Huckabee Is An Idiot

umm… seriously?

he really said that?

wow.

*sigh*

and this would be the person responsible for cleaning up all of the rhetorical mess bush has strewn behind him?

on behalf of my state, I offer my deepest sympathies…

I’m not going to advocate cutting off thumbs or anything in order to get information. But putting *certain* captives, who are very likely to contain very valuable information, in uncomfortable situations in order to save lives doesn’t fly in the face of anyone’s faith.

Simply put, had we caught one of the hijackers going into 9/11, known that they were going to do something and that extracting that information would save thousands of lives, then I think it’d be pretty heartless to *not* use the methods necessary to save those lives.

Trying to compare this to Jesus being obedient unto death on a cross is pretty dumb, as well, in my honest opinion. If you take that approach, then pretty much any action you take defending your life, family, property, or country is indefensible. If you’re going to advocate that as a political approach, you’re (a) not going to get very much support and (b) if you do, some other nutty country out there is going to take advantage of it and charge their tanks down your streets unopposed.

All of that said, I respect Huckabee’s reasoning for being against some of the more intense forms of interrogation, which is not about what it does to the person being interrogated. His perspective is concern for the person doing the interrogation.

Personally, I don’t know that waterboarding fits into the category of torture, and I think that the attention given to it has been way overblown. If people were half as worried about babies getting their brains sucked out of their head while being halfway through the birth canal, I’d take liberals a little more seriously in their concerns about waterboarding.

If you want to go that far, Jesus was completely separated from politics. Period. Neither advocated NOR criticized the Roman government. I don’t think either one of us are consistent with that.

I’m not advocating taking the terrorist to within an inch of his life. In general, I’m advocating that the use of putting people in uncomfortable situations (isolation, sleep deprivation, loud music, etc., *possibly* waterboarding) is warranted if it will save other people’s lives.

Finally, it’s not “holding somebody under water.” Waterboarding is not drowning someone.

So you’re against abortion, war, capital punishment, and torture. Only one of those is against someone who is completely innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever. Which one is the most important issue?

I’m not in favor of war or torture. Are they sometimes necessary? I’d have to say yes. History proves me right on that point. Capital punishment not so much.

But seriously, are you going to compare abortion to non-lethal forms of torture? And somehow call me a hypocrite because of my stance between the two? If you’re going to make that argument, stick with capital punishment, it’s the stronger one. Even still, my point earlier stands – those who fight against capital punishment while supporting unrestricted access to abortion are the far worse hypocrites in our society. Without question. If you’re going to get offended let’s start there.

I think the only option is to be wholly pro-life. From abortion, to capital punishment, to poverty, to torture. If McCain (who says he was waterboarded) says it’s torture ima take his word on it.

Some guy (a while ago) said love your enemies, I’m gonna go with he implied that we shouldn’t torture them…

First, let me clarify that there’s a difference between torture and interrogation. I meant to do that earlier. The question is whether a method fits into one category or another. And whether we allow those who are tasked with defending us to make the difficult decisions of when it is appropriate to use one method versus another.

Waterboarding is, at a minimum, a more intense method of interrogation. But after all the other claims of things being “torture” that to me were clearly not (things like sleep deprivation), it was hard for me to take liberals seriously when they claim that this was torture. In any case, it creates no permanent damage, and if it is not being done to simply “torture” but to interrogate someone in order to save lives, then I think it is a morally and ethically grey area, and in those circumstances, that’s why we have leaders who are tasked with making the difficult decisions of how to proceed.

I’m not an advocate of war. I believe that for this to be true, you have to be an advocate for invading other countries to expand your territory. War as an expansionist, conquering tool. This is very different from taking action to protect others. For us to lay down our lives to defend others is quite consistent with Christian ethics. Every military action the US has been a part of in the 20th and 21st centuries has been from this standpoint. I’m not saying that all of them were appropriate or that all of the decisions made were the right ones. Or that there aren’t people in this country who might enjoy war for war’s sake. But the appropriate response isn’t all-out pacifism. It’s somewhere in the middle, in a morally and ethically grey area.

By contrast, there is no moral or ethical grey area in abortion. Simply put, taking explicit action to end a completely innocent life is always wrong. That’s not saying that you can prevent all of the cases of it, just like you can’t prevent all murder. But for the position of the state to be that it is a “right” is equivalent to the position of the state being that murder is OK in any circumstance. After all murder isn’t something you can control, so why bother passing laws about it? It’s absolutely absurd, and I can in no way support any politician who has this viewpoint towards abortion.

This isn’t picking and choosing what I want from Jesus. This is about distinguishing areas that are ethically and morally grey from those that are not. Murder and abortion are wrong. Always. Interrogations and defense, even to the point of preventative action, are not always wrong.

And when I choose a political leader, I want someone who can tell the difference. Who can take a clear position against things that are always wrong, and have the ability to make difficult decisions when no choice is right.

Let’s just say I’d prefer that waterboarding be “safe, legal, and rare.” Would that be OK? Because I don’t hear liberals take much flak for that kind of talk, in cases where the moral issues are much, much clearer.

Josh – I was recommended by Mudpuppy to join you.

Here is the funny thing about this. On your moral horse you make a point about how it is awful to joke about waterboarding. Yet you call this man an “idiot”, does that coincide with your belief in Jesus? Is this the type of way to address another brother in Christ? Doesn’t sound like the love of Christ there.

You also seem to like Obama. Who doesn’t mind abortion yet seems really upset about terrorist being waterboarded. Yeah he really cares about life!

PS I will leave you with the question I had for Mudpuppy. How then would you interrogate known terrorist for information? Knowing full well they are holding information about an attack that could lead to a lot of people dead.

well the good news for me is that a kingdom built on non-violent love even unto my enemies is the only way to lasting, true, and eternal peace.

DING, DING, DING! We have a winner!

you said that a country built on pacifism has no ability to maintain peace. well the good news for me is that a kingdom built on non-violent love even unto my enemies is the only way to lasting, true, and eternal peace.

You’re confusing two different ideas of peace there. One is peace as the absence of armed conflict, with relative social liberty. The only kingdom you will ever find or can be a part of that is built on non-violent love even unto your enemies will never be of this world. And the peace it offers is not worldly peace, it is a peace within that removes the bondage of sin. These are completely different things.

War as an expansionist, conquering tool. This is very different from taking action to protect others. For us to lay down our lives to defend others is quite consistent with Christian ethics. Every military action the US has been a part of in the 20th and 21st centuries has been from this standpoint. I’m not saying that all of them were appropriate or that all of the decisions made were the right ones. Or that there aren’t people in this country who might enjoy war for war’s sake. But the appropriate response isn’t all-out pacifism. It’s somewhere in the middle, in a morally and ethically grey area.

There are multiple places I could have taken issue with your position, Derek, but this one is the most glaringly frustrating to me. And it’s frustrating to me for a historical reason.

You made a sweeping comment above that “for us to lay our lives down to protect others is quite consistent with Christian ethics.” You might be interested to know that that sort of position would have been declared heretical for the first 300 or so odd years of the church, and that you would’ve been excluded from communion for a year after taking life for repentance and penitence.

It’s no accident that the church’s stance shifted radically almost overnight at one point because of two guys, Constantine and Theodosius, who made the brilliant move of knowing that the church was subverting their rule in its very existence, so the solution was to fuse the church and state in such a way that the state’s interests would become the church’s interests, what with everyone in the empire being “Christian” and all and the gospel needing to be “defended” against the pagans.

It just so happens the church took the hard stance they did in the beginning because they followed Jesus’ call to “love their enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” they heard him teaching in a time where he exposed the dangerous fusion of state and religious goals, and they saw him live that teaching out on the cross.

So no, laying down our lives to defend others is not quite consistent with Christian ethics. It IS consistent with an ethics divorced from a commitment to faithfulness to Jesus, an ethics with a different starting point that asks different questions. This ethics makes the statement, “Well, if we loved our enemies, then tanks would roll down our defenseless streets,” or “When Jesus said ‘Do not resist evil,’ in common sense terms he meant don’t be an aggressor.”

And your statement “Every military action in the 20th and 21st centuries has been from (the protecting others and not expansionist) standpoint.” Looks like you’re exactly the person propagandist spin doctors like to see.

I’d love to hear how the wars that emerged from Communist domino theory; like Vietnam, Afghanistan, the Bay of Pigs and constant assassination attempts on Castro, and the channeling of weapons, training, and money into destabilizing Central America fit into that category.

I’d also love to see how dropping how dropping atomic bombs on two cities full of civilians in Japan, affecting their society for generations afterwards fit into that. Kind of lessens the force of the rhetoric of our Iran is a “rogue nation” that may use nuclear weaponry when the only nation that’s ever used it, and on CIVILIANS nonetheless, is the U.S. Which is the rogue nation? And why not toss in the firebombing of Dresden and carpetbombing of Berlin and illegal phosporus bombs used in the most recent attack on Iraq that riddled civilians with holes throughout their bodies while in their homes?

It sorts takes away a bit of the force of the “protecting” innocent people bit when your methods of warfare are killing those very innocents in their homes.

Jesus gave us no choice as followers of his. Period. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” And “greater love has no one that this, that they lay down their life for their friends” is sickening when put on posters honoring military lives; it has nothing, NOTHING to do with picking up a weapon to defend a nation. It DOES, however, have EVERYTHING to do with a willingness to step in the midst of what is broken and absorb the punishment of the brokenness to break the cycle of violence. Jesus did it, and he expects us to do the same.

“That’s beside the point. To say it this way is to make it seem like you make that declaration in order to be subversive. Which is not the point. The point isn’t to be subversive.”

it was very much the point up until constantine took over and the christian ethos crawled into bed with imperial ideology. that’s when the idea that it wasn’t subversive was birthed. that’s when atonement theology began to change, and that’s when the statement “…[for] us to lay down our lives to defend others is quite consistent with Christian ethics” became orthodox. until then people took jesus at his word.

as per the declaration of jesus as lord, again, it was (should be) intrinsically subversive. we can’t really understand that because words like lord aren’t vernacular like that were when paul and the early church were operating. to say the jesus is lord in a context where caesar was said to be divine, the savior, the redeemer, the bearer of good news, and the lord of all, was to directly overtly challenge the legitimacy rome’s self asserted authority. we can thank post-edict of milan christianity for perverting that for us.

in that light, we would do better in 21st century america to assert that jesus is president rather simply reciting a confession of which we know virtually nothing.

Just realized that here I said Rome was using religious language while in Politic I said that Christians used political language.

I guess that’s really a mixture of both. Ceasar using the whole “divine” thing (co-opting religious language), while Jesus and early Christians referring to the “kingdom” of God (co-opting political language, though admittedly probably more of a reference to the expected restoration of Israel that the messiah was supposed to usher in).

It was not calling for a change in the existing system (which is what subversive really indicates). It was calling people to live under a different system. Part of the danger of using the terminology was that it was calling out this worldly system as irrelevant.

I’m not sure where you get the idea that this worldly system is irrelevant, Derek. Where did Jesus even mildly intimate that, what with his comments of “May your kingdom come and will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” and earthy stories and metaphors that spoke of transformation now (rich young ruler and Nicodemus) and healings that impacted the world now.

These signs and stories weren’t meant to teach us to wait for a redeemed reality far off, the present be damned. Jesus was about redeeming the present in light of God’s kingdom…with an anticipation for that fullness to come in the future….here on earth! Last I checked, the “New Jerusalem” wasn’t coming down onto Mars, and I don’t read of us all being scooted off to some faraway paradise in the clouds.

And I’d encourage you to read some stories about the early church to see how that “Jesus is Lord” talk got them in all kinds of trouble. They realized what it meant and how subversive it was in the mouths of lions and on crosses and ran through with swords. And ol’ Julian the Apostate complained to an aide about the church in Rome subverting his rule not through marching in the streets or sliding knives in ribs, but in…..feeding the hungry.

You simply can’t read the life of Jesus, the life of Paul, or the life of the early church and not see that. Honestly.

But we can only argue about such things if we agree that they are necessary. If you feel that war is never necessary, it’s pointless to argue about specific methods and tactics. Are there times when our military should intervene? I would say yes. I would also say we should have refrained from certain tactics that were used. But if you disagree on the fundamental point – any military intervention at all, then we really don’t need to argue anything but that fundamental issue.

First off, I have friendships and significant disagreement with a fair number of friends who come at issues in much different ways than me, and one thing that comes out of that is keeping the other accountable in their position without agreeing to occupy the same one. You made a sweeping statement that “Every military action that the US has been a part of in the 20th and 21st centuries has been from (the protection of others) standpoint.” That’s just patently false, and I think you should be held accountable for that position. You managed to completely skirt the first part of my response by focusing on the method piece. Tell me how domino theory actions during the Cold War were of the “protecting people” bent…ALL of them, since you’re so convinced the U.S. has been so exemplary.

And this “necessary” element of war is a messy thing to talk about. If we’re talking in purely surface social and political ways, then yes, war is “necessary.” The New Testament is clear that there will be “wars and rumors of wars” and that God can use the state to execute justice, but never is the Christian expected or permitted to participate in such action. And if we believe we’re living for what human beings have been created for in living faithfully (as much as we can), then we believe this is the vision for the world. And if that vision is displayed by Isaiah of nations beating swords into plowshares and the lion at peace with the lamb, then we are to display this peaceableness in our conduct; even in the face of abject evil. Remember, the same Paul who wrote Romans 13 was the Paul who said our weapons are “not the weapons of the world.”

So yes, in the interim, in order to restrain evil and keep some semblance of low-order chaos instead of outright anarchy, God allows and even uses war by pagans. But if the long term vision is for a redeemed world where violence ceases, the world ought to have a picture of what that looks like. So no, war is not ultimately, “necessary.”

But if you think God’s gonna atom bomb this world and send all his redeemed off to heaven and there’s no hope for this place, then I can see plenty of threads in your thought that lead you to say the things you’ve said in this comment thread.

derek. i think i’m understanding what you mean a little better now when you say the the roman system of government was irrelevant. that makes more sense to me. perhaps the word illegitimate is even better.

i know you were responding to nate, but i would offer that jesus wasn’t being subversive just for the sake of being subversive or solely being against something, but to expose the absurdity of the status quo and to offer an alternative.

I like illegitimate for now, and irrelevant for the long term. Ultimately, as the Psalmist says in 146:2-3

“Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal men who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.”

Speaking of the present, worldly governments are VERY relevant, yet also illegitimate…because they’re out busying themselves with extending their territories and name at the expense of God’s name. The distinction you’ve made, Derek, only makes sense when artificially abstracted from reality and talked about. Of course the Roman church wasn’t seeking to feed to be subversive, they were acting out of obedience. But that doesn’t deny the fact that their act was inherently subversive, and the Roman emperor acknowledged that.

Again, the Roman emperors wouldn’t have subjected the Christians to such heavy persecution if there wasn’t an inherent subversive quality to their proclamation of Jesus as Lord.

Without the credible threat of force, there’s no way to prevent mass chaos in a sinful world. On either a community or a global scale. I guess that’s fine if you’re an anarchist. And I think it’s fine to have the personal conviction to not use force, and to not want to participate in systems that do (like the military, police services, etc.)…Is it wrong for a follower of Christ to be a policeman? To be in the military? Is it wrong for us to participate in these worldly systems?

Derek, I respectfully disagree, and the disagreement comes at the fundamental level of our positions, like you spoke of earlier. Your thoughts are rooted in a political and sociological approach to addressing evil, while mine are rooted in the clear, unequivocal teaching of Jesus. I say your foundation is fundamentally flawed, because it’s rooted in what is “common sense” outside the realm of what God calls into question.

On a common sense level (if we’re thinking radically short-term), of course it makes sense to restrain evil through force. But if you see the effects of warfare on the populace, on economies, on social and political capital, and on generational ethnic hatred and deep wounding, then the picture becomes more complex. So today we have a definitely uneasy “Pax Americana.” What’s going to happen when America is no longer the most powerful nation in the world and others (who we have repressed and subjected to our dominion) rise into that place? This “peace” (aka foot on the throat of the other) suddenly turns and the enmity is expressed.

This is a clear historical truth right before our eyes. You can see it in Africa now as the former colonies are struggling to figure out who they are now following decades and centuries of their colonizers playing tribal rivalries off on each other. And I have no doubt that this will continue to be business as usual for secular world governments with a stake in their own people’s security, comfort, and affluence.

That’s why I answer your question with a resounding YES! It IS wrong for a follower of Christ to be a policeman and be in the military or any other occupation that takes lethal action against other human beings. We claim to be followers of Jesus, and thus we are accountable for following his teaching and example, and he took the punishment of humanity’s deep rebellion on himself and died and resurrection to show both the short-sighted, selfish nature of the way the world acts AND through resurrection that, ultimately, there is nothing in this world that prevents us from simple obedience to his expectations. When we step between those in conflict (whether on the playground or in local relationships or on a battlefield) with a hunger for reconciliation and a trust that no one can take anything away from us, even if they take our life, we break the cycle of violence, and even if the effects are not immediately and readily seen, we give a testament to a different kind of people, a different kind of world, and a different kind of vision for who we’re meant to be. And by we I mean all the world.

I highlighted your word “personal” to make a point. Personal convictions may be individual, but they are not private and individualistic. All thoughts, speech, and actions take place in the context of the surrounding world and affect the surrounding world; and this reality should call into question the idea that anything is “true for me, but not true for you.”

I don’t think it’s hard at all to make judgment calls on other people’s convictions in this regard, and frankly, I don’t care about these people’s stories and the spirit behind their convictions if their primary story isn’t God’s story and their primary spirit isn’t God’s spirit.

The primary questions in this matter are; Has Jesus spoken clearly on this matter? Did his example reinforce that part of his teaching clearly? Did he expect his disciples to follow? It is settled. Go and do likewise.

No amount of sociological or political conviction about what is “necessary” is relevant when Jesus has spoken, Niebuhr or Gustafson or Bush or Dobson or Augustine or Luther be damned.

Nate, I get you. And I think you’re right in many ways. But let me push back a little bit more. Does the fact that we’re commanded to be like that affect whether or not policemen, etc., are necessary? Are we to call for them to be disbanded, or to prevent them from functioning? Or do we operate separately from the whole thing?

Jesus told rich people to give their money away. He told prostitutes to go and sin no more. But even though the gospels contain accounts of him interacting with Roman soldiers, we don’t see him say anything like that.

And remember, we’re talking about the same Jesus that made a whip when he drove out the money-changers. I think it’s a little more complicated than how you’re describing it. Did Jesus love the money-changers when he was forcefully driving them out of the temple courtyard? Uh, yeah, but that’s some tough love.

My comments about “personal conviction” have to do with recently studying Romans 14. There’s a certain amount of graciousness were are called to provide to other believers who have a strong conviction about something. I’m not sure if that applies to someone who has a strong conviction to protect others by serving in police units or in the military, but I’m wondering about it.

If I seem like I’m trying to focus on the policeman part, it’s because I’m trying to get to the more foundational issues, still. And I still think a detailed discussion of 20th/21st century military actions would be a little pointless based on the positions. For now, I’ll leave that discussion with what I said earlier – you’ll get little disagreement from me that many of the specific actions and tactics used were inappropriate. What I mean in my original statement was that the major effort of these campaigns was protection-oriented, not oriented towards conquering others.