Republican Duplicity in Arkansas

What will it take for my fellow Arkansans to stand up against betrayal after betrayal by our Republican officials? Governor Hutchinson has decided that he is an autocrat, unilaterally decreeing that we wear demonstrably worthless masks. Doubtless, he’ll try to make the “vaccine” mandatory too. Our Governor also took it upon himself to staff an again totally unnecessary “police reform committee” with “Black Lives Matter” black supremacists whose goal is the total abolition of our police. The Governor isn’t alone, though.

Representative French Hill, of our Second Congressional District, recently voted with the Democrats to whitewash — or should I say blackwash — the U.S. Capitol by removing all traces of Southern heroes, including statues of any man who served in the government or armed forces of the Confederate States of America. That’s not all: the bill that Representative Hill has voted for will also remove statues of John C. Calhoun and James Paul Clarke, a former U.S. Senator and Governor of our great State of Arkansas. 

Senators John Boozman and Tom Cotton just voted to pass the new National Defense Authorization Act and thereby strip the names of Confederate officers from military bases. Who are they going to name them after now? Al Sharpton, as President Trump jokingly suggested? Harriet Tubman? John Brown? Nat Turner? Denmark Vesey? Toussaint Louverture? The Marquis de Sade? To Senator Cotton’s credit, he did weaken this legislation from its initial form, though this is not the point. To put the icing on the cake, Arkansas Republicans led by the Governor and State Senator Jim Hendren are pushing through our first “hate crime” statute. “Hate crimes,” of course, are selectively-enforced weapons used to punish thoughtcrime. How can the State criminalize an emotion? Does “hate” make a crime worse, somehow? Of course not. 

On the second morning of September, construction crews removed the Confederate monument that has rested for 112 years at the heart of the town square in my home, Bentonville, in Northwest Arkansas. Through some positively sinister chicanery, “Black Lives Matter” financier Walmart and its personal County Judge, Republican Barry Moehring, forced the United Daughters of the Confederacy to remove the monument. The public was told, in a bald-faced lie, that this was the decision of the UDC. Our Republican officials promised us for years that no action would be taken on our monument without a vote.

All of this merely scratches the surface. By these actions, Arkansas Republicans are legitimating the lies that underpin the entire 1619 Revolution underway in our dying nation. They are tacitly endorsing the wanton destruction of our culture and our history. Why should we let them pretend any longer that they have our backs, that they give a lick about our Southern heritage, about our American heritage? We cannot afford to send any more treacherous, spineless cocktail “conservatives” to represent us. They don’t. They represent our dispossessors. It’s time that we remind them whose State they live in.