into the West (which Hayes was talking about) there is little for either nationality to be proud of. But we are where we are, and our history is made up of a diverse number of events, movements and processes, some awful and obscene (such as the American treatment of black people well into the twentieth century, or the horrible racism of colonial thugs in the British Empire), but others more creditable (such as WW2, the Industrial Revolutions that started in England and then progressed to America, or the whole concept of representative democracy which followed the same trajectory).

The one thing that is true is that Britain and the USA have been major causes of how the world is today, and my argument, that the USA was a continuation of the tradition and practice of the struggles for liberty by Englishmen and women, is totally true and accurate. It goes directly against the expression of American exceptionalism, which would have it that America's virtue came from the sky, which you quite rightly reject. By seeing the USA's love of liberty in a historic context it puts the USA at the leadership of the free world, not, as some exceptionalists would have it, in its silo imagining the dragons beyond its borders. If you are no exceptionalist, fundamentally you agree with me. You just don't like my style, which is designed to provoke numskulls, not the fans of Locke, Hume, Paine, Ricardo and Smith (like you).

You seem to now want to define a country not just by its ruling class (of which Paine was a member) but only by its aristocracy. Your earlier protestation is now looking totally laughable.

....says nothing....

So why say it then? Feeling a little insecure?

Where is your rightful place then? I'm hammering you in this argument (sorry that was blatantly obvious to any onlooker and so extremely vulgar for me to point out - I'm obviously spending far too much time in the company of those from the colonies!).

I think you've lost your way here cousin. You claimed that Americans had little "blood" relation to the English and cited your Irish ancestry as evidence. I merely pointed out that millions of British people also have Irish ancestry (including me) and so your claim that we were not related was nonsense.

Why not say Bavaria or Swabia? Not that far from Old Saxony. A lot closer than Los Angeles is to Chicago or Atlanta.

Again in this part of the argument you simply have no defence, do you? Britons, like Americans, are an anglo saxon race that has major influences from Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Scandanavia, Africa and Asia.

Now look at that signature again. It's a joke.

 

How was I to know that excerpt originated from a 16th century play in which, as you say, the English were indulging in a (well-deserved) self-deprecating orgy? You've given no context to the passage in your signature. For all I know, the author could have been a 19th century playwright admitting that areas such as Turkey, France, or Italy were (and still remain today, indeed) infinitely preferable to England, a playwright who then proceeded to laud his countrymen who had the astonishing fortitude to remain in their homeland when quitting it would have simply been all around the more attractive option.

That you're a charlatan.

"Refuse" as in the noun (in the sense of swill, rubbish espousals, and so on), not the verb.

The British population at large had nothing to do with the American Revolution. You wish to characterize Britain by the seminal works of three or four philosophers; that, indeed, is an absurd assertion.

I've said this time and time again, really.

Not entirely accurate, no. French philosophers were decisive as well, as were their American counterparts. The Germans also had some impact with the likes of Wolff and Kant. So now what does that leave us with? A joint Anglo-Franco-German-American project? Come on now -- how about simply a Western project? For every Locke, a Voltaire. For every Jefferson, a Kant.

You can't simply say Britain did all the heavy lifting, as you imply; you can't even say Britain did the majority of it. In fact, you can't really say that Britain, and its people, did much of anything at all. What you can say, however, is that British philosophers, along with thinkers from several other nations, played a decisive role in instigating revolution.

Now, that's really only half the picture. If it had been up to the British government and its people, America would not exist today. Thankfully, the French intervened decisively on our behalf (along with the Dutch and the Spanish) and the Prussians sent over von Stueben. The American populace fought bitterly for its natural rights, while the British population backed a government which sent forces to destroy them.

Looking for Roman and classical inspiration in form was a Western thing. This is my issue with you: you seem to think Britain is special. You seem to be a British exceptionalist (how veritably vulgar!). Anything England did, many other European powers had already done. The one notable exception was the Glorious Revolution and the Bill of Rights that came about. Now, this is a rather important exception, but it is an exception nonetheless.

Also, the United States originally attempted a unicameral legislature. Only when that failed in practicality was the switch to a bicameral Congress made, so its not as if the United States simply imitated England in all things, as you seem to be absurdly suggesting. Indeed, our Presidential system is quite a bit different than its Parliamentary counterpart.

As for the legal system being Common Law, of course it is. What else would it have been? The people were accustomed to the laws already in place.

 

Anglophobia now is akin to bigotry? That's certainly news to me. I suspect you would find anti-Americanism or, say, anti-Canadianism (if there even were such a thing) bigoted as well? What nonsense.

You think by quoting Churchill you'll somehow persuade me, simply because I have him in my signature? I've read A History of the English Speaking Peoples and I'm fully aware of what he thinks. I don't agree with it. This is a myth perpetuated by the English in some obscene attempt to hold sway over the US. By stating, "You're but a continuation of English civilization," the English elevate themselves and denigrate the others involved in the American Project -- the majority of whom were and are not British.

Oh, I had a good laugh at that. The US as the leader of the free world? No, thank you. I'll happily prefer Washington's opinion, which was that America should by and large tend to itself, to yours any day of the week.

Don't put words in my mouth, especially if they're the result of your own incomprehension. What I said was quite clear: The French elites at the time of the American Revolution hated what was happening across the Atlantic. Said elites, at that time, were composed of the aristocracy and were thus monarchists. Nothing more, nothing less.

You're hardly a reliable source, as has been repeatedly proven in this discussion.

I quite enjoy Celtic company, actually. Say, when is England planning on treating Wales properly and acknowledging Scotland's right to independence?

Ireland and England are not one in the same. You may be an Irishman born in England, or whatever, but that doesn't make you of Anglo-Saxon stock.

I am at once both mystified and horrified by your penchant for attributing English characteristics to decidedly non-English peoples.

Entirely irrelevant in this modern age of ours. Immigration and globalization have forever altered the ethnic makeups of continents.

Americans are not an Anglo-Saxon race. There isn't even such a thing. The majority of Americans came from Germany and its predecessor states almost a full millennium after the Angles and Saxons had departed from the areas south of Denmark. Now, one might say that in the grand scheme of things these German immigrants and the English share a Teutonic stock in the same way we are all Caucasians. That I would agree with... but this Anglo-Saxon race nonsense? No.

 

The lines quoted in Heroclitus' signature are not from a 16th century play. They are from a comic operetta called 'HMS Pinafore or The Lass who Loved a Sailor', by W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan, which was first performed in 1878.

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but you are displaying a lamentable lack of knowledge of English culture in not knowing about Gilbert and Sullivan. Every English schoolboy knows about HMS Pinafore, The Mikado, and The Pirates of Penzance, and many have played various characters in their school theatrical productions. I have played Captain Corcoran in Pinafore, and Ko Ko in the Mikado. It is awesome fun.

And Gilbert and Sullivan is extremely popular with cultured Americans, so you must forgive me if I consider your education somewhat lacking. And it should appeal to an Anglophobe such as yourself, as it sends up British society, past and present, unmercifully.

 

If Gilbert and Sullivan were alive today, they'd probably write a comic opera satirizing a pretentious British culture that is flabbergasted by the fact that some people aren't intimately familiar with Gilbert and Sullivan operas and are labeled as uncultured and uneducated as a result.

 

Certainly you do not expect me to know of every English playwright?

Well, therein lies our problem: I am not, nor have I ever been, an English schoolboy.

I don't doubt it. Any kind of acting can be very fun.

And you would know this because you keep such close company with such a great number of us?

No doubt.