Believe it or not, the NRA is about to get a whole lot crazier

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Wait, is that even possible? Yes, apparently so (sorry for the long blockquote, but you need to know just what the NRA is all about):

Just in time for its wingnut-filled annual meeting tomorrow, the National Rifle Association is set to install a new president: an Alabama lawyer who laments "the war of Northern Aggression," calls Barack Obama "this fake president," and fantasizes about "whipping" opponents of the gun lobby's agenda.

Jim Porter of Birmingham, a longtime board member whose daddy's name graces an NRA championship shooting trophy,... laid those views out last summer in a videotaped address... to rod-and-gun enthusiasts in Ulster County, New York. While speaking to residents of that rural upstate region, which saw significant losses in life and wealth fighting for the Union cause in the Civil War, Porter took an unconventional tack. The NRA, he said in a barbecue-licked Dixie lilt,

...was started 1871 right here in New York state. It was started by some Yankee generals who didn’t like the way my Southern boys had the ability to shoot in what we call the 'War of Northern Aggression.' Now, y'all might call it the Civil War, but we call it the 'War of Northern Aggression' down south.

That was apropos of the NRA's original purpose, Porter said: to train civilians to use military-style weapons so that "when they're ready to fight tyranny, they're ready to do it. Also, when they're ready to fight tyranny, they have the wherewithal and the weapons to do it."

Apparently, the time to fight tyranny is now. "The NRA, I can assure you, is dug in," he said. "And I can assure you, we're whipping their ass. Everywhere we can go. Right, left, up and down."

Porter never specified who "they" were in his applause line, but he later ranted against Obama, "this fake president," whose "entire administration is anti-gun, anti-freedom, anti-Second Amendment." He reserved special ire for Attorney General Eric Holder, whom he called "rabidly anti-gun, rabidly un-American, involved in trying to kill the Second Amendment at the United Nations."

The speech wasn't a fluke for Porter. At the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference, he told an NRA interviewer of the need to rally "warriors for freedom" against Obama's push not merely for gun control, but for an all-encompassing "European socialistic bureaucratic type of government."

An anti-government, anti-Obama (racist, xenophobic, you name it) neo-Confederate with serious paranoid delusions... and an anti-Amerian traitor with clear criminal intentions.

Yes, he's right at home in the NRA.

GOP/KKK

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) really, really, really supports the Iraq War. And in really, really, really supporting the war (and the troops) on the floor of the House, he quoted, of all people, one Nathan Bedford Forrest, a "successful Confederate general".

Forrest was indeed a Confederate general, and quite a celebrated one, a "wizard of the saddle" (according to this bio), but what Poe neglected to mention was that Forrest was also a slave trader, a war criminal (see Fort Pillow Massacre), and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. For more on the real Forrest, rather than the one held in high regard by modern-day sympathizers and apologists, see this report by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Think Progress has the video/transcript of Poe's remarks.

Eugene Volokh is right that Poe was quoting Forrest's "famous military advice". And he is also right that many highly quotable historical figures, such as Napoleon and Mao, Luther and Stalin, did or said or believed horrible things. And Ed Morrissey also makes good points about "glass houses".

All of which is to say: This is, in my view, much ado about not very much.

It was insensitive and perhaps stupid of Poe to quote Forrest, but he was not, in quoting him, endorsing his racism or the Klan. If anything, he was just exposing his own ignorance for public view.

Furthermore, this episode hardly proves that the Republican Party is racist.

Still, it was my good friend Steve Benen who started what has become a blogospheric maelstrom, linking to the original piece in Roll Call and providing the initial commentary. I must disagree with his assertion that this should "be a bigger deal," that it is all "rather scandalous". I must also therefore disagree with another friend, Melissa McEwan, who agrees with Steve. However, Steve and Melissa are quite right to mention the Republican Party's "race problems," with Melissa reminding us of the specific problems of the GOP's recent past. This is precisely why I found Poe's remarks insensitive and perhaps stupid, if not nearly as meaningful as Steve and Melissa found them.

This episode is getting quite a bit of attention at the moment, but what I take from it is that some politicians are amazingly ignorant and that Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest was a truly reprehensible man. That's about it.

Genuine bigotry is to be found elsewhere.