Anglo-Saxon Historical Discussion

Theory? It’s an observation.

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Im listing the reason for temping this as off topic.

But “Anglo-Saxon supremacy” what the hell? Please find somewhere else to discuss that topic.

What the hell indeed.

It’s a claim, and a vague one. You haven’t even told us when the “invention of freedom” allegedly occurred, let alone how.

Margaret Thatcher is one of my hugest heroes. She says the English-speaking population are superior…at standing up to tyranny.

This was during a Swedish interview. Asked what she thinks about
Sweden, she says, they were neutral to Hitler.

https://youtu.be/rgBPybvoKqA?t=1218

Thanks, Jotham. That video doesn’t answer the questions, but it does make me laugh. :smiley:

I see why you’re still in love with her. :heart_eyes:

To paraphrase,

Interviewer: Do you believe women are more peaceful than men?
Maggie: I think you’re a Communist.
Interviewer: You didn’t answer the question.
Maggie: I’m teaching you the proper way to speak!


Now since @rowland doesn’t want to play anymore, I invite you to set the rhetorical goalposts for him, if you like. Exactly when and how did the Anglo-Saxons “invent freedom”?

:popcorn:

Well, one school might direct you to Genesis 1:1:

Some point after they found themselves on the safer side of the English channel I think.

Oh come now, even the English aren’t that arrogant. Taking credit for the achievements of Scots and Welsh-Lithuanian immigrants is one thing, but the Bible is too sacred. After all, it was written in the name of a Sc-- uh, I mean English king!

[quote=“tempogain”]
Some point after they found themselves on the safer side of the English channel I think.[/quote]
You mean when they went to Agincourt? :wink:

They didn’t invent it, it doesn’t have to be invented. It was always there. But big statists like to believe that they can be invented and then bestowed on people like some kind of government or royal benefit. That’s why our Constitution says that we are created with unalienable rights, because government can’t give us those rights or take them away. I believe the Anglo-Saxons were centuries ahead of the rest of the world in applying this to their own situation.

What’s this? Jotham, Defender of Gender Equality? :astonished: Keep it up. You might get an honorary knighthood!

I believe the Anglo-Saxons were centuries ahead of the rest of the world in applying this to their own situation.

That’s still a little vague. How were they centuries ahead of the rest of the world?

Shame on you. I explained it succinctly and got temped for my troubles. And you’d better be careful yourself. This sort of thing triggers mods.

By the way, I notice others here have since provided all the data points you could easily have googled for yourself. Me, I never go on at length about how water is wet, unless I’ve decided to humiliate a very large group of wetness-denying morons. (Did this once here about fascism being allegedly right wing, won’t bother again.) You either know it’s wet already, or you never will.

And no, the wetness of water is not a theory.

They had so much freedom, they just wanted to spread it around it a bit.

Shame on me? :astonished:

I explained it succinctly

Succinct means brief and clear. You explained nothing.

By the way, I notice others here have since provided all the data points you could easily have googled for yourself.

Oh, so it is the Magna Carta you worship after all. But which Magna Carta? The one the king signed under duress in 1215 and promptly renounced? The 1216 version? The 1217 version? The 1225 version? The 1297 version? Medieval England went through Great Charters like modern Thailand goes through constitutions (to say nothing of the not-so-great charters).

True, common law was influenced by these charters, and common law is not worthelss, but the concept of liberty (oops, freedom) existed long before the Anglo-Saxons were a thing, and the concept of divine right – usually considered the antithesis of the “freedom” expressed in the Charters – existed long after them (and still does), at least in England.

In the hilarious “entrapment” video that Jotham so kindly showed us, Maggie also lists equity as evidence of the greatness of (as she says) the British. Okay.

But apart from so-called Parliamentary supremacy and the legal system (as if civil law were utter tyranny), the only other evidence of this greatness she can come up with is that Britain has not been “occupied” in the last 1000 years.

I’m sorry, what’s that you were saying about water?

Strangely, Maggie doesn’t mention the mass deportation of a well known immigrant community with ties to the Middle East :eek: nor the reversal of that policy a few centuries later. :idunno: I wonder, which one of those makes better evidence of Anglo-Saxon supremacy in the fields of freedom, pragmatism and anti-stupidity? :ponder:


And no, the wetness of water is not a theory.

How about the whiteness of polar bears? :smile:

We can lead you to Google, but we can’t make you think.

(Really don’t mind if you sit this one out.)

Yeah start thinking yyy. What’s your problem?

Google “Anglo-Saxon supremacy”? :rolling_eyes:

I don’t want to put racist words in your mouth, so I hope you’ll come up with something more thoughtful than that.

Remember, when you cross your arms and say my next move is so obvious that I don’t even need to show you, it means you waive your right to complain when your opponent shrugs and moves a piece for you.

[quote=“yyy, post:14, topic:160121, full:true”]
Oh, so it is the Magna Carta you worship after all. But which Magna Carta? The one the king signed under duress in 1215 and promptly renounced? The 1216 version? The 1217 version? The 1225 version? The 1297 version? Medieval England went through Great Charters like modern Thailand goes through constitutions (to say nothing of the not-so-great charters).[/quote]
See, this is your problem, you think freedom or liberty can only be documented, invented, bestowed or taken away, solely by government decrees or contracts. This is why I’m saying our Founders said that we were Created with unalienable rights, which means what government decrees has nothing to do with it. Yes, the barons forced the king to listen to him because he thought he was king and could do anything, but the barons set him straight. It was a bit of struggle, it wasn’t done in one day or one document, but we see the struggle, and it continued as it was the fashion of the English personality at that time to understand their God-given rights, (instead of Government-given).

The concept of liberty evolved over time in many strokes towards the goal (which strokes weren’t going on elsewhere), it wasn’t in just one stroke, though the Magna Carta was a pretty good one. Common law is a democratic way so that no one judge can take the law in his own hands, but must humbly submit and arduously study the opinions of others before him/her, (And this is why I think the Democrats are getting away from this, because they don’t review history so much, as they like to find new things in the Constitution to agree with their opining, while the Republicans who respect stare decisis, are necessarily binding themselves to the diktat of Democrat judges, who weren’t so humbly following tradition.)

Napoleon did away with common law which had developed in Northern France, and all the mostly northern countries in Europe at that time when he conquered them, making all the law systems more in line with his authoritarianism, and it stands today, none of those countries reverted back to common law.

But apart from so-called Parliamentary supremacy and the legal system (as if civil law were utter tyranny), the only other evidence of this greatness she can come up with is that Britain has not been “occupied” in the last 1000 years.

Britain was the only country that saw Napoleon’s defeat whenever they were involved. As far as I know, if the English character wasn’t what it was, they would easily have succumbed to Hitler’s Air Force superiority, like most Europe had. They were outnumbered something like 1 to 10, but it was the spirit of resistance that kept them steady. It might have been easier just to let it go and think it can’t be so bad under Hitler, but liberty isn’t always easy, and they chose to fight or die than live under easier conditions albeit tyranny, which is the most horrible idea to them than it is to others that they’d rather take the burden to fight it out.

I talk all the time to Taiwanese who think China dominating them wouldn’t affect their lives that much, so as not to be worth fighting and dying for. I think a lot of Europeans thought this way too, and saved many of their own lives by enduring tyranny. That is not the English way, or American, or most other English speakers. We believe in greater things.

I’m trying to work with Rowland’s original claim, that the Anglo-Saxons invented freedom.

We can interpret that as the Anglo-Saxons discovered freedom, but invoking American politics or the results of a world war is getting away from the history of the actual Anglo-Saxon people.

Even calling freedom liberty, as you just did, is problematic if you worship your Anglo-Saxon roots to the point of saying the rest of the world never made any progress in the freedom department without the enlightened leadership of the master nation.

Every invention is a discovery of a useful combination of parts. The distinction you make here is meaningless.

To argue that freedom comes from God as an inalienable right is a variation of Platonic idealism. It’s not a contradiction but a difference in emphasis.

Or is this all over your head? Well, then. A workable model of political freedom came into our world by way of Anglo-Saxon civilization, having failed to emerge by any other path. Ancient Greece, pre-monarchical Israel, even the Roman Republic - all groped for it but fell short. England/America plugged away at it for centuries and got it to work. This is a well documented fact, racist or not. The rest is semantics.

These days the people who throw around the “racist!” slur are generally regarded as obnoxious yahoos. Also, hypocrites. But that’s another topic entirely.