Nikki Haley Didn't Vet MLK Day Very Well

S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley is receiving criticism over the company she’s keeping at a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day event.

Haley is celebrating MLK Day at a S.C. Republican Party luncheon in Myrtle Beach, S.C. – site of Monday night’s Republican presidential debate. Also appearing at the luncheon? David Barton, a Texas evangelical historian and GOP activist who two years ago tried to remove King from textbooks in the Lone Star State and “not given credit for advancing the rights of minorities.”

Ruh-roh …

Seriously, governor? Who vets these things?

A favorite of Mike Huckabee, Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann, Barton believes that black leaders weren’t responsible for advancing civil rights because they held no power – meaning that their successes were dependent exclusively on the benevolence of white leaders.

“Only majorities can expand political rights in America’s constitutional society,” Barton wrote in 2009.

Any statement to the contrary he called an “absolutely false premise.”

“In every case where a constitutional protection has been established for a minority, whether of race, gender, social status or age, each protection was extended by the consent of the majority of eligible voters at that time,” Barton wrote.

Technically, he’s correct – although to argue that the work of civil rights leaders like King did not play a primary role in obtaining that “majority consent” is ludicrous. Also, as we noted on a recent MLK Day, “you can say whatever you want about King’s life, but his enduring legacy is that of a man who fought on behalf of the expansion of individual liberties.”

Wait … but wasn’t King supposed to be a communist? And a moral degenerate?

We don’t know … wasn’t J. Edgar Hoover (the former FBI director who made those allegations) supposed a homosexual cross-dresser?

Whatever the case, there’s no denying one thing: The gains King achieved on behalf of blacks in South Carolina continue to be squandered by the current, corrupt crop of African-American leaders – the vast majority of whom are shameless sellouts in search of the next taxpayer-funded pay day.

And then there’s the NAACP … an organization which exists almost exclusively to perpetuate the political careers of poverty pimps like Jim Clyburn.

Meanwhile who keeps getting screwed? Black children … by the tens of thousands.

“Your NAACP says it is for equality, yet it actively endorses and perpetuates a separate and unequal education system that is falling further behind the rest of the county in all categories for all students – but falling furthest behind for black children,” our founding editor wrote to an NAACP leader recently. “Your NAACP says it is for justice, but the sad, unavoidable truth is that all it really wants to do is keep black people poor, dumb, out-of-work and totally beholden to the government – just as it has kept them for decades.”

Having said all of that, though … Haley really does need to have her head examined for scheduling a luncheon on MLK Day with a guy who tried to take MLK out of the history books.

It’s just the latest example of her administration not being ready for prime time …