Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend More than 27 million Americans today can trace their lineage to the Scots, whose bloodline was stained by centuries of continuous warfare along the border between England and Scotland, and later in the bitter settlements of England’s Ulster Plantation in Northern Ireland. Between 250,000 and 400,000 Scots-Irish migrated to America in the eighteenth century, traveling in groups of families and bringing with them not only long experience as rebels and outcasts but also unparalleled… Product details and pricing info |
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144 Customer Reviews Posted
- Outstanding
- Great, entertaining read, and if you happen to be of Scots-Irish descent, you may well see some of yourself in the vivid descriptions Webb uses in regards to the traits of the Socts-Irish.
- 2008-12-22, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Born Fighting
- The book moves along at a quick pace and is a good read. Especially to those of British descent.
- 2008-12-17, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- A genuine klunker of popular history.
- This is a sloppy, romantic view of the people who came from Scotland, Ireland and England to the U.S. over the centuries, and how they subsequently effected American culture. So many errors are present, that there is just not enough room herein to detail them. It is something of "revenge" history against what Mr. Webb sees as elitist Yankees who somehow lucked out, won the Civil War and spent the subsequent 140 years making life miserable for Southerners. In one chapter he praises Andrew Jackson up and down--and his powerful actions to maintain the union. Then, in subsequent chapters he romanticizes the sucessionists. Eventually the book dissolves into a horrible snarl of contradictions and quasi-drive-by Bubba History. This book is very bad--not worth the money, be the copy used or new.
- 2008-11-30, 1 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Jim Webb--Fighting for the Wrong Cause
- As an American of prodominately English descent, with a little Irish mixed in, I enjoyed this book about the Scots-Irish contributions to American wars and American culture. But it seems to me the theme of this book is ultimately about freedom and the centuries-long fight of the Scotch and Irish people to achieve it. When they came to America they did, in large part, achieve freedom for themselves and for their families. But even the Scots and Irish, who hate the English people, have to admit that Britain was right about slavery and the Union was right about slavery. They fought for freedom for themselves but many fought against freedom for African American slaves.
Basically this book is about tribalism and Webb is saying my tribe is better than yours, better fighters, and better people. Sen. Jim Webb started out as a Republican and then dumped the GOP to run, and win a Virginia Senate seat, on the Democratic ticket. What Sen. Webb is saying, in effect, is that Affirmative Action programs were set up to help African Americans but nothing was, or is being, done for the depressed southern white population, many of them of Scots-Irish descent. As a Democrat senator, he seems poised to help his tribal group under a possible "share the wealth" Obama administration. So, in effect, it looks like Webb is poised to help implement Obama's socialist agenda as long as the Scots-Irish population in included in the give-away packages.
One might ask, "What happened to the goal of freedom that Scots and Irish fought so tenaciously for throughout their existence?" Their Democrat leaders seem ready to lead them into new bondage based on "We provide the goodies and you provide the votes."
Most did not have plantations during the Civil War but their descendents seem more than willing to work on the plantation as long as their overlords in Washington, D.C., continue to hand out the goodies. - 2008-10-31, 0 of 3 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- You can't stomp `em out and you can't make `em run...
- I read this right after McWhiney's Cracker Culture and Fischer's Albion's Seed, both of which cover a lot of the same ground as Born Fighting. Webb takes us in a more personal direction, however, telling the story of the Scots-Irish's origins and their taming of the American heartland largely through the history of his own family.
I found very interesting Webb's statement that it is "undeniable" that FDR "persistently maneuvered" the U.S. into WWII. That's hardly an earth shattering theory nowadays, but I didn't expect to hear it from a high ranking Democrat.
In any case, it would be hard to award less than five stars to any book that between the same two covers acknowledges the greatness of George Patton, Chesty Puller, Johnny Cash, Hank Jr, Steve Earle, Tom Petty, Three Doors Down, Cool Hand Luke and the Jacksons Andrew, Stonewall and Alan. - 2008-10-18, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
