ScottSA

We could play this game all day Momo; obviously you've been googling, so you know very well that there's a debate about it, and you know very well that the question is up in the air in any number of facets.

And I suppose women who abuse men should get the best free counselling available, right?

We've finished building the railways, or haven't you noticed? Geez, you're not just stuck in the 1960s, you're stuck in the 1860s!

Speaking of straw, where exactly in this thread have I addressed the founding of Rome, St Patrick and snakes, or the American civil war? Noplace, actually, so I guess we can pass over this reference as entirely irrelevant. You are making up facts, and borrowing from the "overwhelming consensus" myth. "Virtually no historian or archaeologist still holds" the same views as me? Sorry, but that's not only wrong, but egregious fabrication.

I'll see your claptrap and raise you some real history: https://www.dur.ac.uk/anthropology.journal/...ll/russell.html

This, in a nutshell, explains your position. Throw out history and replace it with something more palatable. Historical truth doesn't really matter if it gets in the way of future vision, right?

Make that a 'millions' and 3.

Oh, they are. My 6th grade daughter knows far more about the "lifestyles" of stone age savages than about the philosophies of dead white men who ascended from hell to wreak havoc on the world. She knows too that her forefathers came here and took it all away from the poor stone age savages, who, left to their own devices, would have no doubt evolved into shining cities of light, peace, and sylvan harmony, with nary a cloud in the sky, nor a broken branch nor puff of industrial smoke. She can recite lists of stone age tribes, where they lived, what they ate, and the niceties of their existence (if not some of the inconvenient truths), but she doesn't know who Plato is, nor Adam Smith, and she's never heard of Vimy Ridge. And she goes to a private Catholic school. I can just imagine the mess the public schools are making of minds.

Do go on. I take it you feel it "uncivilized" to reject immigration? Far more "civilized" to paste a vacant smile on our faces and wave goodbye as our civilization slowly fades into oblivion?

You are most assuredly right.

I don't understand the reference to the Peloponesian war. You are aware that it didn't take place in Britain, right? My mention of wki had to do with you sourcing it as evidence of a claim that, to say the very least, is extremely questionable. Wiki is well known for academic and ideological battles fought over the text. Some of us occasionally fight them ourselves. You claim that we know almost nothing about Hengist and Horsa, and I'll give you that; beyond Bede, there is very little known about the specific events leading into the invasions. Yet, while claiming lack of evidence in the face of evidence in one case, you are adamant that something cooked up by immigrationphiles in the last decade or so, in the face of all counterevidence, is wholly true. Almost the entire rationale behind this "peaceful immigration" thesis rests on the evidence that some sections of the odd village were inhabited by both Britons and Saxons; and even that evidence can't establish that it was even in the same decade! Not to mention the inconvenient fact that the same villages show evidence of being torched. Not to mention the archeological, traditional, literary, historical, placename change, and just about every form of academic evidence available, that the invasions were at the point of a sword, and not through "peaceful trade." What's next? Alfred was a warmonger against the innocent Danes?

Ahem: Hengist and Horsa are not mythical, and you're using Wiki as source material. 'Nuff said.

Well, I'd certainly like to see evidence of that by way of a link to a bona fide historical anthropologist (not the new age variety). Leaving aside, of course, cultural, place name, and a host of other evidence separating the Welsh from the Saxons, from the Scots from the Danelaw and so on. Not to mention the actual historical evidence, including the ASC that you so blithely dismiss in passing by arbitrarly attributing intent to the minds of people you admittedly know nothing about, simply because there's nothing to know about them aside from their records. Oh, and then the plentious archeological evidence of warfare between the Saxons and the Romano-Brits. Then of course, there is yet more historical evidence, including Crayford, Cymen’s shore, The Weald, Mearcred’s Burn, and a host of other battles. In fact, there is almost nothing you can offer in concrete evidence suggesting this ludicrous notion that the Saxon warriors showed up in their hundreds to "trade" with a virtually unarmed society of far too civilized folk. Especially when most accounts talk of horrific slaughter, begining with, but not confined to Hengist and Horsa. And Brittany, by all accounts, was repopulated by a mass influx of Britons about 50 - 100 years after the legions left and the saxon shore expanded. Coincidence? Well, maybe, but not very bloody likely.

Stop smiling at me siren. I know what's lurking in your mind. Stop hitting on me!

That is about the only thing I wholeheartedly agree with you in the last post. The saxon shaore wasn't all about "trading," as much as you'd love to buy into that revisionist nonsense. What they have found in the wake of the legions is that the society struggled on for a while until it was overrun. Brittany wasn't populated by vacationers, y'know.

Oh, I don't think I'm the one who doesn't 'get it.'

Don't lie. I saw that movie about the day after. It was hot. No, I mean cold. Everything was buried under snow. Wait a second...

You obviously missed what I said. Sorry for your confusion.

Gandhi was the last word in pacifism. His advice to the Ethiopians was to "allow themselves to be slaughtered," to the Jews of Germany to make "a calm and determined stand offered by unarmed men possessing the strength of suffering given to them by Jehovah," in order to "convert the Nazis to an "appreciation of human dignity. Apparently he was too used to working with the British. Naturally, his advice the the British was to "You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these, but neither your souls, nor your minds.' Link Aside from being a snake oil salesman, he was an abject fool. Pacifism is neither good nor bad. It is simply another ism attached to the latterday eurocentric notion that peace is a central good in and of itself. And it's a relatively recent ism...the founders of the US didn't see peace as a self sufficient good; "give me liberty or give me death" is not the thought of someone willing to 'make do'; "we will fight from the hills...and never surrender..." is not a thought common to a pacifist, and in fact if you asked an Arab today if peace is important to him, he'd look at you funny. The idea that peace is a good; indeed the central good of civilization, without caveat; is something unique to the west, and virtually unique to western history. Sure, peace has always been seen as ok, but never before as an overarching pathos like it is today. And unless the west sheds the idea, we're in for a rocky ride in the future.

Absolutely. See colonialism. I don't mean the usual revisionist claptrap from the left, but actual history. Take India, for example; not only did it's institutions change, but paradigmatic view of the world radically changed. What was a series of decaying empires based on what Marx called "Asiatic despotism" became, under the British, a modern democratic state. British culture was very strong then. It was self evident to the British that their culture was better than that of the nations they conquered, and it was self-evident to the conquered as well. And it wasn't just confined to colonialized cultures. Anyone remotely familiar with Chinese or Japanese history...real history...knows the debates that took place from 1850 - 1930s about how to best evolve into a western culture. Now the west is awash in self doubt, mostly the offspring of a flawed revisionist parody of colonialism. By and large, at least in the case of the British colonies, colonialism was the best thing that ever happened to Asia. We have nothing to apologize for, even if there were any 18th century colonizers or their alleged "victims" alive today.

If you had even the slightest idea how things work, it wouldn't be so painful to read your sniffets of unwisdom. Oh, right, I'm brainwashed by the queen's black rood.

I take it you're unable to elaborate on this "right of movement?"

Please do elaborate on this historical revision. It sounds fascinating.

"Why are you here?" What "right of movement?" Please explain, and cite some convention, or at least something to show me that you're not hallucinating.

This is a nonsensical statement that simply isn't borne out by economics. The only reason people like you use it is because you're parroting it in true Goebbelian fashion. Besides, if the issue were any other one, you'd be howling about the capitalist insistence of "growth."