The English don't like foreigners. Never have.
It's just a thing. Comes of being on an island for ten thousand years.
"The people are bold, courageous, ardent and cruel in war. But very inconstant, rash, vainglorious, light and deceiving. And very suspicious, especially of foreigners, whom they despise".
Emanuel van Meteren
September 6, 1535 - April 11, 1612
"The inhabitants are extremely proud and overbearing. They care little for foreigners, but scoff and laugh at them".
(An unknown German author, describing visit to England by Frederick, Duke of Wurttemberg in 1592.
"Someone shouted that we were all English. Why are we running? The English don't run. And so it went on. Having fled in panic, some of the supporters would then remember that they were English and this was important, and they would remind the others that they too were English, and this was important, and with renewed sense of national identity, they would come abruptly to a halt, turn around, and charge the Italian police".
(upon witnessing English football hooligans fighting a pitched battle with the Italian police, Sardinia 1990)
"The best thing I know between England and France is the sea".Douglas Jerrold (1803-1875) - English author & journalist
"Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live".John Milton (1643) - English poet
"He that wishes to see his country robbed of its rights can not be a patriot". Samuel Johnson
5 comments:
Someone I know (with English parents) has noted that the English really are, by any objective standard, xenophobes. "They go to new lands and quickly decide that it needs to look more like Shropshire, right down to sending the foreigners packing."
Americans don't usually recognize it because, the Unpleasantnesses of 1775-1783 and 1812-1814 nothwithstanding, we're conditioned to regard the English as smart people with impeccably good manners who do not do that sort of thing. Which is at least half right.
Just following a family tradition, I figure--the Angles and Saxons weren't exactly indigenous to the Island.
Forgot part of it, right after "half right":
And we followed the pattern pretty, which is why there are big American cities squatting on the Great Plains that look like big American cities on the East Coast, instead of buffalo.
Yes, it's true.
Their problem is that they've been brainwashed. They've been told that other places are nice to visit, (cathedrals and whatnot) and convinced to go to them by cheap airfares. What they've forgotten is that they naturally loathe Other Places. To the point where they won't travel from one English county to another without complaining about the weird accents (trust me on this, I live in Cheshire and am learning the difference between Cheshire and Lancashire accents.) They hate any other place than the one they were raised in, but the media and the government (who have long since lost their own Inner Englishman) are constantly telling them that England isn't good enough. It has set up a terrible programming conflict for them.
It drives the Euro's nuts (but who cares about that?). The result of this programming conflict is that in obedience to their braishwashing, the English go to all the trouble of going to some Other Country on holidays and when they get there, spend all their time miserable and looking for a place with 'decent lavs' and a good plate of chips.
When I got here, I quickly realised that not only did I like it here better than anywhere else I had ever been, but that it was better than anywhere else I was likely to go. It was like living in an exciting holiday country with lots of interesting attractions and staying at home at the same time. Perfect.
Not having been subject to the same lifetime of brainwashing as my poor countrymen, I seem to be the only one who looks upon this country as the only place I want to visit or live. Chips with every meal in every village pub from one end of the country to the other. And it isn't until you start getting to places like Northumberland and Scotland that you can't understand what people are saying, and even then, it can be worked out from the context.
Yes, I feel terribly badly for the English. People keep telling them that their country is no good, but whenever they go anywhere else, they're miserable.
There is no reason in the world to go anywhere else. You can't heave a brick here without hitting something worth looking at, and we've got loads of cathedrals of our very own.
Let the Euroweenies and commies have Europe. If only we could learn to embrace and proudly wear our xenophobia and stop letting Labour and the effing Guardian tell us this country isn't worth living in. If those bastards want to make Britain into Belgium, why the hell didn't they just move to Belgium?!
(See? This really is the place for me.)
Oh, and when you've been in a country for 1500 years and shaped its entire culture, you get to be called "indigenous".
I'm mostly a Celt. Mum was Irish, with a smattering of Scots, on both sides, with the family having come to the Big Island in the 1830's and becoming heavily Anglicised culturally. The other half is Welsh and English. There isn't a native Anglo who hasn't got some mixed blood, but if you're mostly one of the Big Four, you're an indigenous person to these islands. There is a lot of evidence, including DNA, that the people who live here now, have, in some cases, lived here since at least the last ice age. There have been additions, but once we're talking about additions going back thousands of years, they're no longer "additions", but us.
And yes, I'm still pissed about the Norman invasion.
The old argument, "Well, we're all foreigners if you go back far enough," is crap and is always used by the people who want to destroy the British nation to excuse their programme of cultural genocide.
As a slogan, it has a certain cadence to it, doesn't it?
"Say it loud, xenophobic and proud!"
Yes, we're indigenous. No, we're not 'all foreigners'. No, we will not let you reform our country to suit some immature, half-baked communist fantasy.
The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of turning the tables on the High Priests of Political Correctness by taking pride in our incorrigable uniqueness and distaste for the Other.
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