This week Mike Huckabee, one of the few practicing Christians in the presidential primary races released a Christmas ad. The guy was a Southern Baptist pastor for years before his 11 years as Governer of Arkansas, so he's always talking about his faith.So he releases a Merry Christmas ad, reminding everyone that regardless of the nasty politics that are happening right now, we need to remember the reason for Christmas is Jesus' birth.
The response? The shelves of his bookshelf behind him with Christmas decorations looks like a cross!
Peggy Noonan, who didn't even notice the bookshelf on first viewing jumped on the political insanity bandwagon stating that in America, we don't "hit people over the head with [religion's] symbols in an explicitly political setting, such as a campaign commercial, which is what Mr. Huckabee's ad was." - His commercial wasn't forcing religion because he said Jesus is the reason for the season, but because a vertical and horizontal piece of painted wood made it into the shot.
But here's the problem : he was saying that he's a Christian and believes that Jesus is the purpose behind Christmas!
Subliminal messages are to get by un-noticed - he was saying the words outright!
I find it very interesting that it's not worth attacking the guy for what he believes, and what he is actually saying on the ad, but for some supposed politically-minded bookshelf that is subliminally agreeing with the speaker.
Doesn't this attack seem like the result of some disorder? I'm not sure if it's passive aggressive or just insane.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton's campaign is distributing fliers bashing Obama, using a quote from John Edwards to make Obama look bad, with Hillary no-where mentioned, so it looks like Obama has bad policies and Edwards is the one who is attacking... and who does everyone attack? The guy with the bookshelf that made a profession of faith.
I think Huckabee is a nut, that's for sure. :)
I'm just rather annoyed by the God card always being played in politics. It's cheap.
By the way, I found this mashup quite funny, of things he said as governor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0md2vXiOGs
Ron Paul's response was a lot nuttier than Huckabee saying Merry Christmas. The guy was a pastor for years. Him saying Merry Christmas isn't playing "the God card," it's a big part of who he is.
So far the best arguments against Huckabee are huge logical flaws of 'mere assertion' - Huckabee's a nut and that's that, no reason needed. A photoshopped and sound-chopped youtube video isn't really that great of an argument.
Whether or not he wins, it's great that he and Ron Paul are doing so well in the race:
1. Huck - total non-elite. The first man in his family to get a high school dipoloma. He was then a Governor for about 11 years, which is more government experience than everyone running except McCain.
2. Huck and Paul are both much more conservative in some ways than the other candidates, and I'm sick of limiting our choices to who we think can beat Hillary, rather than who can champion the "conservative" cause.
3. They both prove that you can be a nut and still get people to vote for you.
My problem with Ron Paul is that his response to a difficult problem that 'we should have never gotten into' is not to stabilize and try to fix the problem we caused, but just to pull out all of the supports and let the region go to hell. After all, one American soldier's life is worth more than the entire middle east population's lives... right?
It was an offhand comment, and a video I found funny - not an argument.
If you're interested, the basic reasons I don't like Huckabee have nothing to do with this commercial. And they apply to just about every candidate out there.
He's a statist and is not fiscally conservative. He will continue waging war in the Middle East, including trying to take us into Iran. Those are two huge negatives for me.
I know he's a pastor and this is a part of who he is. "Playing the God card" doesn't mean the person is not being authentic. I suppose it's not that in itself that bothers me as much as a lot of people will decide "well he's a Christian, and a Republican, so I'm voting for him." Stuff like this, no matter the intentions, feeds that mentality.
I really appreciate Ron Paul's approach on that. He's a devout Christian, but he goes out of his way to focus on policy and his principles; not hiding his faith, but not flaunting it to pander to the "Christian Right".
Iraq is an entire other, lengthy, topic, but my semi-short :) answer is that no one has an answer to "stabilize the region." If the guilty parties involved in committing the US military to that atrocity want to privately fund their attempts to stabilize the region, they can go for it. But I'm sorry, I did not decide to invade Iraq, I am not responsible to fund the repeated, failed attempts to "fix it."
No, I'm not being selfish by saying that. I would gladly donate to private initiatives to promote peace and stabilization over there, but I believe firmly that military is not the proper means for that. The key difference being that private initiatives are voluntarily funded, so I can choose based on their effectiveness or other criteria. As it stands, I have no choice but to fund the US government's decisions and put money in the coffers of the military-industrial complex.
This is way too long for a comment.
What kind of insanity would ensue if everyone coming into office disregarded the commitments of those before them?
I suppose that would be the peak of corporate irresponsibility.
Iraq is interesting, because there are thousands or millions of lives at stake. I can whine about my tax dollars and how they are used - like the department of eduction which costs me several times what the Iraq situation has - but if the US and allied forces are the only thing keeping thousands of people alive, it is the epitome of selfishness for me to request that those thousands of people die so I can continue to amass disproportionate wealth in view of the global economy.
I agree that it is unfortunate that in order to live in a society we must give our money to a government that makes bad decisions.
I do wonder, however, if progress is being made in Iraq, how many of us would be forced to live in denial, and still effectively be rooting for the deaths of innocents in order to protect our political agenda.
I'm really quite open minded, so I hear that Iraq is going better and that its failing. I'm open to either side. Ethically, however, I do tend to think that life, even if it is the life of a middle eastern or African person, is incredibly important and more important than my personal wealth.
Hey Gregor,
You're right in the observation that I didn't mention that people have been killed in Iraq. Unfortunately, what we forget is that we don't have a time machine. What's in the past has already happened. No one can change what's happened.
What decision we should have made years ago is a very different question than what we should do in the situation in which we find ourselves.
A nosy neighbor makes a stupid decision to try to take the baby away from the babysitter across a freeway in a shopping cart, to get to a store on the other side. She can't figure out how to get safely across the second half, and she realizes it was a bad thing to start in the first place - and she wants her shopping cart to go buy clothes. So, she decides to leave the baby in the middle of the highway to fend for itself.
Regardless of whether there was justification for the original action, leaving the baby in the middle of the highway is wrong.
To believe we can de-stabilize a region and then pull out and everything will be hunky-dory is an overly simplistic view of things.
When we do complain that it's costing too much money, that is a statement about wanting money for ourselves, and many a convert has been won to the anti-war cause out of this selfishness. I wonder how people's views would change if taxes would go up if we pulled out of Iraq - it would be interesting to see who would switch and be rooting for the war in that case, eh?
No, I didn't forget that we don't have a time machine. Let's not be ludicrous.
Look, I was starting to type another longer comment, but I'm just going to keep it short and simple.
It's annoying to have it implied that my objections to the war are based on greed or valuing certain lives over others. These implications are incorrect.
Indeed, my indiscriminate value for human life has been a primary motivator of my position on this topic since before the war started.
The baby analogy is a good one, yet you have not demonstrated how I put a baby in a shopping cart and took it into the middle of the highway.
You'll find that I did no such thing.
I never said things would be hunky-dory, and I haven't complained about it costing too much.