I’m not sure I can imagine a scenario in which I’d vote for any Republican candidate in November, but if Mike Huckabee is still the front-runner by then, we could be in trouble. What’s worse, a President who claims to occasionally talk with God, or one who refuses to sign disaster relief because it might possibly make God look bad?
No, seriously, Huckabee did that:
ARKADELPHIA, ARK. — Five days after the tornado tore through the state, this city of 10,000 lay in ruins. The cyclone destroyed an office building, a bank, a pharmacy and 70 other businesses. The electricity was out. The National Guard patrolled the streets. Six people were dead.In Little Rock, GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee was reviewing a disaster insurance measure that he intended to support when he became troubled: The bill, drawing on centuries-old legal terminology, referred to natural disasters as “acts of God.”
He refused to sign what should have been a simple and straightforward state senate bill because it painted God in a slightly unflattering light.
“While I realize that to some this is a minor issue, it is a matter of deep conscience with me to attribute in law a destructive and deadly force as being an ‘act of God,’ ” he eventually wrote to the bill’s sponsors, Young and Sen. Wayne Dowd. While acknowledging that “acts of God” was the “appropriate” legal term, he suggested the legislature substitute “natural disaster.”
And, as any good Christian knows, God has nothing to do with nature.
I swear, reality has made The Onion and its like obsolete.
Link via Gerry Canavan.
You know, I’d actually be all in favor of changing that rather stupid wording everywhere. Nevertheless, I am now banging my head repeatedly against my keyboard.
The wording has a long legal history, and the lawmakers worried, not unreasonably, that, by not including it in this case, they would effectively be leaving the law open to interpretation and legal maneuvering.
From a “separation of church and state” standpoint, yes, I think there’s a good argument to be made for changing it across the board. However, that wasn’t Huckabee’s argument, not by a long shot, and church and state seem to be about one and the same with him on a lot of issues. He was worried, apparently, that the Big Guy would look bad — when everybody knows it’s that secular bitch Mother Nature who’s to blame.
You know, maybe someone should point out to Huckabee that it is a separation of church and state issue, and that it’s actually a not-bad (if rather trivial) example of why he ought to be all in favor of the idea. Back when the whole separation concept was first proposed, it was advocated for just as strongly by evangelical churches — which were then in the minority — as it was by secularists. And for good reason. It is a deeply uncomfortable thing when your government, in however trivial a fashion, appears to endorse a religious standpoint that you don’t agree with, whether it’s on the question of whether God causes cyclones, or the question of whether God exists at all. In fact, it might be good if Huckabee, and anyone else who might agree with him for the same reasons, keeps this in mind the next time someone protests about the Ten Commandments appearing on a courthouse,or the government’s mention of God on currency and in the Pledge of Allegiance and realize for once that, “Oh, lighten up, it’s no biggie!” is not an appropriate response.
That having been said, I don’t know about Huckabee’s particular brand of Christianity, but secular humanist ethics would certainly say that helping disaster victims ought to win out over quibbling over wording every time.
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