Hullabaloo

Friday, January 18, 2008

 
Huckabee The Extremist

by tristero

Just as I suspected, Michael Huckabee has close ties to Christian Reconstruction, the far right theocrats whose ideas I blogged about during last year's Blog Against Theocracy:

Back in 1998, when he was still serving as governor, he helped write "Kids Who Kill," a short book purporting to analyze the outbreak of school shootings by teenagers. His coauthor was George Grant, a well-known militant Christian reconstructionist author, activist and educator. That same year, the libertarian Reason magazine published an exposé of reconstructionism titled "Invitation to a Stoning," which identified Grant and quoted him on the movement's ambition for "world conquest." Scorning the moderation of other conservative Christians, Grant explained, "It is dominion we are after. Not just a voice ... not just influence ... not just equal time. It is dominion we are after."

Of course, Huckabee must have had no illusions about Grant's baroque worldview, since it is clearly reflected in their book. The school shootings were mere symptoms of American civilization in decline, they thundered, with communities "fragmented and polarized" by "abortion, environmentalism, AIDS, pornography, drug abuse, and homosexual activism." (Unlike his coauthor, Huckabee was too nice to call for the execution of gays. He merely wanted to place them in detention if they tested HIV-positive.)

And this is for starters. Salon also published today a round up of Huckabee's connections to far right christianists. It's a sobering list.

I'll say it again: Huckabee is not a joke and he has no business being one of the frontrunners of a major political party. That he has come this far is extremely ominous. If he were to get the nomination, it would be a terrible catastrophe even if he were to lose, as he almost surely would, the presidential race. Why? Because Christian Reconstruction will take one more giant step towards the mainstream.

In 1964, Goldwater ran and lost on a program so extreme that many of us simply laughed at him. Extremists, however, took heart that they had come so far into the mainstream. Today, Goldwater's extremism is the dominant mainstream attitude in this country.

Don't kid yourself. Huckabee and his ilk play for keeps. It may take another 40 years, but as long as normals continue to underestimate and dismiss christianism with a superior snicker instead of fighting back as hard as possible, the most repulsive notions of the religious right will further dominate our discourse. This is a war; christianists are acting like it is. And the rest of us are laughing ourselves silly at the very idea that such ignorant phonies and weirdos could be that dangerous.

Don't kid yourself. They're no longer considered even half as ignorant, phony, or weird by the American mainstream as they were even 15 years ago. They have come a long way while we have just smirked.

And there's been far too much smirking, that's for sure.

tristero 1/18/2008 09:07:00 AM |