What part of the history of your people/country are you most Ashamed/proud of?

i'm mildly interested in soccer. i know the names you mentioned. i'm too far removed from Ireland. a friend bought me an Irish soccer cap, though. my family came over because a great-great-grandfather was a minister who was hung. the family decided that was probably a good time to leave. landed in Philly...one of the brothers ended up immediately drafted into the Union army....after the civil war they all ended up in Tyler, Texas...good land. a generation later, we were in Houston. that's my mom's side of the family...the surname is my middle name, and my first son's middle name. my father's family is irish too, but i know less of their story.

the part of the family that went to Dallas says the surname wrong. it's hilarious. Dallas can't do anything right.

 

Clutchfans and other Rox boards got overrun with Chinese Yao fans after the Rox drafed Yao so I was wondering if Pacers' boards were overrun with Dutch SOF (Smits Only Fans)

 

strangely, yes. it was emphasized when i was a kid. like my mom was always quick to point out things of interest related to being from Ireland. it was VERY real to my grandfather. so, yes, I feel connected. And I find myself telling my older son about his Irish roots a lot. i don't call myself an Irish-American, but i definitely relate with that.

 

America has a history?

 

I've dated a couple of Irish girls so there've been a few times I've felt connected to Ireland.

Oh father why are you so sad on this bright Easter morn?

When Irishmen are pround and their glad of the land where they were born.

Oh son I see in memories view a far distant day.

When being just a boy like you I joined the IRA.

Oh were are the lads who stood with me when history was made.

At Cran a Cree I long to see the Boys of the Old Brigade!

 

easy, champ!

we're easy and politically correct to make fun of though!

 

Whoops had the wrong song and wrong verse:

And I leave behind my Mary.

She's the girl I do adore.

And I wonder if she'll think of me

When she hears those cannons roar.

And when the war is over

and Ireland is free.

I'll take her in a church

and a Rebel's wife she'll be.

Cause were off to Dublin in the Green!

Where the helmets glisten in the Sun!

Where the bayonets flash and the rifles clash

to the echo of a Thomspon gun!

 

ok..so we fought a lot. but we went to church. and we married girls with good Christian names like Mary.

 

Perhaps you can console yourself with the thought that this is a universal phenonomina, not a Dutch specific issue, and one of the most important lessons in life, IMHO, is expressed in the English truism, "There but for the grace of God go I", or perhaps "It could happen to you." This is why I am so anoyed with some of the anti-Japanese threads and what they portend.

Any group of people subject to stresses and pressures is capable of devolving to ignorance, hatred, greed or calousness. Every group will do it in their own particular way and the moment you believe that you would never do it is the moment you become weak to the temptation. I hate to sound too Biblical, but I again go back to the truism, "Let he among you who has no sin, cast the first stone."

It is my opinion, that when subjected to the stresses placed upon them by history the Dutch have preformed remarkably well, if examine how their peers among nations have done.

(By the way, the thing that I'm most ashamed of as an American is the process of lynching that occured in the US, particularly the South, up until the 1940's. I think it's shameful that we don't remember this more than we do. The fact that people still claim the US Civil War was about states rights only demonstrates that the capicity for self-delusion is limitless.)

I think we can all fairly safely agree that colonialism was a bad thing. My point is one that is more based on outcome than process. Most of the places that were Dutch colonies are doing pretty well and the people haven't self-destructed, as with Hati for the French. There's certanly the Dutch influence on South Africa, which has been a shameful mess, but I'm not sure how much is Dutch infuence, and how much English.

I'm fairly sure that just about every human being from 200 years ago, when judged by today's standards, would be deemed anti-social, cruel, intolerant, and self indulgent in inexplicable ways. I think you have to judge people in history relative to their environment.

Piracy is a wonderful place to talk about relativism. Basically, because the Spanish had all the $$$ in the New World there are no "famous pirates". For the French, Brittish, and Dutch, the people of legend now were basically the same people who would be in maximum security lockup today, but many of the colonial governments, when confronted with horrible acts would sanction the acts with a "Letter of Marque", which was basically a license to go commit crimes against another country. This concept is completely counterintuitive, but you just have to accept that it doesn't make sense by today's standards.

Here's a web page with the text of many English, French and Dutch Letters of Marque. It makes for interesting reading.

 

The general theme of this book seems to be that the irish saved civilization because they lived so completely in the middle of nowhere that it was too much work for barbarians to bother with despoiling Irish civilization. Hooray of you!

All of the sectarian violence, btw, is a direct outcome of British colonialism. I have trouble blaming the Irish.

There's a really interesting book called The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World which talks about the story of 4 plants, two of which are relevant to this thread.

The first is basically the story of Dutch tulip-mania, which while not good or bad is amusing, and a lesson for anybody investing money.

The second is the role of the potato and the potato famine in Ireland. One of the more interesting things that is related is the way in which the English somehow managed to convince themselves that the Irish were getting what they deserved, because grain & bread were clearly the food of Jesus, and potatos were Satan's temptation for the weak. In this view, the potato famine was understood as God's wrath of the Irish for using the potato, based on some very interesting and subjective value judgements.

Very interesting stuff.

 

yeah, we kicked ass that way.

 

you teacher used teach about Pirate Hawkins
And you said he was a very great man
you teacher used teach about Pirate Morgan
And you said he was a very great man
you teacher used teach about Christopher Columbus
And you said he was a very great man
you teacher used teach about Marco Polo, so

You can't blame the youth
You can't fool the youth
You can't blame the youth of today

 

crushing any country that stands in our way.

 

For Cameroon it would have been government corruption, but now it's whatever part they play in Boko Haram. For Haiti it would probably be all of the earliest rulers bickering with each other and basically re-indenturing part of the population; but Dessalines having all those French slaughtered shortly after independence is pretty abhorrent and probably helped keep them isolated.