A classmate in my last class today brought up what Mike Huckabee said at Rev. Jerry Falwell’s old church Sunday.
From CBS News:
From CBS News’ Joy Lin:
LYNCHBURG, VA. — “I always cringe when I hear people talk about throwing away the vote when they vote their conscience,” Mike Huckabee told reporters today. “That’s what voting is – voting is voting with your conscience, it’s voting with your convictions.”
Earlier, he spoke at Thomas Road Baptist Church, the pulpit of the late Dr. Jerry Falwell. Lacing together the relationship between religion and state, he delivered a short speech about how moral clarity decreases the need for more government and more law.
“Frankly, we really don’t need a lot of law if we are people of morality,” he said to the congregation of over 7,000. “There are only ten basic laws that we need. If you think about it, the Ten Commandments cover it all.”
“The reason law gets more complicated is because we try to figure out clever ways around those ten,” he said to applause.
Huckabee cautioned that a lack of moral clarity would result in “paying for more and more government to overwhelm us with direction when our own personal freedom and conscience does not.”
“And that’s why I stand here today, not to make a political statement but to make one I hope you will hear,” he said. “That what happens in this church every Sunday, what is spoken from this pulpit every week, what comes forth from the word of God is not a disconnected message from whether or not we will continue to be a free and great nation because the day our nation quits listening to God and the day we no longer have moral clarity, is the day that we will have to have increasing levels of government and law to restrain us because then our own consciences will not. ”
“I hope you know Jesus Christ personally…because the level to which he rules you and governs you, you need less and less of man’s law to tell you how to live and that is what our Founding Fathers understood and we must understand.”
This young woman in my class, mockingly, the way those who are “tolerant of all people” usually do, brought up this statement and this prompted several other students to mock Huckabee. (Just to be clear, the only statement the girl brought up was the statement that we wouldn’t need laws if people were moral.)
Now I spoke up and stated that what Huckabee said was obvious, and has been affirmed by political philosophers of all types of backgrounds. Laws are necessary to keep order and set restrictions because laws rule “out of bounds” actions that people would take without them. Of course, this girl would have never said something if Thomas Jefferson was quoted saying the same thing, but knowing Huck is a Christian, she pounced. As does the media. As do most liberals.
I also mentioned that Huckabee’s speech was not made to a political audience, and although some may hold that as a candidate, every word he speaks is political, which I in fact hold, we still should keep it in mind that he is speaking to a church audience.
Because, apparently, when pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, anti-expression of faith, politicians (like Bill Clinton this weekend) speak at churches, particularly black ones, it is accepted and never criticized.
An illustrative example:
We do discussions at my College Dems group meetings. I choose the topic and lead the discussion. A few meetings ago, I asked if the Democratic Party should change, compromise, or tamper down the rhetoric on any issue in order to make our Party more palpable. In other words, what core principles should our Party not compromise: Health Care, Ethics, War in Iraq…
Well, right away, one of our Huffington Post, Daily Kos- reading members said that the question (he assumed the premise of my question meant my thoughts were that we should compromise our every value) was feeding into what the GOP was feeding us. Which is the usual response of the losing Party…Republicans lost in 2006 because they moved away from their principles, Democrats lost in 2004 because we tried to move to the center…which, by the way, shows why Dems should never elect a candidate based on electability because the fact they thought a Senator from Massachusetts was electable and a move to the center is a major testament to some major problems with how we judge electability.
The member’s conclusion was that if we steadfastly spoke out for and pushed policies that reflect “our” values…which, I would assume, what he considers “our” values to be with what I consider “our” values to be would be completely different. (Talk about imposing values)
The following meeting the topic was along the same topic…basically what our 2008 platform should be. The same member from the last meeting spoke up about ten minutes into the conversation and said that we need to hang onto the African-American vote, and African-Americans are social conservatives. Given that, we might have to back off on some of our positions regarding abortion and gay marriage.
The insinuation was clear, it is common, and it is this:
That black people were bamboozled into Christianity, they are ignorant, but Democrats need them and so it is ok to try and fool them and not speak out about the social issues.
However, if a white Christian believes that ending a human life is not something our government should promote, allow, or be proud of, then that person is written off and chastised.
The only people I see using a religious test is those people, like the folks at MSNBC especially, who use the opportunity whenever a religious candidate runs, to question his personal doctrinal beliefs. Apparently, it is only acceptable for candidates to “kind of” believe in their faith, or “only kind of” follow their religion. The luke-warm believer, the very kind the Bible condemns, is the only one acceptable to some people.
It’s great if John Kerry quotes the books of James or Matthew in order to slam Bush, but if Huckabee talks about the fish and the loaves, or David and Goliath, that “Baptist Minister” has crossed a line.
Well, I apologize, but I will not concede my right to say what I believe, and be forced by those who would like to win an argument by shutting up the opposition to try and parse out what I believed before I read the Bible and before I became a Christian, to what I believed after.
