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Message: Entry: Three Strategies for the Right Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/three_strategies_for_the_right#23250 Post contents: A propos of Sid's comment, with which I agree, I would note that Paul Gottfried has an excellent article in the same issue of "Modern Age" mentioned earlier, on interwar right thinkers, featuring Hugo von Hoffmansthal. In there, he makes the point that, as I understand it, a good national sense was viewed by the best then as based on shared history, language, and literary tradition (perhaps there are other such factors). In this sense, perhaps the Central European thinkers had in mind their own histories, with Austro-Hungarian culture and language, even, being a blend of German with some French and Italian additions; and even in Prussia and other northern German areas, there were pockets of Germans with French surnames, going back to the dispersal of the Huguenots from France, e.g., the famous WWII fighter ace Hans-Joachim Marseille, or the current footballer Oliver Neuville (last I heard he had the bad taste to play for opponents of Bayern Munich rather than for die Bayern). This not even to mention the rather surprising frequency of slavic surnames even among the Junkers. On a more whimsical note, "Chronicles" recently had a small piece by a Mr. Tausch (I think), on the real history of the Germans in Texas and their connection with the late unpleasantness, in which he asserts, based on evidently substantial documentary research, that the Texas Germans were among the greatest supporters of the Confederacy, rather than opponents as has been the conventional wisdom. The most charming part, however, is his retelling the story of a rally of mostly black Texans (former slaves or descendants, of German masters) around Fredericksburg in 1915 or so, to oppose US entry into WWI, complete with speakers saying that "ve Chermans haff got to stick togedder". Sent at: 2008 09 07