Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
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Iowa Rep. Steve King said he opposed a bill designed to honor the African American slaves who built the U.S. Capitol because it was used as a “bargaining chip” to allow the depiction of “In God We Trust” in the Capitol Visitor’s Center.
King released a statement to the Washington, D.C.,-based news site Politico describing the reason he was the lone dissenting vote in the U.S. House on the measure, which also called for the placement of a marker paying tribute slaves who worked to build the Capitol. He said a deal was struck that called for votes in support of honoring slaves in order to get votes on a resolution directing the Architect of the Capitol to engrave the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” in conspicuous places in the three-story underground visitor center.
This is just the latest example of a several year effort by liberals in Congress to scrub references to America’s Christian heritage from our nation’s Capitol. Liberals want to amend our country’s history to eradicate the role of Christianity in America and chisel references to God or faith from our historical buildings.
Our Judeo-Christian heritage is an essential foundation stone of our great nation and should not be held hostage to yet another effort to place guilt on future Americans for the sins of some of their ancestors. Christian abolitionists gave their lives by the hundreds of thousands to end slavery. Great American leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. worshiped God just as our Founding Fathers did. We must never forget this important aspect of our heritage or use it as a political bargaining chip.
In an interview with Radio Iowa’s O.Kay Henderson, King expanded on on his statement.
So why was King the only no vote?
“I think it’s simply many of them thought, ‘I don’t want to die on that hill. It’s not worth fighting over,’” King replied. “…It was a deal and I mean, I sat there and looked at that (voting) board for quite a while last night and I thought this through and I knew I was going to be the only one and I thought: ‘I just can’t. I just cannot simply go along with this and let them do what they’re doing to our history.’ This doesn’t have anything to do with slavery to speak of, really. It has to do with them trying to amend our history, after the fact, and at some point somebody had to draw the line and no one else had the will to do it when the issue was slavery.”
This isn’t King’s first controversial vote regarding slavery. In August, King called a bill apologizing for slavery “White Americans wallowing in guilt.”
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