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Mike Huckabee Wants to Tell You Something about the Negro

November 25, 2014

After days of tense anticipation, the residents of Ferguson, Missouri learned that a grand jury would not indict Officer Darren Wilson in the killing of unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown. But in advance of that announcement, former Baptist Minister and Arkansas Governor turned Fox News star and 2016 White House hopeful Mike Huckabee has poured gasoline on the fire of an already incendiary situation. The same Mike Huckabee who came to the defense of heavily armed militia members who threatened to kill federal officials to protect million-dollar tax cheat Cliven Bundy now compares the Ferguson protesters to the killers of civil rights hero Medgar Evers.
As the Governor explained in "The Right to Protest":

Some of the protesters in Ferguson, Missouri, remind me of historic figures. But not the ones they think... A grand jury in Ferguson will soon decide whether to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown. At this point, none of us knows their decision, or what happened that night. We appoint grand juries to uncover the truth, wherever it may lead. But that's not good enough for some of the protesters. Some are threatening violence if they don't get an indictment. I'm old enough to have seen this mob justice mindset before -- from lynch mobs who didn't like the legal process, so they took the law into their own hands. The real heroes of racial justice were peaceful protesters like the Rev. Martin Luther King. Today, every town has a street named after him. You don't see any monuments to Bull Connor or the killers of Medgar Evers. Look, everyone has the right to protest. But you don't have the right to become so inflamed that you embrace the very injustice you're protesting.

But Mike Huckabee was whistling a different tune when hundreds of gun-toting militia members threatened to kill Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officers who came to begin collecting over $1 million in unpaid grazing fees from Cliven Bundy. Huckabee stood by the man and his hundreds of well-armed supporters, people the FBI for at least 20 years has classified as "domestic terrorists."

"I'm not here to jump in on the middle of whether Cliven Bundy ought to pay the state or pay anybody for the chance for his cows to eat some grass. Here's what I would suggest: that there is something incredibly wrong when a government believes that some blades of grass that a cow is eating is so an egregious affront to the government of the United States that we would literally put a gun in a citizen's face and threaten to shoot him over it."

As you'll recall, Cliven Bundy enjoyed the support of much of the conservative establishment until he announced he wanted to "tell you one more thing I know about the Negro." Now, Mike Huckabee wants to add to Bundy's list. The secessionists and sovereign citizens who would kill to defend Cliven Bundy's right to food stamps for cows are freedom fighters. As for the tens of thousands of Americans in Ferguson and nationwide who simply want the fair and just administration of the law, Huckabee wants you to know, may be no different than the White Citizens' Councils and the Ku Klux Klan.


About

Jon Perr
Jon Perr is a technology marketing consultant and product strategist who writes about American politics and public policy.

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