Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, said that local governments should be allowed to make the final decisions on whether to keep Confederate monuments.
"I would trust the people who live in a community to make the decision for themselves whether a particular statue or monument is offensive. And if it is, then they should take it down, but if the people in that community don't think so, then they should leave it," the Republican former governor said.
Huckabee rejected protesters tearing down the statues that they take issue with.
"What we can't do, Bill, is have anarchists go and tear down the statues because they're impatient with having politicians doing it. That's not acceptable behavior. It's vandalism," Huckabee said Thursday to Fox News host Bill Hemmer on Fox News' "America's Newsroom."
The former governor pointed to the possible historical significance of monuments.
"I'm not married to monuments . . . but the monuments are a point to help us understand history. Some of it isn't that pretty and that pleasant. Some of it we need to look back and say, boy, that was a hideous time in our world and in our country," he said.
"Just to say we're going to tear down everything that offends us . . . where does it stop?" the former governor said in the Fox News interview.
Removing statues could mean removing ways to learn from history, Huckabee said.
"We learn from it, we grow from it, and I don't think we learn if we obliterate it."
Huckabee has taken the side of President Donald Trump after the Charlottesville, Virginia violence.
"The press seemed to think its role was to jeer and turn thumbs down while Trump waved his sword and defied their demands for his head," Huckabee said.
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