Like Dr. Faustus, Nikki Haley is a horrible person more to be despised than imitated.
She is a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. Last Wednesday, Haley was asked a simple question that even elementary school students should know: “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?”
Haley’s rambling, incoherent response betrayed stupendous ignorance and opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act like 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater. Her response also exhibited sub-amateurish command of the English language akin to Donald Trump’s illiteracy:
“…I mean, 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.”
That would be news to white supremacist, Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, who elaborated, “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
Has Haley also not read or remembered the electrifying Gettysburg Address?: “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.”
Haley adds, “[Government] don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life…We need to make sure that we do all things so so that individuals have the liberties—so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way.”
Did she forget that she is against the freedom of individual women in consultation with their physicians to choose an abortion?
Did she forget that the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 curbs the freedom of employers or owners of public accommodations to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation? Is she in favor of employers advertising that blacks or Irish or gays or women need not apply?
Does she rejoice at the “freedom” of black persons to reside in a city in which no market will sell them food and no doctor will offer them medical care and no realtor will sell or rent them housing?
Haley’s views are Social Darwinism on steroids: the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must, and government be damned! President Abraham Lincoln, in contrast, argued that the leading object of government was “to elevate the condition of men -- to lift artificial weights from all shoulders -- to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all -- to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.”
Women like Haley received the right to vote by government action—the Women’s Suffrage Amendment—not from the beneficence of men. As Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John, “all men would be tyrants if they could.”
Haley had an opportunity to repair her stupidity and callousness Thursday. If she had character and humility, she would have said something like this: “I made a terrible error last evening by refusing to acknowledge that slavery provoked the Civil War. Among other things, the Confederacy, professedly dedicated to state’s rights, prohibited any state from emancipating its slaves. I confess. I evaded acknowledging the truth to attract votes from white supremacists like Alexander Stephens. It was cowardly, and I failed the test of character. To err is human. To acknowledge error is divine. I ask forgiveness from the millions of blacks in the United States who suffered and died under the cruel, vicious yolk of slavery and from brave Union soldiers—black and white—who set standards of gallantry and enlightenment to which the wise and honest may repair.”
Instead, Haley insincerely maintained, “Of course, the Civil War was about slavery,” as if she had received an overnight epiphany like Paul on the way to Damascus.
Nikki Haley, drop out of the presidential race immediately and inform and reform thyself. It will keep you fully employed.
“Stupendous ignorance” is practically a requirement for POTUS.