Book Review: The Three Cs That Made America Great by Mike Huckabee, Part 1

Preface

Several weeks ago my Dad went to Sam's Club and bought us large bags of almonds, pecans, walnuts, and a big jar of cashews. We love nuts of all sorts at our house. The man-spouse frequently drops by the store on the way home to pick up a bag of pistachios or can of cashews to munch on, and I use almonds and pecans in salads and cashews in my sautéed spinach recipe. So this was a welcome gift. When we had consumed them all, I asked him if we could get some more. Sunday night he messaged me saying that he had been to Sam's and could I come over and get these nuts. When I got there he had a paper grocery bag with the three bags and one jar of nuts, four oranges...

... and a book by Mike Huckabee. "I'd like you to read this book," Dad said.

I shuddered and shook my head. "You don't want to read it?" he asked. I shuddered and shook my head. "He's drunk the Kool-Aid," he said to my mom.

The phrase "to drink the Kool-Aid" is a reference to the Jonestown massacre, a 1978 event in Guyana in which a charismatic cult leader convinced his followers that the government was coming to get them, and that the only way to save themselves was to commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking grape flavored Flavor Aid laced with Valium, chloral hydrate, Phenergan, and cyanide. In Foxworld, use of that phrase does not refer to a cult leader type president convincing people that the "socialists" are out to get them and the only way to save themselves is to vote for people who want to take away their health care during a pandemic. It instead refers to people who have a different point of view, one which they supposedly came to because the "lying liberal media" fed them "fake news" in order to enslave them by convincing them to vote for "socialists" who want to "take away our freedoms."

My real reason for not wanting to read the book had little to do with Mr. Huckabee himself, even though I knew I was going to disagree with much of what he would have to say. Nor was it because the forward was written by fascist and professional fabulist Sean Hannity.  No, it was because I knew that this was going to turn into an involved research project that would occupy my brain, and I wanted to be able to sleep. It will take up ALL of my time, and I've got things to do. Plus, I know he's hoping it will influence my vote, but I voted in September.

The conversation turned to the fact that I'm back at work, and how much I am enjoying not being on the overnight shift anymore, and then I stepped into the other room to look for a DVD I wanted (but didn't find.) While there I thought, Oh, why not. I came back to the kitchen, put a set of DVDs that I had decided to take home into the bag. I grabbed the book and put it in too.
   "Oh, you're going to read it?" Dad asked. 
   "I guess," I said.
   "Have Gaby read it too. It's all about the Constitution, and I think he'll find it informative." Gaby has read two books in his entire life. This isn't going to be the third.

  I had to work on Monday, so there was no way I was going to get into the book before I had to go to bed, so Sunday night it sat untouched on the coffee table. I had three days off, so my plan was to start it on Tuesday morning in the hopes that I could mentally leave it behind as the day wore on. I did peek Monday evening. I thought it might be fun to be able to say, "Well, the first sentence was a lie." But it wasn't. I looked at one more sentence on a random page, and got reminded of why this could turn out to be difficult. 

A few years ago I read a book with the rather misleading title The Republican Brain.  It was, in fact, a look at what the differences are between the way the conservative mind thinks vs the liberal mind. Its conclusion, basically was that if you want to convince a liberal of something, you get out the spreadsheets and show them the data. If you want to convince a conservative of something, you have to appeal to their values. (My conservative Facebook friends have convinced me that if you want to convince a conservative of something, you fill them up with bogus information and scare the crap out of them, but that's another post.) For the liberal, their values are informed by their beliefs, and for the conservative, their beliefs are informed by their values. They have different paradigms, and that makes it hard to see the other's point of view.

   The word paradigm means model, and in this case I'm using it to mean the model a person has for his understanding of the way the world works. People with different paradigms have difficulty communicating with each other, usually because they use the same words to describe entirely different things. (My brother did a video about this, primarily about evolution. He could do the same with socialism.) But the understanding of language is more than just the words. There is subtext and nuance and a whole variety of things that influence your usage of the words that out of your mouth. It's like you have your own language. And for someone to understand you, they have to understand your language. That's why it's so hard to argue with strangers on the internet.

Now, I used to consider myself a conservative, and it wasn't that long ago. Unfortunately, it took a while for me to notice that the word 'conservative" had been co-opted by crazy people. But I think I still understand some of the concepts and lingo, so let's give this a go.

The first thing to do was to find out something about Huckabee the man. Checking Wikipedia, I find that there were a lot of things I knew, and a lot of things I didn't. I knew he had been a pastor, I knew he was the Governor of Arkansas at one time, I knew he ran for president a couple of times.  He's conservative on social issues (no surprise there, as his positions on abortion and gay rights are informed by his faith.) He's kind of all over the place on economics. He's surprisingly liberal on immigration. I found out that he plays electric bass in a band, and that he has a sense of humor. I knew that in one of campaigns he had a completely unworkable tax plan, but I didn't remember what it was. Looking further, I found out it was something he called a Fair Tax wherein income tax was replaced by a consumption (sales) tax. Consumption taxes are inherently regressive, which means that the less money you have, the more you pay in taxes. Under his plan, the poor would be given a subsidy (Socialism!) for their basic living expenses, but taxes would still go up significantly for the middle class, while dropping dramatically for the wealthy. 

I also believed that he was a dominionist. After reading the first chapter, that belief was reinforced. 

Dominionism, also known as Christian Reconstructionism, is the belief that 

• America is meant to be governed by Biblical law
• that the US was founded as a Christian nation, then betrayed by secular humanist liberals who created a myth of separation of church and state in the 20th century, leading the country to immorality and godlessness, and
• that the United States must be taken back by Christians.

Dominionists are sometimes called Christian supremacists because of their belief that their religion comes with the privilege of exemption from obeying certain laws, and Christo-fascists (my preferred term) because they seek to eliminate other people's civil and human rights.  Huckabee is quoted as saying, in January of 2008, 

"I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view." 

 But in the title of the book, he gives equal billing to Christianity and the Constitution, so I'm eager to see how he reconciles this. 

Sitting out on the front porch, I began reading the first chapter, Christian Faith Comes To A New World. Immediately I'm confronted with a question: just how pedantic do I want to get? Like, the Pilgrims did not name their colony Plymouth Rock. John Smith, of Pocahontas fame, had surveyed the area a few years earlier, and named it New Plymouth after a town in England, and the Pilgrims kept the name. Plymouth Rock, however, didn't become a thing until 121 years later. (Plymouth Rock has a pretty interesting history. Check out its Wikipedia page.) But of course, that's not Huckabee's larger point. 

Huckabee writes that during the time of the pilgrims the established church had become corrupt, seeking to please the king, who was using the church as a political tool to control his subjects. For the Pilgrims, being English, that would be the Church of England, and the king would be King James I, who had sponsored an English translation of the Bible just a few years earlier. Without meaning to, Huckabee has made the point iterated by Thomas Payne in his pamphlet The Age of Reason:

"Persecution is not an original feature in any religion, but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law."

I see this as problematic for someone who wants to change the Constitution to line up with the Bible. But this is only page 2, so we'll have to see where it goes. 

Next up is a section about colonial charters. A charter is a letter of permission from the king to a private company allowing them to do business. It's basically a contract that defines the business and its objective. The London Company, for instance, was formed with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in the Virginia territory as defined by the charter. Shareholders were given interest in the natural resources produced in the colony. It was a feudalistic system in which the company served as the lord and the settlers as the fiefs. Huckabee pulls a portion of a quote from the penultimate paragraph of the second Virginia Charter (1609):

"The principle effect that we can desire or expect of this action is the conversion... of the people in those parts unto the true worship of God and Christian religion." 

He says this is an example of the "religious fervor held by the early colonists in America." There may well have been a religious fervor held by the early colonists, but the charters have nothing to do with that. This was a directive from the King of England, who is also the head of the Church of England, who Huckabee said was using the church as a political tool just one page ago. "People in those parts," of course, refers to Native Americans. King James himself had a strong dislike of Native Americans because they had introduced the "filthie novelitie" of smoking into British society. But the king still held the opinion commonly held by English clergy that the Native Americans were ripe for conversion to Christianity -- of a particular flavor, as we will see in a moment. Richard Hakluyt (the younger) wrote, "The people of America crye oute unto us... to come and helpe them, and bring unto them the gladd tidinges of the gospell." In his pamphlet Nova Britannia, Robert Johnson wrote that once in the New World, the English would begin the social and spiritual conversion of the natives "by faire and loving meanes, suiting to our English natures." But while writers back home were insisting that conversion of the natives was a principal purpose of colonization, the men on the scene considered the natives a military problem in which the natives were a real or potential foe. 

Besides, he was very selective about the quote. Here is the rest of it:

And lastely, because the principall effect which wee cann desier or expect of this action is the conversion and reduccion of the people in those partes unto the true worshipp of God and Christian religion, in which respect wee would be lothe that anie person should be permitted to passe that wee suspected to affect the superstitions of the Churche of Rome, wee doe hereby declare that it is oure will and pleasure that none be permitted to passe in anie voiadge from time to time to be made into the saide countrie but such as firste shall have taken the oath of supremacie, for which purpose wee doe by theise presents give full power and aucthoritie to the Tresorer for the time beinge, and anie three of the Counsell, to tender and exhibite the said oath to all such persons as shall at anie time be sent and imploied in the said voiadge.

So the directive from the King of England, Sovereign Head of the Church of England, is to convert the natives and prohibit Catholics, the Catholic Church being the Anglican Church's bitter rival, from entering the colony. 

Meanwhile, back at ranch, the Native Americans did not welcome the new settlers with open arms. They were skeptical of English intentions, and wanted neither Christianity nor encroachment on their lands. John Smith had lied to the Powhatans about their purpose for being there, saying that they had just escaped from a Spanish squadron, and they were taking temporary refuge. Three colonists were killed in a skirmish when the Powhatans found them planting crops. But eventually the English weaponry forced the Powhatans to reluctantly accept the English presence. Captain Smith recorded this conversation in 1609 with Wahunsenacawh, who the English referred to as King or Chief Powhatan: 

"Captain Smith, some doubt I have of your comming hither... for many do informe me, your comming is not for trade, but to invade my people and possesse my country... Having seene the death of all my people thrice... I knowe the difference of peace and warre better than any in my countrie" If he fought the English, Powhatan predicted, he would "be so hunted by you that I can neither rest eat nor sleepe, but my tired men must watch, and if a twig but breake, everie one crie, there comes Captain Smith: then must I flie I know not whether and thus with miserable fear end my miserable life."

The colonists' relations with the natives was complicated. There was a period of hostility between 1610 and 1614, followed by an eight year span of relative peace. Then in 1622, 347 colonists, a third of the population, were massacred by a confederacy of Powhatans. After that it was all out war. 

The history of all that can be read elsewhere, but one of the underlying causes for all the conflict was the English attitude of ethnocentric racism, what would be referred to today as white supremacism, which transformed itself into outright contempt once it arrived in the New World. The Native Americans were viewed as culturally and religiously inferior, and in need of redemption, which involved adopting English customs and fealty to the King. William Strachey wrote, "we shall by degrees chaung their barbarous natures, make them ashamed... of their savadge nakednes, informe them of the true god, and of the waie to their salvation, and fynally teach them obedience to the king's Majestie and to his Governours in those parts." Concern for the native's salvation failed to cover the general disdain the colonists felt for them. John Bonoeil described them as knowing "no industry, no Arts, no culture, nor no good use of this blessed Country heere, but are meere ignorance, sloth, and brutishness, and an unprofitable burthen... [They] are natural borne slaves." The message of his pamphlet fell on receptive ears in a public that perceived the natives as a nuisance to be pushed aside or enslaved. Even the clergy saw no prospects of conversion until "their Priests and Ancients have their throats cut." 

I doubt that any of this is what Huckabee meant when he referred to the "religious fervor held by the early colonists in America." I also doubt that he did any research about it, because it certainly doesn't fit into the narrative he wants to promote.

 I'm only on page four. This is going to take forever.