That’s the one. He was Abbot of Citeaux ( the Cistercian Order ) and later Bishop of Narbonne. One evil bastard.
- Tamerlane
I connect it because I view support for internment in the same light as I do the holocaust, I think it’s stupid and racist.
As it is, I’m not sure what conservative circles you’re talking about. I read several conservative opinion pieces each week, I read the Wall Street Journal, I watch a lot of news (although not one particular news organization, I typically watch MSNBC and CNN out of habit, and sometimes Fox News, I’m not ideologically married to any of those news channels) and I’ve never even heard of the book before this.
My votes for worst Brits among those not mentioned:
Aethelred the Redeless- his incompetence caused the depletion of the treasury and the Viking takeover. Of course his mother and his second wife were pieces of work for different reasons, the former for poison and the latter for shagging the opposition and so favoring her second son over poor little whitey Edward the C.
T.E. Lawrence- I’ll had him to the list with Balfour for the “lots to do with the screwed up Arab world of today” blame.
I’m surprised Unity Mitford hasn’t popped up on this thread.
Agreed: the internment of Japanese citizens was racist and unfair and unthinkable. The U.S. Government has admitted as much and made significant financial settlements by way of apology. To compare it to the Holocaust, though, is a monumental overstatement. They were never used for slave labor, actively starved to death or left to die in subhuman conditions, the simple fact there were no poison showers or mass executions alone distances them to the point of the incomparable. To quote Jon Stewart: “You know who was like the Nazis? The Nazis.”
Though I’ll admit that my post #3 was made with some element of faux wide-eyed innocence (Britain would not be what it is today without the Norman conquest), I’d still be interested in opinions of why Duke William’s defeat of King Harold should not make him the worst Briton of the 11th century, and quite a few succeeding centuries.
Though Norman, I’ll count him as Briton - his victory made him and his courtiers the ancestors of today’s Britons.
His victory set up a 400 year long rearguard action in which Britain spent lives and money beyond measure in a futile attempt to maintain a Continental foothold, a foothold which proved quite unnecessary to Britain’s future glory. Indeed, in my opinion, a foothold which had it been held, would have meant that the British Empire would never have existed.
It absolutely would not have been - there was a fundamental cultural shift from a Germano-Scandinavian northern political/cultural orientation to the that of Latin western Europe.
Because individually he was a pretty effective monarch and IMO can only be tangentially blamed for the continental mess of later rulers.
Ah, but you forget William divided his realm - his rebellious eldest, Robert Curthose, got Normandy and his favorite, William Rufus, got England ( and his youngest, Henry Beauclerc, got a big-ass wad of cash ). It’s not William’s fault that Robert turned out to be a bungler and his younger brothers schemed to deprive him of his continental fiefdom ( and Robert schemed, with notable lack of success, to get England ).
Interesting thought, but I dunno. It might at very least have become the center of yet another North Sea empire like Canute’s, for example.
- Tamerlane
[nitpick]couldn’t care less.[/nitpick]
Bah! Typical anti-Viking bigotry :D.
Canute was a far better monarch and died too young - Aethelred did England a favor when he got his incompetent ass kicked. The world would have been a better place if Harthacanute had lived ( and spawned some offspring ) and whiny, non-reproducing Edward the Confessor had never been able to assume control. For example Frank ( above ) wouldn’t have had to worry about those filthy Norman dogs ruining that fine Germanic kingdom ;).
- Tamerlane
Well, possibly. Probably.
But at what point would their eyes have turned outward? To the Americas, to the Spanish or the Portuguese territories? Never. Had they repulsed William, where do they invade? The North Countries, a much longer lasting enemy, and an enemy with a coastline. An enemy against whom a grudge exists in living memory.
Having lost to William, had the British held Normandy, would they have been an ally of the Netherlands, or an invader?
I just don’t see any situation in which the British hold any of the continent where they explore the seas. Maybe that’s just me.
What if?
Well, the Normans were basically Vikings who took the wheels off their trailers for a couple of centuries, so England was going to be ruled by Scandinavians one way or the other.
Care to explain yourself at all? From what I see there’s absolutely no reason for you to post this in this thread. If you have some problem with what I said, address that. All you did is post an inflammatory and meaningless little nitpick that serves no purpose I can see.
Leaper was asking MY PERSONAL opinions on that Malkin book, and I gave them. It’s not like I broke off into a discussion about myself out of nowhere. I was answering a direct question from another poster about my personal opinion on an issue, and within the frame of me answering that what I said only seems like information worth stating since leaper was interested enough to ask me about it in the first place.
I wasn’t saying they were the same. I was just saying defending Japanese internment was along the same lines as denying the holocaust existed, in that it’s a stupid argument and is almost solely made by people who are undeniable racists.
The similarities aren’t in the gravity of the actions being discussed, but in the stupidity of the arguments.
Calm down, Butch. He was just pointing out that you misused a common saying. If you could care less about something, that means that you actually do care about it to some degree. If you couldn’t care less, then it means you are absolutely, 100% disinterested in it. Nothing inflammatory about it, unless you’ve got an uncommonly high aversion to grammar nitpicks.
William the Conquerer has one other aspect to his charactor that must put him in the running for worst Briton.
His ‘harrying of the north’ would nowadays be considered akin to genocide, and yet it seems hardly to hit the historians radar.
He committed many outrages on civilian populations in order to further his own ambitions, particularly when he first landed on English soil, even if this was a strategic ploy, its still pretty gross.
Even the French considered him to be a brute, even the pope of the day did too.
Well, the North did revolt against him, backing Edgar Aethling. Edgar and Malcolm III even managed to hold York for a while.
No votes for Henry VII?
I am surprised. He was a twisty one and fairly nasty in his own way…Machiavelli could have learned a few things from Hank.
as for Americans: I second McCarthy, although there are so many to choose from in the 20th century, it’s hard to pick!
I also second Andrew Jackson for 18th century.
nothing else to add…
Gah-make that 19th century.
For 21st Century America the toss-up would seem to be between Karl Rove, Ken Lay and Tom Cruise.
A cite - Peter Haining’s 1993 book Sweeney Todd: The Real Story of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street - that was specifically and convincingly discredited at some length by APB in this old thread. The kernel of the story looks likely to be a 19th century invention, with Haining then inventing nonexistant 18th century sources to apparently back it up.
What have you got against Karl Rove and Ken Lay?