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I seem to be gravitating to the Huckster, all of a sudden, but that’s just because he’s, well, a huckster, peddling his cheap, petty lies to the unsuspecting. Huckabee has somehow convinced the political press that he’s a barrel of laughs and a great campaigner, but then again, anybody can be a great campaigner if you have a rampant disregard for the truth.
During the Republican debate, Mike Huckabee said he believes one of the defining issues facing the country is the sanctity of human life. Arguing that the issue is of historical importance, he invoked the Declaration of Independence’s rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and said that most of the signers of the declaration were clergymen.
Not even close.
Only one of the 56 was an active clergyman, and that was John Witherspoon. Witherspoon was a Presbyterian minister and president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University).
This is part of that whole “America is a Christian nation” zombie lie, and any argument they can use to further that is fair game. In fact, a good portion of the Founders were deists, believing vaguely in a spiritual being on a philosophical level but not identifying with a specific sect, and CERTAINLY not as clergy.
But this is the kind of deliberate fabrication that rolls as trippingly off the tongue of Huckabee as anyone else in the Republican field. It’s no different from when he asserted with nothing resembling proof that illegal immigration is somehow caused by “the holocaust of liberalized abortion.” And by the way, he doesn’t believe in any punitive action for those committing the holocaust:
First, if abortion is a “holocaust,” one wonders why most anti-choicers believe that the alleged primary perpetrators of this genocide should face fewer legal sanctions than if they spat on the sidewalk. And Huckabee would have signed the North Dakota law that also exempted women from punishment for contributing to the “holocaust.” Does Huckabee believe that Eichmann should have been exempt from punishment? Or maybe he should stop using this idiotic and spectacularly offensive analogy?
But he won’t, just as he won’t stop outright lying to provide substance to his unbearable lightness.
3 Responses to “98 and 21/100% Wrong”
If you check the Wikipedia entry on Deism, you find a quote that captures the meaning of Deism as it was current around the time of the Founding Fathers. It was printed in Bayle’s Dictionary, which though known to be idiosyncratic was a basic reference work for such things. I think it can be said to capture what many of the Fathers believes, and I am sure there is nothing in it for Huckabee to quarrel with:
“There are many who confess that while they believe like the Turks and the Jews that there is some sort of God and some sort of deity, yet with regard to Jesus Christ and to all that to which the doctrine of the Evangelists and the Apostles testify, they take all that to be fables and dreams.”
And of course when is it not a good time to reprint the opening phrase of a treaty drafted in 1796 under George Washington, and signed by John Adams in 1797: “As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion . . . .”
But then, I’m arguing with a crazy person on a blog he probably doesn’t read.
[…] the sane Republican, he says that most of the signers of the Declaration were clergymen. In fact, only one of the fifty-six were […]
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By that standard, Independents fill “most” of the seats in the U.S. Senate (Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman) and “most” of the States in the Union are not part of the Continental U.S. (Hawaii and Alaska).
Left by Matt Ortega
October 22, 2007 at 9:17pm