And in doing so, he conveniently ignores Arkansas history.
Many of you will probably recall this story from just a couple of days ago:
Republican Mike Huckabee said the government should stay out of disputes over the Confederate flag in South Carolina.
"You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag," Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, told supporters Thursday in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
"In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole, that's what we'd do," Huckabee said.
Or as Eternal Hope put it the other day, "Go shove it up your ass."
Now, the Republican flag fetish notwithstanding, I think it's safe to say this isn't just about the flag. No, this is about Huckabee's deeply held belief that the federal government has no business interfering in states' racist practices, the Constitution and the law be damned. One need only listen to some recent ads to know that (hat tip to TPM):
But the federal government has a long history of interfering when state governments are openly racist. Indeed, one of the most important battles in the fight for civil rights was fought in Arkansas, where the federal government interfered with the state's "right" to be racist and discriminate against people on the basis of skin color.
I'm referring, of course, to the story of the Little Rock Nine. In 1957, these heroes -- Ernest Green, Thelma Mothershed, Elizabeth Eckford, Terrance Roberts, Carlotta Walls, Gloria Ray, Jefferson Thomas, Melba Pattillo, and Minnijean Brown -- enrolled in Little Rock Central High School, until then a whites-only institution, in pursuit of the superior educational opportunities offered at that school.
In response, then-Gov. Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the desegregation of Central High. And when a judge ruled that Gov. Faubus was acting illegally, the Little Rock Police Department replaced the guardsmen in blocking integration.
But on September 24, 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard, sent 1,000 troops from the 101 Airborne Division to Little Rock, and forcibly integrated the school. The next day, the nine aforementioned heroes were escorted by soldiers to their classes.
That wasn't the end of it, of course. There were legal battles, attempts to close all public schools, new legislation banning integration in the state of Arkansas, and a public referendum in which voters rejected integration by a ratio of roughly seventeen-to-one.
Ultimately, it wasn't until 1972 that Little Rock's schools were fully integrated.
Had the federal government not interfered in Arkansas' internal affairs, Arkansas may still not be desgregated today. Had the federal government not told Arkansas what to do, a few hundred thousand Americans civil rights would have continued to be denied in their entirety. Even with the federal government's intervention, some of their rights were still abrogated.
Is this the sort of interference for which Huckabee would tell us what to do with the pole?
Granted, a flag isn't the same thing as turning a high pressure firehose on a group of people with the audacity to demand the right to the same education white people get as a matter of course. But again, as the Republicans so frequently remind us with their flag fetish, a flag symbolizes certain ideals, and the Confederate flag is no exception.
The Confederate flag represents Orval Faubus.
The Confederate flag represents segregation.
The Confederate flag represents the abrogation of civil rights for a class of citizens on the basis of skin color and nothing more.
The Confederate flag represents racism.
The Confederate flag represents hatred.
The Confederate flag represents bigotry.
The Confederate flag represents slavery.
In short, the Confederate flag represents the worst qualities our country has ever had to offer the world.
And so Ron Paul, who gladly takes campaign contributions from neo-Nazis and Klan members, clearly now has some stiff competition for the racist vote in the 2008 elections. To paraphrase one of my late Bubbe's favorite Yiddish curses, may they both grow like onions -- their heads are already in the ground.
