{"id":13963,"date":"2007-12-18T13:31:32","date_gmt":"2007-12-18T18:31:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13963.html"},"modified":"2007-12-18T13:31:32","modified_gmt":"2007-12-18T18:31:32","slug":"culture-warrior-huckabee-saw-a-lot-of-enemies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/culture-warrior-huckabee-saw-a-lot-of-enemies\/","title":{"rendered":"Culture warrior Huckabee saw a lot of enemies"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been days<\/i> since we learned about another intemperate, intolerant remark from Mike Huckabee before he became a presidential candidate, so I suppose we were due for a new round of revelations. Mother Jones’ David Corn delivers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To briefly recap, the past couple of weeks have been painfully revealing for the former Arkansas governor. In 1998, he supported<\/a> a statement that called on “wives to graciously submit to their husband\u2019s sacrificial leadership.\u201d He wanted to quarantine AIDS patients<\/a>. He believed homosexuality could \u201cpose a dangerous public health risk<\/a>.\u201d He said that if a man and a woman live together outside of marriage, they\u2019re engaging in a \u201cdemeaning … alternate lifestyle<\/a>.\u201d He claimed intervention from God<\/a> in his successful 1993 special election in Arkansas’ race for lieutenant governor. In a 1990 speech, Huckabee said, “It doesn’t embarrass me one bit to let you know that I believe Adam and Eve were real people<\/a>.” In 1997, Huckabee refused to sign legislation to assist storm victims because the measure referred to tornadoes and floods as “acts of God<\/a>.” In 1998, Huckabee spoke at the National Pastors\u2019 Conference and implored the group to “take this nation back for Christ<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

There’s almost certainly more, but Huckabee and his campaign refuse to release <\/a>copies of the sermons he delivered from his pulpit.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the hits just keep on coming. David Corn took a look<\/a> at a book Huckabee wrote as governor in 1998, called “Kids Who Kill: Confronting Our Culture of Violence,” and found a “fierce culture warrior.” Among the “cultural conflicts” Huckabee descried:<\/p>\n

Abortion, environmentalism, AIDS, pornography, drug abuse, and homosexual activism have fragmented and polarized our communities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It gets worse.
\n
\nA few pages later, the reader learns:<\/p>\n

It is now difficult to keep track of the vast array of publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations — from homosexuality and pedophilia to sadomasochism and necrophilia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The point of “Kids Who Kill” — which Huckabee has not emphasized on the campaign trail, perhaps afraid someone might read it — was for the then-governor to denounce the “demoralization of America,” and a country that he said “seems to be disintegrating before our very eyes.”<\/p>\n

And what did he mean by that? Well, his book denounces no-fault divorce, women’s equality in the workforce, and these perceived social ills:<\/p>\n

The legal commitment of ideological secularism to any and all of the fanatically twisted fringes of American culture — pornographers, gay activists, abortionists, and other professional liberationists — is a pathetically self-defeating crusade that has confused liberty with license.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The irony, of course, is that Huckabee obviously felt quite strongly about being a culture warrior at the time, but is trying to characterize himself as a friendly neighbor now. Corn pointed to these Huckabee comments in the most recent presidential debate. After Mitt Romney cited a series of specific policy goals for his administration, Huckabee added<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“Reality is, none of that’s going to happen till we bring this country back together. I think the first priority of the next president is to be a president of all the United States. We are, right now, a very polarized country, and that polarized country has led to a paralyzed government. We’ve got Democrats who fight Republicans, liberals fighting conservatives. The left fights the right. Who’s fighting for this country again?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Given his track record, Huckabee seems to have helped create that polarization by denouncing everyone who shares a competing worldview. It’s a little late to run on a “bring the people together” platform, don’t you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been days since we learned about another intemperate, intolerant remark from Mike Huckabee before he became a presidential candidate, so I suppose we were due for a new round of revelations. Mother Jones’ David Corn delivers. To briefly recap, the past couple of weeks have been painfully revealing for the former Arkansas governor. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}