March 6, 2008
by Brian Trent

Hey Mike,

Yesterday you announced that you were conceding the race to John McCain. I would be happy, if it wasn't such a pitifully sad commentary on American politics that you made it as far as you did to begin with.

I love the American Republic. I love our Constitution and Bill of Rights that guarantee religious freedom and pluralism, that protect our democracy from fascism, and that list our liberties.

So your announcement is a good day for the Republic. Why?

"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view."
Mike Huckabee, January 14, while addressing supporters in Michigan

Of course, people are entitled to their opinions, Mike. But you are not entitled to take the SECULAR CONSTITUTION and reconfigure it, melt it down, and pour it into a Biblical mold. It was the puritans, as fanatical fundamentalists, whose values were ignorance, subservience, and bigotry. But the founders of the American Republic were realists, concerned with Enlightenment values of liberty and reason.

"I hope we answer the alarm clock and take the nation back for Christ. I didn't get into government because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives."
Huckabee at a Baptist convention, 1998

Are you serious, Mike? Why do you (and others like you) always have to make such a public deal about faith? You are entitled in this country to believe in whatever god or gods you want. But no - you wield your faith like a golden idol and scream, glittering-eyed and rabid, foaming at the mouth, spitting quotations you barely understand. So I'll throw one at you: "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men....when thou prayest, enter into thy closet and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret...." That one is from Matthew, and it doesn't endorse the kind of Circus Maximus that had you, as the self-professed peddler of morality, hopping around like a new prophet drunk with all the attention he's getting.

Just why do you hate America's Constitution so much, and how much were you prepared to alter it to accommodate your faith?

I can see it already:

Find: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Replace with: "Congress shall make only those laws which are sanctioned by Deuteronomy, Leviticus, Exodus, etc."

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Were you planning on using public funds to dig all the mass graves for all the people who break the laws of Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and Exodus? It's not like special prisons would suffice: Biblical law is very clear that gross crimes like working on the Sabbath, refusing to listen to a priest, or subscribing to a faith other than your own can only be dealt with by execution.

"I didn't major in math," you told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington DC on February 9th, "I majored in miracles."

Well, Mike... I'd rather have the leader of the free world believing in the rational process of mathematics.

You have repeatedly declared "my conservatism is rooted in my understanding of the Scriptures."

Sorry to say, Mike, but you're a man of extremely limited understanding, then. The Republican Party of Lincoln was never about mixing faith and politics. It was originally about small government and fiscal responsibility, but in the hands of people like you it has since devolved, like political Morlocks. I say "devolved" to you - you, who denounces evolution. Apparently it isn't just math that you avoided in school.

Neither is it just biology. It's history, too, since you don't seem to realize what a theocratic nation would truly be like.

How would you have run your foreign policy - on "spectral evidence," perhaps?

This isn't the year 1692, Mike. An Enlightenment happened since then. America doesn't need leaders who believe that they have the ear of the divine, any more than we need kings or pharaohs. We need people who uphold the values of rationality, logic, and humanism. Torquemada had yesterday. We have tomorrow.

I'm sorry to say it is a bit late in the day for you to catch up on all that a good education should have taught you. But I'm not sorry to see you go, Mike.

America's future isn't with the likes of you.

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Brian Trent [send him email] is a professional essayist, screenwriter, and novelist; he is the author of "Remembering Hypatia" and the just-released "Never Grow Old: the Novel of Gilgamesh."  Brian is a contributor to American Chronicle and The Humanist Magazine.  Visit his website at www.rememberinghypatia.com.

Copyright 2008 Brian Trent

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