It’s very apparent that my thumb is not on the pulse of Tennessee. I understand that it takes some rational disconnect to be a Republican in the first place, but voting for Mike Huckabee is the equivalent to giving the bird finger to all things logical.
He might actually be out of the race by the time you read this, but I thought it interesting how someone can instantly become a credible candidate based solely on religious belief. As far as I can tell, the only thing that separates him from any other Republican is that he was once a Baptist minister. That alone should probably disqualify him from running, or at least disqualify him in the minds of people who’ve acquired the skills to read a ballot.
When people used to ask me about the politics of Tennessee, I would give the token cute answer that we live in the Bible belt. The logic was that many Tennesseans vote the way they do because they live in some land of unstoppable flowing religious belief. I no longer have cute answers to give. Your political beliefs should be developed through reasoning skills, not some stilted sense of morality based upon supernatural literature. That’s basically what the Bible is, a book of tall tales and supernatural occurrence.
And if you think I’m being closed minded then feel free to read the sacred text. If you can come back to me with a straight face and say you believe everything you’ve just read, then my hat’s off to you. I’ll give you a high-five and meet you on the mother ship. Huckabee stated in one of the many debates that he viewed the Bible as a book of lessons to live by. There’s nothing wrong with that. I remember my third-grade teacher reading us kids didactic fables to give us a sense of some basic mores. However, if you’re trying to gain a complex understanding of human interaction and existence through children’s tales, then your logic has already derailed, and your ability to make decisions is flawed.
A good example of that is Huckabee’s disbelief of evolution and his views on homosexuality. How can a person be trusted to make a decision on education when he thinks the world was created in six days, or marriage rights, when his God has already ruled on the subject? How can a person be trusted to make ethical decisions when all decisions are filtered through King James? Many Tennesseans might even prefer that, but it’s just not progressive.
In the last few years there has been a movement underway, spearheaded by evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins and a philosopher named Daniel Dennett. The movement, which many refer to as the New Atheism movement, is founded with the basic goal of steering people away from illogical religious belief. I don’t know if this movement will gain any traction in the South anytime soon, but it’s becoming a must for our political system.
And if it does, Mike Huckabee might find himself without a job.
