Mike Huckabee can always be relied on to offer a clever little ‘gotcha’ in reaction to a liberal position he scoffs at. His speech and tweets cackle with self-satisfaction in the smug belief he has delivered a knockout blow to the other man's argument. When in reality is it nothing more than a hay-maker and miss. Not that he'll ever know - his intellectual attainments are on a par with his gift for comedy.
Take Mike’s dig at Beto O'Rourke 's announcement that he will take people's AR 15s and AK 47s. Huckabee brought up skateboards. Why? Because people are injured — even killed — using skateboards. So Mike proposes that Beto demand their ban.
Dozens are killed every year on skateboards. Thousands injured. Hey Beto! Heck yes, we're going to take your SKATEBOARD!
At first blush, Huckabee seems like he might have a cunning, albeit snide, argument — but a brief inspection reveals it to be smoke.
Let’s wonder what else kills you - cleaning chemicals, flights of stairs, swimming pools electrical appliances, to name a few.
But none of them has ever been used in a massacre.
He’s not new at this game. When faced with the prospect that homophobic ‘Christian’ bakers might have to sell cakes for gay weddings, Huckabee asked if kosher delis should be forced to sell bacon-wrapped shrimp.
“This is not just a political issue. It is a biblical issue. And as a biblical issue — unless I get a new version of the scriptures, it’s really not my place to say, OK, I’m just going to evolve. It’s like asking someone who’s Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli. We don’t want to do that — I mean, we’re not going to do that. Or like asking a Muslim to serve up something that is offensive to him, or to have dogs in his backyard.”
The comparison is sophistry. Christian bakeries don’t have to sell wedding cakes, but if they choose to sell them, they should sell them to anyone who asks for one - with one caveat, which I will get to next.
A Jewish deli can’t be required to sell pig products or crustaceans, any more than a Christian book store can be required to sell Korans. But if the deli sells a nice little brisket, it cannot refuse to serve a Muslim.
So what is the caveat? One defense of discrimination is the claim that, if you must sell to everyone, what's to stop the KKK from demanding a black-owned bakery create a cake that celebrates lynchings - or racial segregation. The answer is that the first amendment does not protect hate speech. A couple celebrating their wedding is the complete opposite of hate speech.
Huckabee isn’t interested in promoting a dialogue over guns. This good Christian believes it isn’t worth God’s time to prevent over 35,000 Americans dying from gun violence annually. If we can yuck it up and dole out some ‘thoughts and prayers’ when the bodies pile up, then job done.
Curiously, if the victims of gun violence aren’t Americans at home, but instead Christians abroad, the joking stops and Mike and the boys piously intone that the persecution of Christians has to be stopped. Aside: How would Huckabee react if a liberal were to tweet that we should take ISIS’s skateboards away.
Huckabee’s homophobia is consistent. “I’m not gay. They are. I have a book that says hate the gays. so I will.” It’s all quite logical — even if incredibly hateful.
But what of the shooting victims. The vast majority of which weren’t gay, or atheist, or Muslims, or ‘illegals’— Mike’s usual targets. They are white, Christian, American citizens. Where’s his care for them? These are his people — what difference does it make where they live? Why doesn’t he want to save them?
The demographics get even starker on closer analysis. Gun violence closely correlates with religiosity. The higher the rate of a state’s church attendance, the higher the gun violence rate. The Bible Belt is a veritable ‘killing fields’. And yet this stalwart Christian would rather make jokes than do something.
Is it because Christians are killing fellow Christians that Mike doesn’t care? Is it only when non-Christians are the perps that Mike gets his fight on? Would he be more prone to action if the slaughter of his co-religionists was in New York or New England where atheists roam around like they own the place?
Huckabee has no use for the Bible. He is a miserable little sadist who cherry-picks the parts of scripture that reinforce his hate. What the world needs now is fewer Christians and more Christianity.
