Obama- Billions for Immigration

[Armistead]

Don't think we have a thread on this hot topic. I see now towns are rising up and blocking buses with "undocumented" children.... The almost 4 billion is just to deal with about 181,000 non Mexican, mostly under 18 year old children.

"most of whom have not been vaccinated against infectious diseases like measles, there is fear of potential epidemics. According to the Daily Mail, a rabies outbreak has already been reported by Border Patrol, and officials in Texas are beginning to worry that other infections could spread as well. In Rio Grande, at least, the children are not being screened for diseases."

Also numerous reports of drugs being smuggled, etc. Heard on the news almost 300 children reported dead trying to make the trips, many kidnapped and taken into prostitution, etc.

Numerous militia groups are rising and being called up by their groups and supporters to protect private land on the border, stating it's their duty since the govt. will now protect the border.

Course this non Mexican crisis is separate from the Mexican issue.

I can't find a true number on the cost of all issues related to illegal immigration yearly, certainly many billions.

Another concern, the big call for foster parents. It appears this will be a fast tracked process with very little oversight approval. Course, being a foster you can get and qualify for govt help, possibly $1000's per month per child, so much concern many children will just fall prey to people wanting money and no telling what else.


http://rt.com/usa/171028-immigration-militias-obama-conspiracy/

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/09/us/obama-seeks-billions-for-children-immigration-crisis.html?_r=0

[Feuer Frei!]

I can't find a true number on the cost of all issues related to illegal immigration yearly, certainly many billions

This bit of 'light' and detailed reading material should quench your thirst for a more definitive number:

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/05/the-fiscal-cost-of-unlawful-immigrants-and-amnesty-to-the-us-taxpayer

http://www.fairus.org/publications/the-fiscal-burden-of-illegal-immigration-on-u-s-taxpayers

EDIT: This might also be apt to this thread:

http://www.thedailysheeple.com/armed-militias-planning-to-take-over-us-border-to-thwart-illegal-immigrants_072014

[Wolferz]

Find a way to staff his retirement villa on the public dime.:stare:

[Catfish]

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y174/penaeus/immigrants_zps6ab22de2.png (http://s5.photobucket.com/user/penaeus/media/immigrants_zps6ab22de2.png.html)

[eddie]

:agree:

[August]

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y174/penaeus/immigrants_zps6ab22de2.png (http://s5.photobucket.com/user/penaeus/media/immigrants_zps6ab22de2.png.html)

Maybe you had better stick to presenting your own countries history Catfish because you don't know ours at all. There were no Indians present when the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth. No such thing as Plymouth Rock was ever mentioned until a couple hundred years later.

The Pilgrims first real contact with the Indians was at what they call "First Encounter Beach" on Cape Cod where the Indians showered the Pilgrims with arrows before retreating back into the forest. The first non belligerent contact with the Indians was several months later with Wampanoag tribe who saw the colonists and their European weapons as a possible counter to the Narragansett indians who had been waging a brutal war of annihilation against them.

So far from being an act of Indian charity the first thanksgiving was actually a mutual benefit to both groups.

[Admiral Halsey]

Maybe you had better stick to presenting your own countries history Catfish because you don't know ours at all. There were no Indians present when the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth. No such thing as Plymouth Rock was ever mentioned until a couple hundred years later.

The Pilgrims first real contact with the Indians was at what they call "First Encounter Beach" on Cape Cod where the Indians showered the Pilgrims with arrows before retreating back into the forest. The first non belligerent contact with the Indians was several months later with Wampanoag tribe who saw the colonists and their European weapons as a possible counter to the Narragansett indians who had been waging a brutal war of annihilation against them.

So far from being an act of Indian charity the first thanksgiving was actually a mutual benefit to both groups.

Plus the fact that future encounters weren't all that friendly either.

[Tribesman]

Maybe you had better stick to presenting your own countries history Catfish because you don't know ours at all. There were no Indians present when the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth. No such thing as Plymouth Rock was ever mentioned until a couple hundred years later.

Well if you want your local history go to a local museum.
You can try the Essex in Salem or MFAs historic New England in Boston and find your history depicted by local people with natives present at the landing.
So before you get uppity about someones humerous take on your local "history" complain instead about your locals teaching your local mythology as your local history.
Also you want to get details right, a couple of hundred years is a couple of hundred years, it is not less than a hundred years or less than 200 years, and of course the great rock should be called Saints and Strangers Rock :03:

The Pilgrims first real contact with the Indians was at what they call "First Encounter Beach" on Cape Cod where the Indians showered the Pilgrims with arrows before retreating back into the forest.
Any reason why you skip Standish and his armed party of grave robbers chasing the natives while on his first discovery?
I suppose that's not a "real" contact eh?

[Peter Cremer]

How do these "kids" get all the way from Mexico's southern border to the northern border without being found by the Mexican authorities and stopped. It's easy, they are helped all the way by the Mexican authorities.

Think about this: When all these 50,000-100,000, or whatever, kids are made American citizens they will live here, grow up here, and when they are of a legal age they will import all there relatives to this country. Why else do you think their parents send them here?

The American tax payer is footing the bill for all this crap. Why doesn't the government demand payment for all that is being spent from the countries that are sending their trash here. If we are paying these countries billions each year for them to be our "friend", why don't we just deduct what it costs us to take care of their little invaders?

People from all over the world just walk into this country and we do nothing about it but talk.

And the NSA can kiss my ass!

[Wolferz]

How do these "kids" get all the way from Mexico's southern border to the northern border without being found by the Mexican authorities and stopped. It's easy, they are helped all the way by the Mexican authorities.

Think about this: When all these 50,000-100,000, or whatever, kids are made American citizens they will live here, grow up here, and when they are of a legal age they will import all there relatives to this country. Why else do you think their parents send them here?

The American tax payer is footing the bill for all this crap. Why doesn't the government demand payment for all that is being spent from the countries that are sending their trash here. If we are paying these countries billions each year for them to be our "friend", why don't we just deduct what it costs us to take care of their little invaders?

People from all over the world just walk into this country and we do nothing about it but talk.

And the NSA can kiss my ass!

Blame it on the French for giving us that stupid statue. Then load all them little border hopping buggas onto a cargo ship and expel them on the beaches of Normandy, marked no return.:shifty:

[Armistead]

Watching news tonight of all those dying, ranchers finding dead bodies on their private property of children. This really shows how irresponsible Obama is making the statements that started the mass flow into America.
Just about votes for the Dems later on.

As for indians, maybe they got here first across the land bridge, but they were fighting and killing each other before we got here, we just ended up winning the fight.

Secured borders are needed for numerous reasons, drugs, terror, diseases, gangs, etc...but it seems liberals would just like everyone to come on over. I asl liberals...why any border protection if it's about letting people come in to improve their lives?

[Tribesman]

Secured borders are needed for numerous reasons, drugs, terror, diseases, gangs, etc...but it seems liberals would just like everyone to come on over. I asl liberals...why any border protection if it's about letting people come in to improve their lives?
And if you ask the conservatives its all about cheap labour and letting people come in to improve the profit margin:O:

[Armistead]

And if you ask the conservatives its all about cheap labour and letting people come in to improve the profit margin:O:

Yea, but that was only up to point they couldn't vote or become citizens.

And I assure you, I have numerous rich customers in the old country club neighborhoods that complain about immigration while illegals are cutting their grass, maids, painting, etc...

[Wolferz]

It's to be expected since Obama is also an illegal immigrant.

Cue Led Zeppelin music.

[Oberon]

http://i.imgur.com/OZehXQj.jpg

[Onkel Neal]

How do these "kids" get all the way from Mexico's southern border to the northern border without being found by the Mexican authorities and stopped. It's easy, they are helped all the way by the Mexican authorities.

Think about this: When all these 50,000-100,000, or whatever, kids are made American citizens they will live here, grow up here, and when they are of a legal age they will import all there relatives to this country. Why else do you think their parents send them here?

The American tax payer is footing the bill for all this crap. Why doesn't the government demand payment for all that is being spent from the countries that are sending their trash here. If we are paying these countries billions each year for them to be our "friend", why don't we just deduct what it costs us to take care of their little invaders?

People from all over the world just walk into this country and we do nothing about it but talk.



Yep. Within 10 years the Hispanics will constitute the key voting block. Good luck keeping control of your country when people from another land just walk in and take over. :hmph: That's a cue for someone to wittily point out that's how the Anglo Americans took the land away from the Indians and Spanish/Mexicans to become America... and yeah, that's my point.

[nikimcbee]

Here's the fix, take all those bus loads and drive to DC and dump them off at the white house, Pelosi's house, and the bamster's district in Chicago.

[Jimbuna]

Yep. Within 10 years the Hispanics will constitute the key voting block. Good luck keeping control of your country when people from another land just walk in and take over. :hmph: That's a cue for someone to wittily point out that's how the Anglo Americans took the land away from the Indians and Spanish/Mexicans to become America... and yeah, that's my point.

Well you have certainly learned well from your English cousins :)

[Oberon]

Yep. Within 10 years the Hispanics will constitute the key voting block. Good luck keeping control of your country when people from another land just walk in and take over. :hmph: That's a cue for someone to wittily point out that's how the Anglo Americans took the land away from the Indians and Spanish/Mexicans to become America... and yeah, that's my point.

Talk about long awaited vengeance...I have underestimated Mexicos long game... :doh:

[Skybird]

United
Socialism of
America.

Thats what it is about, even if it sounds like cliché - it is no cliché, but socialist ideology. Delete historically grown identity and deny its existence, by that make rum to fill the void with socialist collectivism and the ideal new socialist man. The EU does exactly the same in Europe, by trying to delete regional differences more and more, habits and characteristics, and demanding that all regions shall run by the same rules, no matter whether said rules make sense in all regions. But the similarity between people on the Balkan and in the Baltic are not going much beyond phonetic similarities.

What is done in the US and the EU, compares to what Stalin did in the Soviet Union, and Tito in Yugoslavia: deleting ethnic and national characteristics of people, and replacing them with the monocultural homo sovieticus, or the Yugoslav uni-identity man.

See how they ended, learn from it. Conflict, hostility, war. Thats what happens when you force together what does not match, and deny people the right to live by their own identity feeling.

Admitted, that is more important for Europe than the Us, since the US is basing on a totally different historic path of origin, being founded not by ethnic and national identity, but migration in the first. Still, the US has since long started to copy EU ways of thinking, and has turned socialist to a degree one would not have imagined possible just some decades ago.

The destruction of the institution of "family" also plays a role here.

[Oberon]

Thats what happens when you force together what does not match, and deny people the right to live by their own identity feeling.

So immigrants cannot live by their own identity feeling, but residents can? When does an immigrant become a resident? What is an identity feeling?

[Tribesman]

United
Socialism of
America.

Thats what it is about, even if it sounds like cliché - it is no cliché, but socialist ideology. Delete historically grown identity and deny its existence, by that make rum to fill the void with socialist collectivism and the ideal new socialist man. The EU does exactly the same in Europe, by trying to delete regional differences more and more, habits and characteristics, and demanding that all regions shall run by the same rules, no matter whether said rules make sense in all regions. But the similarity between people on the Balkan and in the Baltic are not going much beyond phonetic similarities.

What is done in the US and the EU, compares to what Stalin did in the Soviet Union, and Tito in Yugoslavia: deleting ethnic and national characteristics of people, and replacing them with the monocultural homo sovieticus, or the Yugoslav uni-identity man.

See how they ended, learn from it. Conflict, hostility, war. Thats what happens when you force together what does not match, and deny people the right to live by their own identity feeling.

Admitted, that is more important for Europe than the Us, since the US is basing on a totally different historic path of origin, being founded not by ethnic and national identity, but migration in the first. Still, the US has since long started to copy EU ways of thinking, and has turned socialist to a degree one would not have imagined possible just some decades ago.

The destruction of the institution of "family" also plays a role here.
How far beyond the realms of sanity does one have to voyage to make a claim like that?
I do like that last bit though, so funny to read crap like that from someone who believes all that Rothbardian ideology nonsense where families don't matter and their children are just a commodity which should be sold at the market without a second thought.:doh:

So immigrants cannot live by their own identity feeling, but residents can? When does an immigrant become a resident? What is an identity feeling?
No , he clearly means that any muslims in Germany shall live under their own caliphatery and have whatever sharia law they like as you cannot deny their right to live however they choose to identify:haha:

Who'da thunk he would be so accommodating eh?:smug:

[Betonov]

and Tito in Yugoslavia: deleting ethnic and national characteristics of people, and replacing them with the monocultural homo sovieticus, or the Yugoslav uni-identity man.

See how they ended, learn from it. Conflict, hostility, war. Thats what happens when you force together what does not match, and deny people the right to live by their own identity feeling.




The wars started AFTER some people went to reverse what Tito did.
And there were no wars when Tito was alive. Titos Yugoslav uni-identity man was a successefull war prevention project, unfortunately successefully reversed 10 years later by individuals with personal ambitions.

No-one went to war after 1991 because they were forced to live together.
They went to war because they were brainwashed AFTER Tito died.

How do I know ?? I live on the ashes of that country and I listen about the good times from Slovenes, Serbs, Bosnians, Croats and Macedonians, when no-one hated each other.

How do you know??

[Onkel Neal]

United
Socialism of
America.

Thats what it is about, even if it sounds like cliché - it is no cliché, but socialist ideology. Delete historically grown identity and deny its existence, by that make rum to fill the void with socialist collectivism and the ideal new socialist man. The EU does exactly the same in Europe, by trying to delete regional differences more and more, habits and characteristics, and demanding that all regions shall run by the same rules, no matter whether said rules make sense in all regions. But the similarity between people on the Balkan and in the Baltic are not going much beyond phonetic similarities.

What is done in the US and the EU, compares to what Stalin did in the Soviet Union, and Tito in Yugoslavia: deleting ethnic and national characteristics of people, and replacing them with the monocultural homo sovieticus, or the Yugoslav uni-identity man.

See how they ended, learn from it. Conflict, hostility, war. Thats what happens when you force together what does not match, and deny people the right to live by their own identity feeling.

Admitted, that is more important for Europe than the Us, since the US is basing on a totally different historic path of origin, being founded not by ethnic and national identity, but migration in the first. Still, the US has since long started to copy EU ways of thinking, and has turned socialist to a degree one would not have imagined possible just some decades ago.

The destruction of the institution of "family" also plays a role here.

:yeah: Wow, you've come a long way, my friend. There was a time years ago when I suspected you a Socialist.:03: I agree, the US is not really the US as it was on its path to its current/fading glory.

So immigrants cannot live by their own identity feeling, but residents can? When does an immigrant become a resident? What is an identity feeling?

I'm not sure I understand your question, so my response may be totally wrong. Obviously, the culture and identity of a country is determined by its people. Since its founding, the US has been basically a Euro-derived people. As it stands, the US is quickly on its way to becoming a Hispanic nation. Is that bad? Is it good? Is it immaterial? Well, consider this: the people who are illegally entering the country are coming from countries where Hispanics are the majority, where they have their own government and culture, and they are leaving en masse. So, when the US becomes Mexico II, think it will be any better over the long term?

[Skybird]

:yeah: Wow, you've come a long way, my friend. There was a time years ago when I suspected you a Socialist.:03: I agree, the US is not really the US as it was on its path to its current/fading glory.

I remember some opportunities you probably have on mind, and you are right - I have changed some views I once held up. Sometimes I take my time to do so. But when reality forces me to see that I got something wrong, then I do adapt for sure. I just hate to change my mind just to do somebody else a favour. :)

And believe it or not, a few answers of yours in long since gone discussion have had their impact on me for sure. It's just that they detonated with a delayed fuze. Your innocent naturalness by which you once asked me in a return argument why you should see it as your obligation to pay taxes for the demands of other people - that got me completely unprepared, and I never have forgotten it. Back then I somewhat snapped, or was disgusted (-> empört). Today - I cover you.

Yes, on some things I have done a very long intellectual journey. My attitude towards "state" and "social responsibility", and Islam being the two most obvious examples. It is not necessarily a bad thing, however: you have come to see things from both sides, and then know even better why in the end you refuse the one and accept the other.

A "socialist" by the meaning of the word however I have never been, not even in my teen years. ;) My teen years' folly was that I admired Reagan back then. No joke. Anothert thing I have dramatically changed... :)

[STEED]

Inside Tory central campaign office...

Mr Cameron we can win the general election if we let in one million Mexican's

Cameron.."What can they offer?

Mexican chilli..

And on that note welcome to the UK and remember vote Tory.

:shifty:

[Skybird]

Inside Tory central campaign office...

Mr Cameron we can win the general election if we let in one million Mexican's

Cameron.."What can they offer?

Mexican chilli..

And on that note welcome to the UK and remember vote Tory.

:shifty:
Some years ago the German Green party's bosses back then said something comparable in public, during a convent I think, that they want to get in much more foreigners into germany because the numbers show that most in those years voted SPD and Green while both parties promised them to make it easier to bring in their families as well, and then mnore of their friends. It continued by stating that this would help to to form left political majorities and destroy the burgeoise fundament of society, so that their view for a leftist society could easier be implemented.

[Wolferz]

One world government, where everyone becomes a citizen of Earth with no national boundaries to cause this kind of BS.:hmmm:

I hope the ET's don't mind.

[Oberon]

I'm not sure I understand your question, so my response may be totally wrong. Obviously, the culture and identity of a country is determined by its people. Since its founding, the US has been basically a Euro-derived people. As it stands, the US is quickly on its way to becoming a Hispanic nation. Is that bad? Is it good? Is it immaterial? Well, consider this: the people who are illegally entering the country are coming from countries where Hispanics are the majority, where they have their own government and culture, and they are leaving en masse. So, when the US becomes Mexico II, think it will be any better over the long term?

No, I think you got the gist of it.
Nations change over time because of the influx of immigrants, once upon a time England was a pagan nation, as was most of Europe, then Christian immigrants and missionaries spread out from the Middle East. Sometimes these immigrants arrive through conquest, the UK has gone through at least a dozen of these conquests in its early history. Even as recent as the aftermath of the destruction of the Spanish Armada we received Spanish immigrants, survivors of the Armada who integrated themselves into the South-east coast of the country. They changed and the people around them changed, mostly un-noticably in the grand swathe of time, but when it happened it must have seemed like an invasion to the people of Cornwall and Devon.
The US is changing, just as all nations have changed, Skybirds Germany didn't even exist until two hundred years ago, and since then it has changed in demographics dramatically over two centuries.
In a way, America has been lucky, its borders have remained relatively static since the civil war, Europe has not. Borders are written and rewritten on the whims of leaders, we have seen just under seventy years of relative peace in Europe, the longest since the end of the Roman Empire, but even then our borders have changed, and people have moved from one nation to another. My great-grandmother came from what was called 'Polish Russia' but is now Lithuania, my wifes great-grandparents were from Poland, and yet I am English. My entire country is made up of immigrants, as is yours, and the ethnicity of these immigrants has changed from century to century.
Sure, you have Hispanics coming in by the truckload, and they will settle, and they will bring their own language and their behaviour, and this will benefit and cause problems for Euro-Americans. I mean, how many Euro-Americans eat at Taco-Bell these days? Look at Tex-Mex food, a blending of American and Mexican food. With a more xenophobic outlook on Mexican immigrants it's likely this would never have occurred.

Sure, it's scary, especially when you're on the other end, you feel as though you're losing control of your country, of your way of life, and people will happily use that fear to create hatred against others, even to the extent of genocide and murder. However, change is inevitable, whether you perceive it to be good or bad is immaterial. You can fight it, if you wish, many have done, Native Americans, Anglo-Saxons, Incas, and perhaps you will succeed, others have done...but your nation will still change, it will still become a nation that you will not recognise, just as the nation you grew up in would be unrecognisable to the Founding Fathers.

Everything changes, nothing stays static, that is the nature of the world.

[eddie]

Here's the fix, take all those bus loads and drive to DC and dump them off at the white house, Pelosi's house, and the bamster's district in Chicago.

Lets make sure we dump a bunch off at the leading Republican congressmen homes too, along with the high ranking Tea Party members. You know, who I'm talking about, the clowns on the right who just bitch about immigration, but don't do anything about it. Like "Boner" Boehner!, Canter, O'Connell, they just sound like Palin. Run their big mouths, but do absolutely nothing.

[Skybird]

The wars started AFTER some people went to reverse what Tito did.
And there were no wars when Tito was alive. Titos Yugoslav uni-identity man was a successefull war prevention project, unfortunately successefully reversed 10 years later by individuals with personal ambitions.

No-one went to war after 1991 because they were forced to live together.
They went to war because they were brainwashed AFTER Tito died.

How do I know ?? I live on the ashes of that country and I listen about the good times from Slovenes, Serbs, Bosnians, Croats and Macedonians, when no-one hated each other.

How do you know??

You just prove my point. Tito failed. He did not delete the underlying identities, he tried, and he couldn't. After Tito was gone, they broke their way once again.

Or look at the Ukrainian conflict - the same. Stalin moved people by the millions. Millions died, huge resettlement projects throughout the Soviet Union. Suppression of Muslim republics in the south. Then, the USSR gone - and eruption of multiple conflicts.

Look at the artificial border-drawing by Western imperialists in the ME, the states formed that way, where beliefs and tribes got stuffed together that do not go well together. The whole region is a powderkeg. You remove the dictator that held the lid on the kettle by raw power - and the thing exploded imemdiately.

Look at the 70 years of sleeping of Islam in Turkey, where Attaturk tried to overcome traditional Islam and form a modern, Western society. Erdioghan took less than one decade to end that experiment and reverse it. Turkey is on its way back into the pre-Attaturk era. Conservative Islam was never gone - it was suppressed, so it pulled back and rested some decades, and now its back in full force.

You cannot change historically grown identities of regions and people by power and force and pressure.

The EU doing it now - it will terribly backfire one day. If you think the days of war are over in Europe, then you are wrong.

[Betonov]

You just prove my point. Tito failed. He did not delete the underlying identities, he tried, and he couldn't. After Tito was gone, they broke their way once again.



Tito didn't fail. He just died at the end.
He was sucesseful because there was no ethnic tension while he was alive.

The party failed because they let people that didn't believe in a multi-national
state take power.

Actually, he was succesefull even in the long run. The current young generation is growing past that ethnic hatred. Cheap travels and the internet made connecting with the other republics as simple as a push of a button. Cultural borders that Tito tore down and the nineties built back are decaying on their own.
Only some sad angry individuals still linger in the shadows. Bitter because there was no winner in those wars. Causing trouble when they can but only reinforcing the unity between the open minded.

Yugoslavia is being reborn even if only in the minds of the young ones, not corrupted by the leftover brainwashing that destroyed their parents generation. And they take Tito as an example.

So, Tito did not fail. Only his ideals skipped a generation.

[Tribesman]

I'm not sure I understand your question, so my response may be totally wrong. Obviously, the culture and identity of a country is determined by its people. Since its founding, the US has been basically a Euro-derived people. As it stands, the US is quickly on its way to becoming a Hispanic nation. Is that bad? Is it good? Is it immaterial? Well, consider this: the people who are illegally entering the country are coming from countries where Hispanics are the majority, where they have their own government and culture, and they are leaving en masse. So, when the US becomes Mexico II, think it will be any better over the long term?
That would make sense if Hispanics were not defined as deriving from Hispania which is of course in Europe.

You just prove my point. Tito failed. He did not delete the underlying identities, he tried, and he couldn't. After Tito was gone, they broke their way once again.

Or look at the Ukrainian conflict - the same. Stalin moved people by the millions. Millions died, huge resettlement projects throughout the Soviet Union. Suppression of Muslim republics in the south. Then, the USSR gone - and eruption of multiple conflicts.

Look at the artificial border-drawing by Western imperialists in the ME, the states formed that way, where beliefs and tribes got stuffed together that do not go well together. The whole region is a powderkeg. You remove the dictator that held the lid on the kettle by raw power - and the thing exploded imemdiately.

Look at the 70 years of sleeping of Islam in Turkey, where Attaturk tried to overcome traditional Islam and form a modern, Western society. Erdioghan took less than one decade to end that experiment and reverse it. Turkey is on its way back into the pre-Attaturk era. Conservative Islam was never gone - it was suppressed, so it pulled back and rested some decades, and now its back in full force.

You cannot change historically grown identities of regions and people by power and force and pressure.

The EU doing it now - it will terribly backfire one day. If you think the days of war are over in Europe, then you are wrong.
Whereas that makes no sense.
What you ascribe as a problem of federated super states like the applies equally to nation states of all sizes, extends to county city and town level and even fits little villages or tiny hamlets

[Skybird]

Skybirds Germany didn't even exist until two hundred years ago,
Not really, that is too shallow an argument. The German identity started to set in already roughly one thousand years ago. Its a bit more tricky than just going back to 1848/49 (I assume you refer to the Frankfurt Parliament), or 1871 (founding of the German empire). Or 1648, the end of the 30-years war and Germany being a collection of German states.

You need to go back as far as to Heinrich I. (9th century) to find the era in which the German identity started to form up as a characterising trait uniting many groups. The initiliasing event was his successful campaign against the ongoing raids and attacks by predatory Hungarians.

Others will trace back the birthday of "German-ness" even further, back to the time of the Roman empire.

What it comes down to? Identity is more than just a passport or nationality.

[Tribesman]

Not really, that is too shallow an argument. The German identity started to set in already roughly one thousand years ago. Its a bit more tricky than just going back to 1848/49 (I assume you refer to the Frankfurt Parliament), or 1871 (founding of the German empire). Or 1648, the end of the 30-years war and Germany being a collection of German states.

You need to go back as far as to Heinrich I. (9th century) to find the era in which the German identity started to form up as a characterising trait uniting many groups. The initiliasing event was his successful campaign against the ongoing raids and attacks by predatory Hungarians.

Others will trace back the birthday of "German-ness" even further, back to the time of the Roman empire.

What it comes down to? Identity is more than just a passport or nationality.
Is that why you claim Bavarians are not Germans?

@neal
Wow, you've come a long way, my friend.
Not really, ideologies are like a horseshoe. The extremes are close together so its only a very short move from one to the other

[Skybird]

Tito didn't fail. He just died at the end.
He was sucesseful because there was no ethnic tension while he was alive.

The party failed because they let people that didn't believe in a multi-national
state take power.

Actually, he was succesefull even in the long run. The current young generation is growing past that ethnic hatred. Cheap travels and the internet made connecting with the other republics as simple as a push of a button. Cultural borders that Tito tore down and the nineties built back are decaying on their own.
Only some sad angry individuals still linger in the shadows. Bitter because there was no winner in those wars. Causing trouble when they can but only reinforcing the unity between the open minded.

Yugoslavia is being reborn even if only in the minds of the young ones, not corrupted by the leftover brainwashing that destroyed their parents generation. And they take Tito as an example.

So, Tito did not fail. Only his ideals skipped a generation.

Unfortunately I am very certain that sooner or later you will come over to my POV. You seem to thiunk that Milosevic and the nationalsits were a mishap, a variable penetrsating the system from the outside. But they found their birth in the middle of society. And growing trends for regional independence in former Yugoslav provinces emerged all by themselves, even before Milosevic started to go on rampage. He did - in reaction to these independence movements.

An arrangement in a state that only remaisn as long as the found/dictator/king/whoever stays alive and keeps it unde rhic controll is no evidence for this arrangement functioning, Betonov. Tito thus failed, like Attaturk failed in the long run, too. Both men did not change the cultural and ethnic realities in their sphere of influence, just suppressed them for some time. When they were gone, they sprang back to life like the spring-puppet out of the box.

[Oberon]

Not really, that is too shallow an argument. The German identity started to set in already roughly one thousand years ago. Its a bit more tricky than just going back to 1848/49 (I assume you refer to the Frankfurt Parliament), or 1871 (founding of the German empire). Or 1648, the end of the 30-years war and Germany being a collection of German states.

You need to go back as far as to Heinrich I. (9th century) to find the era in which the German identity started to form up as a characterising trait uniting many groups. The initiliasing event was his successful campaign against the ongoing raids and attacks by predatory Hungarians.

Others will trace back the birthday of "German-ness" even further, back to the time of the Roman empire.

What it comes down to? Identity is more than just a passport or nationality.

This is true, and certainly there are parts in other countries that consider themselves German and there are parts of Germany that consider themselves something other than German. Brazil and Bavaria respectively are the two words that spring to mind.
However, back before the Unification of Germany, would a man from the Kingdom of Saxony refer to himself as German or Saxon? Would a Prussian refer to himself as German or Prussian?

I do see where you're coming from, but it's not a definite rule that such things always occur. Were this the case then Germany would have split into federalised states again, Belgium would be in even a bigger mess than it already is, and the US would be all over the place. Not to mention that Russia would be a complete mess in terms of borders.
Assimilation does occur, and the success does vary, but fracturing is not inevitable. England has managed to stay together for over a millennia without devolving back into Wessex, Mercia and the East Angles.

[Tribesman]

Unfortunately I am very certain that sooner or later you will come over to my POV. You seem to thiunk that Milosevic and the nationalsits were a mishap, a variable penetrsating the system from the outside. But they found their birth in the middle of society. And growing trends for regional independence in former Yugoslav provinces emerged all by themselves, even before Milosevic started to go on rampage. He did - in reaction to these independence movements.

Utter drivel.:down:
the growing trends for regional independence were a result in the Serbian attempts at expansion into the autominous provinces in the preceeding decade.

[Betonov]

Unfortunately I am very certain that sooner or later you will come over to my POV.

I got a special pill for that occasion

[Oberon]

I got a special pill for that occasion

Pistol is more en vogue, I hear. :yep:

[Betonov]

Pistol is more en vogue, I hear. :yep:

Yeah, but I'm a Agatha Christie fan.

[Oberon]

Yeah, but I'm a Agatha Christie fan.

Ah, but surely it was more a case of not taking a pill, Hastings. :03:

[Sailor Steve]

England has managed to stay together for over a millennia without devolving back into Wessex, Mercia and the East Angles.
Actually those parts broke free in 1832.

But nobody noticed. :O:

[Oberon]

Actually those parts broke free in 1832.

But nobody noticed. :O:

Ssssh, don't tell the continentals that! :nope: :O:

[Skybird]

This is true, and certainly there are parts in other countries that consider themselves German and there are parts of Germany that consider themselves something other than German. Brazil and Bavaria respectively are the two words that spring to mind.
However, back before the Unification of Germany, would a man from the Kingdom of Saxony refer to himself as German or Saxon? Would a Prussian refer to himself as German or Prussian?

I do see where you're coming from, but it's not a definite rule that such things always occur. Were this the case then Germany would have split into federalised states again, Belgium would be in even a bigger mess than it already is, and the US would be all over the place. Not to mention that Russia would be a complete mess in terms of borders.
Assimilation does occur, and the success does vary, but fracturing is not inevitable. England has managed to stay together for over a millennia without devolving back into Wessex, Mercia and the East Angles.

;) Language, anyone...? :)

The German states, although a lose collection at first that had regions also competing with each other (one of the reasons, if not the most important one, for the temporary blossoming of German cultural and economic life later on, btw), had more in co9mmon, for the most,k than any of these states and for example the Spaniards, or the English, or the French - although in the medieval, at Heinrich i.'s reign, they saw themselves in parts as successor of the Franconian heritage.

Hm, not sure I got the right word in English, Franconian. Sorry if I picked the wrong one.

Shared language (native language I meran) is one of the most important tools to create shared identity. It transports identity over time - by telling tales of history and mythology. The less you feel close to a given place'S laguages spoken, the more foreign and isolated you feel. In the end, back in those times you still could travel from Northern to Southern Germany - and still get along with the language you spoke. If you tried to stick to that language while moving to England, France, Italian places, you would have had problems...

The German "Ritter- und Heldensagen" (German sagas of knights and heroes, also show that common ground between the Germanic places, and "Burgund", the kingdom in the Franconian area. But that only as a curious detail. Wonderful sagas, btw, I like them as much as ancient Greek sagas, the King Arthur cycle, and the Nordic sagas. I still wait for a psychologically adequate and complex film-making of the Nibelungenlied.

Small detail from the present: not English, Itlaian or French or Spanish but German is the most spoken native language on the European continent. Its also the most spoken foreign language.

[Tribesman]

so Germany is Germany because there was this Frankish bloke who spoke latin that didn't like the other franks , his succesors married non german foriegners so had sprogs who were Italian English and Turks/greeks of Armenian decent and lived in german places like Rome and Sicily .
So the fatherhood of german culture language and identity is a bunch of mongrels from all over Europe that shared the latin tongue.
So Germany is uniquely just like all the other European nations culturally and historically:rotfl2:

[Oberon]

;) Language, anyone...? :)

The German states, although a lose collection at first that had regions also competing with each other (one of the reasons, if not the most important one, for the temporary blossoming of German cultural and economic life later on, btw), had more in co9mmon, for the most,k than any of these states and for example the Spaniards, or the English, or the French - although in the medieval, at Heinrich i.'s reign, they saw themselves in parts as successor of the Franconian heritage.

Hm, not sure I got the right word in English, Franconian. Sorry if I picked the wrong one.

Shared language (native language I meran) is one of the most important tools to create shared identity. It transports identity over time - by telling tales of history and mythology. The less you feel close to a given place'S laguages spoken, the more foreign and isolated you feel. In the end, back in those times you still could travel from Northern to Southern Germany - and still get along with the language you spoke. If you tried to stick to that language while moving to England, France, Italian places, you would have had problems...

The German "Ritter- und Heldensagen" (German sagas of knights and heroes, also show that common ground between the Germanic places, and "Burgund", the kingdom in the Franconian area. But that only as a curious detail. Wonderful sagas, btw, I like them as much as ancient Greek sagas, the King Arthur cycle, and the Nordic sagas. I still wait for a psychologically adequate and complex film-making of the Nibelungenlied.

Small detail from the present: not English, Itlaian or French or Spanish but German is the most spoken native language on the European continent. Its also the most spoken foreign language.

Language is a fair point, but then from that you get dialects which split things up again. Someone from Devon does not sound the same as someone from London, and yet we speak the same language (just).

Technically when it comes to languages, German and English are grouped under the same origin as the 'Germanic languages', and when you get to English itself, it's a complete motley mess of just about every other language in the world pushed together, and indeed the German language shares similarities with the English one because of its origins. Water for example comes from waeter, to the Dutch Water which comes Wasser.

So technically, if one were to draw boundaries on language, then it would look a bit like this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Germanic_languages.svg/940px-Germanic_languages.svg.png

The dark blue is where a Germanic language is the official language, and the light blue is where it is an official but not primary language.

Then of course there's proto-Germanic which hails from the Denmark/Lower Sweden area.

Of course, the languages split over the years, Middle English took over in the UK, and Germany split between Upper German and Lower Saxon dialects.

Now that I've rambled on about the history of the Germanic language (as well as educating myself on a matter that I knew only a small amount of) I've completely forgotten the original point I was trying to make. That being said though, nations and languages rise and fall, once upon a time most of Western Europe spoke Latin, now only scholars and eccentrics do so. History is littered with dead nations and languages, and new nations that have spawned from the ashes of the dead. What America is going through is just another cycle in the history of a nation, the Hispanic language has already influenced the English one in its sayings, for example when we say "No way, Jose" and Latin has mixed with Spanish and English to turn Festum to Feast and Fiesta.
Perhaps when I said that history was littered with dead languages I was wrong, perhaps it is more that it is littered with constantly evolving ones.

Oh, and I would love to see a properly done film of the Nibelungenlied, because that is a tour de force and a half, Beowulf has been done to death, The Ring deserves a turn, although you'd have to mix in Wagners epic there somewhere because that is music to stir the soul. But who would we trust to create such an epic? Sometimes the imagination is the best director and producer. :03:

[Skybird]

A mixture of Peter Jackson for the visual aspect, Steven Soderbergh for the story telling, and Darren Aronofsky to focus on the psychological complexity of Hagen - that would be the right gang for such a project! And yes, my focus of storytelling would be Hagen - not Siegfried.