👏👏👏 Thank you, Will for an outstanding piece that deserves to go viral! For the most part, I agreed with your argument here! The leftist reading of history which all about the oppressor/oppressed binary is complete nonsense and not reflective of the historical record. Can hierarchies and inequalities be bad? Yes. But are they always? No. As Will shows here in this excellent, we’ll-written and researched piece, the Norman conquest of England was hugely beneficial for the Anglo-Saxon people and helped propel them to a better future. A future where they built one of the world’s greatest empires and spread their culture, language and traditions around the globe much to humanity’s benefit. We have so much to be thankful to the Normans for. There was no “Norman yoke” that is complete b.s.! We need to stop looking at history that way. Also, can we stop worshiping leftist heroes or at the very least, lionizing them. I won’t go as far as Will does here about Dr. King and Nelson Mandela, both are historical figures I greatly respect. But can we stop acting like they were saints?
Nelson Mandela was a believer in socialism, committed violent acts of sabotage in South Africa that would technically be classified as terrorism, embraced despots and terrorists, was responsible for the 1994 Shell House Massacre, and invaded Lesotho in 1998. Dr. King was a philanderer who often cheated on his wife, plagiarized papers he wrote in college and at seminary school and was sexist and homophobic by our standards today. I’m not trying to take away from the great things these men did but they weren’t angels. Eldridge Cleaver was NOT a hero! He was a monster who murdered a man he thought was his wife’s lover, said raping white women was an act of revolution, buddied up with North Korea and its brutal dictator Kim Il Sung, received regular stipends from Le Duan’s murderous regime in North Vietnam while living in exile in Algiers, was convicted of rape and assault in 1958, and was a psychopath. Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, The Black Panthers, Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, and third world independence movements get celebrated these days. Okay, well let’s make some things clear here. Fidel Castro was a brutal dictator thus why hundreds of thousands of people fled Cuba on rafts. Che Guevara was a psychopathic killer, a racist, a homophobe, dreamed of firing nuclear missiles at New York City, a bad soldier, a coward, and lived in luxury while the Cuban people lived in abject poverty. The Panthers may have done good when they first started, but they soon developed into a brutal and violent organization. Huey P. Newton was a junkie and a cop killer. Bobby Seale actually ordered the murder of a Panther party member as he suspected him of being a police informant.
Shakur was also a cop killer who fled to Cuba to hide out from the authorities. Angela Davis kissed up to Communist dictatorships. Third World independence movements tended to be under Communist influence and ran their respective countries into the grown once they got control. Furthermore, natural hierarchy can be a good thing and there are many examples of this from history. Whether it be the Virginia gentry, the English gentry, the Romans and the Normans in Britain, or European colonialism. Nor are those who claim to be fighting against oppression always good by default. Hierarchy is bad? Then why did the English settlers in Virginia go out to the New World and carve out civilization there? The English did the same thing in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The British greatly improved the lives of Indians, Pakistanis, Egyptians, Sudanese, Yemenis, Irish, Scots, Welsh, Burmese, Nigerians, Ghanaians, Kenyans, and Malaysians. The French greatly improved the lives of Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Senegalese, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Syrians, and Lebanese. The Belgians lifted the Congo out of the Stone Ages.
The Germans brought peace and prosperity to the peoples of East Africa. The Dutch improved the lives of Indonesians. Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia’s black populations were better off than their fellow Africans anywhere on the continent. The English gentry took good care of those under them as did their counterparts in Virginia who by the way, also produced some of America’s greatest leaders including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Marshall, and Robert E. Lee. As to the Civil Rights Movement, yes it did a lot of good for America but it declined and devolved into the corrupt civil rights establishment we see today which is all about race hustling and dividing people.
We don’t need to apologize for the Old South, European colonialism or any other old systems. As to the comments on the French Revolution. Yes, the Bourbans warts and all, were much better than the Jacobins. Yes, the Tsars warts and all, were better than Lenin and the Bolsheviks. When one replaces natural hierarchies with egalitarianism it never works out well. These are just facts and they can’t be disputed. We need to start looking at history in a nuanced and objective way and stop seeing it through these leftist lenses and oversimplified ways.
Great stuff and I do agree, but as a localist, I do more the replacement of commons and nobles freely farming with the introduction of “feudalism” with manor-estates and serfs who work the land. I do understand that serfs weren’t slaves and did have problems more freedoms than we do in some areas and they were the “stinking dirty” stereotype we’re taught about. Still, I do prefer the local shires and I do like the Magna Carta that limited the king’s powers. Weird, when I was younger, I fantasized about a based king putting nobles in their place, but now I realize, Absolutism is gay modernist crap. Lol!
Well, the other side of that that Magna Carta was largely baron’s revolt, and the Lord’s saw it is their duty to reject the tyrannical usurpations of the king
Further, it was because they had the resources they did collected as they did that they were able to resist in the ways they were
There’s a trade-off to all of these things, and I do think that Norman system that reasonable job of arranging resources and talent so that there was a more general and continuous sort of flourishing as opposed to the sort of decay that characterized late Anglo-Saxon Britain
Fair enough. I can see the good the Normans brought, like you said, there’s good and bad. And some of the bad was dragging England into centuries of conflict with France over the Normans’ claims in the region. But the Anglo-Norman-Celtic Spirit was a force to be reckoned with on the world stage.
Defining these peoples also becomes ridiculous at a certain point anyway, because they were all of the same Germanic stock. William was related to the Anglo Saxon kings, and Rollo himself was obviously a Viking. The Normans were a creation of Viking fathers and French mothers, and then many of the Norman lords married local Anglo women. Scotland is even more interesting because its aristocracy has a Norman element, a Norse element, a Hiberno-Norse element, a Scot element and perhaps even a Pictish element.
It always makes me laugh too that the leftist types conveniently ignore that the Anglo Saxons were capable of atrocities above and beyond the Normans, and practised slavery.
👏👏👏 Thank you, Will for an outstanding piece that deserves to go viral! For the most part, I agreed with your argument here! The leftist reading of history which all about the oppressor/oppressed binary is complete nonsense and not reflective of the historical record. Can hierarchies and inequalities be bad? Yes. But are they always? No. As Will shows here in this excellent, we’ll-written and researched piece, the Norman conquest of England was hugely beneficial for the Anglo-Saxon people and helped propel them to a better future. A future where they built one of the world’s greatest empires and spread their culture, language and traditions around the globe much to humanity’s benefit. We have so much to be thankful to the Normans for. There was no “Norman yoke” that is complete b.s.! We need to stop looking at history that way. Also, can we stop worshiping leftist heroes or at the very least, lionizing them. I won’t go as far as Will does here about Dr. King and Nelson Mandela, both are historical figures I greatly respect. But can we stop acting like they were saints?
Nelson Mandela was a believer in socialism, committed violent acts of sabotage in South Africa that would technically be classified as terrorism, embraced despots and terrorists, was responsible for the 1994 Shell House Massacre, and invaded Lesotho in 1998. Dr. King was a philanderer who often cheated on his wife, plagiarized papers he wrote in college and at seminary school and was sexist and homophobic by our standards today. I’m not trying to take away from the great things these men did but they weren’t angels. Eldridge Cleaver was NOT a hero! He was a monster who murdered a man he thought was his wife’s lover, said raping white women was an act of revolution, buddied up with North Korea and its brutal dictator Kim Il Sung, received regular stipends from Le Duan’s murderous regime in North Vietnam while living in exile in Algiers, was convicted of rape and assault in 1958, and was a psychopath. Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, The Black Panthers, Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, and third world independence movements get celebrated these days. Okay, well let’s make some things clear here. Fidel Castro was a brutal dictator thus why hundreds of thousands of people fled Cuba on rafts. Che Guevara was a psychopathic killer, a racist, a homophobe, dreamed of firing nuclear missiles at New York City, a bad soldier, a coward, and lived in luxury while the Cuban people lived in abject poverty. The Panthers may have done good when they first started, but they soon developed into a brutal and violent organization. Huey P. Newton was a junkie and a cop killer. Bobby Seale actually ordered the murder of a Panther party member as he suspected him of being a police informant.
Shakur was also a cop killer who fled to Cuba to hide out from the authorities. Angela Davis kissed up to Communist dictatorships. Third World independence movements tended to be under Communist influence and ran their respective countries into the grown once they got control. Furthermore, natural hierarchy can be a good thing and there are many examples of this from history. Whether it be the Virginia gentry, the English gentry, the Romans and the Normans in Britain, or European colonialism. Nor are those who claim to be fighting against oppression always good by default. Hierarchy is bad? Then why did the English settlers in Virginia go out to the New World and carve out civilization there? The English did the same thing in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The British greatly improved the lives of Indians, Pakistanis, Egyptians, Sudanese, Yemenis, Irish, Scots, Welsh, Burmese, Nigerians, Ghanaians, Kenyans, and Malaysians. The French greatly improved the lives of Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, Senegalese, Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Syrians, and Lebanese. The Belgians lifted the Congo out of the Stone Ages.
The Germans brought peace and prosperity to the peoples of East Africa. The Dutch improved the lives of Indonesians. Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia’s black populations were better off than their fellow Africans anywhere on the continent. The English gentry took good care of those under them as did their counterparts in Virginia who by the way, also produced some of America’s greatest leaders including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Marshall, and Robert E. Lee. As to the Civil Rights Movement, yes it did a lot of good for America but it declined and devolved into the corrupt civil rights establishment we see today which is all about race hustling and dividing people.
We don’t need to apologize for the Old South, European colonialism or any other old systems. As to the comments on the French Revolution. Yes, the Bourbans warts and all, were much better than the Jacobins. Yes, the Tsars warts and all, were better than Lenin and the Bolsheviks. When one replaces natural hierarchies with egalitarianism it never works out well. These are just facts and they can’t be disputed. We need to start looking at history in a nuanced and objective way and stop seeing it through these leftist lenses and oversimplified ways.
Great stuff and I do agree, but as a localist, I do more the replacement of commons and nobles freely farming with the introduction of “feudalism” with manor-estates and serfs who work the land. I do understand that serfs weren’t slaves and did have problems more freedoms than we do in some areas and they were the “stinking dirty” stereotype we’re taught about. Still, I do prefer the local shires and I do like the Magna Carta that limited the king’s powers. Weird, when I was younger, I fantasized about a based king putting nobles in their place, but now I realize, Absolutism is gay modernist crap. Lol!
Keep up the great work. 👍 Peace ✌🏻
Well, the other side of that that Magna Carta was largely baron’s revolt, and the Lord’s saw it is their duty to reject the tyrannical usurpations of the king
Further, it was because they had the resources they did collected as they did that they were able to resist in the ways they were
There’s a trade-off to all of these things, and I do think that Norman system that reasonable job of arranging resources and talent so that there was a more general and continuous sort of flourishing as opposed to the sort of decay that characterized late Anglo-Saxon Britain
Fair enough. I can see the good the Normans brought, like you said, there’s good and bad. And some of the bad was dragging England into centuries of conflict with France over the Normans’ claims in the region. But the Anglo-Norman-Celtic Spirit was a force to be reckoned with on the world stage.
Defining these peoples also becomes ridiculous at a certain point anyway, because they were all of the same Germanic stock. William was related to the Anglo Saxon kings, and Rollo himself was obviously a Viking. The Normans were a creation of Viking fathers and French mothers, and then many of the Norman lords married local Anglo women. Scotland is even more interesting because its aristocracy has a Norman element, a Norse element, a Hiberno-Norse element, a Scot element and perhaps even a Pictish element.
It always makes me laugh too that the leftist types conveniently ignore that the Anglo Saxons were capable of atrocities above and beyond the Normans, and practised slavery.