"Wow. I didn't mean to upset anyone to this extent."
Heh, no worries, I enjoy a good rant ;)
"England doesn't exist in any legal sense. Northern Ireland has a legal existence, Scotland has a legal existence, but England exists only as part of "England and Wales," and Wales has its own national assembly while England has nothing but the Westminster (Union) Parliament. Ulster, Scotland, and Wales have capital cities while London is the capital of the United Kingdom."
This is all true, but I'd argue pretty much irrelevant. The national assemblies in Edinburgh and Cardiff are recent innovations and were as much the product of the Labour Party's love of government bureaucracy as of nationalist sentiment.
"Many years ago saw a news story on television about signs in Wales saying "Brits out," which I thought was ironic since the Welsh are the most British people in Britain."
There was a (very small) group of nationalists around North Wales (the Gogs seem to think of themselves as more pure Welsh than South Walians) back in the 70s/80s who had a campaign of setting fire to holiday homes owned by English people - this is the only place I can think of where you may have seen this usage, possibly picking up on the kind of usage that one would see amongst Irish Republicans in Ulster. No Welsh person of my acquaintance has ever referred to British where they could use English - English of course being quite the worst insult that they can imagine ;)
"The Celtic nations are all the beneficiaries of Leftist nationalism whereas English nationalism is "rightwing" and therefore forbidden (besides, "English nationalism" manifests itself mostly as "British"ism and Unionism though there are a few English nationalist movements)."
Right - I think you hit the relevant point at the end - there basically is no English nationalist movement (in terms of any desire for political separation from the Union, as others have pointed out there has very much been a resurgence in English nationalist sentiemnt over the last decade and a half or so - look at pictures of England fans at the 1986 World Cup and they will all be carrying Union flags, watch an England play Paraguay on Saturday and all the England fans will have the Cross of St George). British Nationalism is very much a seperate phenomenom and is very much rooted in Unionist philosophies - I don't think we can lump this in as 'English nationalism'.
In some ways it is very paradoxical that there are nationalist movements in Wales and Scotland, but not England - looking at the situation rationally, Wales and Scotland benefit greatly in financial terms from the Union, whereas England could be a lot more wealthy by cutting off the Celts. But there you go.
I think overall, we need to differentiate between nationalist sentiment and support for 'nationalism' in political terms. As I said, English nationalist sentiment has been rediscovered over the past 16 years (I'd mark the Italian World Cup of 1990 as the trigger point - some may say that I overinflate the importance of football, but I think this is a reasonably argument). There is a lot of nationalist sentiment here in Wales and it gives a great atmosphere to the place. But that far outweighs any serious support for seperationist policies.
I do think we need one more thing in support of English nationalism and that is a recognisable English national anthem. I don't like seeing England national sports teams using God Save The Queen (especially when playing one of the other home nations, that just makes no sense), mostly because it's a crap song! I've been at the Milennium Stadium to watch Wales play both rugby and football and the singing of mae hen wlad fy nhadau is just exhilarating. England need a good song!(my vote would be for Jerusalem...)
Most English nationalists/separatists do use the song Jerusalem, which is another thing that makes my skin crawl (because of its Anglo-Israelite and potentially anti-Semitic implications).
Since there's no such place as England, I suggest we rename the English language. Why don't we just call it "British?" After all, outside Spain Castillian is called "Spanish." But since English seems to be the common property of the entire human race (making me feel impoverished in comparison to every other ethnic group which has its own ancestral language), perhaps we should just call it "Earthish," "Terran," or just "human." Why call a language "English" after a place that doesn't exist?
Agh! C. S. Lewis was right! I'm a Telmarine!!!