Why Mike Huckabee Scares Me (or scares Marc)

My friend Marc wrote a nice response about Huckabee and religion in government on facebook, but you'd have to be on facebook to read it. I've reposted it here for my legions of readers to absorb...

James Madison, the author of the document to which every person elected to the presidency MUST swear to uphold and defend, would have been deeply troubled by this debate. Religion is faction. Even those who maintain their LACK of faith belong to a faction. Faction is inevitable in a free society. Even if we destroyed all remnants of religion, left a nation of infants here to be self sufficient, and all killed ourselves before those infants knew what happened, the survivors would still grow up to become factioned by class, belief, etc. Even in Christianity, in Revelation, when the whole of mankind is exposed to the truth of God and Jesus, humanity is factioned into those saved and not saved. Now, if faction is inevitable in a free society, how are we to maintain that free society if one faction believes itself to be correct in something that cannot be proven while one is alive?

We can either get rid of the causes of factions or offset the effects of faction (of course, I'm paraphrasing Madison here). Getting rid of the causes of faction is impossible in a free society because it requires destroying the liberty of the free society or getting every man woman and child to agree on one thing. That means we must offset the effects of faction. The constitution has been set up to do just this by creating a democratic republic. In a pure democracy, if some maniac were able to sway the majority into believing his/her way, he could then abuse that mandate to his disgression. In our republic, the maniac is rendered impotent by two of our greatest qualities: federalism and representation. Our system of federalism separates power into 50 smaller units. Our system of representation falls into separation of powers; populous states are rewarded more representation while everyone is still represented. In this case, even if a maniac comes along and is able to sway the popular majority of one state, section, or even the whole country itself, the system will still prevail.

Those of you professing that Mike Huckabee "scares you", take comfort in this: Even if Mr. Huckabee were to amass an overwhelming majority of support from Arkansas or the deep south or even the United States of America, he would still be hard pressed to eliminate the document that he is bound by. The most important thing for people afraid of a dominant faction to do is to vote. By voting (not just for president, but for every election no matter how trivial) those in fear of the majority ensure they still have a voice. What Mr. Madison most likely couldn't have predicted was for people to become apathetic and complacent. To quote Michael Douglas' character in "The American President": "This is advanced citizenship, folks! You got to want it and want it bad."

The US has seen its share of maniacal yet popular movements. Abolition, secession, unchecked capitalism, xenophobic hysteria, court-packing, nuclear hysteria, communist hysteria (which, incidentally is the reason we have "God" in our pledge of allegiance) all come and go. If the majority wins, the movement wins. If the movement is meritorious, it remains (i.e. abolition). If said movement should lose veracity over time, it cannot persist (i.e. prohibition).

So, in short, speak your voice with your vote. Debate party, policy, and platform until your voice is hoarse. Welcome the next president to the white house as a public servant, and only that. For the people who sit in the oval office have no more power to mandate their personal beliefs than each and every one of us have to destroy theirs. I'll end by quoting Madison:

The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage of any improper or wicked project will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.

Huh-ha....he said "taint".

Smurf your smurfing terrorism, here's the real news

Smurfs -- known in the original Belgian comic strip as Schtroumpfs -- may only be as tall as three apples ...

Again, I need to understand what strange algorithm (or stoned intern) at Reuters decides what stories warrant a "priority". It seems almost uncomfortable to read about the Smurfs in any context, but for fuck sake it's between a bomb in Karachi and a bomb in Kabul!

There's people dying across the globe but stop the presses! This time, there's a superfluity of smurf vaginas! C'mon Reuters; you're better than this. Also, why is this a Reuters World story to begin with? Do they know the Smurfs aren't really in our "world"? Who did the fact checking? I'm so tired...