I seem to have read Churchill on the subject. He spoke fondly of the "English-speaking people", but he wrote even more fondly of his American relations (his mother was a New Yorker). I do find that wherever I go in the English-speaking world it is easy to chat with people (I wonder why?) and to find something in common (perhaps our tendency to get skin cancer?). It is very hard to say after your ancestors lived in a place for about 30,000 years since the last Ice Age, that all of a sudden you are something else, a Kiwi, an American, a Australian, a Canadian. The physical reality is that you belong to a group of people who have racial characteristics in common and not only that, you emigrated somewhere because of the fairly recent historical conditions in your homeland. It may have taken you to Jamestown 400 hundred years ago, but compared to the shared history, that is a blink of the eye. Having said that, you have also mingled with the people you found where you went. As an American, you have played games with North and South, Catholic and Protestant, you've intermarried with other immigrants. But just today, I saw Barack Obama insisting that his white ancestry be considered in his identity. We are all enjoying tracing our origins, and most of us have in common that we are descended from Edward III -- I don't know why, but I believe the statistics show that everyone in England today can trace back to him. There is one great thing the English-speaking people share - our legal system, and Magna Carta and the Constitution. We are SUPPOSED to enjoy all the panoply of rights of Englishmen, whether we call ourselves citizens or subjects. We should know our heritage before we reject it for something more flashy.

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