Question for the left and right:

flaja wrote:

Roughly speaking almost half of the American population has German ancestry and almost half have British ancestry.

flaja wrote:

I doubt that most people know anything about their distant ancestry.

flaja wrote:

People don't always know everything that they should report.

flaja wrote:

I've already addressed the statistics. They likely are incomplete.

Interesting thought process:

- you make a claim
- you cannot back it up
- in the face of evidence that counters your claim, you declare the evidence invalid

0 Replies

Why is European ancestry declining so rapidly?

All this copy and paste and flinging insults is just an escape mechanism.

It sticks out like a chapel hatpeg in Walt's figures.

Why are you going to such lengths to avoid trying out an answer?

Does it bother you or something?

0 Replies

OK, class, let's summarize what we've learned in the last few days. This will be on the test.

Not so many Roma were killed by the Nazis, not enough to justify calling it a holocaust. Anyway, the Nazis didn't kill them because they considered them racially inferior. We have not yet been enlightened as to why they were killed.

German Protestants, ravaged by the battles of the Thirty Years War which did not take place in southern Germany, emigrated in large numbers to North America. Of course, it took them more than 30 years to get off their dead asses and get moving, because Pennsylvania did not exist until 1681.

Half of Americans are descended from the Germans, and the other half are descended from the "British." (I can hear my Irish ancestors grinding their teeth in their graves.) Any data from the Census Bureau is unreliable, because it contradicts Herr Flaja.

People with straight hair are descended either from Mediterranean people or American Indians.

Hispanics are not Europeans.

I'm sure i'm missing some of the other high points, but i am confident that Herr Flaja will correct me.

0 Replies

Well, I'm not sure you got all the points correctly. I mean, does your college work show that you have a better ability to analyze historical evidence and controversies than a layman?

I don't know.

0 Replies

Who is this Layman, and has he been posting in this thread?

Slow down, OE, you're confusing me.

0 Replies

Hard to tell. Not flaja. I mean, according to him.

I just hope he's here to stay.

0 Replies

You sure can't beat this site for free entertainment. In fact, i've suffered from recurrent bouts of hilarity all day.

0 Replies

So have I Settin'.

At least we have that in common.

There's not much to beat it I don't think.

0 Replies

Re: Question for the left and right:

flaja wrote:

Meaning people that supported the war before they opposed it have no clue what defeat would mean either.

They may, they may not. If they show a consistent inability to define "defeat" in the same manner that the Bush administration has shown a consistent inability to define "victory," then I suppose you'd be right.

flaja wrote:

It is senseless to wage left v. right political warfare over ideas that cannot be readily defined.

I have no trouble defining "victory" as it applies to the Iraq War. If that causes ideological warfare, so be it.

flaja wrote:

But what constitutes a favorable outcome?

You tell me.

flaja wrote:

Quote:
As the initiator of an illegal and unjust war,

How so? The Constitution grants the U.S. Congress the power to define and punish offenses committed against the law of nations. Congress can decide what international law is, and by authorizing the use of force in Iraq Congress legally declared that Iraq was violating international law.

It is remarkable how much misinformation is crammed into the small compass of this paragraph. Let me try to address it all:

1. It's true that the constitution gives congress the power to define and punish offenses against the law of nations, but that applies to individuals, not to states. Congress does not have the ability to define and punish acts by states, since those acts are not amenable to the US's judicial power. If a state breaches international law, the recourse is either to a recognized international forum or tribunal, or else to some type of coercion, including war.

2. In that same vein, congress most certainly cannot decide what international law is. Article 8 of the constitution gives congress the power to define and punish offenses against the law of nations, i.e. to define those offenses that are already contrary to international law. See US v. Smith.

3. Congress, in its resolution on the use of military force, did not declare that Iraq was violating international law. At most, it accused Iraq of violating various UN resolutions. As it is not in congress's power to enforce UN resolutions, however, such accusations bear little weight.

0 Replies

flaja wrote:

Foofie wrote:
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).

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?

Quote:
And there is a Hispanic population that have no German or British ancestry.

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

Quote:
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.

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.

Quote:
And, don't include Blacks (since they might have some British ancestry),

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

Quote:
since in that case you can add all American Ashkenazi Jews, who likely mixed with pre-Christian Germans in the first millenia.

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

Quote:
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.

What books?

Quote:
Referring to one's ancestry, too often, is based on some desired "ethnic pride"

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.

To reply to most of the above:

Yes, yes, after the Revolution of 1848 liberal Germans (Protestants, Catholics and Jews) came to the U.S.

The Lone Ranger was supposed to be Spanish (Tonto saying, "Kemo sabe" was his poor Spanish for, "Quien sabe" (Who knows?), in answering the Lone Ranger's question, "Which way did they go (the bad guys)). My point is that the Southwest and California had an original Hispanic population that was here since the early 1600's.

I've never met anyone with German and British ancestry that are Protestant. However, German Catholics do marry Irish Catholics, if you include them as British, if they are from Northern Ireland. Isn't this parsing getting silly?

I thought American Blacks do not consider themselves British, just like American Jews that obviously mixed, during their 2.000 year sojourn in Europe, with Gentile Europeans (Jews today don't look anything like Moses), and don't feel that minimizes their being Jewish. By the way, recent DNA studies show that a fair percentage of Ashkenazi Jews have paternal lineage (Y Chromosome) from the mideast, but maternal lineage (X Chromosome) from Europe. The theory is that male Jews settling in Europe, for "trading" purposes, married local women. Don't forget that Germany had Jews in the first millenium (pre-Christian Germany). There was little anti-Semitism amongst the pagan Germans. Jews mixed, since there are "German" traits amongst Jews, like early male pattern balding.

I can't argue/reply intelligently to the thought about the benefits of genealogical study. Each to his own. For me it would be boring. My ancestry came from the ocean like everyone else's.

0 Replies

Re: Question for the left and right:

joefromchicago wrote:

They may, they may not. If they show a consistent inability to define "defeat" in the same manner that the Bush administration has shown a consistent inability to define "victory," then I suppose you'd be right.

How has the Left defined defeat other than simply saying we are in Iraq?

Quote:

I have no trouble defining "victory" as it applies to the Iraq War.

Then define victory as it applies to Iraq.

Quote:

1. It's true that the constitution gives congress the power to define and punish offenses against the law of nations, but that applies to individuals, not to states.

No where in the Constitution is this distinction made.

Quote:

Congress does not have the ability to define and punish acts by states, since those acts are not amenable to the US's judicial power. If a state breaches international law, the recourse is either to a recognized international forum or tribunal, or else to some type of coercion, including war.

What internationally recognized tribunal existed in 1787, when the Constitution was written?

Quote:

Article 8 of the constitution gives congress the power to define and punish offenses against the law of nations, i.e. to define those offenses that are already contrary to international law.

Article 8? Try Article I. The Constitution only has 7 Articles in its original, un-amended form.

Quote:

See US v. Smith.

This case has to do with piracy, which is a separate issue.

According to Article I, section 8 the Congress has the power: To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations.

Thus piracy on the high seas is separate from international law. Congress has the power to define what piracy is and what international law is. For all intents and purposes Congress defined international law in such a way that Hussein remaining in power in Iraq violated international law. So even by your own (faulty) standards that say Congress can direct its power only at individuals the U.S. invasion of Iraq was legal because it was directed at an individual.

Quote:

3. Congress, in its resolution on the use of military force, did not declare that Iraq was violating international law. At most, it accused Iraq of violating various UN resolutions. As it is not in congress's power to enforce UN resolutions, however, such accusations bear little weight.

Doesn't the UN mean international law to you leftists?

0 Replies

Foofie wrote:

Yes, yes, after the Revolution of 1848 liberal Germans (Protestants, Catholics and Jews) came to the U.S.

But before, you gave the impression that this group included mainly (if not only) Catholics.

Quote:

The Lone Ranger was supposed to be Spanish (Tonto saying, "Kemo sabe" was his poor Spanish for, "Quien sabe" (Who knows?), in answering the Lone Ranger's question, "Which way did they go (the bad guys)). My point is that the Southwest and California had an original Hispanic population that was here since the early 1600's.

Where did I say that there were no Hispanics in this Country? All I said is that for most of our history the Hispanic population was small in comparison to the European population.

Quote:

I've never met anyone with German and British ancestry that are Protestant.

You must not get out much.

Quote:

However, German Catholics do marry Irish Catholics, if you include them as British, if they are from Northern Ireland. Isn't this parsing getting silly?

Why wouldn't you count ancestors from the British Isles as British ancestors?

Quote:

I thought American Blacks do not consider themselves British,

It's not a matter of what blacks consider themselves to be. If a black has a British ancestor, then he has British ancestry regardless of whether or not he knows about it or accepts it.

Quote:

just like American Jews that obviously mixed, during their 2.000 year sojourn in Europe, with Gentile Europeans

You have documentation for this mixing?

Quote:

(Jews today don't look anything like Moses),

You know what Moses looked like?

Quote:

By the way, recent DNA studies show that a fair percentage of Ashkenazi Jews have paternal lineage (Y Chromosome) from the mideast, but maternal lineage (X Chromosome) from Europe.

I am familiar with research regarding Y chromosomes and the Cohanim(sp?). Men who are rabbis or who come from families that have included rabbis tend to have very similar Y chromosomes with the implication being that they are descendants from the original Hebrew high priest Levi.

I am not aware that any such research has involved the X chromosome since maternal genetic ancestry is traced through mitochondrial DNA which is transferred pretty much intact between mother and child. In fact, X chromosomes cannot be used to trace maternal ancestry, i.e., determine if two people share a common female ancestor, because a woman gets an X chromosome from both her father and mother. A woman's grandparents collectively have 4 X chromosomes that come from among the 8 X chromosomes that her great-grandparents had- the number of X chromosomes doubles with each generation you go back further in time. It is entirely possible for a woman to get her X chromosomes from one side of her family while her sister gets them from the other and you could end up with both sisters getting one X chromosome from each side of the family but without the siblings getting the same chromosomes from the same side. You cannot trace maternal lines using the X chromosome.

0 Replies

flaja wrote:

Foofie wrote:
Yes, yes, after the Revolution of 1848 liberal Germans (Protestants, Catholics and Jews) came to the U.S.

But before, you gave the impression that this group included mainly (if not only) Catholics.

Quote:
The Lone Ranger was supposed to be Spanish (Tonto saying, "Kemo sabe" was his poor Spanish for, "Quien sabe" (Who knows?), in answering the Lone Ranger's question, "Which way did they go (the bad guys)). My point is that the Southwest and California had an original Hispanic population that was here since the early 1600's.

Where did I say that there were no Hispanics in this Country? All I said is that for most of our history the Hispanic population was small in comparison to the European population.

Quote:
I've never met anyone with German and British ancestry that are Protestant.

You must not get out much.

Quote:
However, German Catholics do marry Irish Catholics, if you include them as British, if they are from Northern Ireland. Isn't this parsing getting silly?

Why wouldn't you count ancestors from the British Isles as British ancestors?

Quote:
I thought American Blacks do not consider themselves British,

It's not a matter of what blacks consider themselves to be. If a black has a British ancestor, then he has British ancestry regardless of whether or not he knows about it or accepts it.

Quote:
just like American Jews that obviously mixed, during their 2.000 year sojourn in Europe, with Gentile Europeans

You have documentation for this mixing?

Quote:
(Jews today don't look anything like Moses),

You know what Moses looked like?

Quote:
By the way, recent DNA studies show that a fair percentage of Ashkenazi Jews have paternal lineage (Y Chromosome) from the mideast, but maternal lineage (X Chromosome) from Europe.

I am familiar with research regarding Y chromosomes and the Cohanim(sp?). Men who are rabbis or who come from families that have included rabbis tend to have very similar Y chromosomes with the implication being that they are descendants from the original Hebrew high priest Levi.

I am not aware that any such research has involved the X chromosome since maternal genetic ancestry is traced through mitochondrial DNA which is transferred pretty much intact between mother and child. In fact, X chromosomes cannot be used to trace maternal ancestry, i.e., determine if two people share a common female ancestor, because a woman gets an X chromosome from both her father and mother. A woman's grandparents collectively have 4 X chromosomes that come from among the 8 X chromosomes that her great-grandparents had- the number of X chromosomes doubles with each generation you go back further in time. It is entirely possible for a woman to get her X chromosomes from one side of her family while her sister gets them from the other and you could end up with both sisters getting one X chromosome from each side of the family but without the siblings getting the same chromosomes from the same side. You cannot trace maternal lines using the X chromosome.

The need to retort on every thought, including whether "I get out much" is beyond my level of comfort. I retract everything I've posted in this thread. But you should agree that if you believe the "Moses story," he was raised in the Royal Court of the Pharohs who were Black Africans at that time. Moses did not stand out like a proverbial sore thumb; voila, Hebrews were a people of color at that point in history. And, they lightened up somewhere, but let's not argue that point, since I don't want to offend any of your Teutonic sensitivities.

0 Replies

Re: Question for the left and right:

flaja wrote:

How has the Left defined defeat other than simply saying we are in Iraq?

I don't know. Why is that relevant?

flaja wrote:

Quote:
I have no trouble defining "victory" as it applies to the Iraq War.

Then define victory as it applies to Iraq.

You must have missed this the first time I wrote it:

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.

flaja wrote:

Quote:
1. It's true that the constitution gives congress the power to define and punish offenses against the law of nations, but that applies to individuals, not to states.

No where in the Constitution is this distinction made.

You might try reading the case law that analyzes this clause of the constitution.

flaja wrote:

What internationally recognized tribunal existed in 1787, when the Constitution was written?

States were always free to refer their international disputes to arbitration, which was certainly not unknown in the 1780s.

flaja wrote:

Article 8? Try Article I. The Constitution only has 7 Articles in its original, un-amended form.

My mistake. I was referring to Art. 1, section 8.

flaja wrote:

Quote:
See US v. Smith.

This case has to do with piracy, which is a separate issue.

No it's not. Piracy is an offense against the law of nations. As Justice Story wrote:

The common law, too, recognises and punishes piracy as an offence, not against its own municipal code, but [i]as an offence against the law of nations[/i], (which is part of the common law ,) as an offence against the universal law of society, a pirate being deemed an enemy of the human race.Emphasis added.

flaja wrote:

According to Article I, section 8 the Congress has the power: To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations.

Thus piracy on the high seas is separate from international law.

No it's not. As Story pointed out, piracy is a type of offense against the law of nations.

flaja wrote:

Congress has the power to define what piracy is and what international law is. For all intents and purposes Congress defined international law in such a way that Hussein remaining in power in Iraq violated international law. So even by your own (faulty) standards that say Congress can direct its power only at individuals the U.S. invasion of Iraq was legal because it was directed at an individual.

That is, without a doubt, one of the stupidest things I've ever read in this forum that wasn't written by gungasnaKKKe. First, the US can't define international law -- unless, of course, you're willing to grant that same right to every other nation in the world, since each nation is equal under international law. Thus, if the US could declare that the invasion of Iraq was legal under international law, Iraq could, with equal justice, declare that the invasion was illegal under international law.

Secondly, the US can't wage war against an individual. As much as Bush might have wanted to fight only Saddam Hussein and his henchmen, he still invaded an entire country to do it. But then if you genuinely take the position that the US only went to war with Saddam Hussein, you must also take the position that all of the thousands of Iraqis who weren't Saddam Hussein but who were nevertheless killed and wounded in the war were non-combatants. That would mean that the US committed vast numbers of war crimes in its pursuit of Saddam Hussein.

flaja wrote:

Doesn't the UN mean international law to you leftists?

The UN resolutions relative to Iraq did not constitute statements of binding international law (unlike, e.g., international agreements or treaties that set forth rules governing the relations of states). Furthermore, UN resolutions can only be enforced by the UN. The US unlawfully arrogated that power by purporting to enforce those resolutions even in the face of the UN security council's refusal to authorize that action.

0 Replies

What the hell does all this ancestry stuff have to do with victory in Iraq. Are we not all basically the same.

0 Replies

Foofie wrote:

The need to retort on every thought, including whether "I get out much" is beyond my level of comfort.

Then stop telling lies and partial truths. You give the impression that no Protestant has ever had both German and British ancestry. This is absolutely untrue.

I have German and British ancestry and I am a Protestant.

My mother's father had German and British ancestry and his family were Protestants.

H. Norman Schwarzkopf is Protestant, but his mother was a descendant of Thomas Jefferson, thus H. Norman Schwarzkopf has both German and British ancestry.

Dwight Eisenhower had German ancestry on his father's side and partial British ancestry on his mother's side, but Eisenhower was Protestant.

The Queen of England has both British and German ancestry, but she's a Protestant.

Quote:

I retract everything I've posted in this thread. But you should agree that if you believe the "Moses story," he was raised in the Royal Court of the Pharohs who were Black Africans at that time.

Your documentation for these black-African Egyptians is what?

Quote:

Hebrews were a people of color at that point in history. And, they lightened up somewhere, but let's not argue that point, since I don't want to offend any of your Teutonic sensitivities.

The Jews are a subset of Israelites, since not all of the descendants of Jacob are Jews. When King Solomon died his son and successor raised taxes to the point that 10 of the tribal components of his kingdom rebelled and created their own kingdom. This new kingdom was known as Israel, while the original kingdom became the Kingdom of Judah. Judah consisted of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin with a portion of the Levites. The people of the Kingdom of Judah became the Jews.

Furthermore, the Israelites were likely a subset of the Hebrews so not ever Hebrew has been an Israelite or a Jew.

And the Israelite tribes stemmed from at least 4 different women and only two of these tribes came from full-blooded brothers- Joseph and Benjamin, who were both sons of Rachel. The other Israelite tribes came from Rachel's sister Leah and an assortment of surrogate mothers drawn from the two sisters' handmaids. And then Joseph's two sons were born of an Egyptian mother and they each became separate tribes in their own right- there was no tribe of Joseph when it came time to distribute the land of Canaan to the Israelites.

0 Replies

flaja wrote:

The Queen of England has both British and German ancestry, but she's a Protestant.

I'm just answering to your wrong claim that she is Protestant.

She is the "Supreme Governor of the Church of England", the "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church".

0 Replies

Re: Question for the left and right:

joefromchicago wrote:

I don't know. Why is that relevant?

If the Right cannot define victory in Iraq because victory is such a vague concept, how is defeat not equally a vague concept, i.e., something that the Left cannot define?

Quote:

You must have missed this the first time I wrote it:
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.

In other words you define defeat by the simple fact that we are in Iraq in the first place- just like I said.

Quote:

You might try reading the case law that analyzes this clause of the constitution.

Who's to say that your interpretation of the case law is the correct interpretation?

Quote:

States were always free to refer their international disputes to arbitration, which was certainly not unknown in the 1780s.

Care to give some examples as to when, where and why international disputes were settled by arbitration before 1787? And if submitting a dispute to international arbitration was our only recourse for dealing with foreign nations, we could not be a sovereign nation because we would have always been dependent upon and subject to the whims of other nations.

Quote:

No it's not.

Yes it does. By definition crimes committed on the high seas are not committed within the jurisdiction of any nation since no nation has sovereignty over the high seas. Thus piracy has nothing to do with statutory international law. But Article I gives the Congress the power to make statutory international law.

Quote:

No it's not. As Story pointed out, piracy is a type of offense against the law of nations.

Even if this is true, the Constitution does not limit offenses against the law of nations to piracy and felonies committed on the high seas. Congress can and does decide what other actions violate the law of nations.

Quote:

That is, without a doubt, one of the stupidest things I've ever read in this forum that wasn't written by gungasnaKKKe. First, the US can't define international law -- unless, of course, you're willing to grant that same right to every other nation in the world, since each nation is equal under international law.

I don't see where the Constitution denies such power to other nations. Every nation must have this power in order to maintain their individual sovereignty. But then the idiots on the Left don't want the U.S. to have any sovereignty.

0 Replies

Advocate wrote:

What the hell does all this ancestry stuff have to do with victory in Iraq. Are we not all basically the same.

The topic of ancestry wouldn't have come up if the topic of tribalism in Iraq hadn't come up.

0 Replies

Re: Question for the left and right:

flaja wrote:

Yes it does. By definition crimes committed on the high seas are not committed within the jurisdiction of any nation since no nation has sovereignty over the high seas. Thus piracy has nothing to do with statutory international law. But Article I gives the Congress the power to make statutory international law.

Quote:
No it's not. As Story pointed out, piracy is a type of offense against the law of nations.

Even if this is true, the Constitution does not limit offenses against the law of nations to piracy and felonies committed on the high seas. Congress can and does decide what other actions violate the law of nations.

It's quite practical that a lot about this is onlene - like here at the US Supreme Court Center

0 Replies

Question for the left and right:

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know