Racial Pride/Tribalism and Orthodoxy. Are they compatable?

[Hexapsalms]

I'm a southern MIDWESTERNER myself, which makes for divided loyalties between north and south. My grandparents, though, were staunch SOUTHERN midwesterners who were very proud of their Confederate parents and grandparents. But I took the side of the North in a debate with them, saying I thought Lincoln was a great man and that it was good that the North won the Civil War because I felt God wanted us to be a united nation, not a separate one, in order to meet the challenges of the 20th century. I was taking the long view...

However, while I was spouting off, my grandparents gave me the most dumbfounded look. After I finished, my grandmother said "Well our better relatives are Confederate!" My grandfather grimaced but made no comment. Instead he took up the "Bates County History" and began reading the story of the illustrious Mayfield sisters who were Confederate gun runners, guerilla fighters, and spies. They were captured and put in a Confederate women's prison in my city, but they escaped by taking the door off the hinges and tiptoeing past a sleepy guard. They made it back to their home county and carried on with the war until the end. He ended this reading on the passage "and the Mayfields from the oldest grayhair to the youngest infant were loyal to the Cause all their lives. The Mayfield sisters were a bright shining example of glorious Confederate womanhood..." With that he snapped the book shut and slammed in on the coffee table, and said--"let that be a lesson to you!!"

So thereafter I kept my Northern sympathies to myself.

[Joe Zollars]

So it was God's vision for America for non-beligerant civilians to be either outright killed (usually after being raped) and/or starved to death in the famine left behind by yankee destruction?

Teh point is North and South, then and now are two seperate cultures, two seperate peoples. Each with its own cultural outlook etc. The problem is one culture (due to massive population differences) is and was represented more fully while the other culture was forced to endure teh majority of hte tax burden at the time. Is this starting to sound familiar or should we also reject American Independence?

Joe Zollars

[Hexapsalms]

Joe--

Lighten up. I was just trying to tell a funny story about how old conflicts still resonate through a family.

I had relatives on both sides of the Civil war. One (a civilian) got bushwacked by rebels just shortly before the war ended. One (a Confederate) was shot for desertion. Yankees burned down the town I was born in. My state fought with Kansas for 10 years before the War began and both states fought that mini-civil war with complete brutality. Some of the hard feelings on both sides are still there.

The British, French and the Russians were all working to divide our country during our Civil War. It's also historical fact that the Confederate states were threatening to secede from each other before the War's end. Then Napoleon III's army in Mexico was poised to take advantage of the situation, but the Mexican Revolution was beginning to brew around then.

Think about how 20th century history would have turned out if we stayed a divided nation. How would we have fought WWII, for example, if we were divided into several different regions or hostile states. American public opinion was very divided about WWII prior to our entering it. How would the situation have been had our nation been broken up? We only entered the war because the Japanese bombed us and 4 days later Hitler declared war on us. If they hadn't, the Nazis would still be in power as England was on the ropes in 1941 and the German army was 20 miles from Moscow at that time.

I think God takes the long view of history.

[TomS]

Teh point is North and South, then and now are two seperate cultures, two seperate peoples. Each with its own cultural outlook etc.

Ahh! If ONLY that were so. If only NASCAR and Country music STAYED in the south! Well, I guess we can always dream.

[OrthodoxyOrDeath]

We only entered the war because the Japanese bombed us and 4 days later Hitler declared war on us. If they hadn't, the Nazis would still be in power as England was on the ropes in 1941 and the German army was 20 miles from Moscow at that time.

That is really an American myth. Forget about Normandy, by the time America even got around to landing in Italy, the German army at Stalingrad was already defeated (the turning point of the war) and what was left was being wiped out at Kursk. So by the time America finally did land in Normandy, the Russians had already pushed a ragged, disorganized, and hopeless German army back into Poland and were well on their way to Berlin. 9 out of every 10 German soldiers killed in WWII were killed by the Russians.

The fact that most Americans have no concept of this demonstrates the effects of our own "propaganda" and self-delusion, which is by no means limited to our understanding of WWII. People in the West (as you may well know) have the same delusions of Church history which is of course even more significant.

[Joe Zollars]

Teh point is North and South, then and now are two seperate cultures, two seperate peoples. Each with its own cultural outlook etc.

Ahh! If ONLY that were so. If only NASCAR and Country music STAYED in the south! Well, I guess we can always dream.

Astute observations Tom. But as you yankees have no music of your own you had to take ours (Bluegrass, Jazz, Rock and Roll, Blues, R&B, Country, etc.). But oh wait you do have music, Hip-hop and Rap.

Actually I was speaking more along the lines of such cultural values as Civility, Genteelity, and at least some concept of honour and loyalty, which from my recent unfortunate exile from my true home to the land of the JayHawker, appear to be wholly non-existent even among the rural folk of the north.

Joe Zollars

[Joe Zollars]

very good points OOD. Again I come back to the point that it is those who win the wars that write the history books. For instance little is known of hte atrocities commited against the indiginous population of America during hte French-Indian war.

Joe Zollars