The Audacity of Huck

Here is a great Article on the way "Blue Blood" Republicans feel about the Religious Right. I have read a number of articles that have tried to explain this, but this one seems to be the best.


January 28, 2008 IssueCopyright © 2007 The American Conservative
The Audacity of Huck
The Religious Right roils the establishment by backing one of its own.
by Michael Brendan Dougherty
Mike Huckabee was supposed to be an amusing sideshow. Just last August, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani dominated the GOP big tent, capturing the spotlight with their massive fundraising efforts and early endorsements. Meanwhile, without a single reporter in tow, Huckabee wandered around New Hampshire and Iowa, speaking to perhaps a dozen people at a time, joking that other candidates “pay $150 for an exfoliation. I could just hand them a bar of Lava soap.” Beltway conservatives and consultants, enjoying Huck’s genial act, speculated that he might make a nice vice president and laughed at his harmless quips. They aren’t laughing anymore.
As Huckabee moved up in the polls, his campaign chairman Ed Rollins declared the Reagan coalition dead, implying that Huckabee could form a new one in its place. The leaders of the conservative movement struck back: free-market activists spent thousands on ads to halt Huckabee’s rise in Iowa, and editors of the leading conservative publications denounced his “populism” and “evangelical identity politics.” Rush Limbaugh told his 20 million listeners that a Huckabee nomination would be a disaster.
Then he started winning. In Iowa he beat the heavily funded, establishment-approved Romney by 9 points and moved from sixth to third in New Hampshire, scrambling the entire Republican race. He is running close to John McCain in national polls and leading in delegate-rich states like South Carolina and Georgia.
Huckabee has convinced his supporters that the Religious Right has too long endured second-class citizenship in the conservative movement. Ironically, the anti-elite posture that Beltway conservatives taught heartlanders to assume when confronting the media or academia has been turned against establishment conservatives themselves. David Brooks declared in the New York Times, “The old guard threw everything they had at him, and their diminished power is now exposed.”
The Beltway Right has reason to worry. As a rhetorician, Huckabee is as good as anyone in politics today. He can stir an audience like Barack Obama, but he adds a deft sense of humor and pop culture that allows him to keep up with media figures like Stephen Colbert or Jay Leno—qualities unexpected in a leader of the Religious Right.
But obvious as his talents are, Huckabee’s policy prescriptions have been hard to decipher. On foreign policy, he grabbed headlines by denouncing the Bush administration’s “arrogant bunker-mentality,” and in a nod to realism, he wrote that the U.S. policy toward Iran should be containment, not confrontation. He says that there are options between “shock and awe” and “cut and run.” But just as observers began speculating that Huckabee might decouple Christian conservatives from the aggressive foreign policy of the Bush administration, he suggested that Palestinians could form their own state in Egypt or Saudi Arabia. So far, he has managed to make members of nearly every school of foreign policy uneasy.
Asked about economics, Huckabee claims to be “a Main Street Republican, not a Wall Street Republican” and preaches a message of economic independence—even nationalism. Speaking to a group of social conservatives, he declared, “A country that cannot feed itself, that cannot fuel itself, and that cannot fight for itself with its own weapons which it manufactures itself is a nation that is not longer free. … I don’t want to see our food come from China, our oil come from Saudi Arabia, and our manufacturing come from Europe and Asia.” Yet Huckabee has not called for an end to NAFTA or for implementing protective tariffs, insisting against evidence to the contrary that he is a free trader.
Establishment conservatives, deciding that the joke from Hope has gone on long enough, have begun sneering with increasing condescension. “That bait shop on the lake—it’s looking good,” Lisa Schiffren blogged on National Review Online. “You’ll be surrounded by nice neighbors, real Christians, and you can be the smartest guy in the room. … Remember Huck—Jesus wouldn’t be dumb enough to go into politics. You were right on that one. Maybe it’s not what he wants from you either.”
Former House majority leader Dick Armey penned a blistering attack on Huckabee’s “feel good politics” and told TAC that he “sounds more like John Edwards than John Edwards.” According to Armey, the conservative movement must balance its priorities: “The traditional, successful, happy Reagan coalition is a coalition of conservatives that came from an economic wing and a social wing tied together by their commitment to constrain the growth of government.” Armey laughs at the idea that Republicans want evangelicals in the backseat: “I can’t remember someone who has been elected besides Reagan that hasn’t caused Jim Dobson to say, ‘He’ll betray us.’”
Asked which candidate comes closest to his vision for the party, Armey chooses Rudy Giuliani. The former mayor’s tax plan, Armey enthuses, “is the biggest supply-side statement of any candidate in the race,” and Giuliani’s commitment to small government commends him to the conservative movement. Of course, Giuliani is also pro-choice and pro-civil-unions.
It is precisely Armey’s understanding of “balance” that has created the backlash for Huckabee. Consider: Romney’s conversion to social conservatism is recent and, to many, unconvincing. Yet National Review endorsed him. Giuliani has been considered an enemy of social conservatism since he was first elected mayor of New York. And John McCain opposed the Bush tax cuts. Writing in The American Spectator, George Nuemayr sympathized with evangelicals: “How is it that the bar of conservative entry for a presidential nominee lowers for the Romneys and McCains, then rises for the Huckabees?” Nuemayr suspects that vitriol is directed at Huckabee not because he “takes this or that heterodox position on issues of economics/trade/foreign policy; it is that he’s a transparent Christian conservative.”
Joe Carter, an activist at the Family Research Council, took a leave of absence to spend a month acting as Huckabee’s rapid-response man. He seconds Nuemayr’s analysis and highlights the barely disguised class conflict in the GOP: “The establishment Republicans don’t want some hillbilly preacher to be president.” To Carter and others, the conservative establishment’s contempt for Huckabee feels familiar. It mirrors the liberal establishment’s disdain for conservatives generally. And so just as Beltway conservatives have taught middle America to resent the liberal elites, so Huckabee and his supporters have leveraged evangelical discontent at those who tell them to “sit down and take what the party gives you.”
The turning point in Huckabee’s campaign came at the Values Voters Summit held by FRC last October. All the Republican candidates came to speak to the largely evangelical crowd, and the leaders of social conservatism hoped to announce their united endorsement. Though Romney was given the keynote spot, Huckabee blew the doors off the conference, saying, “I come today as one not who comes to you, but as one who comes from you. … I think it’s important that people sing from their hearts and don’t merely lip-synch the lyrics to our songs.” Attendees bought Huckabee’s identity-based appeal and voted for him overwhelmingly in the event’s straw poll.
In the weeks that followed, Huckabee continued to call for evangelical solidarity, telling Zev Chafets of the New York Times, “If my own abandon me on the battlefield, it will have a chilling effect.” Recently, campaigning in Michigan, Huckabee told reporters, “Many of us who have been Republicans out of conviction ... the social conservatives, were welcomed in the party as long as we sort of kept our place, but Lord help us if we ever stood forward and said we would actually like to lead the party.” For years the Beltway Right had posed to heartlanders as an “us,” but for evangelicals supporting Huckabee, National Review, the Club for Growth, and the Republican establishment now resemble a “them.”
Huckabee’s success also corresponds with an intellectual shift among conservatives focused on rising middle-class anxiety. This summer, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam are set to publish Grand New Party, in which they argue that the Republican Party must address the economic needs and aspirations of its middle-class base, transforming itself into the party of Sam’s Club rather than the country club. They praise Huckabee’s populist sensibilities.
Similarly, in a column that told Huckabee-fearing Republicans, “Be Not Afraid,” neoconservative David Brooks framed the preacher’s rise this way: “Huckabee understands that economic well-being is fused with social and moral well-being, and he talks about the inter-relationship in a way no other candidate has.” Brooks argued, “A conservatism that pays attention to people making less than $50,000 a year is the only conservatism worth defending.” Huckabee doesn’t yet demonstrate policy sophistication, but it’s easy to imagine reform-minded conservatives refining his instincts.
Even if Huckabee fails to capture the nomination, he may still effect significant change in the GOP coalition. In 2004, Republicans nabbed three out of four white evangelical votes. Karl Rove credited them with Bush’s re-election. But just as these voters demonstrated their power, their leadership was disappearing. James Kennedy and Jerry Falwell have passed away; others like James Dobson are on their way out of public ministry. Carter believes Huckabee can easily fill the void of evangelical leadership, but he warns that Republicans shouldn’t expect another compliant pastor who will shepherd the masses to the polls then otherwise leave them alone. “Because Huckabee doesn’t come from the establishment, he doesn’t owe them any favors. He has the potential to lead a new movement—and not just evangelicals alone.”
If the affable preacher consolidates his influence over the largest bloc of voters in the GOP, he’ll have the whip hand in the Republican coalition. No wonder the establishment is wincing.

Does One Great Man Out Weigh 1000 Criminals

I read a book called Freakanomics and in it was a statement that the drop in crime rates in the mid-1990s was a direct correlation to the Roe-v-Wade decision 20 years earlier. In this train of thought the unwanted children, that had been forced to be carried by the mothers that did not want them, were now off the streets and not there to commit the crimes so there was a drastic drop in crime. In the world of facts and figures without contemplation, this might be a good explanation, but under scrutiny this does not hold much water. If we take 20 years before the peak crime era in the late 1980s, we see that it is true Abortion was illegal in most states. It is also true that a number of poor childern were born to poor and unready mothers. And some of these childern became criminals. But if his theory was correct then would not crime rate always been high when abortion was illegal and hard to get? It happen that crime rates had started to spike in the late 1960s and slowly increased until 1993. Before that the crime rates were 1/3th of what they were in the 1990s after the so-called effect of abortion. A better theory if this author wants to try and explain the fall in crime, or better explain the initial rise in crime is look at the effect of the "Great Society" on crime. I see a better corrilation to the beginning and the reduction of crime to the beginning of "Welfare" and the "Welfare Reform" in the middle 1990's.

At this point I want to ask another question. What is effect of Abortion on Society? If you think thru this questions you would have to say that a good number of criminals do comeout of the poor or unready mothers giving birth, but that is not all that comes out of these situations. Some of the greatest men in our nation's history have come from very difficult situations. What if these men were not born? Let us use an active history look at Andrew Jackson.

Andrew Jackson was born in rural Carolina just months after his father had died and his mother was living on the charity of others. Today a mother in this situation would be suggested to have an abortion. "You can't raise this child, he will not have a happy life. He will be nothing in society" If this happened what would this country look like? For one the Indian Wars in Alabama could of ended much differently. Jackson would not of been in the position to expell the English in Mobile months before they landed in New Orleans. The commander of the garrison at New Orleans would not have the volunteers from Tennessee and Kentucky nor would they of had the Pirates of the Cajun such as Jean Lafitte. They also would have had a commander that was a Bureaucrat not a fighting general. And most likely the city would have fallen without a shot. England would have held New Orleans and most of the Gulf coast and we would have had no way to regain it. Without Jackson we also would not have been there to stop Spain from ceding Florida to England. This would not end here.

If there was no Jacksonian Presidency then many more betterments would never have happened. The populous movement would never have had the strong figurehead it needed. He stopped the first secession of a state. He first showed the strength of the bully pulpit that the President has. He was also the founding force of the modern Democratic Party. (Nobody's Perfect) He fought the corrupt banking system and won. And due to Jackson's support of the Texan revolution and the underhand support of this adventure by Sam Houston, Texas would have stayed part of Mexico and because of this, California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico would never have become part of the United States and we would have a narrow path to the Pacific Ocean.

With the lost of one poor orphaned child, with no money or status, we as a country would have been harmed enourmously. How does a society balance one great man? One Criminal, 10, 100, 1000, 1,000,000? How many lives did Andrew Jackson change for the better? The Population of the country and all the posterity. The worth of one man conqurering adversisty is far in excess of millions of possible criminals.

Plato's Republic

After church one day, I spoke to a friend and I brought up a thought I had during the service about David and Solomon being the first Philosopher Kings. Everything I heard about Plato’s Philosopher kings was that he led by great wisdom. I started to think if Plato used Solomon as the cornerstone of his work “The Republic”? Solomon, being the wisest man the world has known, brought great wealth and power to Israel and the people were at peace. He would have been the perfect person to base a great leader on. Plus Plato lived in the 4th Century BC. Plus he traveled greatly during the time including a trip to Judea before writing this Classic. This peaked my interest, that perhaps the great Philosopher King that the earthly world is clamoring for is based on Solomon? I had to do more research. I had read many accounts of “The Republic” but I had never read the Dialogue, so I read the work and here is what I found.

The Dialogues of Plato are written almost as plays, that places his old mentor Socrates as the central character. Plato seems to explain his thoughts through the interaction of Socrates with the other characters in the story. The Republic starts as Socrates and a few friends going to a festival and they start talking about philosophy of a just man, then move into a story of the best government for the people and who should lead it. All through this Dialogue he uses Socrates’ questioning style to maneuver the other characters into his line of thought. He speaks about leaders and being a just ruler by stating that a just ruler does thing for the weak the same way that a Doctor does things for the sick and not the healthy, and the same way a captain does things for the good of the crew not what is good for him.

Then he goes on and describes justice and praises the just man. Socrates’ friend gives a description of the purely unjust man and shows how a perfectly unjust man will seam like the most just man of all. They state that the truly unjust man will go about it in the truly right way and gets away with it. The one that is not perfectly unjust will gets caught and is considered incompetent and is not the perfectly unjust, since perfect injustice consists of appearing just when you are not. The perfectly unjust man will have reputation of being the most just man. Then we need to contrast him with the “truly” just man. He is a simple and honorable man that does not appear to be just. We must deprive him of the appearance of justice because the appearance of justice will bring him recognition and rewards and then it will not be clear if his motive for justice was a desire for justice or a desire for the rewards and the recognition. This I disagree with completely, that a perfectly just man will not care of the view of others. He will do what is just and leave it at that, not boasting or using this deed. Plato contends that we must strip him of everything but justice. He must have the worst possible reputation for injustice but truly being just, and have this reputation until his death. This description almost makes me think that Plato has a premonition of the only truly just man. Does not Christ meet every aspect of the truly just man listed above? Was he not given a criminal’s death when he was completely just? They then talk of the life that awaits them both here on earth. The unjust man would ask to rule cities because he has the reputation of justice. He can marry who he likes and make contract and partnership with who he wants. He finds it easy to make himself a rich man because he has no compunction about acting unjustly. And the just man is nothing of the sort. He just receives a cross to bear (These are my words).

Socrates defends the just man. And he gives the just man three elements to being just; Courage, Wisdom, Temperance or Self-discipline. First Socrates changes the subject to a just city but intends to describe the just man with the description of the just city. They start with the origin of a city. He starts stating that the origin of a city is because not one of us is self sufficient and need others. He starts talking about how a city is formed and what makes a just city and come to conclusion that a just city is just because of its rulers are just. At this point, he explains that citizens should be classified into four types, the Gold, the Silver, the Bronze and Iron. Gold should be the ruling class and would be the best of the people. They should be trained to be the most just and wise. They should also be removed from the need for money and therefore not be restrained by greed. They should learn the needs of the people and learn what is best for the people. The Silver would be the warrior class and the other lesser important leader roles like doctors and such. And next would be the Bronze and lower classes. These are the common people that need leaders.

The guardian class or Gold class would live communally and would need for nothing except the needs of their people. They would learn from an early life the philosophy and manager skills to run a city. Socrates finally states that these leaders should be Philosophy Kings, for only the Philosopher can have the wisdom to run such a city. He states that these rulers should do whatever is needed to better the lives of the people. Then a question on the women and the children come up, and he comes to say that the families for the ruling class should be in common, that women should be treated the same as the guardian men, each man with knowledge of each women and not knowing his children. With children he states, that the best class should reproduce and have many children and with the lower classes it would only be best that the embryos never see the light of day. This is also the view of any deformed children; only the best people should be born, not the lesser people.

After defining the just city he returns to the just man and states that the just man would be one that does what he is best suited to do; a hunter being a hunter, a farmer being a farmer, a bronze man being a bronze man and a ruler being a ruler. A hunter should not be a ruler because he does not have the skills to be a ruler. Only one trained to rule should rule.
All in all I came from this book with a greater understanding of the liberal view of today’s society. The leaders of the liberal view feel that they are Philosopher Kings in charge of a great just city, and they are the great defender of this city. These are the same liberals that called for free love and communal living in the 60‘s. They force abortion on the lower classes and try to destroy the common people’s society by degrading the value of marriage. All of this thought came not just from Plato, but also from Rousseau and Voltaire. Rousseau and Voltaire shouted “let us make a heaven here on earth and forget about God. Let us rely on reason and human understanding.” These are the same people that attempted at trying to have Enlighten Despots in many European nations, that would rule a nation like these Philosopher Kings of Plato and Socrates, but they all failed with huge amounts of bloodshed; with the French Revolution the bloodiest of all.

In all of these descriptions of the just man I saw one thing. The just man that they described is the perfectly unjust man of the first part of the story. "...The truly unjust man goes about it in the truly right way and gets away with it. The one that gets caught is considered incompetent since perfect injustice consists of appearing just when you are not. They will have the reputation of being the most just man..." They gave this statement when describing the unjust man. Does the Just man in the second part of the story not sound like he will have the gone about it in the right way? This just man lies to his people because “The end justifies the means” and ends up doing what is not just for all the people; only the ruling class. He does all of this in the guise of making the best choices for the society.

Plato tried to introduce his great leader as a man that uses his great human reasoning ability. He believed that man’s wisdom could create a society that was perfectly just, but he did not want to admit that man could never be perfectly just. That ingrained into him was something that would always move to the evil inside of his spirit. Since he lived only a couple hundred years after the greatest part of Israel‘s history, Plato must of known of the story of how David and Solomon ruled with great wisdom and created a great and just nation. He must have known that with this great wisdom that each man ended up doing unjust things after failing to follow God’s guidance. So in the end even Solomon, whom was considered the wisest man ever to live, that had great courage, and was very self-disciplined, ended up becoming unjust to his people and led them astray.

I will say that at the same time of the Enlightenment and the attempts of Philosopher Kings in Europe, a group of castaways in the new world created a different republic that was not formed in the image of Plato’s Republic, but in the theory that each individual is as great as another and getting representatives from all the people would create a truly just nation. They based there nation on something different then man’s wisdom; God’s wisdom. Thomas Jefferson, who admired the French enlightened leaders as a Deist, still spent many a line on the importance of God in society. As is written in a Memorial dedicated to this man are these words.
God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. That his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between Master and Slave is Despotism. Nothing is more written in the book of fate then that these people are to be free.

This Book of Plato’s does give good information, but not of the proper enlightened government, but of the folly of man’s justice. As Solomon has shown us, man can rule justly, as long as he follows the guidance of the truly just man, Jesus Christ.