Posted on 02/25/2012 3:44:37 PM PST by smokingfrog
Arieh O’Sullivan left South Mississippi in 1981 to join the Israeli army. He has made a life as a journalist and olive farmer in that country, but holds tight to his Southern heritage in ways that sometimes perplex his friends, co-workers and even his mother. On Wednesday, he further tightened his connection to the region of his birth by taking the oath of the Sons of Confederate Veterans at Beauvoir.
O’Sullivan, who holds dual American and Israeli citizenship, is proud of the service given by his great-great-grandfather, Alabama Calvary Lt. George A Johnson. In the oath administered by Wallace Mason of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans, O’Sullivan pledged to uphold the traditions of faith in God; honor; chivalry and respect for womanhood; a passionate belief in freedom for the individual; and a military tradition of valor, patriotism, devotion to duty and a spirit of self-sacrifice.
O’Sullivan said there is an unconscious nationalistic soul many Jews carry with them that is similar to the camaraderie shared by Confederate descendants.
“I feel it flowing through me,” he said. “If you have a sense of history that you carry with you, you are enriched by it.”
O’Sullivan is the son of former Ocean Springs Police Chief Efraim O’Sullivan.
A self-proclaimed “Jewish redneck,” O’Sullivan carried a Confederate flag with him into battle with his unit, the Fighting Farmers. He kept the flag, purchased at Gettysburg when he was 12, in the spare grenade pocket of his Israeli army uniform.
He named his jeep the General Lee and attached an image of the Confederate leader to the dashboard. The jeep has a battle flag for a spare tire cover. O’Sullivan said he gets bizarre looks from people sometimes because of his conspicuous affinity for the Confederacy.
(Excerpt) Read more at sunherald.com ...
I’m born, raised and live in New Jersey. You said ‘’only recently we’ve come into our own economically’’. ‘’Our own’’ is what sounded like ‘’separateness’’ to me. And again, at no other time of prosperity did the South do well?
Your ill-mannered screeds have been regularly refuted.
You’re unable, rather than unwilling, to process it.
It’s an indication of ‘invincible ignorance’ which in some circles at least relieves you of responsibility. Meaning “you cain’t hep it”, unlike some others who are motivated by malevolence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invincible_ignorance_fallacy
You might want to consider that this is an area where your knowledge is not as complete as it should be. The South was punished and neglected by the feds for many years after the end of the war. Southerners were considered uneducated and not too bright. In fact, a remnant of that are the last remaining acceptable terms of outright bigotry: “redneck” and “hillbilly”.
I remember reading articles about Carter’s staff and the press was just all agog that they were actually fairly intelligent and informed, in spite of having Southern accents. (I know, I know, Carter, major ick and all that). There’s lots of other examples, but I’ll stick to the main point.
So, “separateness”? Yes, it’s a fact - there is a difference in culture and attitudes. But, that’s OK. You need what we have right now - the pro-business, anti-big-government, self-reliant, git ‘er done kind of thinking that hasn’t been a feature of the NE for a long time. Maybe in a few, idiosyncratic spots. And, of course, as more of y’all move down here to escape bad weather, bad economies, and overcrowding, the distinctness is becoming diluted. Our larger urban areas are becoming indistinguishable from most other large urban areas, both in terms of population and scenery.
You need to come on down and visit. It’s a whole different way of living and thinking. I’ve lived up there - I know whereof I speak.
Ill-mannered? You’re the height of it you dunce. You just can’t process the fact it isn’t 1861 and the South lost a war it started, can you? Do me a favor and shut up. I’m tired of you and I certainly wasn’t talking to you today. In fact I haven’t seen you around here for some time until now.
Do you really think we’re all ‘’big government’’ types up here? Please don’t tell me you would assume that of me. The South launched a war it couldn’t possibly have hoped to win and in the tenor of the times it suffered for it. Doesn’t make it right but that’s the history. What is going to change that 150 years later? I bought up the subject of Kansas (”Bloody Kansas’’) and you didn’t even address it so who’s knowledge is lacking? To make value judgements along cultural lines isn’t the smartest of things to do so again, please don’t assume we’re all liberals up here. I will concede however I was a liberal once and I did vote for Jimmy Carter. I’m aware of the stereo-types of uneducated Southerners and quite honestly it is just that— a vicious stereo-type. Not to be-labor a point but it’s as vicious a stereo-type as to assume all “Yankees’’ are flaming Lefties and liberals, wouldn’t you say? Two of my brothers actually went to a very fine Catholic institution of higher learning in the South,— Belmont Abbey College in Belmont North Carolina. I’ve been there several times, beautiful place in a very beautiful state(’’The “Tar-Heel State’’ is the eighth largest in the nation, did you know that?) I’ve a sister-in-law from NC but I digress. It seems,as I said, the politics of The Civil War still goes on. And btw, New Jersey is one of the “Mid-Atlantic states’’, not a “New England State. :-)
“All that aside, the only really important question is the one of states’ rights vs. an all-powerful federal government.”
Of course that’s the crux of Lincolnism versus the federated republic of the founding era.
Anti-Federalists like Patrick Henry, George Mason, Richard Henry Lee, and even future President James Monroe opposed ratifying the Constitution because they predicted that it could result in a despotic centralized government. The Articles of Confederation obstructed that sort of power grab and the Anti-Federalists preferred amending the Articles to ratifying the Constitution.
The Federalists of course prevailed, but not before granting an Anti-Federalist demand: the Bill of Rights, an attempt to forestall the centralized power grab that they feared the Constitution would end up enabling. But the Bill of Rights only slowed down the process it couldn’t prevent it. A dedicated President could ignore habeus corpus and other impediments at will.
Of all the Founders the Anti-Federalists would be the least surprised by how powerful and intrusive America’s national government has become. Lincoln’s war on state’s rights was only the first iteration of what was to come.
Wow. I don’t even know where to go with all of that. Paragraphs would have been a nice start.
I said in several ways, that I was generalizing. Generalizing is fine, if done with that knowledge and an awareness of what generalizations mean and how they can be applied.
“To make value judgements along cultural lines isn’t the smartest of things to do...” Really? You made the assumption that we think like y’all and I pointed out that perhaps that generalization is incorrect and, culturally, we are different. You assume sameness, I point out difference. Either way, it’s a general assumption about culture.
I’m not sure where the dreaded “L” word came in. I never even addressed liberal vs. conservative. For a lot of reasons. Like that we have leftists, too.
I was explaining why the war is still much more of an issue and of significance here than it might be in, say, NJ. Was that not the original question? Or, do you have something else in mind?
Yeah, I suppose I should learn to space. Suzy, do you not see the um, hazard of ‘’generalizing’’? It can easily take the place of specific facts and logic. It too often paints with a broad brush. I would agree that the war isn’t felt quite the same here in the North as the only battle fought here was in Gettysburg, PA. But irony abounds. I was born and raised in Kearny, NJ, a town named after it’s most famous son, Union General Philip J. Kearny, “Hero of The Wilderness’’. As I said,sans the killing ‘’ The War’’ still goes on. But not between us I pray ‘’Good Woman of Texas’’? Cheers.
Your ancestors likely were encountering the Forty-Eighters who emigrated to the North in large numbers. Thousands of them enlisted in the Union Army and eight became Generals.
Their values still echo in America, the leftism of regions like Milwaukee, Wisconsin hailing back to the progressive politics of the Forty-Eighter radicals.
Even though my own ancestors fought for the Union, I think I can die happy now!
No, it certainly doesn’t. I wouldn’t have gone to the lengths I did to explain why things are a bit different here, if I hadn’t understood us to be on the same side.
Re: generalizations - they are very useful and valuable, and should be used carefully and in an informed manner.
And, there were only 4 or 5 battles fought in Texas, down on the coast at the port of Galveston (of course, we were still fighting the Comanche, Apache and banditos), but the “Reconstruction” had a greater and longer lasting impact. It has cast a long shadow over our history.
Stay warm up there.
Indeed, Pelham. It’s hard to separate that out of the fact that defense of the evil institution of slavery was the proximate cause of the war.
I'll refer you back to this Free Republic thread from 2005, in the hope that you'll shed some of your misperceptions. Barring that, perhaps it will assist others in not falling prey to them:
Oh yeah, The Klan just loved Jews and blacks and Catholics. Thanks for the history lesson.
Generalizations are like fire. They can be warm and also burn, if you know what I mean. “Stay warm up there’’< Thank you although quite honestly it hasn’t really been very cold up here. Did I ever tell you I spent the night in Amarillo? I was traveling to California on I-40 with my brother. He was due to report for duty at Camp Pendelton(USMC), this was, oh gosh, ‘bout 35 years ago. “The stars at night are big and bright/(da da da da)Deep in the heart of Texas...’’ I love the USA, north, east south and west! :-)
You didn’t read a thing at that link, did you?
Northern prejudice, and the inability of those states to assimilate their former slaves, certainly discouraged efforts toward freeing the slaves in the South. Having inadvertently freed the slaves in the state, the Massachusetts legislature voted to bar interracial marriages and expel all blacks who were not citizens. Boston authorities took action against 240 of them in 1800, most natives of Rhode Island, New York, Philadelphia, and the West Indies. White Philadelphians were rioting against blacks from 1805, driving them from the Fourth of July celebrations on Independence Square. Within a decade, the burning of black churches in the city had begun. A Virginia judge, observing the North in 1795, wrote, "If in Massachusetts, where the numbers are comparatively very small, this prejudice be discernable, how much stronger may it be imagined in this country ...?" [5]
No, the warm part was a result of my natural dislike of the cold, and I was feeling for ya! I tell all my yankee friends to stay warm - it’s my way of empathizing.
Indeed. But the violence didn’t amount to 660,000 dead in four years.
Ah ha! Well in about 4 months an average day up here will be about 80 degrees at about 10 in the morning, humidity about the same and the wind out of the south at about 4 miles per. A month after that it’ll be about 90 at the same time. Now you’ll tell me about the heat in The Lone Star State and all but I have to tell you humidity up here is the killer!!
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