The United States Constitution, the foundation of our system of government and a model for the world for more than two centuries, is an entirely secular document. It doesn’t mention God or any specific faith tradition, it only mentions religion at all to separate church and state.
Apparently, that’s not quite good enough for Mike Huckabee.
For those of you who can’t watch clips online, the video shows Huckabee, speaking to an audience in Michigan yesterday, arguing, “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 — is 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 of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.”
Now, I should note that I haven’t seen the full context, and have only seen what MSNBC showed this morning on the air. But it’s very difficult to imagine the circumstances that could make these comments acceptable. Indeed, in case there were any doubts, there was no indication that Huckabee was kidding. (First Read added that the context was Huckabee expressing his support for constitutional amendments discriminating against gays and banning abortion.)
Huckabee whined at a recent debate that he, a former Baptist minister, gets more questions about religion than any of the other Republican presidential candidates. As he sees it, that’s unfair.
But Huckabee is, in more ways than one, terribly confused.
When we have an evangelical candidate publicly arguing that we should change the U.S. Constitution to bring it in line with his views of “God’s standards” — and then he criticizes his GOP rivals for disagreeing — we’re looking at a candidate who probably isn’t receiving enough questions about religion.
On MSNBC, Willie Geist noted after showing the clip that if a typical American made similar remarks about changing the Constitution, “he’d be dismissed as a crackpot, but he’s Mike Huckabee and he’s basically the front-runner.”
Maybe, but I’m still pretty comfortable calling Huckabee a crackpot anyway.
Once in a while, I hear liberals refer to the “Taliban wing of the Republican Party.” I should admit that I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the phrase, in part because I think it’s overused. The Taliban believes there should be no secular law — that all rules of government should be based on a specific religious worldview. Most Republicans reject that kind of thinking.
But that’s exactly what makes Huckabee’s remarks so startling. If the video clip is accurate, he was coming a little too close to a Taliban-like approach to the law. The Constitution, Huckabee seemed to be arguing, isn’t good enough the way it is; we need to fix it, by making it conform to “God’s standards.” And who’s going to decide exactly what standards God prefers? Presumably, Huckabee and his evangelical supporters will.
I don’t care how charming Huckabee is. It’s irrelevant whether he can be funny on The Colbert Report. Anyone who believes the U.S. Constitution is flawed because it insufficiently meets “God’s standards” is almost certainly living in the wrong country.
