President Obama has decided to put anti-slavery hero Harriet Tubman on the front of the $20 bill. It’s a major move — and one that, as former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee points out, Republicans and conservatives everywhere can be happy about. Huckabee went on Facebook to point out something that the current administration maybe doesn’t want America to know: that America just replaced a racist liberal with a gun-toting Republican who strongly believed in the right to self-defense.
Said Huckabee, “Personally, I have no problem with that, although I wonder if they realize they’re replacing one of the racist founders of the Democrat Party with a black, female, Republican gun owner.”
This is true; as the National Review pointed out, Tubman carried a pistol with her everywhere she went (and an ivory-handled sword, just in case that didn’t work) and was a strong advocate of the right of self-defense. “I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me,” Tubman once wrote.
Some other fun facts about Tubman, courtesy of Business Insider:
*Her codename in the Underground Railroad was “Moses.” Moses was pretty badass, too; she would sleep in swamps with the escaped slaves she moved to freedom, moved only at night, and would threaten to kill those who lost the nerve to escape at the last minute. And yet, even with all that, she never lost a slave.
*And she had good reason to be that badass: at the height of the Underground Railroad, she had a $12,000 bounty on her head. That’s equivalent to $330,000 today.
*She was the first woman to lead a combat battalion in battle, commanding 150 black Union troops across the Combahee River in South Carolina and freeing 750 slaves.
*Tubman was a narcoleptic who received brain surgery later in life to cure her sleeping problems. That’s nothing special, but here’s what is: she refused anesthesia. She chose to bite on a bullet instead!
We’ve all heard the Chuck Norris jokes — when he does a push-up, he pushes the earth down; he can burn fire; he’s already been to Mars and that’s why there’s no signs of life. In case you hadn’t guessed, Harriet Tubman is basically a real-life version of that.
Harriet Tubman, a great role-model for every American.
