The South may not rise again, but one of its governors is defending Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s recent proclamation for Confederate History Month.
Mississippi’s Haley Barbour said he doesn’t think the proclamation was a mistake, the Associated Press reported. McDonnell was criticized for not including any reference to slavery in the decree, and he later amended it to call slavery “evil and inhumane.”
Barbour thinks that language was unnecessary, claiming critics are making a fuss over something that “doesn’t amount to diddly.”
“I don’t really see what to say about slavery,” he told CNN. “But anybody that thinks that you have to explain to some people that slavery is a bad thing, I think that goes without saying.”
Barbour issued a similar proclamation to McDonnell’s in Mississippi last year. Republicans and Democrats have maintained the state’s Confederate Memorial Day. Mississippi also honors Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Confederate general Robert E. Lee on the same day in January.
