03-14-2017, 01:39 AM
Quote:King, meanwhile, stood by his remarks.
“I meant exactly what I said,” King said on CNN’s “New Day.”
The eight-term Republican lawmaker said the U.S. and Western European countries “need to get our birth rates up” to avoid being “entirely transformed.”
He tied his argument to illegal immigration, saying that those who come to the country illegally refuse to “assimilate into American culture.”
“I’d like to see an America that’s just so homogenous that we look a lot the same, from that perspective,” King said.
“This is an effort on the left, I think, to break down the American civilization, the American culture, and turn it into something entirely different. I’m a champion for Western civilization and, yes, our English language is a big part of it. It’s a carrier of freedom.”
King’s remarks were praised by white nationalist leaders such as Richard Spencer and featured on racist websites.
“Just in case you were thinking about moving, sanity reigns supreme in Iowa’s 4th congressional district,” tweeted David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
King is among the most strident immigration hard-liners in Congress and has stirred controversy with racially charged remarks in the past.
During the Republican National Convention last summer, King said on MSNBC that Western civilization had contributed more to society than any other group of people.
“I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you’re talking about? Where did any other sub-group of people contribute more to civilization?” King asked.
When King was asked by MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes whether he was referring to “white people,” he responded that he was talking about “Western civilization itself.”
“It’s rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world,” King said. “That’s all of Western civilization.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/323708...al-remarks