NWmichigan wrote:
This is what he said on his facebook page 24 hours ago:
Quote:
A church is called a sanctuary because it's a place of refuge and respite from the earthly and connects us to the heavenly. The Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. became a scene of unspeakable carnage because an evil person violated the sanctuary where earth and heaven meet and turned it into a place where earth and hell meet. No civilized person can react except with revulsion to such a senseless, cowardly, and despicable act. And for it to happen in one of America's truly great and gentile cities adds to the horror. All Americans join in the condemnation of this act, but for Christians, such horror is especially painful because a holy place for peace and prayer has been infected and desecrated by demonic violence. The prayers that were interrupted by a mass murderer will be continued by a grieving nation.
I don't think the racial motivation of the act was clear then?
So, here are the facts as we know them so far:
1) The suspect made a statement to his victims just prior to the shooting of all but one of them that he was wanted to kill black people. He told the woman whom he did not shoot, who is one of the witnesses, that he was leaving her alive so that she could tell others to his words and motivation.
2) South Carolina Law Enforcement immediately categorized this mass murder as a probable hate crime.
3) The suspect's roommate said that he had been planning this atrocity for at least six months and that his intent was to start a race war.
4) The suspect has some documented association with white supremacist culture (patches for the flags of Rhodesia and apartheid-area South Africa).
5) The shooter actually referenced the Trayvon Martin killing when talking with his roommate about his desire to ignite a racial conflict.
All evidence points to the fact that this was a racially motivated mass murder (including the murder of an 87 year-old woman). There is no evidence that seems to point to another possibility.
But that's not even the point. The larger point is that our country has been facing a continual parade of ugly stories over the past few years in particular which have been intensifying the racial divide in a way that is extremely unhealthy for the state of our nation. We've had a number of high profile incidents in which young black men have been shot while unarmed and the predictable divide in which many blacks believe that it was unjustified and many whites believe that it was. We had a brief episode with the so-called "knockout" game in which black youth, especially in a few cities, have attacked whites as part of some sick "game." We've had issue after issue and the predictable fallout from each of them in which many people of different ethnic groups have had their hearts hardened, resentment overflowing, saying and doing things that exhibit levels of ugliness that are surprising. What I'm saying is that America has a problem. America needs racial healing.
When America has a problem, politicians who are able to identify the problem and come up with solutions tend to do very well. When America's problem was that our military and prestige were in terrible shape, Reagan identified that problem, latched on to it, and both annunciated and implemented actions to fix the problem. When America's problem was that we had just experienced the vulnerability of being attacked by terrorists, President Bush announced and took actions to increase our vigilance against terrorists and made it clear to the nation that our new national problem had top-level attention from the White House. The list goes on and on. But when America has a problem, politicians who actually have answers to the problems rise to the occasion when they step forward, identify America's pain point and then show that they have an understanding of the problem as well as a plan to fix it.
I have absolutely no doubt that Mike Huckabee understands better than most politicians today the complexity, the pain and the history of America's racial divisions. He is a guy who I have always admired because of his willingness to reach out to and include everybody and I continue to admire him in this way. He can speak with authority about being a son of the South, being a conservative and yet understanding the viewpoints of people from different places, different ancestries and the like. He definitely understands more about how to solve this crisis that America is facing more than most who are in national politics. And he also has a track record for being accepted by a wider range of voters than most politicians.
But as it is obvious to many people that our country has a problem that we thought we were past, not just a problem of individual instances of bad things happening but a problem with people's hearts (hatred and resentment in all directions) in addition to a widely perceived problem in which people of different races experience different treatment in terms of 4th Amendment rights and freedom from unwarranted harassment. It's a divide that keeps raising itself every month in the form of a different crisis. And it's not just a matter of, as some suggest, Democrats trying to "play the race card" or stir up agitation. There is real pain and, under the surface of a country that has come a long way since the 1960's, a lot of resentment and some real unresolved issues. Surveys indicate that most Americans believe that this country is more racially divided than it was previously.
And so here comes a once in lifetime opportunity for Mike Huckabee. America has a problem. Mike Huckabee has spent enough time building relationships with people of all ethnicities that he actually knows big parts of the solution. The missing link: I haven't heard him talk about any of this in a long time and our country really needs leadership that will step in and speak healing, and not more division, at this moment in time. Mike knows how to do this and is capable of doing this. Mike just needs to figure out a way to use his excellent oratorical skills and common sense in order to tell America that he recognizes the problem, that he understands the pain and the divide and that he knows how to bring us together. And then he needs to do it. This is the wrong time to not speak out on this issue of racial healing. Especially for the very few in politics who have experience in helping to manifest it.