http://www.newswithviews.com/Duke/selwyn79.htmTHE CHURCH OF HUCK: GROWING GOV’T. IN THE NAME OF RELIGION
by Selwyn Duke
December 25, 2007
NewsWithViews.com
There is a candidate in the presidential race who has a serious religion problem. No, it’s not Mormon Mitt or recently-religious Rudy. It is Mike Huckabee.
Just for the record, I share Huck’s faith in Jesus Christ. Not only have I no problem with religion in public life, I also understand that one can’t really separate a person’s world view from his politics. The political is merely a reflection of the spiritual; our politics doesn’t emerge in a vacuum.
So what is my problem with Huck? Do I accuse him of false religiosity?
No, what scares me is that his beliefs are all too real.
To that enormous secular conservative voting block out there, I will say, be not afraid. It’s not that Huck would impose religion through government. No, his actions would truly offend you.
He would impose statism in the name of religion through government.
While Huck will say what you want to hear to win office, he will not hear what you want to say once there. He will make tone-deaf Bush seem like a maestro. How do I know this?
He believes.
Belief can be a great thing, of course. Our Founding Fathers’ unprecedented respect for liberty was born of their Christian belief that rights were bestowed by the divine king and not worldly ones. Mother Teresa’s Christian beliefs inspired her to toil tirelessly to aid the destitute and dying in India. But whereas the founders kept charity out of government and Teresa kept government out of charity, Huck conflates the two in a disastrous mix of bad theology and bad political science. Perverting Christianity’s message and violating 2000 years of its tradition, he believes it is his Christian mandate to do good works through government.
With, of course, your money.
Huck invokes faith to justify ambitions ranging from the insidious to the idiotic. For the former, look no further than immigration, where Huck espoused the Christian principle, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” while advocating an apparent open-door policy. This, despite the fact that if any good Christian were to find himself in a country illegally, he would expect its citizens to demand he return home.
What was the motivation for these outrages? While some critics assert that he created a “magnet” for illegals at the behest of business interests, for certain is that Huck invoked his Christian faith while attacking supporters of the proof-of-citizenship bill. He labeled the measure irresponsible, un-American, anti-life and un-Christian. This prompted one of the assailed legislators, Jim Holt, to say that “Christian charity does not include turning a blind eye to lawbreaking.”
The problem, according to many, is that Huck doesn’t agree. For instance, Daniel Larison at the American Conservative wrote,
“. . . Huckabee regards it as his Christian duty to help subvert and liberalize U.S. immigration laws. Together
, they embrace the notion that fidelity to the Gospel requires privileging the interests of non-citizens over those of fellow citizens.”
(Note: This is why immigration crusader Tom Tancredo just exited the presidential race and endorsed Romney; he knows Mexicali Mike must be stopped.)
Huck explicitly cited the same “Christian duty” when explaining a lenient attitude toward felons that would allow for twice as many pardons under his Arkansas administration as those of his last three predecessors combined. Among those pardoned was the notorious Wayne Dumond, a thug serving 25 years for raping a teenage high school cheerleader. But Dumond had no feeling of Christian duty. He then raped and murdered a woman named Carol Sue Shields.
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