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[XXSockXX]

BTW Owlbread:
I feel I should add that I hope I'm not insulting you when I say that Scots are not Celts, I was just pointing out that any sort of national identity can be deconstructed ultimately, most of them very easily. Nationality has a lot to do with gut feelings and that is not wrong per se, but one needs to be aware of it.

[smjjames]

Much like the Middle East happens to have tons of oil and tons of instability?

[smjjames]

It's funny, no one seems to associate what America is doing now with what happened years ago. Britain saw a struggling country which need stability, and gave it to further their own interests. America..."stabilises" countries that happen to have valuable raw materials. I wonder if future history will deride Americans for this.

Oh come on, most of our wars aren't even about oil!

Look at Vietnam, did they have oil? no.

The second Gulf War probably was, and the first one, while definetly in an oil rich region, wasn't wholly about oil.

Edit: Inserting quote for context.

The Vietnam war isn't a good example for you to use. France wanted its colony back. Vietnam didn't want to be a French colony. America wanted European friends against the soviet union. America fought, in this case, not for material wealth but political power.

Which disproves your original point as stated. Because if you broaden it to include 'or for political power', then you can say the same about every single country ever.

Yeah, I was responding to the 'natural resources' bit and it sounded like he was doing the 'America did ___ war because oil!' thing.

The Middle East just also happens to be a very problematic region.

[Owlbread]

Spoiler: In reply to The Dwarfy One (click to show/hide)

This is why I said it. They are your ancestors too.

Well, yes and no. I've been a bit heavy handed in the way I wielded the words "my ancestors".

And in spirit and thought I'm sure the Scottish were civilized. But they didn't put it to practical use-no architecture, no maths, no public health system.

We had architecture and it's debatable whether we would have seen maths and a public health system without the Roman conquest.

The Romans were ahead of their time, mainly because they were forced to in order to keep their soldiers healthy. This gave them a fighting edge. Perhaps civilized isn't quite the right word. The Romans were more practical and knowledgeable.

But whether that knowledge was entirely necessary is rather debatable, and the uses to which it was put is highly questionable.

They did terrible things, true, but so has every nation. The Scots have done terrible things. The Americans. The English. The Arabs. You cannot judge an entire country on this, however.

Everyone has done terrible things, the Romans did more terrible things than many others in their time.

That would be like me judging every Irish person according to how the IRA acted, or every Irish person were the same as the Garda who cooperated with the IRA.

Or indeed on the other side of the coin, the RUC who cooperated with the UVF. But, as with all things, my beef is with "Rome" as a political entity, not its people.

Spoiler: In reply to UrbanGiraffe (click to show/hide)

My problem with that kind of a worldview is that you're identifying more with being racially Scottish than anything else.

I'm not harming anyone. It's not to the detriment of people who are not "ethnically Scottish", such as my mother who is not "ethnically" Scottish at all and actually grew up in London, or the people who came over from Belfast at the turn of the century and gave me my surname, or the English gardener from Bedfordshire whose progeny included my Grandmother, or my English Uncle, raised in Middlesex, who plans to vote Yes in the referendum.

I have notions of "nation" that generally transcend blood, it's all about "heritage". It has less to do with genetic continuity than cultural continuity.

Culturally, you're much more similar to a Roman than an ancient Scot (if they're called that, not sure).

That's true, though that's more for the sake of convenience than anything else. We know so little about the ancient Scots that it's hard to model ourselves on them. That hasn't stopped me trying to learn our indigenous languages and be closer to our ancestors. If it didn't cause problems professionally, I would actually take off my shirt and paint my body with various designs. I have considered doing that at home but copper ore in a muddy form is hard to come by these days and it would stain the couches.

But indeed, they weren't called Scots back then, nor were we one people. My ancestors actually fought the Scots and Picts. I'm just referring to the peoples that lived on this landmass back then collectively.

I can stomach cultural nationalism, where a significantly different culture may wish for an independent government, but basing it off of ancestry or whatever notions of race we still have rings alarm bells like crazy.

What I'm talking about shouldn't ring your alarm bells though. I'm not advocating that we ethnically cleanse English people or something. I'd just rather we washed away Imperial yoke and found confidence in our own heritage and history, moving away from the cultural cringe that plagues us.

Not that this point necessarily has any relevance to the modern movement for Scottish independence, but I would still intensely disagree with removing traces of latin in Scotland.

Take it as an issue of breaking free from the shackles of ancient Imperialism, good sir.

Spoiler: In reply to Sock (click to show/hide)

What then? Language?

You've just cracked it. I wish I could give you a prize, I genuinely do without sarcasm. Thank you.

I mean Scots is a Germanic language, like English. Gaelic is Q-Celtic, and comes from Ireland, unlike the P-Celtic Brythonic languages.

Scots is also the language of the invader, forced upon my Welsh-speaking ancestors, yet the people twisted and changed it to suit them, so we've effectively "made it our own". It has been naturalised, so to speak, and therefore I support its preservation.

How Celtic languages and culture ended up on the British Isles isn't that clear either, probably as a trade-related lingua franca, since there is no archaeological evidence of a large scale Celtic migration or invasion of Britain. Archaeologically speaking none of the peoples we think of as "Celtic" today are actually Celts, if you use a narrow view, defining Celts as the descendents of the Hallstatt and La Tene cultures.

To be Celtic has always had little to do with blood and far more to do with language, culture and at one time religion.

So possibly none of your ancestors have spoken a native British language since the early Bronze Age (the Picts maybe, but their language is lost). Basically the further you go back, there still are elements of foreign cultures, you just have to pick one to identify with... 

This is true, very true. If I knew what language they spoke in the Neolithic (possibly something related to Basque, I hear) I would learn it as quickly as I could and try to speak it. In the absence of such knowledge, I've tried to settle for the next best thing; even though Gaelic is the language of the invader, specifically the Scots of Argyll who colonised the rest of Scotland and obliterated the Pictish and Welsh languages here, it picked up Brythonic characteristics and changed. The fragments of those languages that still exist live on in Gaelic dialects, so it's almost like the next best thing.

I know through DNA testing that my paternal ancestors came to Britain 7000 years ago as part of the big Neolithic migration that wiped out and displaced most of the original British Mesolithic people.

Spoiler: In reply to The Dwarfy One - 2 (click to show/hide)

You want something because it's Scottish. Well, Latin has been used so much in Scotland, it is Scottish. Cultural change happens, no need to rewind back every time you see something you, in particular, don't see as Scottish. It has been in Scotland a hell of a lot longer than you have .

This is a very good point. In the same way that we made Gaelic, Scots and later English our own over time, Latin has become a part of our society in a similar way.

Perhaps there's a part of me that is objecting to Latin in particular because the Romans were the greatest threat to our independence and cultural preservation that we have ever faced, greater than the English. I suppose when you get down to it I just really, really hate them, as childish as that sounds.

Spoiler: In reply to Sock 2 (click to show/hide)

BTW Owlbread:
I feel I should add that I hope I'm not insulting you when I say that Scots are not Celts, I was just pointing out that any sort of national identity can be deconstructed ultimately, most of them very easily. Nationality has a lot to do with gut feelings and that is not wrong per se, but one needs to be aware of it.

You haven't offended me at all, don't worry. I only get offended at things that I consider morally reprehensible. Though my approach is to say that we are a Celtic country, just as we are a Nordic and Germanic country etc.

I'll try to keep this discussion spoilered so I don't drown out the Ukrainian news.

[smjjames]

You guys ALREADY drowned out the Ukranian news. The bit I posted and the bit G.I. Guardian posted got drowned out two pages ago.

[Owlbread]

You guys ALREADY drowned out the Ukranian news. The bit I posted and the bit G.I. Guardian posted got drowned out two pages ago.

By the time I finished typing that message, I was informed that 7 other posts had already been made.

[TD1]

It's funny, no one seems to associate what America is doing now with what happened years ago. Britain saw a struggling country which need stability, and gave it to further their own interests. America..."stabilises" countries that happen to have valuable raw materials. I wonder if future history will deride Americans for this.

Oh come on, most of our wars aren't even about oil!

Look at Vietnam, did they have oil? no.

The second Gulf War probably was, and the first one, while definetly in an oil rich region, wasn't wholly about oil.

Edit: Inserting quote for context.

The Vietnam war isn't a good example for you to use. France wanted its colony back. Vietnam didn't want to be a French colony. America wanted European friends against the soviet union. America fought, in this case, not for material wealth but political power.

Which disproves your original point as stated. Because if you broaden it to include 'or for political power', then you can say the same about every single country ever.

So you're saying that there is no correlation between American wars and natural resources? Because I'm saying there is. My statement on Vietnam was merely saying that it hardly paints a vision of a glowing America either. What Britain did helped countries, but it was still wrong in the act of doing it. America is doing what the British Empire did, and still deriding colonial Britain when it is doing everything short of taking control themselves. And whether America is even helping is debatable.

America doesn't go to war exclusively for material gain. But it sure as hell helps. Much like the British Empire didn't go to war solely for material gain, I might add. So, what connections may an historian draw between the two? Either redeem colonial Britain or knock America to the same level of derision.

[smjjames]

I'm not saying there was absolutely NO correlation between American wars and natural resources. Some obviously were (The Mexican-American war for example, pure landgrab), others were purely political or something. Though the picture gets much more complex in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Also, if you're defining land as a natural resource, we're talking about every country ever, again.

[Frumple]

I'll try to keep this discussion spoilered so I don't drown out the Ukrainian news.

Pretty sure you actually want to be drowning that out, to keep the thread from igniting and Ukrane burning down a previously workable thread.

[RedKing]

It is interesting how Ukrainian-related unrest is spreading as much on these forums as in Ukraine. Obviously, the solution is to invite Putin to send Russian moderators peacekeepers to restore order.

[misko27]

I venture the theory that this is, in fact, a European politics thread, and thus there are elements in the current discussion that are, in fact, off-topic, and thus should be moved elsewhere; perhaps to the appropriate threads, or even dropped entirely, but clearly this is not the place.

[smjjames]

It is interesting how Ukrainian-related unrest is spreading as much on these forums as in Ukraine. Obviously, the solution is to invite Putin to send Russian moderators peacekeepers to restore order.

He did just that in Crimea.

I venture the theory that this is, in fact, a European politics thread, and thus there are elements in the current discussion that are, in fact, off-topic, and thus should be moved elsewhere; perhaps to the appropriate threads, or even dropped entirely, but clearly this is not the place.

The current discussion kind of bounced from British Empire to American wars.

Reposting what I had said earlier but got lost in the language discussion.

Anyways, back to news stuff, evidently there are going to be thousands of observers for the vote coming up sunday, so, I wonder how many will be in the eastern part of Ukraine? I can understand them not being there for the separatist referendums, but this one is for the whole country.

The protestors (was going to say rebels, but um, protestors is a less, um, hot, way of describing them) have said multiple times that they were going to try and sabotage the vote in some way or other.

[misko27]

It is interesting how Ukrainian-related unrest is spreading as much on these forums as in Ukraine. Obviously, the solution is to invite Putin to send Russian moderators peacekeepers to restore order.

He did just that in Crimea.

I venture the theory that this is, in fact, a European politics thread, and thus there are elements in the current discussion that are, in fact, off-topic, and thus should be moved elsewhere; perhaps to the appropriate threads, or even dropped entirely, but clearly this is not the place.

The current discussion kind of bounced from British Empire to American wars.

Well the moment it did that it became off-topic now didn't it? It's not like we only have one politics thread.

[XXSockXX]

To be Celtic has always had little to do with blood and far more to do with language, culture and at one time religion.

Well, the interesting thing is though, most of what we associate with Celtic culture today is actually coming from the British Isles. We know far less about the continental Celts, since they didn't write anything down. In terms of culture, the Alpine regions might be much more "originally Celtic", we just don't really know.
I identify as German (the language obviously, plus what genealogical evidence I have), but I live in the former tribal territories of the Treveri and Mediomatrici, so I might as well claim Celtic heritage too. This has become somewhat of a thing here in recent years btw, since Celtic heritage is not seen as tainted as claiming a Germanic one.

I know through DNA testing that my paternal ancestors came to Britain 7000 years ago as part of the big Neolithic migration that wiped out and displaced most of the original British Mesolithic people.

That stuff is really interesting, I should do that too someday. It's important to remember though how mobile people used to be even in ancient times. I only have reliable genealogical records back to the 1650s, and my ancestors from just these few centuries come from all over the place. So while I'm likely related to people who lived where I live in the Neolithic period, other ancestors might be from anywhere else in Europe, at least in theory.

You haven't offended me at all, don't worry.

Good then, if I attempt to poke holes into your nationalism, it is just because I'm interested in concepts of national identity, their history and mechanics. It's interesting how your particular brand tries to bridge the gap between traditionalism (or cultural heritage) and civic nationalism with a good portion of idealism. I find that likeable actually, I'm just a sceptic by nature. Maybe it works better with Scottish relative isolation (compared to the mess that is the continent).

[Owlbread]

Spoiler: In reply to Sock (click to show/hide)

Well, the interesting thing is though, most of what we associate with Celtic culture today is actually coming from the British Isles. We know far less about the continental Celts, since they didn't write anything down. In terms of culture, the Alpine regions might be much more "originally Celtic", we just don't really know.

My Gaelic teacher, a native of the Isles, went to Lake Hallstatt in Austria on a skiing holiday once. He marveled at how the ancient houses that are famously preserved there so closely resembled the old Scottish black houses, at least one of which was in use on his island when he was a boy.

I identify as German (the language obviously, plus what genealogical evidence I have), but I live in the former tribal territories of the Treveri and Mediomatrici, so I might as well claim Celtic heritage too. This has become somewhat of a thing here in recent years btw, since Celtic heritage is not seen as tainted as claiming a Germanic one.

By all means, claim it good sir. Identities can be complex and multi-faceted. You can be a German with Celtic ancestry or even a Celto-German, no problem.

Did you know that Germans actually wrote Highland Cathedral, one of the candidates for the Scottish national anthem?

That stuff is really interesting, I should do that too someday. It's important to remember though how mobile people used to be even in ancient times. I only have reliable genealogical records back to the 1650s, and my ancestors from just these few centuries come from all over the place. So while I'm likely related to people who lived where I live in the Neolithic period, other ancestors might be from anywhere else in Europe, at least in theory.

The weird thing people learned through some of the genetic studies in Scotland is that most people stayed within the same general area for hundreds and hundreds of years. I am quite typical in that sense, though I broke the tradition by moving away to the Highlands. Continental people may have been far more mobile, I am unsure.

Good then, if I attempt to poke holes into your nationalism, it is just because I'm interested in concepts of national identity, their history and mechanics. It's interesting how your particular brand tries to bridge the gap between traditionalism (or cultural heritage) and civic nationalism with a good portion of idealism. I find that likeable actually, I'm just a sceptic by nature. Maybe it works better with Scottish relative isolation (compared to the mess that is the continent).

Thank you, I'm still trying to iron it out though. I don't always get it right. Maybe I need to make a point of thinking this through and writing it down or something.

Here is an interesting article about the most likely Ukrainian President-to-be, The Chocolate King.