Hillbilly Huck and His Reading Skills

Here is our Hillbilly Huck watch for the day. Rev. Huckabee went pimping for votes in Iowa and pandering himself to the public doing a passable imitation of a modern day Buzz Windrip. He tried to be a bit of everything to everyone which lead to one embarrassing incident, as we shall see shortly.

Old “Buzz” Huckabee had on his dark suit to look presidential but he made sure he was wearing cowboy boots, which don’t really go with suits, to send the message that he’s a fascist of the people, by the people, for the people. Then he told the crowds of panting faithful Theopublicans that he was going to say something “very controversial” followed by “may I say to you, Merry Christmas.” Oh, yes, individuals saying Merry Christmas is so controversial.

Outside the bang up that Fox news and fundamentalists do every year pretending there is a “war on Christmas” there simply is no controversy. Proof of that could have been found if Buzz Huckabee had simply said “Merry Christmas” which would have gotten no publicity whatsoever as no one really cares. Calling it controversial was an attempt to create controversy and to pander to the paranoid delusions of the Theopublican mobs that worship at Huck’s clay feet.

Huck was just getting the god botherers warmed up. He then told them that, at this time of year, his “presidential campaign” doesn’t matter, just the “celebration of the birth of Christ.” Notice that if the campaign doesn’t matter that he was saying this in the middle of the campaign at campaign rally as part of a campaign speech. For something that isn’t as important he’s sure is spending a lot of time and money going at it -- especially at this time of year. We won’t even mention that there is not one smidgen of evidence that Jesus was born in December and plenty of evidence that he wasn’t.

Of course what mattered for Huck was not the birth of Jesus at all but shoring up support among the rabid fundamentalists who are his core support group. His invocation of Christmas was a way of winding up the faithful, to drag out of them a stray “hallelujah” or a robust “hosanna” and an “amen” here or there. If invoking Christmas wasn’t enough he then got down to the hard core.

“What’s wrong with our country, what is wrong with our culture, is that you can’t say the name Jesus Christ without people going completely berserk.” Well, praise the Lord and pass the campaign donation bucket I feel inspired.

Again Buzz Huckabee is being a tad bit dishonest -- he does that a lot especially when it comes to covering up for his dog murdering son and the killer/rapist he released from prison so he could kill and rape again. There is no controversy if someone says Jesus. The controversy is when theocrats like Mr. Huckabee try to merge their religion with the force of law and impose it on others.

It is the politicization of religion and the theologizing of politics that is the problem. The state is a coercive engine that imposes on others. That’s bad enough but when religious views or values are imposed by force of law it is bound to be controversial. Mr. Huckabee spent his entire life shouting about Jesus from the pulpit on a regular basis. No one paid the least attention. No controversy. Merging that theology with the presidency is going to create conflict by its very nature. Then, after intentionally creating that conflict, he pretends that others are picking on him.

And don’t think that the secularists created the conflict. For much of Western history worship of Jesus wasn’t only allowed but mandated. The Christian faith dominated and the controversies were even greater. Christians were slaughtering each other, not because they were mentioning Jesus, but because they couldn’t agree with one another over the finer points of theology. The reason that sane people eventually separate church and state was to prevent the churches from using the state to violate the rights of other churches. Mr. Huckabee wants to merge the two again and that eventually means that other churches, which don’t hold his theology, can be in trouble. We have already seen how the Theopublicans are trying to dismiss Mitt Romney for not believing in Jesus the same way they do. And it isn’t just the Mormons that fundamentalist dismiss as anti-Jesus. They say they same thing about Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, most mainstream Christian denominations, etc.

The conflict starts when they use the Christian dominance to merge religion and politics. Once their view dominates politics then, and only then, do they start culling the flock. At the Air Force Academy fundamentalists took control and they started denigrating people for being practicing Jews or for belonging to Christian sects that were not fundamentalists. They support a “big tent” until they are running the tent then they start cutting out others. When the Huckabees of the world talk about putting God into politics they mean their specific God and their specific God alone.

One of Huck’s pandering moments did backfire on him. A young girl, Aleya Deatsch was introduced to Huck and got to ask him a question. She wanted to know his favorite author. Like the political prostitute who tries to please the customer Buzz thought for a second and decided on the best, most politically expedient answer: “Dr. Seuss.”

Little Aleya was not impressed. When the press asked her about the answer she said that she was surprised by it because she figured he would be reading at a higher level. As for herself, she preferred C.S. Lewis, she said.