You know that things have reached a desperate pass when you see a Pilgrim-descended, hard core Yankee like backbaybaygrouch (BBG) and a Jamestown-descended Rebel fanatic from the Bible Belt like me in the same foxhole covering each others’ backs.

In Europe they consider this North-South thing a bit of a joke, compared to the national hatreds of France, Germany, and Poland, for example. But for those of us who live in our OWN national history, this is a big thing.

While we ask Europe to bury its national hatreds and work for our race’s survival, we are DOING it.

I used to tell Scots that they could call me a “Yank” if I could call them Englishmen. But they really don’t GET the comparison. It never occurs to them that calling a Southerners a Yank is just plain provincialism.

Another lesson BBG can demonstrate is how MANY ancestors a long-term American has. A European would be confused when a descendant of the Pilgrim’s is also a hard-core Catholic. This did not surprise me at all.

There is the impression, carefully cultured in the press, that all Americans are recent immigrants. But the Pilgrim was among a THOUSAND of BBG’s ancestors when you go back to 1620, and my Jamestown forebear was one of a thousand Americans who became my ancestors.

The Puritans lost all trace of their hard religious roots, so I assume that BBG’s later determined Catholic fathers and mothers formed so that he did not drift off into the rootless generality that caused the Pilgrim descendants to die off.

But the point is not BBG or me. The point is REAL American history. Whites didn’t really turn on each other until we had taken the entire country all the way to the Pacific in a joint effort. None of those people considered themselves immigrants.

They were conquerors.

And they were PROUD of it!

Even after the shock and hatred of the Civil War, no one took this “nation of immigrants” bullshit seriously. History books simply erased Jamestown from the books and declared that our America was first settled at Plymouth Rock in 1620.

Only since World War II has this “nation of immigrants” nonsense been enforced. Whenever we are shown pictures of the real America, we see photographs of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

What is particularly bad about this is the pure rude INGRATITUDE of it. O’Reilly brags that HIS ancestors never took part in taking land from the Indians or slaveholding.

The reason Bill’s ancestors were so pure is because the earlier white Americans had taken and made safe an area of three million square miles, and all O’Reilly’s ancestors had to do was take a boat over here.

Yes, the poor babies DID run into anti-Irish sentiment here. But they did NOT run into hostile Indians.

I read New York Jews talking about the awful third-class places on the ships THEIR ancestors had to take. What they NEVER mention is the Mayflower, which ran out of FOOD and had to land and which, like the ships Jamestowners came over on, took cat-sized rats on board and drinking water that was thick with slime , and rationed, as a matter of course.

I don’t know about BBG, but I find it personally insulting when an O’Reilly joins in the condemnation of my ancestors.