Huck's Beliefnet interview

Check out Beliefnet's interview with Mike Huckabee. He elaborates on his remark that the Constitution should be amended to conform with "God's law":

I probably said it awkwardly, but the point I was trying to make– and I’ve said it better in the past – is that people sometimes say we shouldn’t have a human life amendment or a marriage amendment because the Constitution is far too sacred to change, and my point is, the Constitution was created as a document that could be changed. That’s the genius of it. The Bible, however, was not created to be amended and altered with each passing culture. If we have a definition of marriage, that we don’t change that definition, that we affirm that definition. And that the sanctity of human life is not just a religious issue. It’s an issue that goes to the very heart of our civilization of all people being equal, endowed by their creator with alienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That was the point. The Bible was not written to be amended. The Constitution was. Without amendments to the Constitution, women couldn’t vote, African-Americans wouldn’t be considered people. We have had to historically go back and to clarify, because there’ve been injustices made because the Constitution wasn’t as clear as it needed to be, and that’s the point.

He goes on to explain he was talking narrowly about amending the constitution to protect unborn life and traditional marriage, and nothing else:

I’m not suggesting that we say, “Okay, the Bible says you should tithe, so now in the Constitution we’re going to amend it to say everyone tithes.”

His point is that the law should reflect transcendent moral truth. This is called the natural law. You may not agree with it, but this is traditional conservatism. If Father Neuhaus said it -- and he certainly believes it -- and not a Baptist preacher from Arkansas, I very much doubt we'd have right-wing spluttering on the matter.

I also liked this exchange:

There’s something interesting going on now in the evangelical world – there’s a conversation going on about what the agenda ought to be that seems broader. There was a little bit of a sense that the religious conservative leadership, while emphasizing important things like abortion and family, had neglected issues like poverty and the environment. Do you think that’s true?

I’ve said that, that I’ve felt like as Christians and particularly even as Republicans, we needed to address issues that touched the broader perspective, and that included disease, hunger, poverty, homelessness, the environment. And it’s not a matter that we’re going to become left-wingers. I don’t think that at all. I think taking care of the earth is a matter of stewardship. It’s not about global warming, it’s about stewardship and responsibility. [Emphasis mine -- RD.] Things like hunger and homelessness. And it’s not about having a government program, it’s about simply reminding each of us as individual citizens that this is an area of our own responsibility. At my own church… our church is very, very engaged in everything from dealing with hunger, poverty, and we reach out to a lot of people. We don’t ask the government to do it. We do it ourselves as a church. It’s part of our ministry. The only reason the government would get involved would be that the other social institutions – primarily the family the church the neighborhood – failed. If the family or church does its own work and does it well, then there’s no reason for government to ever get into these things at all. The ideal is that they wouldn’t, that they’ll do a lousy job of it generally.

"It's about stewardship and responsibility." That's Traditional Conservatism 101. That's what I mean by crunchy conservatism. That's the antithesis of this idea put forth by Limbaugh the other day, that to be a conservative means to create conditions under which the maximum number of American can have all their material desires met, virtually on demand.

I strongly encourage you to read the entire interview. As a non-Evangelical whose moral and political understanding has been formed primarily by Catholicism, I am struck by how profoundly consonant Huckabee's views are with Catholic teaching. Any Catholic who thinks he's some sort of anti-Catholic fundamentalist should read this interview, and think again.