It has been decided by British high command that Harry will not, in fact, be shipping out to Iraq with his troops.
Good move.
Harry should be focusing his attention on places where he can really be of use…such as combating Lord Voldemort.
PAD
It has been decided by British high command that Harry will not, in fact, be shipping out to Iraq with his troops.
Good move.
Harry should be focusing his attention on places where he can really be of use…such as combating Lord Voldemort.
PAD
• 
Posted by: Jeffrey Frawley at May 20, 2007 09:58 PM
I’m not hostile toward Megan, because she has not yet disagreed with anything I said – but she does seem to have a strong disagreement with something no one has said. I just hope no one realizes the error of his ways, and stops doing it, already!
ROTFLMAO!!!!
Jeffrey Frawley… JEFFREY FRAWLEY… is poking fun at someone else for arguing with a strawman????
ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bill, if you’d prefer that I stick to my old tricks, that’s entirely possible.
Curse this pesky time differential! Every time I get back here the shouting’s over and there’s nothing left to do but bury the survivors…
Jeffrey initially asked if I had any ideas why Americans were so interested in ‘why so many Americans are so in love with the institution of the British monarchy’. Somewhere in my rambling response I included:
“4) Maybe, just maybe, and without intending to patronise, the US (and in the same way Australia) are such young countries that there’s almost a need to connect to countries with much greater reserves of history. “
So, starter for ten, I wasn’t particularly contrasting forms of government so who lives in a constitutional monarchy or not becomes moot. What I was attempting to addres was why people were so fascinated by the royal family, as celebrities.
Based on the Australians I met while living in London, the majority of them who were interested seemed to me to be interested in the same way as the Americans I met at the same time, ie: we’re here to see the wierd but kind of quaintly cute people who live in yonder castle.
Now, Megan, as our reporter on the spot in Australia you’re more than welcome and/or entitled to tell me I’m talking through my áršë with my conjectures on why Australians are sometimes fascinated by the Royal family.
Living as part of the Commonwealth may well give you a different view to Americans, I don’t know how most Australians view the royal family’s role in their day to day lives or in their cultural identity.
Speaking of cultural identity, if I ignored the aboriginal history in favour of the more recent Western settler influenced one I was, at least, equally dismissive of the Native American one when classing America as a ‘young country’. If that caused offence, I apologise. I tend – rightly or wrongly – to see the current cultures as being predominantly those descended from the Western settlers, and I spoke accordingly. Again, feel free to correct me if you think I need or deserve it.
Cheers,
Peter J. Poole: I think you were correct to discount the Aboriginal, Maori and Amerindian cultures’ influence on the younger nations’ national identities – the Maoris perhaps slightly less so than the others. Without impugning the duration and vitality of those cultures, they were more supplanted than blended with, and the majority cultures of North America, Australia and New Zealand look much more to Europe than inward to define themselves. Pretending that these nations were formed by nice people getting together and hugging each other would be unrealistic: The Pilgrims, colonists, planters, convicts, missionaries and transportees who sailed to the Americas, Australia and New Zealand did not so much integrate with as subjugate and destroy the cultures they found in place.
Jeffery, I’d much rather prefer you not to get hostile with people, period…especially if all they do is disagree with you.
Now, if some one hauls off and starts calling you names and such, hostility might be justified.