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To: Wonder Warthog
I did not include the Northern Europeans because they did not retain individual liberty after achieving some form of statehood, but for the most part never achieved a statehood in the post-tribal state, instead enduring centuries of autocratic rule by the nobility in the duchies and principalities north of Austria. Once they did achieve statehood, 1000 years after Britain, they were not anything like Britain in their protection of freedom. The northern Europeans are now democratic, but since the Angles left home, we have seen Charlemagne (Karl), repressive small states, Prussia and Hitler's Germany. Over the centuries, the Germanic tribes lost something that the British did not.

If you are referring to Denmark and Holland, you may be right about their unbroken retention of their tribal sense of individual liberty, but I am not as familiar with their history during the middle ages and prior to the 1700s.

87 posted on 05/26/2003 2:38:13 PM PDT by Defiant (Bush as philosopher: "I-raq, therefore I-ran.")
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To: Defiant
You appear to be basing your definition of "Northern European" on CONTINENTAL Northern Europe, which is not what Oztrich Boy and I mean by "PLINES". The Scandinavian Peninsula has a largely unbroken tradition of representative government, even during the period of monarchy. Iceland in particular has the oldest, continually-active parliament known to exist, established in 920AD. The British Parliament owes far more to these sources of parliamentary government than to anything that came out of Greece or Rome.
89 posted on 05/26/2003 3:38:19 PM PDT by Wonder Warthog (The Hog of Steel)
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