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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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The distinctions between Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Britons, Normans, etc. washed out hundreds of years ago, though. Nobody in England has spoken Norman French in over 500 years. Back when these groups were still linguistically and culturally distinct, they absolutely did not get along - see the wars between the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and then famously the conquest and subsequent violent subjugation of the Anglo-Saxons by the Normans. It’s only in hindsight, after a centuries-long process of mixing and integration, that we consider these to be constituent ancestries of a unified population. (And of course the existence of Wales as a separate entity, and the revival of the Welsh language, are testaments to the fact that the pre-Anglo-Saxon Britonic people were in fact never fully integrated, despite centuries of effort.)

Meanwhile, in Lebanon and Afghanistan these groups are still very distinct, generally geographically segregated, and - again, most importantly - have been in open violent conflict at various times even within your and my lifetimes.