Atheists for Huckabee
A piece written by Bob Price pre-2016 general election.
Don’t worry: this is not an attempt to persuade your 2016 vote one way or the other. Instead, I am trying to make my position clearer to many of you who remain baffled at my political conservatism. To most atheists, skeptics, humanists, etc., it appears self-evident that political “Progressivism” (Leftism) is the logical political stance for them (us). As I have tried to explain before, I reject this connection and remain surprised that such tough-minded skeptics turn right around and embrace failed, dreamy ideologies long ago discredited by history and based on sheer faith such as they would never be caught dead applying to religious questions. When Liberals vote based on their Socialist, pacifistic, and Politically Correct faith, sure with closed-eyed certitude, heedless of the foreseeable consequences, I see them as merely one more sect of faith-fueled theocrats. I call it “political snake-handling.” I see them as imperialistic and intolerant in their ceaseless efforts to scrub public space and speech of religion. They look to me like the Red Guards trying to impose their own Cultural Revolution.[1] They are the mirror opposites, I think, of the Christian Reconstructionist nuts.[2]
And as long as a political candidate is not a Christian Reconstructionist (someone who wants to replace the Constitution with Deuteronomy), I consider his or her religious faith irrelevant. I base my vote on real-world policy, things like the economy, smaller government, and foreign policy. I’d much rather have a Pentecostal or a Roman Catholic in the White House than a Socialist. Obviously, I plan to vote Republican in 2016, as I have in every election since that of the disastrous Jimmy Carter. I don’t care much for Rand Paul and his isolationist tendencies, but I’d even cast my ballot for him if Hillary Clinton or Pocahontas, er, I mean Elizabeth Warren, were the Dem nominee.
Frankly, I’d prefer Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister whose religious beliefs I categorically reject. I think his stand against PC and Islamo-fascism is vitally important. These ideologies are dangerous to free speech and national security. Unlike President Neville Chamberlain II, Huckabee appears to have learned the lessons of history. If he becomes President (and the same is true of most other Republicans), we have a good chance of averting another Holocaust in Israel. (Watch Obama allow it and then say that at least it solved the Israeli-Palestinian problem.) Huckabee will not vainly imagine he can make nice with the apocalyptic fanatics in Tehran, whose every action serves to demonstrate their incorrigible, anti-Semitic intractability.
Huckabee, I’m pretty sure, holds certain apocalyptic beliefs himself. He most likely believes all the nonsense about the Antichrist, the Rapture, and Armageddon, the stuff I debunk in my book The Paperback Apocalypse. But that hardly means he thinks it’s his duty to bring on the End Times, an absurdity often ascribed to Ronald Reagan with no justification whatever. Pat Robertson, okay, but my point is that Huckabee is more like Reagan than Robertson. (Similarly, many of our militant secularist pals used to try to convince us that George W. Bush was a Reconstructionist, thereby revealing their gross ignorance.)
I do not like it when I hear Huckabee make contemptuous cracks about atheists (e.g., how their holiday should be April Fool’s Day),[3] but I don’t care. I am not a whining “victim.” To hell with “sensitivity.” I’m drawing a wider circle that includes him. Admittedly, it’s more troubling when, as recently, he said something to the effect that atheists should be fired from government posts, but I think atheist alarmists have missed his point. Huckabee, I think, takes the bait of those whom I call “Westboro Atheists,” the kind I repudiate. They are almost all “Progressives” supporting the ruinous policies of the current regime, and I think that is what Huckabee blames them for. Hell, I’d like to see them on the bread line myself.
One reason I think Huckabee opposes atheists primarily insofar as they are “Progressives” is that he gets along fine with George Will (an atheist), Charles Krauthammer (an agnostic leaning toward atheism), and Carl Rove (an agnostic). These guys are my (and, I suspect, Huckabee’s) kind of non-believers.
But Huckabee opposes Gay Marriage big time, doesn’t he? I don’t, though it is not a major concern of mine. But Huckabee’s opinion is moot. Like him, Reagan was Pro-Life, but he never really did anything about it. What could he have done? In the same way, a President Huckabee would never be able to turn back the clock on Marriage Equality even if he wanted to. Besides, he seems to have softened his position a bit lately, comparing belief in Gay Marriage with using profanity and narcotics: he is tolerant of colleagues and friends who do any of these things.
Huckabee would shelve Global Warming fears, which is certainly okay with me, since I strongly suspect the whole thing is yet another Progressivist scheme to control, i.e., screw up, the economy. As my old professor, Robert Beckwith, used to say, “Figures don’t lie, but liars sure do figure!”
Vote for whomever you want. I am just sharing the sort of calculus I bring to bear on politics. I don’t think there is a particular political stance inherent in atheism or humanism, as some do (remember the recent flap over “Atheism Plus”?). I do not even see atheism as politically relevant. You don’t have to be a secularist to be against Christian theocracy; most Christian fundamentalists repudiate it, too (e.g., Norman Geisler, Chuck Colson). And I am equally leery of any possible atheocracy.
[1] Yeah, I know our Westboro Atheists are not resorting to actual violence like the culture-purging Red Guard or the Taliban. You know what I mean.
[2] Rousas John Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law; Greg L. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics; Gary North and Gary Demar, Christian Reconstruction: What It Is, What It Isn’t.
[3] By the way, Easter is the same day as April Fool’s this year.
Bob Price is a board member of Republican Atheists. He is a Freethinker, Author, Debater, Editor, Anthologist, Columnist, Podcaster and Heretic. You can visit his podcast The Bible Geek here. Contact Bob.
