United States
There is an aristocratic tinge to the social usage of the title “colonel", which today designates the southern gentleman, and is archetypal of the southern aristocrat. States conferring this title as an honor include Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Alabama. In 2005 Illinois allowed for the Governor of the State to make appointments to the Governor's Regiment of Colonels, but no such appointments have been made. Many states have provisions in their articles or bills concerning state defense forces which allow the governor to grant honorary membership of the officer ranks. While the honorary colonel of this usage has no actual military role, the title did evolve from the military.
The highest honor of Tennessee is “Colonel, Aide de camp, Governor’s staff". Those who receive this award are recorded by the Secretary of State of Tennessee with those who have been commissioned into the State Guard and Tennessee National Guard. This distinction went to only American citizens or Tennessee residents until Governor Phil Bredesen awarded it to the first non American, a Canadian, Cory Ward Dingle of British Columbia for his contributions to the People of Tennessee.
Kentucky’s famous colonelcy evolved from the personal bodyguards of the governor and now confers its recipients as honorary members of the governor’s staff. Like Tennessee, Georgia’s honorary titles give its members a rank as Aides-de-camp to the Governor's staff and is codified in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated 38-2-111, while the Alabama honor specifically makes one a lieutenant colonel in the state militia.
The Colonel is also often a shorthand reference to Colonel Sanders, the founder of KFC, who was an honorary Kentucky colonel. Another famous "colonel" was "Colonel Tom Parker", the manager of Elvis Presley whose title was granted by Jimmie Davis, the governor of Louisiana.
Read more about this topic: Colonel (title)
Famous quotes related to united states:
“... the yearly expenses of the existing religious system ... exceed in these United States twenty millions of dollars. Twenty millions! For teaching what? Things unseen and causes unknown!... Twenty millions would more than suffice to make us wise; and alas! do they not more than suffice to make us foolish?”
—Frances Wright (1795–1852)
“I incline to think that the people will not now sustain the policy of upholding a State Government against a rival government, by the use of the forces of the United States. If this leads to the overthrow of the de jure government in a State, the de facto government must be recognized.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Fortunately, the time has long passed when people liked to regard the United States as some kind of melting pot, taking men and women from every part of the world and converting them into standardized, homogenized Americans. We are, I think, much more mature and wise today. Just as we welcome a world of diversity, so we glory in an America of diversity—an America all the richer for the many different and distinctive strands of which it is woven.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“An inquiry about the attitude towards the release of so-called political prisoners. I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“I feel most at home in the United States, not because it is intrinsically a more interesting country, but because no one really belongs there any more than I do. We are all there together in its wholly excellent vacuum.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)