Article

2007-05-12 Europe

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2007-05-12 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11140 views ] Top

#1 These people are no different than San Francisco Democrats, self-absorbed hedonistic self-righteous twits that believe that the protection afforded them by America is their natural due. People like this are why the sun set on the British Empire. Too many good men lost in WWI, WWII, and Korea thinned the bloodlines. These Mayfair swells are the progeny of the men who didn't go to war, the ones unwilling or unfit to defend their way of life.

Posted by RWV 2007-05-12 00:19|| 2007-05-12 00:19|| Front Page Top

#2 Apparently anti-Americanism & anti-Semitism have been running together in some circles in Europe for quite a while. I found a speech by a French Canadian man who did research on his ancestry in France in 1973:

I turned toward the vicar R and told him that I was pleased to discover that the family of R, contrary to mine, was still living at Saintes. I also added, by way of an explanation, that the wife of my first ancestor, Etienne Gellineau who came to America with his 12 year-old son on 1658, shared the same family name as he did (Hugette R) and that she died in the parish of Saint-Eutrope.

After I had finished my explanation, I held out my hand to the vicar R... He drew his hand away and put them behind his back. Surprised by this gesture, I froze before him. The face of the vicar was suddenly transformed - all congested and red with his eyes looking as though they were coming out of their sockets! I wondered, what had made him suddenly so sick to the point of having an attack?

The short duration of this time was upsetting, but I did not know why. When the silence was finally broken, a torrent of insults of an unknown nature rained down upon me.

You can rest assured, sir, that we are not of the same race! My family never contracted to marry your family or anyone else of your race! Your race has lived off of the blood of Europe and of France! Thanks to Germany, during the last war, Europe and France were purged of the people of your race! The people of your race who survived, all left for America and you can stay there - we dont need you here! Europe and France are better off without people of your race!

(He repeated the last insult several times, in a persistent manner) etc.....
After such an effort, the vicar R seemed to be exhausted. I noticed that in addition to his explosion, his face was red with deep-seated anger and he had a dazed look.
After his sudden burst of anger, the vicar R suddenly left us and drew back behind me. He went down a corridor in the back of the rectory, crying out the insults until he disappeared. Then there was nothing but silence!
I turned my head and I saw the old priest slumped in a chair, holding his head between his two hands. Slowly, the old priest got up and came toward me. Tears were filling his eyes. His took my hand in his, and looked at me with great sorrow. He begged me, in the name of Jesus Christ, to forgive the vicar R...

Posted by Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-05-12 02:24|| 2007-05-12 02:24|| Front Page Top

#3 We're in you world
growing your foodz

We're in you drive
makin you crash

We're in your movies
makin you payz

Maker me a samich!

Posted by Shipman">Shipman 2007-05-12 04:56|| 2007-05-12 04:56|| Front Page Top

#4 During a family trip to Lady Besoeker's relatives near Manchester in 1986 many of the WWII generation were still alive. Time for these dear people was told in terms of "before the war" or "after the war." Most men and many of the ladies had been in the services at some point. They were a great generation and most definately pro-American. Twenty years changes things and oftentimes not for the better. I suggest we move the embassy to a sprawling estate near Windermere and the District and leave Mayfair to the National Trust.

Posted by Besoeker 2007-05-12 05:44|| 2007-05-12 05:44|| Front Page Top

#5 Three years ago my daughter went to London on their honeymoon. Found anti-American sentiments widespread. Americans are seen as the cause of the problems of the world, & everything would be fine if we would alll just go home and stay there. 1938 worldview again.

Posted by Glenmore">Glenmore 2007-05-12 07:34|| 2007-05-12 07:34|| Front Page Top

#6 Yes, there are a lot of Britishers who hate us. I think it's because they know how far they have fallen both morally and physically, and they simply can't bear to face the reality of what they have allowed to happen to themselves and their country. It's much easier to take out their cowardly rage and anger on their friends than to face their dangerous internal demons and vanquish them. The men who fought at Lucknow, Sevastopol and Rorke's Drift would despise the character of today's Britain, and honest Britons know, and are ashamed, of that fact.

Posted by Mac 2007-05-12 07:51|| 2007-05-12 07:51|| Front Page Top

#7 Mac, your analysis sounds like Victor Hanson's discussion on global jihadism (see Opinion post today), but without the violence.

Posted by Glenmore">Glenmore 2007-05-12 08:02|| 2007-05-12 08:02|| Front Page Top

#8 I think an intellectual inferiority complex has been tweaked. They are ashamed to be of the same Anglo-Saxon strain and have such weed-grown, stammering kin. It's Sophistication Syndrome gone awok. In WWII, no one had the luxury of such pretensions and foci when bombs were raining down on their homes-all that mattered was a decent heart and courage. What, besides violence, can push the Brits back into common sense and graciousness towards friends?

Posted by Jules 2007-05-12 09:00|| 2007-05-12 09:00|| Front Page Top

#9 This leaves me once again shamed to be English. For what it is worth, I apologize on behalf of my selfish, blinkered countrymen. If we fall to the scimitar we will only have ourselves to blame.

Posted by Excalibur 2007-05-12 09:03|| 2007-05-12 09:03|| Front Page Top

#10 No worry, Excal. Plenty of Americans send money to the IRA to sate their Anglophobia. Part of the strength of our mutual culture is that we tolerate such nonsense until the chips are really down. The bad news is that we've farther to fall before we get there.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2007-05-12 09:46|| 2007-05-12 09:46|| Front Page Top

#11 I think part of becoming "EUropean" is hating Americans. I blame the State Department for encouraging this. Things like this are why I am rapidly becoming convinced that our policy of extending a defense umbrella to the world is not tenable in the long run. It is not only expensive in men and money, it is making foreigners hate our guts. It is time to bring our men back from far-flung locations and have them employed in free market vocations that will strengthen our economy and make America a better place. It is time to let foreigners do their own fighting and dying.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2007-05-12 10:30|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2007-05-12 10:30|| Front Page Top

#12 NS: Plenty of Americans send money to the IRA to sate their Anglophobia.

That would be Irish Americans only. Mainly from the New England area.

I'm no Anglophobe, but I'm tired of carping from Brits after losing a few hundred men in Iraq. We lost about half a million men during during the two World Wars pushing the threat back from British shores. Against a country that did not attack the US.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2007-05-12 10:37|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2007-05-12 10:37|| Front Page Top

#13 *ahem* NS - can you name one? Otherwise your observation is false as well as being dated. Jeebus. Anglophobia?

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2007-05-12 10:37|| 2007-05-12 10:37|| Front Page Top

#14 ZF, I just had a long conversation with a Kool-Aid drinking Frenchman who was telling me all about how global warming was going to kill us all. He had a novel approach, however; it was the West's fault that there was so much pollution in China and India because we had "driven" the manufacturing industries there. He was of the opinion that we had to "force" those countries to "stop polluting the world."

After I asked him if France wouldn't have been better off keeping some of those "polluting" industries so as to diminish a bit of the banlieue's 40% unemployment, I told him he needed to lose the idea of "forcing" China and India to do anything. He got quite offended when I told him that I would be happy to provide him statistics showing that not only the Chinese PLA but the Indian Army would currently whip France hands down in a stand-up fight.

I'm afraid I didn't do much of a job hiding my amusement at the idea of the EU "forcing" anyone anywhere outside of the EU to do anything. I suspect this guy won't be talking politics or economics to me anymore. Oh well, c'est la vie!

Posted by Mac 2007-05-12 10:47|| 2007-05-12 10:47|| Front Page Top

#15 Zhang Fei: Of course, the Anglosphere did not include US public opinion until after Pearl Harbor. Until then it was a George W. style FDR doing his best to fund and equip the British, the Canadians, the Australians, the Kiwis and the Indians against Nazi Europe.

But hey better late than never.

Posted by Excalibur 2007-05-12 13:14|| 2007-05-12 13:14|| Front Page Top

#16 No apologies needed, Excalibur, your eyes are focused on the real goals we all need to reach for international security.

Now, after years of protests that the Embassy is the number one terrorist target in the world, the Mayfair Residents association has finally succeeded in driving the Embassy from its historic residence.

... no sooner had 9/11 happened than I was being lectured on the cowardice of the Yanks and how their support for Israel had left the world in turmoil.

These stupid pommy asstards seem to have forgotten what it is like to be an island of freedom surrounded by hostile forces. Israel is the ONLY democratic nation in a sea of tyrannical Arab cesspits. Anti-Semitism is still well and alive in Europe and represents a fundamental societal flaw in European thinking. If this is what allows them feel so closely aligned to their Muslim colonizers then they can be damned right along with Islam.

I'm far more confident that European anti-Semitism is really a streak of sublimated yet abiding racism that will finally re-emerge when the charnel house doors are once again flung wide open to engulf their Muslim population in another, perhaps more deserved, bout of incredible slaughter. Europe seems unwilling or incapable of implementing sane measures that would forestall such carnage and instead is doomed to repeat the same grotesque set piece of the World Wars all over again.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-05-12 14:58|| 2007-05-12 14:58|| Front Page Top

#17 "I suspect this guy won't be talking politics or economics to me anymore..."
It's a terrible loss, Mac... but I imagine yuu'll be able to bear up.
Myself, I wonder how much of this British anti-Americanism was just always there (because historically there always was a certain level of resentment among certain classes of Brit, about those crass and vulgar Yanks) and how much is a very new and ugly kind of scape-goating. They can't really bring themselves to face that which they really fear, and which could hurt them a lot... so they lash out at a handy substitute.

Posted by Sgt. Mom 2007-05-12 15:05|| www.ncobrief.com]">[www.ncobrief.com] 2007-05-12 15:05|| Front Page Top

#18 Yawn. In 1862, the London Times condemned the Emancipation Proclamation.

Posted by mrp 2007-05-12 15:14|| 2007-05-12 15:14|| Front Page Top

#19 so they lash out at a handy substitute.

You screw your friends because your enemies won't let you get close enough.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-05-12 15:44|| 2007-05-12 15:44|| Front Page Top

#20 FRANK, *ahem* NS - can you name one? Otherwise your observation is false as well as being dated. Jeebus. Anglophobia?

dittos,

My family were colonists who fought in the Revolution against King George. But hey, the revolution was over before i was born Nimble, and inspite of my Irish blood and a few Catholics in my family I have always considered the IRA to be a terrorist org. Absolutely No Simpatico whats so ever from me.

The English have contributed far to much to civilization to be discounted because of a certain % of bad apples.

I'm a big fan of Newton, Churchill, Bill Shakespeare, Benjamin Disraeli, Maggie Thatcher, Mark Steyn, Monty Python etc. and the the Brits general. ;-)

One more 7/7 attack and the British silent majority will rise up and cull the shitheads, immigrants and native born.

Posted by RD">RD 2007-05-12 18:12|| 2007-05-12 18:12|| Front Page Top

#21 E: Zhang Fei: Of course, the Anglosphere did not include US public opinion until after Pearl Harbor. Until then it was a George W. style FDR doing his best to fund and equip the British, the Canadians, the Australians, the Kiwis and the Indians against Nazi Europe.

But hey better late than never.

No offense - Germany was a threat to Britain, not the United States. Both times.

Posted by Zhang Fei 2007-05-12 22:25|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2007-05-12 22:25|| Front Page Top

#22 E: Zhang Fei: Of course, the Anglosphere did not include US public opinion until after Pearl Harbor. Until then it was a George W. style FDR doing his best to fund and equip the British, the Canadians, the Australians, the Kiwis and the Indians against Nazi Europe.

But hey better late than never.

In fact, it would be interesting to see the British response to an attack on the US from a neighboring country that involved millions of troops and hundreds of thousands of dead on the US side. I bet the Brits would just sit back and laugh at the silly buggers having a go at each other. In fact - didn't Britain support the Confederacy during the Civil War?

Posted by Zhang Fei 2007-05-12 22:31|| http://timurileng.blogspot.com]">[http://timurileng.blogspot.com] 2007-05-12 22:31|| Front Page Top

#23 RD wrote:

I'm a big fan of Newton, Churchill, Bill Shakespeare, Benjamin Disraeli, Maggie Thatcher, Mark Steyn, Monty Python etc. and the the Brits general. ;-)

Mark Steyn is a Canadian.

Posted by Chuck 2007-05-12 23:02|| 2007-05-12 23:02|| Front Page Top

23:58 Rob Crawford
23:57 Rob Crawford
23:52 Mike
23:41 Lee
23:24 smn
23:15 OldSpook
23:13 OldSpook
23:11 Sonar
23:10 OldSpook
23:02 Chuck
22:50 Old Patriot
22:31 Zhang Fei
22:25 Zhang Fei
22:22 Zhang Fei
22:17 OldSpook
22:14 Pappy
21:55 wxjames
21:44 anymouse
21:42 anymouse
21:33 wxjames
21:32 wxjames
21:32 Natural Law
21:26 Baba Tutu
21:21 Steve White