Arkansas Republicans Scramble to Disown Elected Pro-Confederate Colleagues Who Praise Slavery, Genocide

The good ol’ days in Arkansas, according to some members of its current legislature

Members of the Republican Party in Arkansas began speaking out this week to attempt to distance themselves from three Republican elected officials who have been outed—in some cases have long ago outed themselves—as proponents of, variously, slavery, genocide, religious pogroms, and the summary execution of naughty children.

Rep. Jon Hubbard

Rep. Jon Hubbard, a state legislator, wrote in a 2009 book, Letters to the Editor: Confessions of a Frustrated Conservative, that Southern slavery “may actually have been a blessing in disguise” because “the blacks who could endure those conditions” (you know, the ones that people like Hubbard’s ancestors didn’t whip to death) “would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth.”  He also blamed African-Americans for bringing down educational standards with their “lack of discipline and ambition” and said that “planned wars or extermination” as a policy response to immigration “now ... seems to be barbaric and uncivilized” but “will at some point become as necessary as eating and breathing.”

Rep. Loy Mauch

Another Arkansas state representative, Rep. Loy Mauch, wrote in 2009, “If slavery were so God-awful, why didn’t Jesus or Paul condemn it, why was it in the Constitution, and why wasn’t there a war before 1861?”  Mauch, a member of the League of the South, a Southern separatist group classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center (S.P.L.C.) as a racist hate-group, has also called the Confederate flag “a symbol of Christian liberty vs. the new world order,” and he once delivered a keynote address titled, “Homage to John Wilkes Booth,” referring to Abraham Lincoln’s assassin.

A League of the South rally in South Carolina

Lastly, a former legislator running for Arkansas office again, Charlie Fuqua, published a book this year, titled God’s Law, in which he argues that there is “no solution to the Muslim problem short of expelling all followers of the religion from the United States.”  Fuqua, a recipient of the Arkansas Christian Coalition’s “Friend of the Family” award, also quotes scripture to the effect that parents have the right to kill their children in order to set a disciplinary example for other children.

Most Arkansas Republican politicians, in replies to nosy Yankee journalists over the past week, have been pretending that they didn’t know that their colleagues, whom they had supported numerous times in the past, including financially, had such views—although Hubbard’s book came out in 2009, for crying out loud, and the other men’s views were also well known long before being brought to light this week.

Fuqua told reporters on October 6th, “I think my views are fairly well-accepted by most people.”  Given that it’s Arkansas, he’s probably right.

[Also, for those who are wondering, yes, this blog is tied in with a forthcoming book, a sort of encyclopedic atlas to be published by Auslander and Fox under the title Let’s Split! A Complete Guide to Separatist Movements, Independence Struggles, Breakaway Republics, Rebel Provinces, Pseudostates, Puppet States, Tribal Fiefdoms, Micronations, and Do-It-Yourself Countries, from Chiapas to Chechnya and Tibet to Texas.  Look for it in spring 2013.  I will be keeping readers posted of further publication news.]