Here is a depiction of William Barber as a guest on the Bill Maher show broadcast on Saturday… and yes this is what he really said to Maher (this image came from the NAACP facebook page — we can only presume Barber is proud of this).
Then there was the following interchange between Maher and Barber after Barber had identified the Republican leaders in NC as extreme and immoral and Maher called them the "bad guys" who hijacked the state.
Maher: "They seem to work backwards from "who doesn't vote for? hmm, Let's see how we can f*** with them?"
Barber: "Well (amid laughter and applause) "Well that's all right, that's all right, that's why I'm here." Then Barber gave Maher a high five.
Barber was busy last week, he also spoke the Netroots Nation Conference and according to sources, spoke to a half-empty room. Nevertheless, his message of social justice resonated with the audience.
Barber's take on North Carolina history is always interesting, to say the least. As he began his speech at the conference in Detroit, he talked about the Redemption Movement in the 1800's and feigned a word slip when he called movement the Tea Party instead of the Redemption Movement. The audience loved it. Of course, Barber couldn't be farther off the mark with this story. The truth is, the Redemption Movement was fueled by the Democratic Party and its attempts to return the South to its pre-war class system is well documented, first in 1877 and the second time in 1898. The latter was also called The Democratic White Supremacy Campaign. Barber would have us believe that Democrats of the White Supremacy Campaign were conservatives, but its leaders and members were mostly known Progressives.
Here are a couple more gems that I must share from Barber's speech at Netroots:
Barber takes us all the way out into left field with this one;
"Our deepest moral traditions declare that the true challenge society is not private charity but public policy that impacts how people exist everyday of our lives."
Our deepest moral traditions? Evidently Barber relies on this idea in his ongoing chase for more and more money in the form of state and federal government grants to fuel his non-profit based in Goldsboro, NC and numerous other ultra-liberal non-profit organizations based throughout NC.
Barber said his go-to Bible is called the Poverty and Justice Bible and I'm assuming this is where he finds this translation of Matthew 25:36.
"When I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was naked did you clothe me? When I was sick did you give me health insurance? That's in the book!"
One thing is for certain, Barber makes it clear in his speeches that he has replaced the word justice with the words "social justice" in both the U.S. Constitution and the Bible. We can only speculate as to whether the framers of the Constitution would laugh or cry if they heard Barber's interpretation of the Constitution and I don't believe there is mention of "social justice" in the Bible.
Dr. Mark Creech, Executive Director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina, Inc. explains social justice this way:
"Teachings of social justice catch the Spirit of Jesus in that they are trying to help the underprivileged, the helpless, and the needy. Nevertheless, it (social justice) is none other than a form of government coercion that takes money from one group to give to another — in this case supposedly the impoverished. But such is really no more than a violation of one's rights to private property based on the eighth command of God not to steal."
Barber claims in his speeches that he and the people who agree with him are moral and the people who disagree with him are immoral, extremists and bigots. After listening to more than an hour of his speech in Detroit, it is obvious to me who the real extremist is – and it's not the conservatives he constantly attacks. We can be sure that it never occurs to Mr. Barber to apply his teachings to himself, because near the end of his speech, he said;
"The worst thing you can do as an activist is to be loud and wrong." Here's the video - just in case you want to come to your own conclusions as to who is wrong.
