Heritage of Drum & Fife

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Mike Shupp writes:
>until a
>moment of sanity descended and I remembered most of my ancestors were
>German. I live in an English speaking nation under an English legal
>system and a system of government which has English roots, and I enjoy
>English civil liberties, but I'm not English in background. I just
>inherited all this Englishness by being born in the right place.
> And yet, I was born in the right place. Am I supposed to throw all
>that aside and demand to be governed by a bunch of Nazis, or some scion
>of Kaiser Bill, because I'm "really" German? Hell no. George Washington
>_is_ my Founding Father, and Father Abraham my guiding saint, and I'm
>just as entitled to all those silver-dollar-across-the-Rahapponank and
>chopping-down-the-cherry-tree myths as anyone.

Can't disagree with that.

But just to test consistency, how do you feel about accepting,
or not accepting, responsibility for 'negative' events
in US history that involved neither you nor any of your
ancestors (e.g. slavery, some 'wars', some laws, etc.)?

Sheldon Klein
sklein@cs.wisc.edu
Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison

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