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English people are the perfect mix of western europeans features

Reader comment on item: An American in Search of the English National Character

Submitted by Andrea Bortolami (Italy), Mar 8, 2021 at 14:52

English were succesful, in my opinion, because they had the pride nd love of freedom of the celts mixed with the stricness and hard working mentality of germanic invaders (anglo-saxons and vikings) plus the exposure t the refined french (latin, mediterrean) culture: they are the point of convergence of south/north europe.
English people can be work-oriented like germans, but without their inflexible planning of events: they also can change and adapt at the mutuation of events, and many battles of the WW2 showed when germans were stubborn on following a certain action, british can change and beat them. British were also intolerant to individual limitation of freedom, much more than we continentals: this is due to their insular nation, they didn't have so much invasions like us (last invasion: normans in XI century..) and they put their king at his place since the Magna Charta. 60% of english vocabulary come from french and latin, making it a "creole" language.They are hard but flexible: and they were the only to give some freedom to people so may individual pursuing their career made the british empire the most important of our modern era: more than spanish empire.
But they lack some taste in art like continental europeans and they are now too much scared to compete : losing in the 60's the empire was a big blow; but I think the worst is giving up on industrial focusing only on finance.
England lost his battle to Germany: while Germany has industries in every fields able to compete even with the USA or China, and still retaining financial hub in Frankfurt and docks in Hamburg, England closed its shipyards, downsized automotive industry, etc. etc.
The young generations want to make money quickly and without efforts: so the brexit, chosen by country people rightly afraid of the (third) world invading this windy island, was in fact a retreat from the hypertrophic power of a UE owned by germans. Indeed, tabloid frontpage often showed a germanophobia really surprising in the XXI° century. London is trying to attract money from the islamic world, offering islamic banks and so on, so I known english people are worthy of the greatest respect because every choice they made was good for them, but now they are escaping from a bad UE to a worse islamic hug

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