Question for the left and right:

It is common for Americans to identify with their state or home region when talking to other Americans, but I wouldn't call myself a Floridian when I am talking to a non-American.

I know there are many WASPS in the U.S., and many people with German ancestry. However, the newer 19th century immigrants (mostly Catholic) have not been in the U.S. long enough to marry that many non-Catholics, or German Catholics (who were already middle-class or higher).

And there is a Hispanic population that have no German or British ancestry. When you said "Roughly speaking" above, I believe the two groups (German Americans and British Americans) add up to 50%, at most, of the U.S. population. I could be wrong, so someone else can Google the facts.

And, don't include Blacks (since they might have some British ancestry), since in that case you can add all American Ashkenazi Jews, who likely mixed with pre-Christian Germans in the first millenia.

As I've read in some sociology book, WASPS tend not to marry German Americans, but do marry Americans of Scandinavian ancestry. So do German Americans marry Americans of Scandinavian ancestry. Everyone seems to like Scandinavians.

But, when will we forget ancestry, and start focusing on the reality that America is a real country, and we are Americans. Referring to one's ancestry, too often, is based on some desired "ethnic pride" that might be disappointing, if we really met those ancestors of whatever country. I believe people mention their respective ethnic heritage based on the "positive stereotypes" of the ethnic group, not the specific ancestors one has. That's silly; that's like if Jews started thinking they are all as smart as Einstein in physics.

I believe many New Yorkers don't want non-Americans to think of them as anything but a New Yorker (aka, cosmopolitan, liberal, educated/cultured to some degree), so I believe many New Yorkers refer to themselves as New Yorkers when meeting non-Americans. Naturally, this is an individual preference. I'm sure I'm wrong in many cases. But, the point remains, New Yorkers often view themselves as different than the rest of the country. Especially, if they are native New Yorkers.

Since the entire world is aware of New York, it's not like a New Yorker would get a blank stare response, if he or she said they were a New Yorker to a non-American.

And, I've noticed that anyone that lived in Florida usually says (fairly quickly) whether they lived on the east coast or west coast of Florida. Apparently, that means something in the collective Floridian identity?

Re: Question for the left and right:
A long time ago, in what seems like another thread, flaja asked the following question:

As I have noted elsewhere, the terms "defeat" and "victory," as applied to the Iraq War, are rather vague and imprecise. I'm not sure that the administration that started this war has any clear idea of what "victory" would mean, so I suppose the rest of us can be excused if we're a little hazy on the subject ourselves.

For partisans of the war, I gather that "victory" has now come to mean any kind of favorable outcome. I suppose that's as good a definition as any other, but then I probably see a far more limited range of outcomes as favorable -- or, more precisely, as both favorable and within the realm of possibility. For instance, the establishment of a truly democratic, pro-American government in Baghdad might be considered a favorable outcome, but then that's about as likely as the establishment of a modern-day caliphate in Iceland.

Moreover, if we define "victory" as any sort of favorable outcome, I don't think that it would necessarily be a "victory" for the United States to prevail in a war that is illegal under the norms of international law and contrary to the treaty obligations entered into by the US. In the larger scheme of things, it is not at all favorable for an aggressor nation to be rewarded for its aggression. If the US gains a "victory" as the result of its unprovoked and unjust invasion, then that merely sets the template for the next aggressor that seeks the same kind of result. The United States, as the world's only superpower, is the biggest beneficiary of a stable international system, and it suffers the biggest detriment when that system is destabilized by aggressor nations seeking some advantage through a policy of preemptive war. The fact that the war has thus inflicted the greatest damage upon the US is an irony lost on the Bush administration.

As the initiator of an illegal and unjust war, the US has the responsibility to end the hostilities and attempt to undo the damage for which it alone is to blame. That is the only way that the US can fix the problems it caused, both to Iraq and to its own position in the international system.

The only "victory" that is both possible and favorable, then, would be for the US to withdraw its forces from Iraq immediately and attempt to repair the damage for which it is responsible. Any other outcome would be a defeat.

Your claim, Flaja, about German migration to North America in the period of the Thirty Years War is specious at best. The Thirty Years War ran from 1618 to 1648--and the fighting was essentially ended by 1642 at the latest. The earliest phase of the Thirty Years War is known as the Danish phase, because the King of Denmark instigated the outright fighting between the Protestant and Catholic leagues which were ranged against one another at the opening of the 17th century. The fighting in that phase of the war took place in northern Germany, not in southern Germany. The worst devastation of the Thirty Years war took place in northern Germany, not in southern Germany. Late in 1630, Gustav Adolf, the King of Sweden, landed on the Baltic coast of Germany, and began campaigning against the Imperialist armies early in 1631, winning his first great victory at Breitenfeld near Leipsic in 1631. He was killed at Lützen a little over a year later, once again near Leipsic. In the interim, in the early spring of 1632, he invaded Bavaria, the first time in the Thirty Years War that the fighting entered the southern portion of Germany.

That was known, reasonably enough, as the Swedish phase of the War. After his death, Gustav Adolf was succeeded by his daughter, Christina, who was still a toddler at the time. The government of Sweden, and the conduct of her armies in Germany, was in the hands of Gustav Adolf's great minister Axel Oxenstiern. Oxenstiern responded positively to the overtures of Richelieu, who was alarmed that a victory by the Imperialists (the Austrians, essentially) would have left France surrounded by Hapsburg enemies (Spain still held the southern Netherlands and threatened northern Italy, which was also an area which the Austrian Imperialists wished to control). At first Richelieu simply provided financial subsidies to the Swedes and German Protestants to keep them in the war. Later, French armies were sent into the Rhineland under the command of Turenne, while Condé opposed the Spanish in the Netherlands. However, French forces did not operate independently in the Rhineland, and Turenne only arrived there in 1638. A joint Franco-Swedish operation in Wurttemberg ended in defeat, although the French and Swedish forces retreated in good order.

The Thirty Years War rarely visited southern Germany, and had little to no lasting impact on that region. It was fought primarily in northern Germany, with the three exceptions of the incursion of the Swedes into Bavaria in 1632, the 1634 invasion of Bavarian in which the Swedes were defeated at Nordlingen, and the Franco-Swedish invasion of Wurttemberg (or Swabia, if one prefers).

In the period of the Thirty Years War, there were only, at first, two English colonies on the mainland of North America, Virginia and Massachusetts. Both were chartered private companies. The Virginia Company was a financial failure, and the charter was revoked in 1642. Of course, Charles I went to war with Parliament in 1642, so making a crown colony of Virginia meant very little. The Plymouth Company had received a charter in 1606 at the same time as the London Company, both of them being charters issued under the authority of the Virginia Company. The London Company established the Jamestown colony in 1607, but the Plymouth Company did not effect a colonial settlement until the "Pilgrims" landed in 1620. The Plymouth Company was superceded by the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629 (the English still used the Julian calendar, so some confusion may arise since the charter was dated in March, 1628, before the new year recognized by the Julian calendar; in terms of the modern use of the Gregorian calendar, the Company was chartered in March, 1629).

The second governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company was John Winthrop, who sailed to Massachusetts Bay in 1630, and landing, formally founded the town of Boston (named for a sea port in Norfolk in England). The charters of most such commercial enterprises stipulated that the Governor and Selectmen of the corporation would meet in London, but the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company neglected to specify where the Governor and Selectmen would meet. So, by physically taking the charter with him, Winthrop and his Puritan backers thought to place themselves beyond the reach of royal government. If this were not so de jure, it was certainly so de facto. Charles I had prorogued Parliament in 1628, and called a new Parliament in 1629. This Parliament immediately passed resolutions against the "tyranny" of Charles, physically holding the Speaker of the House of Commons seated in his chair while the measures were passed. So Charles dissolved Parliament, and ruled in the absence of Parliament for 11 years. It was during this period that the Puritans in Massachusetts set up their "godly republic in the wilderness," their "shining city on the hill." Two other colonies were formed in "New England" in this period, one a refuge of "heretics" established by Roger Williams at Providence in 1636, which became the Rhode Island colony. The second was the colony in the valley of the Connecticut River, settled by Puritan Congregationalists from Massachusetts, lead by Thomas Hooker, in 1636. Previously, the region had been settled by the Dutch from New Holland.

In 1639, Charles suffered a humiliating defeat by the Scots in the "Bishop's War" when he attempted to force the Book of Common Prayer on them and Anglican orthodoxy. Charles was forced to call a new Parliament in 1640. The first attempt, the "Short Parliament" was dissolved in less than a month. The next Parliament, the "Long Parliament" sat, and immediately took up "the vexed question of religion." Matters went from bad to worse. Parliament immediately passed an Act which declared that the Parliament could not be dissolved without the assent of its members. Charles' attempts to arrest those whom he considered the radical members and rabble rousers were defeated by the London mob, and in 1642, Charles was obliged to flee London with his family. In the Spring of 1642, Charles and Parliament went to war in the first of the three English Civil Wars of this period. The Long Parliament sat until it was "purged" by Colonel Pride and his troopers in December 1648. The "Rump Parliament" sat until 1649, when it was dissolved by Oliver Cromwell, and new elections produced what became known as the "Barebones Parliament."

Therefore, throughout the period of the Thirty Years War, the only destination that German Protestants could have had in North America were either the Virginia colony or the Puritan colonies in New England. I would be interested to know where it is you claim that German Protestants settled in North America in the period of the Thirty Years War. Your claims about Protestants fleeing the war in southern Germany are specious, both because most Protestants had already left southern Germany after the settlement with the Emperor Charles V resulting from the Augsburg Confession of 1530. After 1540, when Charles reluctantly acquiesced in the establishment of Lutheranism in Saxony, Catholics in the north and Protestants in the south moved to regions of Germany in which they could safely practice their respective religions.

You fail entirely to make a case that any significant number of Germans arrived in North America as a result of the Thirty Years War. Your claims about the effect of the war in southern Germany are without historical foundation--the war ravaged northern Germany, but left the south almost untouched. Furthermore, the claim that "Something like 1/3 of Germany's population was killed." is a canard that modern historians reject. The single incidence of widespread devastation occurred after Wallenstein defeated Mansfeld at Dessau in 1626. Thereafter, Wallenstein marched through Silesia in 1627 to round up the remnants of Mansfeld's army. In 1628, Wallenstein attempted to take Stralsund on the Baltic coast, but was defeated when Swedish troops landed to aid the defense, and Wallenstein was forced to lift the seige. Wallenstein then attempted in 1629 to aid the Polish forces fighting Gustav Adolf, but failed to bring the Swedes to battle. Late in 1630, on a suspicion that Wallenstein would attempt to conquer the Holy Roman Empire, Ferdinand fired Wallenstein, in one of the most breathtaking acts of stupidity from an emperor who had few peers in the realm of stupidity. The devastation of northern Germany in the years from 1627 to 1630 when Wallenstein's army marched through the region to snap up the scraps of the Protestant armies, and in a failed attempt to prevent the Swedes from intervening was the only instance of such violence against the civilian population, and is the basis for all of the false horror stories about what the Germans suffered in that war. The Swedish armies, comprised of Swedes and Protestant Germans, were notable for the care they took not to pillage and to pay for what they took from the peasants. Gustav was insistent on that point, and Oxenstiern continued the policy, and enforced on French forces who operated with the Swedes.

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German Protestants who settled in North America most notably settled in Pennsylvania. However, the Pennsylvania colony was not established until well after the restoration of Charles II in 1660--well after the end of the Thirty Years War. The only significant number of Lutherans in North America before William Penn established his colony on a royal grant in 1681 was the Swedish colony in what became Delaware, and which was established at Fort Christina (named for the daughter of Gustav Adolf who succeeded him as the Swedish Queen in 1632) in 1638. The Dutch took the Swedish colony in 1655, but agreed to recognize the Lutheran establishment among the Swedes and Finns who had settled there. The English took New Holland from the Dutch at the end of the 1664, when James, Duke of York took New Amsterdam, and then the Dutch forts in what is now Delaware. New Holland became New York and New Jersey, and what is now Delaware was incorporated in the grant to William Penn in 1682.

Apart from the Swedish and Finnish Lutherans who were already in Delaware (in very small numbers), the few Lutherans who settled in North America settled in Pennsylvania after the grant in 1681, more than 30 years after the end of the Thirty Years War, and almost 40 years after the end of active warfare in Germany in that period (essentially, large scale military operations ceased after the death of Richelieu in 1642, and the end of French subsidies to the Swedes). Most of the German Protestant settlers in Pennsylvania were pietists such as the Moravians, although a good number of German Reformed Church members also settled on what was then the frontier in Pennsylvania.

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If you feel like asking me for "documentation" as you did before, i would point out to you that my narrative is supported by exactly as much documentation as you provided for your horseshit story about the Thirty Years War and German refugees fleeing to North America--which is to say, none.

Where in North America do you claim that these floods of refugees settled in the period 1618-1648? Providing an answer to that, and evidence for it, would put your doubtful claim on solid ground . . . good luck.

Maybe our respective governments became confused when, once they had proved that they meant business by mounting an actual invasion, they were not welcomed with open arms by the Iraqi citizenry.

It may be a long term problem but there was, by the invasion, an invitation to become more like Westerners and to begin the long haul to a Western way of life with infant mortality rates in single figures and life expectancies in the high 80s accompanied with a move towards two car families, painkillers and golf on a Sunday afternoon after the services were done and dusted. A refusal of such an invitation would have perplexed a committee of the greatest minds so it isn't at all surprising that it might well have perplexed our higher elites who's qualifications to sit on such a committee have probably not thus far been proven.

I remember seeing a LIVE ON SKY NEWS scene where a tank crew in the narrow streets of the suburban districts of Baghdad climbed out and got some refreshments from a small drinks stall and they were greeted by smiles and all the kids came out and smiled as well and jumped up and down and chewing gum, probably, was handed out. (It's worked before, the tin of coffee being kept for after dusk, which did come on for them if not for us.)

And the silly sod at the top fought his way into a hole in the ground and an appointment with a rope. The rope being ungreased for no other reason than Western values say they shouldn't be so at least the silly sod had something to thank us for when he found he was not to be despatched using the methods he had employed and sometimes watched.

A proper General of the Republican Guard would have shown leadership potential had he had his men line the route to Baghdad and doffing their headgear cheering and offering drinks and "leetle seestahs" to the rescuing cavalry. Had he done so the silly sod would have come to a much more grisly end.

Our leaders had also seen, much to their dismay and despair, millions of people going to all sorts of troubles and risks to relocate from those regions, a word not often used in military parlance to designate these places as a more pithy expression is thought more appropriate, and into the Western fold. Two of them call in my pub from time to time and they have easily adopted our ways and look to be constantly congratulating themselves on their wise decision.

I bet they daren't hand out visas to all Iraqis to allow them to come to live in the Western world. That would precipitate an Exodus I think.

I'm afraid that "international law and treaty obligations" are abstractions and transient matters in the destiny of the human race although I can see how important such concepts would be to legal minds conversant with the technique of the foggied assertion and the notion that "in the long run we are all dead."

This is horseshit, too.

Source at the United States Census Bureau's Factfinder page.

In a population of 299,398,485 (as of 2006), 50,764,352 were of German ancestry, representing between 17% and 18% of the population. Those of English ancestry are listed at 28,290,369, or less than 10%. Americans of Germany and English ancestry combined to not add up to 30% of the population, never mind that ridiculous claim of 50% for each.

Virtually all the generals, including Petraeous, have said that there can be no military victory for us. The administration, directly or indirectly, have indicated that victory would be the establishment of a stable and inclusive Iraqi government (which is far from being a fact). Also, I guess, victory would be in the establishment of permanent USA bases in Iraq, along with the completion of our embassy in Baghdad.

Under the circumstances, we should get out of Iraq as quickly as possible.

I can go along with that.

I recall that Bush declared "mission accomplished" about four years ago. In view of this, we have won the war and should now leave.

Though I've done more intensive works only for other periods and some smaller regions, I do have a general idea about when and from where Germans immigrated to America/the USA - but I never could have written it like Set did.

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A 2000-census graphic

[/IMG]

So that we are all happy campers, let's just say the entire population of the U.S. is descended from those that came over on the Mayflower, and every family has a Coat of Arms descended from some aristocratic family in a country of their choice. And, once we resolve those issues, we can all accept the fact that we are all Americans - period!

Why would I say that? I don't want that!

Cycloptichorn

You may not, but I can still call you My Lordship!

O.K., and these percentages add up to 79.6%. Who are the remaining 20.4% that comprise ethnicities all smaller than the 1.4% for Swedish?

It appears then that the U.S. may not be a melting pot, but a big salad.

Also, what perhaps skews the perception of these figures is that many "groups" have settled in a specific geographic area, so the midwest has the bulk of Germans and other Northern Europeans. Many Dutch still live in New York State in the Hudson River Valley. Scotch-Irish in the Southern States. Poles, Italians and Irish in the big urban centers.

And in Hollywood everyone seems to be a little Jewish?

You may ask those at the U.S. Census Bureau who designed and created this graphic, I only copied/pasted it from their website.

But just in case:





NB: all data referring to population above 100,000 - as mentioned.

as a matter of interest i looked at the line AUSTRIANS -

yr 1990 - 864, 000
yr 2000 - 730, 000

so there were 130,000 fewer people COUNTED as austrian in that ten-year period .
even more astonishing , the dutch have gone down by 1.6 milion - 27 % !
one has to wonder what changed that count . i doubt they've all died , certainly a bit of a questionmark .
hbg

You can document that most of the 19th century German immigrants to the U.S. were Catholic? Did no Prussians flee after the revolutions of '48?



In the country as a whole the Hispanic population has historically been dwarfed by the European population.



I've never seen any data for people like me that have both British and German ancestry, but I would venture that more people have both than have just one or the other.



Why not include blacks? Isn't British ancestry British ancestry regardless of whatever else there is?



This I doubt considering how the Jews have managed to maintain their ethnic identity.



What books?



Or it could just be a factor of genealogy research. I never knew with any kind of certainty what my ethnic ancestry was before I was 30. I started doing genealogy research just before my uncle died of cancer. He knew nothing definite about our ancestry and as a history buff not knowing his own family's history weighed heavily on his mind.

Not to my knowledge and I am a Florida native- I've lived here almost all of my 40 years.

You just get more and more entertaining. Where did you come up with this tripe?



You don't consider Hispanics to be Europeans? You don't consider Spanish to be a European language? What do you think it is, and Asian language, an African language?

You crack me up more and more as i read more and more of the sh*t you make up.