Mein Gott! America is the new Germany

The Times (U.K.) ^ | 06/21/03 | Matthew Parris

[ffusco]

Here's an oldie but a goodie from ancient Rome

OVA SFONGIA EX LACTE (Pancakes with Milk)

Ingredients:

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* 8 eggs
* 600ml milk
* 100ml oil
* a little bit honey
* a little bit ground pepper

Instructions:

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Mix eggs, milk and oil until you have a pancake dough. Fry in a pan and serve topped with honey and a little pepper.

[varon]

BTTT

[Desron13]

Achtung! The German-Americans are trying to take over the world, yah?

Yah yah, this might explain my strnge urge to boycott French products lately. Ah, then again, maybe not.

[ntnychik]

"Surnames (if you seek them) tumble from the books of modern American history — Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kissinger."

Um, Roosevelt? Dutch, not Deutsch.

The German qualities listed sure sound like hubby, whose German forbears came here 130 years ago. He was raised by his English Mom and Alsatian Dad (German father, French mother) in a totally American manner. I'm thinking the German inheritance has come through.

[Paleo Conservative]

Surnames (if you seek them) tumble from the books of modern American history — Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kissinger.

Roosevelt is Dutch.

[Centurion2000]

Funny but I'm half Scots half German from family lines that have both been in America for close to 200 years. As far as keeping the best and ditching with worst traits, I keep my temper in check and hardly ever drink alcohol.

I think my ancestors in Europe would have gone into shock.

[Steve Eisenberg]

What are these? In an article in The New Republic two years ago, Peter Beinart suggested the following qualities as typical of the German American in politics: “earnest”, “strait-laced” and “disciplined”.

I remember that New Republic article. And Beinart said that German-Americans were slightly more than average likely to be LIBERAL.

The OP article here is only slightly subtle assasination of our national character. His statements that he likes the German character rings hollow when he associates Germans with "neoconservatives," which coming from a guy like this is no more or less than an insulting term for conservatives.

[redhead]

I'd like to tell this guy that MY earliest American ancestors came over on the Mayflower. From England, in case he has forgotten.

[lodwick]

Huh.

And the point is...?

[Prodigal Son]

I'll have to keep that one in mind next time I'm in the kitchen.

[Little Bill]

I am begining to feel isolated as a Yankee, English, I am almost ashamed we stated the Revolution, wrote the Declaration and the Constitution and Bill of Rights. I don't like German beer either, West County Ales are the rule.

[Little Bill]

I am begining to feel isolated as a Yankee, English, I am almost ashamed we stated the Revolution, wrote the Declaration and the Constitution and Bill of Rights. I don't like German beer either, West County Ales are the rule.

[Thud]

ping the thread and recipes

[Pelham]

A group of prominent intellectuals and activists formed the Project for the New American Century, for the purpose of influencing American foreign policy. Some of these thinkers were advocating the overthrow of Iraq well before Dubya ran for President, so it seems fair to treat them as important.

PNAC certainly has an influential membership-

Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett,

Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen,

Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky, Steve Forbes,

Aaron Friedberg, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney,

Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad,

I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz,

Dan Quayle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen,

Henry S. Rowen, Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber,

George Weigel, Paul Wolfowitz

whether they consider themselves "neoconservatives" is probably up to them. Some seem to have identified themselves as such in the past.

[danmar]

The threatening "Prussian" character of Germany in the last 150 years is a product of Otto von Bismark

I resemble that remark, to quote the great philosopher "Curly".;{)

[ffusco]

Nyuck,nyuck, nyuck!

[ffusco]

I don't like German beer either, West County Ales are the rule.


I enjoy Bass, Harp, Guinness and Sam Adams.

[KellyAdmirer]

He seems to be saying all WASP's are Germanic. Interesting that he thinks they are taking over only now - when everybody has been arguing for 30 years that they have been losing their power in the US.

Incidentally, there used to be a big German community in NYC in the East Village, but it split up after a major ferry boat disaster killed scores of their children on an outing. I guess that caused them to spread out and "take over." Since Franklin Roosevelt, one of the "Germans" to this fellow's way of thinking, stopped Nazism dead in its tracks, hard to see how that is a bad thing.

[Dan from Michigan]

Germans are America’s big ethnic secret. No people and no culture has contributed more to what the United States is and is becoming. In the nation’s ethnic tangle, no root runs deeper than German America.

So what?

As a scattered community only fitfully conscious of its own existence, none has more successfully pursued wealth, power and intellectual influence.
Huh? How many German presidents are there in US History?(Three?) Congressman? Senators? I suspect the number is quite low outside of Wisconsin, Penn, or Minnesota. Last I checked, we didn't have many Grubers, Schmidts, and Schultzes in elected office, especially compared to the amount of Germans in the US.

familiar English surnames of almost all the Presidents until Roosevelt
Roosevelt(Dutch? German?), Truman(don't know), Eisenhower(German), Kennedy(Irish), Johnson(English name), Nixon(English), Ford(English), Carter(English), Reagan(Irish), Bush(Engligh), Clinton(English).

We remember, too, that the United States did (after a slight hiccup) support us against Germany in both world wars,

And Germans in the US were less removed from Germany than they are now.

No, they are not. America’s cousins are the Germans. This is true literally — in blood lineage — but also the personalities of the two nations. Modern America has become more Germanic than it is British

I have no German blood whatsoever. Germans also are more against the US now than ever. This is ridiculous.

The New England aristocracies are pushed aside, Mittelamerika rides high, yet few notice and still fewer discuss the Teutonic phase the country is now entering.

The Aristocracies SHOULD be pushed aside.

A roll-call of the names of elected congressmen (or the presidents of the great US corporations) sounds like the calling of the register in a Bavarian kindergarten. As for the power of ideas, the US academic and research world is stuffed with German-descended talent.

They are? In my state which has a LOT of Germans...Stupak(unknown - possibly German), Hoekstra(Dutch), Ehlers(Dutch), Camp(English), Kildee(Sounds German or Dutch), Smith(English), Rogers(English), Knollenberg(possibly German or Dutch), Miller(English), Levin(Jewish), Conyers(Black), Kilpatrick(Black), Dingell(Polish with Irish name). 2 or 3 out of 15?

The energy and genius of this small community has earned it an influence beyond its numbers. The cultural inheritance of German-Jewish immigrants was a powerful hybrid

Ahhhhhhhhhhh. I think I know what he's aiming at.

Names such as Wolfowitz, Perle or Fleischer are only recently famous: but the political and academic contribution is long-standing, and so is the contribution to the national media. The most recent issue of The Economist argues that the philosopher Leo Strauss, who fled the Holocaust for the US, is the leading intellectual influence on the neoconservatives in Washington.

Dem Jew boys......

Spookier for me has been reading the way German statesmen used to talk, and listening to the way Donald Rumsfeld talks now. Italian and Irish America have made their own distinctive mark on political life in the US. It would be surprising if Germanic attitudes were not contributing in different ways

So what? Germans certainly contributed to this country, as have others.

But is it not uncannily like George W. Bush’s America? Is it not as close an approach as we are likely to get to a definition of the neoconservative personality? And has the Tory Right removed continental Germans from the party’s guest list, only to welcome their reincarnation from across the Atlantic?

No.

---------------------------------------------------- Once again, the lefty talking heads in Europe show their utter ignorance of America.