It's starting to look as though the most troubling aspect of the recently revealed views of Arkansas state Rep. Jon Hubbard on slavery (he wrote in a 2012 book that the institution "may have been a blessing," the Arkansas Times reported last week) could be that they don't make him unique in his state's Republican Party.
Loy Mauch, another Republican member of the state's House of Representatives, wrote several letters to the editor of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette defending slavery while attacking Abraham Lincoln and Karl Marx, the Arkansas Times reports. In one of several letters on similar topics, Mauch wrote in January 2009:
If slavery were so God-awful, why didn't Jesus or Paul condemn it, why was it in the Constitution and why wasn't there a war before 1861?
This was clearly not a passing thought, but rather a question that had been on his mind since February 2003, when he wrote this:
Nowhere in the Holy Bible have I found a word of condemnation for the operation of slavery, Old or New Testament. If slavery was so bad, why didn't Jesus, Paul or the prophets say something?
This country already lionizes Wehrmacht leaders. They go by the names of Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Custer, etc. These Marxists not only destroyed the Constitution they were sworn to uphold, but apostatized the word of God. Either these depraved infidels or the Constitution and Scriptures are in error. I'm more persuaded by the word of God.
And there's much more where that came from.
The statements aren't inconsistent with what's already known about Mauch. In 2010 it was reported that he was a member of the Sons of Confederates Veterans and the League of the South, which has been described as a "neo-Confederacy" group advocating for a second Southern secession, the Huffington Post reports.
The Arkansas Republican Party has announced that it will no longer provide financial backing to Hubbard, Mauch or House candidate Charlie Fuqua, who advocated the deportation of all Muslims in a 2011 self-published book.
Read more at the Arkansas Times and the Huffington Post.