Sunday, July 01, 2007
US Orange Order Documentary
A Documentary shot in Northern Ireland by a U.S. film crew following Maghera Sons Of William LOL 209, Northern Ireland & Sons Of William LOL 1003, Birmingham, Alabama, USA.
I believe this was aired on PBS in the USA. The Alabama based Orange lodge comprises Anglican / Episcopal Bishop, Rev Paul Zahl and other ministers. They have been regular visitors to the South Londonderry Twelfth in recent years. The 32 minute documentary is viewable in 5 parts here
Kilsally @ 02:47 PM
“As I said I avoid OO posts for reasons ably demostrated by yourself Paragraph 2 sentence 2 of my post “I am not an orangeman”.”
Bah. That’ll teach me for scan reading.
Posted by on Jul 01, 2007 @ 09:46 PMThe Orange Order is a demonstrably bigoted and sectarian institution.You only have to read the Orange constitution, which reads like an ethnic cleanser’s charter, to be aware of this fact.It defines itself in terms of *hostility* towards Catholicism.You will not find the converse with any Catholic outfit - Opus Die etc.English/British monarchs were foisted on Ireland against her will - pre and post ‘Glorious Revolution’ so the GR’s role in getting rid of ‘despotic monarchs’ is a red herring.The GR ,described in Orwelllian Orangespeak by the use of words like ‘rights’ and ‘freedom’ actually instituted a dark age of repression and brutalisation of of the Catholic and Presbyterian populations of Ireland - which ,I note , one poster above has tried to justify.
http://www.hoganstand.com/general/identity/stories/penal.htm
http://www.allaboutirish.com/library/bits/penallaws.shtm
http://www.irish-society.org/Hedgemaster Archives/hedge_schools.htm
‘When Orangemen marched in or near a Catholic area they were making the point that Catholics must accept the fact of Protestant domination’
-Conor Cruise O’Briem ,1973.
Hopefully the OO will eventually transform into a genuine nonsectarian cultural organistaion.A good step would be revising its constitution.
Finally, to answer a point made above,in 13 years of Catholic education I was not exposed to one iota of anti-Protestant bigotry.Posted by on Jul 01, 2007 @ 10:40 PMFinally, to answer a point made above,in 13 years of Catholic education I was not exposed to one iota of anti-Protestant bigotry.
I guess you’re just a natural then.
Posted by on Jul 01, 2007 @ 11:04 PMObjectivist, that post was certainly not objective and simply illustrated your own deeply held narrow minded bigotry.
Posted by on Jul 01, 2007 @ 11:04 PMI agree, The order should change............
When the Roman Catholic Church gives up its biggoted and sectarian insistance that all its members be Roman Catholic!
What a load of nonsence is talked here!
No matter what would happen the Orange Order will never be accepted by narrow minded Republicans/Nationalists, not even if that Nazi Ratzinger was Grand Master.
Posted by on Jul 01, 2007 @ 11:09 PM‘not even if that Nazi Ratzinger was Grand Master.’
Seeing as combat 18 nazis are used to steward orange parades in the North Of England, that might work !!
Posted by on Jul 01, 2007 @ 11:20 PMYour evidence?
still doesnt negate my point tho!
Posted by on Jul 01, 2007 @ 11:28 PMProbably from the same source that confidently reports every year that the BNP are about to start campaigning for election in loyalist areas.
Posted by on Jul 01, 2007 @ 11:30 PMRoger
“your own deeply held narrow minded bigotry”.
Coming from you - that’s a classic! You are by far the most pitiful defender of the OO on this site - and that’s up against some pretty stiff opposition.
TAFKABO
“I guess you’re just a natural then.”
There’s no better judge than you.
Are you claiming that there were no Combat 18 members alongside the OO members at Drumcree (as
well as LVF, UVF + UDA)? Or that there are no Combat 18 members who attend OO parades in NI + England?If so, can I ask, what colour is the sky on your planet?
Posted by on Jul 02, 2007 @ 12:06 AMUnfortunately too many people, posters here being a good example, can only view history from the context of their own very narrow viewpoint and get completely confused when it is explained to them that actually it was a little different in the past.
Thus the most radical Irish republicans in the late eighteenth century were Ulster Presbyterians, whilst Oliver Cromwell was also a radical republican and the Catholic forces in Ireland at the time were solid believers in the absolute divine right of an English king to rule them (both instances are fairly broad generalisations to make my point). So it is with the United States.
Throughout the Cold War it was indoctrinated by Marxists in the universities and subsequently in the schools and media that the US was an imperialist force of repressive reaction. Thus despite the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and the opening of liberty to eastern and central Europe and the stark staring evidence that life in South Vietnam would actually have been much preferable to life in the north as in Korea, the mind set persists today that the US was the “bad guy” in the Cold War and the Communists sought individual liberty.
So what’s my point? Wel it might surprise many of the descendents of believers in the most totalitarian, absolutist form of political and religious governance (the Papacy) that the only minority in the US about whom it is permissable to sneer at and deride (apart from asylum seekers and refugees from Castro’s gulag) - the poor whites of the southern states - were in fact, and in many ways still are, the descendants of the hardest fighters for individual liberty on the planet.
Yes they didn’t care much for black people (shock revelation, no white people at that time did!) and they fought long and hard against Indians (such that later waves of Catholic Irishmen settling in Indian free lands could enjoy the benefits) but that does not detract from their political beliefs.
The funny thing is that the political beliefs haven’t actually changed, it’s just that they ain’t fashionable anymore and their proponents look awkward in our new touchy feely world. Actually truth be told the metropolitan elites of America, Britain and Ireland never cared for them much.
They believe in individual freedom, the right of the citizen to be able to bear arms against his government if needs be, the right to practice your own form of religion, the right to speak your mind (including about homosexuality, race and any other thing that your government doesn’t want you to talk about - see I told you it was unfashionable) and the general right to be left the hell alone.
Church burnings whilst regrettable are hardly the whole story any more than if I was to say that bombing protestants at centopaphs and in restaraunts was all that the struggle of Irish freedom was about. The US Civil War and the civil rights struggle of the ‘50s and ‘60s fundamentally were issues about local people resenting being told what they should do by outsiders (of course this was too simplistic as the black Americans were local people too and should have had their rights respected).
To simply dismiss the Hill Billies and Rednecks as dinosaurs from the comfort of our nice urban, elite modern social democratic world is to shamefully dismiss the unattractive characters who won and protected that world. You don’t agree? Well just ask the Vietnamese boat people and the descendants of Chinese Americans and countless millions of other free people who fled to America to seek liberty from tyranny. It wasn’t the faculty of social sciences of Berkeley University who won that freedom, they are merely the ungrateful heirs.
Posted by on Jul 02, 2007 @ 12:40 AMhey harry have you met trow i think you two could entertain each other for hours with your bizzare theories and conspiracies
it would spare the rest of us
Posted by on Jul 02, 2007 @ 01:03 AMCut the crap,Stonewall, the RC church does not expel it’s members for attending Protestant services,being godparents to Protestants,marrying Protestants etc.It does not call on its members to ‘resist Protestant encroachment’ and to convert Protestants.Just a few examples.
‘’I agree, The order should change..........
When the Roman Catholic Church gives up its biggoted and sectarian insistance that all its members be Roman Catholic!’’Come off it.It does not define itself in terms of being exclusively Protestant like Opus defines itself as exclusively RC.It defines itself in terms of *hostility* to RCism with an imperative to repel/convert.Hopefully you won’t ‘Stonewall’ on the difference here.
As for your very original slur on Benedict 16th:
http://www.nobeliefs.com/luther.htm
I hope a stage will be reached when the OO gets rid of its appalling constitution, ditches its sectarian baggage, and becomes a purely cultural, intercommunally acceptable, phenomenonPosted by on Jul 02, 2007 @ 01:03 AMTAFAO,
Please bear in mind the Slugger ad hominem rule (that applies to you BTW, Roger).
I note your spurious conflation of Protestantism with Orangeism.That’s like saying being cynical about Opus Die (which I am incidentally) is being anti-Catholic.However Opus, warts and all, don’t definitively hate other religions.
The fact is many decent Protestants would not touch the OO with a bargepole.Posted by on Jul 02, 2007 @ 02:45 AMSean if you could point out the crazy conspiracy theory in what was a simple interpretation of American history I’d be very grateful.
Have you actually got anything worthwhile to contribute to the debate or are ad hominem attacks all you can manage?
Posted by on Jul 02, 2007 @ 03:19 AMThis never would have made it onto PBS in the USA, so I am sure you’re mistaken on that score, Aughavey. If I’ve read the credits correctly, this was put together by a little Orange lodge in the Deep South.
The type of Bible churches one finds in Alabama would probably make anyone from the fundamentalist community in Maghera feel right at home. I think it was the sort of “documentary” one would expect a fundamentalist Southern Christian Men’s organisation to make. Fairly high quality video by YouTube standards, nice editing and so forth. But utterly biased and uninformative.
Posted by on Jul 02, 2007 @ 03:32 AMAre you claiming that there were no Combat 18 members alongside the OO members at Drumcree (as
well as LVF, UVF + UDA)? Or that there are no Combat 18 members who attend OO parades in NI + England?No, I’m disputing your claims that there were. Please feel free to source your claims and put my mind at rest.
If so, can I ask, what colour is the sky on your planet?
It’s blue.
Posted by on Jul 02, 2007 @ 04:31 AMCut the crap,Stonewall, the RC church does not expel it’s members for attending Protestant services,being godparents to Protestants,marrying Protestants etc.It does not call on its members to ‘resist Protestant encroachment’ and to convert Protestants.Just a few examples.
When was the last time the OO did something similar?
Posted by on Jul 02, 2007 @ 04:32 AMWho was that Alan ?
Posted by on Jul 02, 2007 @ 07:24 AMI love this annual disingenousnessfest (thought I’d have a stab at the longest neologism in Slugger history there).
The OO is an assemblage of religious nutters founded with one principal goal in mind: to annoy the fuck out of their neighbours. But each and every year they’ll attempt to deny this and try to position themselves as the less useful male equivalent of the Women’s Institute.
It won’t work, chaps. It’s over, you’re history. Or ought to be.
Go find something worthwhile to do with your time. Feed the poor, rescue children, help prevent teenagers topping themselves. The list is endless. Anything that’ll keep you off the streets as my gran used to say.
Posted by on Jul 02, 2007 @ 08:39 AMDawkins
Which is why it is so futile for people like Objectivist to try and speak with supporters/defenders/apologists for them on a rational level. They are simply not interested! In fact to be brutally honest some of them are so thick they may well regard mass going as an anti-Prod sectarian act.
Turgon.
>>Now please continue to denounce me as a narrow minded bigot.<<
You are a narrow minded bigot! I aim to please ;¬)
Harry.
I know that you were speaking in broad terms, and you do make interesting points. However we cannot ignore the more unhealthy aspects of the legacy of which you speak. I’m not so sure that you are ignoring it, more like making a case of saying we should take the good with the bad. For the record have you ever seen the newsreel footage of when civil rights protesters were going through neighbourhoods in the south of the US? The hatred coming from the ordinary folk was a sight to behold, the kind of hatred that I have witnessed from time to time, be it from personal experience or Holy Cross for example.
Posted by on Jul 02, 2007 @ 09:55 AM“As for your very original slur on Benedict 16th:
http://www.nobeliefs.com/luther.htm “What’s that supposed to prove eh? Luther was a fuckin taig anyway!
Posted by on Jul 02, 2007 @ 10:23 AM“Luther was a fuckin taig anyway!”
LOL :0)
Posted by on Jul 02, 2007 @ 11:00 AMWhite males from Birmingham, Alabama producing a documentary addressing tolerance? You couldn’t make this shit up.
Posted by on Jul 02, 2007 @ 11:05 AMI notice the boys ain’t holdin’ a British Union flag in the photo, but the stars and stripes of the American Republic instead. (Their ancestors more than likely helped in the booting out of the good King George and Co!) Will there be a day when we’ll see the loyal bowler hatted boys in the north carry a Tri-Colour flag? ‘NEVER’ I hear! like I’ve heard ‘NEVER’ many a time before!
A new flag for the possibility of a united Ireland or an all Ireland context? How about a plain old simple quadrant with the flags of the 4 provinces. Wouldn’t offend anyone and I’ve seen them around many a time. But is that ‘NEVER’ I hear again!
Posted by on Jul 02, 2007 @ 11:05 AMonce again i would like to ask the members how many non- roman Catholics are members of the Roman Catholic church?
As with any church or religious organisation its membership is exclusive. Evidence to the contrary would be most welcome.
Plus..... how many members of the AOH and the knights of St Columbanus are Protestant.
We must get over this terrible misnoma that because the Orange is Protestant (on many occasions with a small p granted)and recognise that once again we are just on the old bogey man hunt once again.
As for stating that the Roman church is oh so welcoming to those not associated with it then why are we all reered to as heritics? Wake up!
The Orange is the only organisation which does not discriminate on race unlike its AOH counterparts who insist that its members must be Irish or directly descended from Irish. Theres a great moral upstanding group of christian men for you.
Posted by on Jul 02, 2007 @ 11:10 AM
