RICHARDSON: Can't make this stuff up

I think I've mellowed as I've become older. I don't let what people say or think about me get under my skin (I never have, really). But every now and again someone says something so insanely stupid that unless he is called out on it, he may get the notion that no one is paying attention. Well, a bunch of people noticed when state Rep. Tommy Benton, R-Jefferson, defended the Ku Klux Klan.

Yep. You can't make stuff like this up.

Benton said the KKK was "not so much a racist thing but a vigilante thing to keep law and order. It made a lot of people straighten up. I'm not saying what they did was right. It's just the way things were."

It gets worse as Benton pulls out the backhoe and starts digging a historical hole. "The idea that slavery was the cause of the (Civil) War," he said, "it wasn't. Southern states seceded because the North was advocating doing away with slavery but they offered no idea as to what the South would do with the loss of $2 billion worth of property."

Just so we are clear. Benton says the Civil War wasn't about slavery, but property. The property he's referring to are slaves. And this guy used to be a history teacher.

Before I come down on him. I understand where he's coming from in a historical sense. I would refer anyone who is interested to Jonathan M. Bryant's "Dark Places of the Earth, The Voyage Of The Slave Ship Antelope." Bryant is a professor of history at Georgia Southern University. Bryant received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia, his Juris Doctor from Mercer University and his Ph.D. from UGA. He is no lightweight.

His book revolves around a case that ended up at the U.S. Supreme Court. The basic question was, were the captives on the slave ship Antelope human or were they property? You need to read the book to find out the answer. However, you know what the American slave system thought. Rep. Benton told you. The prosperity of the agricultural South depended on slave labor. Plantation owners considered slaves property — bought and paid for like mules and cattle — and with the same rights: none.

Unfortunately for Benton, he lives in the 21st century not the 19th. I wonder what kind of history he taught. Did he read the articles of secession from the states that left the Union making it clear why they were joining the Confederacy? Obviously his understanding of history is thin, sheltered in the myth of the "Lost Cause." Actually, I'm OK with that, as long as he kept it to himself, but he was a teacher and now a lawmaker.

Benton, and others like him, point to Africans who were involved in the slave trade as justification for that inhuman business. Really? Think about that for a moment. Using that kind of logic, just about any perversity could be deemed acceptable. "They're selling, so it's OK to buy, as long as you can make a profit."

But there is something special about this sorry tale of Rep. Benton picking up his foot and planting it firmly in his uninformed and historically inacurate mouth. State Sen. Josh McKoon, R-Columbus, who is 180 degrees off of my ideological point of view, rose in the Senate and took Rep. Benton to task for his comments in no uncertain terms. He called them "contemptible, they are wrong and deserve the strongest possible public condemnation."

McKoon said there was no denying the fact that the KKK was "the original domestic terrorist organization. There is simply no excusing the murderous, terroristic campaign they waged against Americans."

Let me give it to you straight. McKoon didn't have to do that. This wasn't his fight. Nobody was going to run to him and ask for comment. He did it, I suppose, out of conscience. I respect that. It doesn't mean I will agree with him on all things, but I will listen, and listen closely.

Benton, on the other hand, is a Rule No. 1 kind of guy to me. He who argues with a fool is a fool. I never break Rule No. 1.

Charles E. Richardson is The Telegraph's editorial page editor. He can be reached at 478-744-4342 or via email at crichardson@macon.com.  Tweet at crichard1020.

This story was originally published February 6, 2016 at 7:47 PM with the headline "RICHARDSON: Can't make this stuff up ."