July 30^th

Today we’ll look at the antics provided by the Reverend Mike Huckabee in his quest for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. What? You say you’ve seen quite enough of Huckabee’s performances? I can understand that, but please bear with me for a few hundred words.

Huckabee is a Christian of the fundamentalist persuasion. This means that, when he can’t avoid it, he accepts everything written in the Bible as literal truth. Jonah was swallowed by a large fish; Lot’s wife looked back and did become a pillar of salt; the ark did contain two of every living creature and enough food to feed them for forty days and nights; God made the earth in six days and rested on the seventh. That last has caused Huckabee to weasel just a little bit. I recall a debate stage occupied by Huckabee and some other aspiring Republican candidates some years back. The moderator opened by asking how many of the candidates believed the earth was less than 10 thousand years old; every hand but one went up. The one that didn’t was Ron Paul who claimed he wasn’t sure about that. Now Huckabee says he isn’t sure either, he says he wasn’t there at the time. Most Christians see these descriptions as metaphors useful for teaching purposes. Most people are by now well aware the earth is about 4.5 billion years old and one fervently hpes aren’t willing to tolerate a president who accepts biblical metaphors as fact.

Huckabee has had some harsh words for recent SCOTUS decisions as well. He, among others, loves to dwell on the obvious fact the Court is appointed and not elected. This allows him and his friends to claim that the court doesn’t represent the people. Indeed it doesn’t, its job is to determine if laws are constitutional or not and not to determine if the laws pass a popularity contest. Huckabee and others disgruntled by the Court’s recent decisions don’t know that, or perhaps would prefer to rewrite the constitution.

Now it is apparent that Huckabee has bought into the Fundamentalist view that the second coming of Christ just awaits the gathering of all the Jews into Israel. Eventually, after the rapture, wars and other events predicted by particular biblical verses, Christ will return to reign for a thousand years. Fundamentalists like Huckabee are very protective of Israel at least until all the Jews are gathered there. This is why he is livid about the agreement with Iran and why he claimed that the agreement was tantamount to “marching the Jews to the oven door.” He doesn’t want to delay the “rapture.”

In 1955 a U-2 spy plane flying over Israel determined that they were developing atomic weapons. They were confronted with this evidence but nothing was settled. Many people believe that the mideast arms race has been over for some time and that Israel has won it. It is assumed that they now have about 80 nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. Israel is not Czechoslovakia but Huckabee doesn’t know that.