Recently I read an article by a Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on something called "beliefnet.com" that was so far out it would have gagged a maggot!

It seems the rabbi and his family visited some Civil War battlefields in Virginia this year and he was grossly disturbed by what he found. The rabbi stated: ""What consistently baffles me in making these visits is the romanticization of the Confederacy that continues 140 years after the war's end. Wherever you go in the South, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, J. E. B. Stuart, James Longstreet, and other Confederate leaders are venerated as heroes." My, isn't that just terrible? Folks, I guess we all just need to climb back onto our "stools of everlasting repentance" because we have the audacity to revere honourable men! The rabbi continues: "In the course of my travels I have driven on Robert E. Lee Drive and Jefferson Davis Highway. I have seen myriad monuments to Stonewall Jackson, and I've seen the Confederate flag flying from cars and homes." So have I, but not nearly as many as I would like to have seen. However, the good rabbi is slightly less than pleased. He seems to regard all this as "the sin of Confederate hero worship." Question: Would he rather drive on Martin Luther King Boulevard, which was named after a plagarist and an apostate, or maybe Ho Chi Minh Avenue. I'll bet he'd just love that one!

I don't know where Rabbi Boteach went to school, but he refers to the War of Northern Aggression as "the Confederate rebellion." It wasn't. Secession was not rebellion, but then I don't expect the rabbi to acknowledge that fact. It wouldn't fit his mindset or agenda.

He states that whether or not the soldiers of the South believed in slavery or not, they fought to preserve it. A handful may well have, but for the majority that is complete hogwash. Slaveowners in the South have been estimated from as low as 6% to as much as 25% of the population, depending on whose figures you accept. For the sake of argument, let's take the higher figure. That means that, theoretically, 25% of the Southern folks may have owned slaves. If you happened to be among the 75% that did not own slaves, would you have gone to war and fought through four miserable, bloody, horrible years of war and accepted the privations you did so that two out of every ten of your neighbors could keep their slaves? I wouldn't. No reasonable person would have. And besides, all the Southern states would have had to do to keep the institution of slavery was to remain in the Union. Lincoln had already stated that he had no intention of bothering slavery where it already existed. So the Southern states did not leave the Union just so they could keep their slaves. In fact, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware all stayed or were kept in the Union--and they kept their slaves until the 13th Amendment was passed after the War was over. The rabbi should have checked on some of this before he spouted. But, then, maybe he just hopes you will accept what he says as gospel and not check it out yourselves.

He has trouble with "Confederate hero worship" but seems to have no problem with Union hero worship. He goes on to tell us that the "really great men" in the War were Lincoln, Sherman, and Grant, who "ultimately freed the slaves from bondage." Oh, come on now! None of these three ever legitimately freed a single slave. Lincoln's infamous Emancipation Proclamation supposedly freed slaves in Confederate territory, where he had no jurisdiction, but slaves in Union territory were left in bondage until the 13th Amendment. In other words, he freed 'em where he couldn't and didn't bother freeing 'em where he could! Some "emancipation!" All three, Lincoln, Sherman, and Grant were notoriously racist in their outlooks, but then we're not supposed to notice that.

The rabbi says that the cause of the Confederacy was no more noble than is the cause for which terrorist Abu Musab Al Zarqawi is fighting for today in Baghdad. Then he hastens to inform us that he is not equating Confederate leadership to terrorists. Cow chips! He just did exactly that whether he admits it or not. He didn't say it outwardly but he planted the thought for people to pick up on--infinitely more devious. Later on he states that he would never compare the Confederate flag to the Nazi flag--more subtle innuendo on his part.