The next year, their annual convention was moved to Little Rock so that Huckabee could attend in person, but he pulled out at the last minute once the press found out that he'd be sharing the stage with a Nazi sympathizer. Read on...
Update: Christopher Hitchens, love him or hate him, has a brutal takedown of Huckabee on the race/confederacy issue in Slate. Juicy bits include:
So slack is our grasp of history and principle that we seem unable to think of the Confederacy as other than "offensive" to blacks. But there are two Republican candidates in this election—the absurd and sinister Ron Paul being the other—who choose this crucial moment in our time to exalt those who attempted to destroy the Union by force, and those who solicited the help of foreign powers in order to do so, and whose treason led to the violent deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Should their patriotism be questioned? I would say most definitely yes, and questioned repeatedly, at that, perhaps especially if they are seeking the nomination of the party of Lincoln.
3 comments:
Well, at least Huck doesn't want a theocracy. Oh, um, wait a second.
Wow, that was quite the takedown by Hitchens.
Funny that it takes a European to explain to us why we should be outraged about crass manipulation of our own sad history.
I've always had a thing for the foreign born writer who has spent enough time in the US to understand it with enough clarity to make such distinctions without sounding like an outsider.
Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan are easily two of my favorite essayists for this reason. Those of us brought up in America can be too sensitive or reverential towards certain traditions. For me, a professed admiration of the Confederacy is an absolute deal-breaker for a Presidential candidate. It cuts both ways, too. I wouldn't vote for Jim Webb, either.
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