Nikki Haley isn’t stupid
JANUARY 1, 2024
She knows that slavery was the primary cause of the U.S. Civil War.
She just thinks that many people who vote in Republican presidential primaries either are ignorant regarding basic facts of American history or would prefer to pretend Americans never enslaved other human beings. And she wants their votes.
That is why she failed so miserably the other day on what, not so long ago, would have been a gimme question on an elementary school history quiz.
At a town hall in Berlin, New Hampshire, an attendee asked Haley what caused the Civil War.
Haley’s response was maybe one cut above gibberish.
“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,†she said.
“I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are. And I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life.â€
So, the Civil War was about giving birth to a libertarian political party?
What toxic nonsense.
The truth is that, in the Civil War, it was the South that relied on the power of government to strip Black Americans of every liberty. The rebels who claimed to fight for freedom fought for the “freedom†to enslave other human beings.
This twisting of both history and logic has tragic consequences that linger today.
The white nationalists and other bigots former President Donald Trump tied to the Republican Party—the party of Lincoln—take it as an article of faith that they’re being oppressed if they are denied the opportunity to oppress other human beings.
If Haley’s difficult campaign to slide past Trump for the GOP presidential nomination is to succeed, she needs at least some of those MAGA votes to move her way. That’s why she was willing to sound like an idiot who never had cracked a book not written in crayon.
At least for a moment.
The backlash to her comments was so immediate and so fierce from both Democrats and Republicans that she quickly backtracked. At campaign events and during a radio interview, she acknowledged that slavery was the cause of the conflict that ended the lives of one out of every four American males between the ages of 15 and 45 over four years.
Not that Haley’s retreat did much to quell the furor.
One of her rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, called her response to the initial question “word salad.â€
Maybe he meant it as a compliment.
DeSantis delivered his own historical head-scratcher not long ago. He said slavery benefited the people who were enslaved because the work helped them develop necessary job skills.
That’s right.
A guy who aspires to lead the party of the Great Emancipator tried to get people to believe human slavery really was an early vocational training program.
It would be one thing if Haley and DeSantis were morons who didn’t know any better.
But they’re not.
Haley is a graduate of Clemson University. DeSantis did his undergraduate work at Yale and then studied law at Harvard.
Doubtless, those distinguished institutions didn’t teach U.S. history as if it were the stuff of fantasy.
No, these two ambitious politicians utter complete rubbish as a political calculation. They know such balderdash conforms with the prejudices of many voters—and they would rather confirm those prejudices than educate the people who hold them.
That’s politics.
But it isn’t leadership.
Leadership seeks to prod people to confront difficult realities. For that reason, great leaders do not run or hide from the truth.
The fact is that this country’s history with race is a tortured one. All too often, we Americans have failed to uphold the principles that we consider most sacred—starting with the notion that all human beings are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
We cannot make our peace with either past or present until we face that reality.
And it doesn’t seem like Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis want to help with that.
FOOTNOTE: Â John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College.
Speaking of word salad. 99.9% of Krull’s gibberish is a buffet of misdirection, intentional misinterpretation, and outright lies to try to change the truth. Anyone who believes the Civil War was only based on the desire to end slavery might need to catch up on their history. Although that desire was the major drive, there was much more dividing the North and South, mainly political.
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Victory for Russia’s post here is ridiculous and preposterous.
The Civil War was fought over the issue of Slavery.
The Confederates attacked the United States of America, to protect their right to own people as property: So they could treat them like Cattle, to be killed if they wanted to kill them, to sell those people in the Market like they were animals and property.
Victory for Russia is willfully ignorant.
We know EXACTLY who we are reading when Victory for Russia posts here.
Through you’re revisionist history, you’ve lowered yourself to an even lower level of Trump-phobia and hate. So following the candidate who desegregated institutions he bought and given numerous miniorities starts in their careers are makes his followers all white nationilst? Quit it you hater.
If you read the Confederate Constitution, then you will learn that while it follow the Democrat party’s idea that black were 2/5 human, the real conflict was the federal government over arching authority of states. (Actually the Democrat party still believes that blacks are only 2/5 capable of thriving on their own.)
While slavery was certainly the catalyst for the war, the question of state soveregnty was the the cause. Lincoln’s Horace Greely letter is indicative that the objective was preserving the union over the question of slavery. ” My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.” The Emancipation Proclamation came near the end of the war not the begining.
So sorry that history is not more funner than your creative writing. Go kick a Confiderative statue. That will make you feel moe relavent. But then if you didn’t baptize yourself in your factual ignorace you wouldn’t be able to exceicise your ignorance to hate on others and feel holy doing so.
Ding! Ding! Ding!……..and THERE it is! Look man. Nothing you are writing here is convincing anyone here of the fact that Confederates were fighting for anything other than they were PRO-SLAVERY…your writing is failing to hide it! Why not just be honest here: Just cop to something that you know you want to say: That you are a Rebel Flag Flying Racist.
(…….it is unfathomable to me, that in a time when the Mayor of Evansville is an African-American, that there are people in Evansville who still believe that the Confederates were somehow innocent…when the fact is these losers believed that African-Americans should be – and if they had not been beaten still would be – personal property/slaves! Good God. It’s sickening.)
You support the party who enslaved blacks, denied them civil liberties, and even now make them wards of the state.
Repent if your racism
Accusing me of racism does not absolve you of your bigotry. I assure you that you still hold the Democrat vies that blacks are only 2/5 human. That’s why you think they can not excel without affirmative action.
I think no more about our mayor’s skin color than I would one’s hair color. It is you who is fixated on her skin rather than her actions, which I have found to be good
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