GOOD JEWS | 2002-09-26
I spent a lot of time in the East Tennessee mountains during the 1960s. Greenville, Tennessee, has no Confederate monument. It only has a UNION memorial!
But when I was there East Tennessee was Wallace country. The local conservative Republican congressman spent a lot of his time at the Wallace for President headquarters. You will still find more Confederate license plates in that area than you will in South Carolina.
During the Civil War, East Tennessee was Andrew Johnson's home country. He was a Unionist who did not like the ruling Southern "slavocracy" which dominated western Tennessee. I can understand that point of view, though I do not think it justified treason against the South.
But today, the once Unionist area of mountain Tennessee is among the "goodest" of the good guys.
During the Civil War, both the Surgeon General and the Deputy Surgeon General of the Confederacy were Jews. The Secretary of the Confederate Treasury was one of the only two Jews ever elected to the United States Senate up to that time. The other had been from Florida.
Like all political theorists, I have a very complex world view.
Or at least I have as complex a world view as you would expect from somebody who is from Pontiac, South Carolina.
My world view is that the people who are on our side are good and the people who want to destroy us are bad.
Am I anti-semitic? That depends on the semite.