Rep. Steve King (R-IA) at the Values Voters Summit:
Could you reverse engineer the United States of America and come up with a better result that what we have here? Could you go back through history and turn us in history in any way where our mortal wisdom could supersede the actual history that we’ve experienced as a country? I say not.
I believe that the bible was written with divine inspiration. I believe that the declaration was written with divine guidance. I believe that God moved the Founding Fathers around this country and the globe like men on a chess board.
Change something about American history . . . Change something about American history . . .
Oh! Oh! I know this one! I know this!
Let’s see, uh, it starts with an S . . . Something with an S . . . Sarsaparilla! No, that’s not it. Saskatchewan! Nope. Hmm, this is hard. I know it had to do with Africa. And cotton. And the South.
Rats. I give up. Steve King is right. There is nothing in American history that should be changed. We are just THAT awesome!
USA! USA! USA!
5 comments:
I don’t agree with King’s assessment, either, but I don’t think you’re playing the game right. You can’t just delete a particular bad episode in American history; that’s too easy. You need to specify a particular point in time where you’d make a change. Where exactly would you change the course of US history to get rid of slavery? Go back to the writing of the Constitution and insist that it prohibit slavery? It probably wouldn’t have been ratified in that case. When you play this way, it isn’t quite so easy.
So your theory is that King was asked the question and quickly thought, "Is the question positing a deterministic universe where history can't be changed or a flexible timeline where events can be altered but with ripples throughout the space-time continuum? If it's the latter, then the imbalance created by any change could rupture the universe. I'd better say "nothing".
Yeah, the correct answer was slavery. He would also have gotten points for saying "the genocide of the Indians."
I doubt King put that much thought into it. He probably thinks slavery was part of the divine plan. Besides, if the question were positing a deterministic universe, the question itself would be pointless.
Had King pointed out that such a question was pointless, I would have given him some credit.
Of course you're right, he probably thinks slavery was part of the divine plan, one of the most horrific tenets of religion in which any moral horror can be justified.
..."he probably thinks slavery was part of the divine plan..."
This posits the idea that he actually thinks.
My first thought, even before I got past his quotes was slavery, second was the wholesale genocide of native cultures, third was the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II. I could probably list another dozen without much thought.
The idea that this country or any country, or for that matter any group of people over a period of time has been essentially perfect is the kind of thing most of us give up by second grade.
Post a Comment