Merry Old English Genetics
A reader with the name Gallowglass, which sound warlockian to me, in spite of himself, takes up his pen and writes:
Interestingly, just to further the confusion, recent genetic testing and ancestry studies have concluded that most anglo-saxons, simply weren’t. The Danelaw, mysteriously, left little to no genetic footprint in the English, nor did, strangely, the Romans who seemed to keep to themselves by and large. The Saxons did, however, but only at most 17% of the population’s ancestry is Saxon, with likely some mixture of Jutes and Angles. The Scottish lowlanders are more Saxon than the English, and the Scottish Highlander Gaels have more viking in their blood than the English who have almost none. The English, it seems, are still majority the Brythonic celts they always have been, with mostly the names having changed from intermarriage. I would imagine this holds true for most of the descendants of the English in America, most of whom likely came from lower classes (and thus, less Saxonic/Norman). It seems calling the English Britons is completely and entirely accurate, even in the ancient sense, they’re still celts.
My comment: persons who want to erect political philosophies on the basis of alleged scientific findings, including such catastrophic political pandemics as Marxism and Nazism, should be warned that the few scientific findings last more than a generation. Grounding one’s political philosophy, as the Founding Fathers did, in the close reading of history, of philosophy, of Biblical truth, will enable one to have a foundation the passing generations will not undermine.
And this is only for real scientific findings. The alarums and excursions, cacophony and commotions of Junk Science always eventually are seen to be proclamations pretending to be science, but instead are merely figments and folly. A political philosophy based on Junk Science does not need to wait for a decade or a generation for its foundations to be overturned: it has no foundations. It is stillborn.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
