It looks like Rudy Giulani is dropping in every poll that matters right now. He is still doing OK in states where the primary is far off, but that will change after the early primary results come in.
Some people think his problem is that he is unacceptable to the social conservatives in the Republican party, because of his stance on abortion and his personal life. That is partly true, but it only explains part of his troubles. If that were his only problem he could still get 30-40% of the vote early on, and a majority once a few candidates have dropped out.
His biggest problem is this: Rudy Giuliani has never governed, or represented, an area containing a cow.
This is huge cultural obstacle to overcome, for a variety of reasons. First of all, when Rudy thinks about guns, he thinks either of being mugged, or of policemen using guns to capture criminals, or perhaps of military activities. Most Americans, especially rural American, when they think of guns, think about hunting. Therefore his opinions about gun control are not only unacceptable to many Republicans, but they are based on alien premises.
The second problem he faces is that rural Americans are necessarily more self-reliant. In a city, your existence depends on a variety of services that are provided for you. There is city water, there are lots of stores and restaurants, and there is public transportation. Also most people have landlords to take care of their apartments.
In contrast to this, rural people and even suburbanites are more self-reliant. We have to take care of our yards and houses, we have to drive to get places, and many of us grow at least some of our own food. While some of us have city water, others have wells that must be maintained. Again, Rudy Giuliani just does not think like we do, and this will hurt him in Iowa, New Hampshire, and beyond.
So when you see Rudy Giuliani, once the front runner, take a big nose dive as soon as the primaries begin, do not be surprised, and don’t just think it is because of social conservatism. There is a huge cultural gap between him and most Republicans.
Books, Toys, and Games 
I worked in NYC while Rudy was mayor. He’s a strange duck. He would initiate some crack down to fanfare and headlines. What did not get any fanfare was his initiatives not surviving a court challenge.
He was credited with ridding NYC of panhandlers when in reality he just made them someone else’s problem. Many of them just went to Philadelphia.
The conspiracy theorists in me has a problem with the fact he was knighted by the queen of England. Doesn’t a knight take orders from a queen?
I’m still liking Ron Paul.
Since knighthood is now purely honorary and since England is now a parliamentary democracy where the queen has no effective power, I wouldn’t worry about it. Unless you really think Elton John takes orders from the queen. 😉
I thought Elton John was queen!
Badger,
You are wrong. Freddy Mercury is Queen. 🙂
Okay, okay, bad example. Sir Paul, then. If Paul McCartney’s secretly taking orders from the QE2, then she’s not the stuffed robe we all take her for. :-Þ
On my grandfathers US citizenship papers he had to declare he was giving up allegiance to any “foreign monarch or potentate” specifically the “Queen of Great Britain and Ireland”. He didn’t have to give up allegiance to a foreign country or government.
This is from Wiki…
Citizens of countries which do not have the Queen as their head of state sometimes have honours conferred upon them, in which case the awards are “honorary”. In the case of knighthoods, the holders are entitled to place initials behind their name but not style themselves “Sir”.
Those who are to be knighted kneel on an investiture stool to receive the Accolade, which is bestowed by The Queen using the sword which her father, George VI used when, as Duke of York, he was Colonel-in-Chief of the Scots Guards.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders%2C_decorations%2C_and_medals_of_the_United_Kingdom
Honorary honours, huh? I’m not sure how that works. The founding fathers would roll in their graves at the idea of an American citizen kneeling before the queen of England.
When the queen summons Brown hops to it.
Who’s Brown?
Gordon Brown, Prime Minister, Great Britain. Every member of parliament has to swear an oath of allegiance to the queen.
From wiki….
United Kingdom
Oath of Allegiance and Official Oath
The Oath of Allegiance and the Official Oath, as set out in the Promissory Oaths Act 1868 are required to be taken by various office-holders.
The Oath of Allegiance is in the following form:
“I, NAME, do swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God.”
The Official Oath is in the following form:
“I, NAME, do swear that I will well and truly serve Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth in the office of …. So help me God.”
End the wiki quote
If you notice the elected officials take an oath to the queen. Not the country, the government or the Magna Charta. They don’t swear to represent their constituents. They swear loyalty to the queen.
Because in the United Kingdom the crown is the state, at least conceptually. As sovereign queen, Elizabeth II embodies the British government. Of course, ever since the days of the Hanoverian kings the real governmental power resides in Parliament and the monarch’s ministers. But the British like to maintain the happy facade.
Magna Carta is just one part of Britain’s unwritten constitution and probably not even the major part.
My uncle Brad is a queen.
But Rudy Giuliani isn’t a member of the British Parliament and never swore such an oath. So it’s irrelevant. Is there even any evidence that he accepted the knighthood in person and knelt before the queen?
At any rate, there are plenty of reasons not to like Rudy Giuliani as a candidate (he seems a generally nice man though not one I’d want to be romantically involved with any woman I cared about, nor one I’d trust in any kind of important dealings.) The notion that because the queen conferred a now-meaningless honor about him, he’s likely to turn the USA over to Queen Elizabeth II (who no doubt wouldn’t want it if he did) is really not worth thinking about at all.
Oh, BTW, when the queen summons Brown hops to it, but her desires really have little impact on what actually happens in Parliament. After all, Brown is no more the absolute effective ruler of the United Kingdom than Queen Elizabeth is, so how would his ceremonial attendance on her ceremonial summonses matter to the governance of the country?
Sean,
Here is the important quote from the Wiki article:
Honorary awards
Citizens of countries which do not have the Queen as their head of state sometimes have honours conferred upon them, in which case the awards are “honorary”. In the case of knighthoods, the holders are entitled to place initials behind their name but not style themselves “Sir”. Examples of foreigners with honorary knighthoods are Riley Bechtel, Bill Gates, Bob Geldof, Bono, and Rudolph Giuliani, while Arsène Wenger and Gérard Houllier are honorary OBEs. Honorary knighthoods arise from Orders of Chivalry rather than as Knights Bachelor as the latter confers no postnominal letters.
Recipients of honorary awards who later become subjects of Her Majesty may apply to convert their awards to substantive ones. Examples of this are Marjorie Scardino, American CEO of Pearson PLC, and Yehudi Menuhin, the American-born violinist and conductor. They were granted an honorary damehood and knighthood respectively while still American citizens, and converted them to substantive awards after they assumed British citizenship, becoming Dame Marjorie and Sir Yehudi. Menuhin later accepted a life peerage with the title Lord Menuhin.
If you are not a subject of the queen, the award is “honorary”, not “substantive”. Therefore Rudolph Giuliani did not take on any obligations to the Queen when he received his award.
Even if he did, I expect he would be no more loyal to his oath than he was to his first few wives.
And BTW, with 3% of the vote in Iowa, Giuliani should just drop out. He finished behind someone (McCain) who opposed ethanol subsidies and did very little campaigning in the state.
If his popularity was at all widespread nationally, he would have gotten at least 10% of the vote without even trying.
Rudy’s a one trick pony. That trick is 9/11 and people are tired of hearing him bring it up repeatedly. He has spent a lot of time in Florida. Wintertime in Florida is full of New Yorkers at their other residence.
I used to fly from NYC to Florida on a fairly regular basis. The flight attendants called them “miracle flights”. Elderly New Yorkers would arrive at the plane in airport wheelchairs and get to board the plane first but when the plane touched down in Tampa or Miami, those elderly New Yorkers were the first ones to be up and out of their seats, no wheelchair, cane or walker needed.
I guess you’re right, you’ve convinced me, Giuliani won’t be obligated to the queen. So why then do so many Protestants claim a Catholic’s first allegiance is to to Rome? I’ve never even been to Rome.
I am a hard core Protestant, but I came along after Vatican II, so I don’t know much about the idea that a Catholic’s first allegiance is to Rome. I don’t think very many Protestants beleive that anymore. (Jack Chick may print a lot of tracts, but he doesn’t represent many people.)
I suspect that idea came about because popes in the past have claimed to have power over kings (i.e. the Donation of Constantine fraud) and lots of Protestants deduced from this that any Roman Catholic leader would feel the pull of Rome if he were elected. Also, a lot of Americans are descended from people who fled Roman Catholic persecution, so we are suspicious of encroaching Roman power. Finally, until recently Roman Catholics worshipped in Latin, and you really can’t trust people who go around saying things in a foreign language. 🙂
I think the idea people came here to escape Catholic persecution is a commonly held idea but not necessarily true. The Pilgrims, the Quakers the Anabaptists all fled from Protestant countries. The area we know as the US was pretty much controlled by Protestant England. Maryland was even granted as a colony for Catholics. It was that way until some Puritans attacked St. Mary’s and killed all of the inhabitants.
One of the largest waves of immigration was of Irish Catholics escaping the genocide of Protestant England. It caused a huge anti-Catholic backlash in this country. Sometimes I wonder if the anti-immigrant stance of some presidential candidates isn’t a veiled anti-Catholicism. Most of the illegal immigrants are from predominantly Catholic countries.
Somebody is buying and distributing those little comic books. You probably don’t hear much about Catholics having divided loyalty up here in the North but down but I heard it a good bit when I lived in the deep South.
A lot of the English Protestants suffered persecution from Roman Catholics, particularly under Bloody Mary, but this happened before colonization. The Puritans who established the Massachussetts Bay Colony were concerned about Catholic tendencies in their king.
A lot of Huguenots also fled Roman Catholic persecution when the Edict de Nantes was revoked in 1685. Unfortunately, the Protestants were forbidden to leave France because they were essential to the French economy, so unless they escaped illegally, they were suppressed. Many of them escaped to America, but they generally were absorbed into our culture. (For example, there are hardly any French Protestant churches in the USA. They mostly became Puritans or Anglicans.)
Another wave of immigrants came from Germany in the 1700’s. This was not exactly the result of Catholic persecution, but parts of western Germany were militarily devastated by France, and this made William Penn’s invitation to settle very attractive.
Didn’t the puritans who founded MBC come by way of the Netherlands. The Dutch were pretty happy to see them go too.
Come on, the Hugeunots! You’re really reaching. The reason there are hardly any French Protestant churches in the US is because they didn’t represent a significant presence. Just because they were fellow Protestants doesn’t mean they would have been greeted warmly by the English colonists, they were French after all. At the conclusion of the Seven Years War many French Catholics were displaced from Canada. One of the places they stopped was Philadelphia, a city founded on religious tolerance, they were not welcome. They, and their French ways were quarantined on a desolate island in the Delaware River. They moved on, eventually reaching Louisiana and are known today as the Cajuns.
The Protestants who came to the New World for religious freedom left from predominantly Protestant countries. They were not being persecuted by the Catholic Church.
Sean, the reason BTG makes reference to Huguenot refugees settling in the colonies and being absorbed into the other Protestant churches is because that is a known part of my family history.
You make a good point about the French not being very welcome here, but here’s the kicker — many of the Huguenots who fled economic and religious persecution by the French crown were ethnic Germans who lived in the disputed border regions (Alsace and Lorraine) between France and Germany. Many of the first wave Pennsylvania Dutch fall into this category, though admittedly by no means a majority. So, they came speaking German and being German by blood, and practicing a German form of Reformed Protestantism, and so were quickly assimilated among other Pennsylvania Dutch (Germans.) Yet the point remains — they fled persecution by the French crown.
Again, this is an exact description of one of my ancestral lines settling in the Lehigh Valley in the early 18th century. And my family is no by no means an isolated example, but is an example of a fairly large group of similarly affected people. Is it a smaller group than all the people who came from Germany proper, England, and Protestant Czech lands (e.g., the Moravians)? Sure. But BTG merely said “a lot of Huguenots,” not “the majority of people who came over,” and it was “a lot of Huguenots.”
Oh, and no, the Puritans who founded Mass. Bay did not come from the Netherlands. Those were the Plymouth Separatists (the “Pilgrims” of Thanksgiving fame) who, I might add, were not driven out of the Netherlands, but did not particularly enjoy living in exile among different people who spoke a different language, and decided a venture to set up their own homeland was worth a shot.
The Mass. Bay colony received a charter from the King and came purely voluntarily, straight from England. They were not even directly persecuted because they did not separate from the established church, though their beliefs were opposed within that church. However, as long as you were within the established church you were not guilty of a civil crime and so were not civilly persecuted, as the Separatists were, but only made rather unhappy by having your views consistently opposed and criticized.
One more thing — not only the Huguenots, but a lot of other Pennsylvania Dutch came over because they preferred establishing their own Protestant society to living in their native Catholic lands. Germany was (and is) by no means a generally “Protestant country,” Luther notwithstanding. After the Thirty Years’ War, the Peace of Augsburg determined that each German principality would follow the religion (Catholic or Protestant) of its prince. Many of them remained Catholic, and to this day, large portions of Germany are predominantly Catholic, though the country as a whole is majority Protestant, I believe. Many of the PA Dutch did in fact come from the majority Catholic regions of the country, not the Protestant areas.
So while many of the PA Dutch probably did not come over because they were actually being actively persecuted, many of them did come because they didn’t like living in Catholic lands. Whether or not this was fair or reasonable on their parts is beside the point — it goes to BTG’s larger point that anti-Catholicism was strong in this country because people came here to get away from Catholics, for whatever reason. That Protestants may have done the same thing to Catholics is true and deeply regrettable, but somewhat beside the point; the Irish et al came in later, and were considered outsiders for a long time after that, and their viewpoint did not meld into the general cultural thought pattern until much later. For good or ill, the American cultural consciousness through the nineteenth century was mostly formed by Protestants who held resentments against Catholics or those they deemed pseudo-Catholics (e.g., high Anglicans.)
BGT posted….”Also, a lot of Americans are descended from people who fled Roman Catholic persecution”
Now you post…..”many of them did come because they didn’t like living in Catholic lands. Whether or not this was fair or reasonable on their parts is beside the point — it goes to BTG’s larger point that anti-Catholicism was strong in this country because people came here to get away from Catholics, for whatever reason.”
BGT gave a very specific reason, they fled Roman Catholic persecution. Apparently, it seems they had the perception that they might sometime in the future may be possibly persecuted by Catholics even though they lived in Protestant countries.
While the Protestants were fleeing Europe to escape imaginary persecution by Rome the very real persecution of Catholics was going on…
http://www.yale.edu/glc/tangledroots/Barbadosed.htm
In the early years of the colony’s growth, Barbados also became a destination for military prisoners and Irish natives. Oliver Cromwell “barbadosed” Irish who refused to clear off their land and allowed other Irish to be kidnaped from the streets of Ireland and transported to Barbados. Those who were barbadosed were sold as slaves or indentured servants, to British planters. They lived in slave conditions and had no control over the number of years they had to serve. The number of Barbadosed Irish in not known and estimates very widely, from a high of 60,000 to a low of 12,000.
http://www.noraid.com/Holocaust.htm
“In 1520, when Henry VIII broke with Rome, it added religion to the bias against the Catholic Irish. Under Henry’s daughter, the murderous Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603), the killing fields of Ireland ran red with the blood of innocent victims. It is estimated 1.5 million Catholic Irish peasants were starved or “put to the sword” and much of their lands seized by English predators, while she reigned.[9] ”
So you will have to excuse me if I’m not all broken up over a couple of thousand Huguenots.
Sorry, that’s the Peace of Westphalia. The Peace of Augsburg was broken when the 30YW broke out; the Peace of Westphalia was its resolution.
No one was asking you to be “broken up” about anything (though I would think that if you wish to present yourself as a charitable person, playing a numbers game as a reason not to care about people being killed won’t help you.) I was asking you to follow an historical argument. Guess it didn’t work.
Sean,
I’m not sure why your last post went into my “moderated” area and sat there for a few hours, but I just let it through.
You obviously have a lot more time to write than I do so I’ll have to try to answer everything at once.
Contrary to your assertions, French Huguenots had a significant presence in the Colonies, and they were welcomed. They were also assimilated into the Anglican Church or the Dutch Reformed Churches in the colonies, so they did lose their cultural identity quickly. Here is a link that disproves essentially everything that you said about them.
Encyclopedia of Religion in the South.
It’s a big bulky link, so check out page 388. please note that 10% of the Huguenot population was estimated to have left France toward the end of the 17th century. Some came to America directly, but many, such as my wife’s ancestors, went elsewhere, and then came to America later.
As for your assertion about Ireland in the 1500’s, it would have been very hard for Queen Elizabeth to have killed 1.5 million Irish. Here are some population statistics for Ireland during that time:
Population of the British Isles.
Since the estimated population in Ireland was never above 1.0 million, it would have been extremely hard for Queen Elizabeth to have killed 1.5 million of them.
That’s odd because I’ve never heard anyone in Ireland refer to it as the British Isles. The victors get to write the history. If you ask a Turk the Armenian genocide never happened either.
But this is from your source….
“The first census in England and Scotland took place 1801, and 1841 in Ireland. The estimations of population size before those years are based on information on the number of baptise,(sic) weddings and burials that occurred every year.”
Any population figures for Ireland in 1500 were estimates. In Ireland, the baptism, marriage and burial records were kept in the local church. How many of those churches were looted and burned by invading forces? Part of any genocide is covering up the crime.
There are multiple sources on the Irish population. The website I linked to has popluation charts of many European countries. I just Googled “Irish population 1600” to get that chart. Here is another article, though:
http://www.dochara.com/eat/history/potato-arrives.php
The population in Ireland appears to have been stable in the 16th century, and started increasing once the potato was introduced. It reached Europe in 1570.
For the genocide you posit to have occurred, Queen Elizabeth would have had to kill 30,000 people a year (3% of the Irish population) over her entire reign. If you blame her for every single death that occured in Ireland during that period, you might get to that number. Otherwise, the number is a total fabrication.
If a Jewish person died of cholera on a train transporting them to Bergen Belsen were they any less a victim of the Nazis than someone who was put in a gas chamber?
And aren’t you playing a numbers game the Mrs. complained about earlier? If the number is off and only 500,000 Irish Catholics were killed during the 1500’s is the crime somehow less heinous?
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it’s queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there’s some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Hey, that’s pretty good! You should think about submitting it to a poetry journal.
Thanks, but Robert Frost published it in 1922. 🙂
REALLY! I had no idea.
Yeah, how ’bout that?
Sean,
Back at post 27, you asked if I were playing a numbers game by questioning the claim of 1.5 million Irish killed under Queen Elizabeth. The answer is no.
Sometimes you hear a claim that sounds really scary. For example, “every second an American child is killed by gun violence.” This sounds frightening, and then you realize that Americans are born about once every 4 seconds, and there are kids all around, so you know the speaker isn’t telling the truth, and probably doesn’t care much about the truth, and he really only wants to scare you into adopting his way of thinking.
The author you cited was playing the numbers game, by making up a number that is rather obviously false to further increase hatred between two nations. The author either has little regard for truth, or is quoting someone who has little regard for truth, or is simply exhibiting mathematical incompetence.