Of Course He's a Fascist

A little man in search of a balcony: Mike Huckabee, practitioner of pseudo-Christian statism.

The gang at Fox & Friends was happily engaged in their familiar morning routine – applying a glaze of insipid cheerfulness to their network's authoritarian partisanship – when one of them made the mistake of asking Rep. Ron Paul about a campaign ad produced by a rival presidential aspirant, Mike Huckabee.

If the object of that odd query was to solicit a trite soundbite it was the wrong question to ask, and the wrong person of whom to ask it, given Dr. Paul's unflinching candor. Rather than indulging in the expected morning show banter, Dr. Paul offered this assessment of the Huckabee ad, in which the former Arkansas Governor, bathed in beatific light and flattered by the camera's soft focus, appears to have a cross floating over his shoulder:

"It reminds me of what Sinclair Lewis once said. He says, 'when fascism comes to this country, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross.' Now I don't know whether that's a fair assessment or not, but you wonder about using a cross, like he is the only Christian or implying that subtly. So, I don't think I would ever use anything like that."

By vowing never to use “anything like that” Dr. Paul was not foreswearing the use of Christian imagery in his campaign materials. He was effectively promising never to depict himself as the embodiment of Christian virtues and as God's anointed vessel of political redemption. That's a conceit that Huckabee embraced when he publicly attributed his recent political good fortune to the power of the One who miraculously multiplied the loaves and fishes to feed the hungry multitudes.

But it was Dr. Paul's boldness in using the “F-word” that caused his hosts at Fox & Friends to suffer a brief fit of the vapors. It's not as if the inhabitants of the Fox News Universe are unfamiliar with the term; it's just that they have been programmed to assume that it can only be used in a purely historical context unless it follows the prefix “Islamo-.” The morning show pixies were pixilated that Dr. Paul would apply that term to a fellow Republican, even – or perhaps especially – one as deserving as Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee's "cross" wasn't the first artfully staged GOP photo-op.

Let there be no mistake: Huckabee, like every other major Republican presidential candidate save Dr. Paul, is unambiguously a fascist. He is an ardent supporter of the welfare/warfare/homeland security state and all of its works and pomps. His objective is to expand, not to diminish, the power of the State.

And Huckabee has displayed a perfectly abhorrent enthusiasm for State-sanctioned bloodshed: It was Huckabee who insisted that although the Iraq war was misbegotten, the “honor” of the government requires that the killing continue for the indefinite future. Just this morning (December 19), Huckabee expressed the view that Washington has used “underwhelming” force in Iraq, when victory requires overkill. And in reacting to a recent ad from the polyurethane candidate Mitt Romney, Huckabee boasted that he had signed sixteen death warrants as the Arkansas chief executive, "more than any other governor in my state's history."

That last fact offers a telling contrast between Dr. Paul (who was an obstetrician) and Rev. Huckabee. Dr. Paul's campaign literature highlights his role in bringing thousands of new lives into the world; Huckabee takes conspicuous pride in presiding over the execution of more than a dozen people. Even those who support the death penalty (a position I can't understand, given the corruption and viciousness of the Regime that rules us) should agree that trading on the death of human beings, even those who “deserved” it, for political advantage is entirely depraved.*

Here's the difference: Unlike other politicians, when Ron Paul admires a baby, he's not looking on the child as merely a future taxpayer or coffin-stuffer.

Celebrating the State's power over life and death is a familiar fascist theme, but not one exclusive to fascism. The same is true of the cynical co-mingling of politics and religion. To understand why Republican statists like Huckabee deserve the description “fascist” it's useful to review the analysis offered by John T. Flynn in his 1944 book As We Go Marching.

As a critic of the New Deal and one-time leader of the America First movement, Flynn was effectively blacklisted from the prestige press on the orders of FDR. Such obscurity was both frustrating and liberating, since a consummated threat no longer has the power to paralyze its target. Freed from worrying about the consequences of tactless truth-telling (for there is none so free as someone with nothing to lose), Flynn used As We Go Marching to dissect and document the kindred relationship between German National Socialism, Italian Fascism, and the American equivalent that had its origins in the New Deal and was brought to malignant maturity during the war.

While stinting not at all in his loathing for Hitler and Mussolini, Flynn quite properly pointed out that “good fascists” like FDR and his clique represented a far more immediate threat to American liberty. As if specifically foretelling Mike Huckabee, Flynn also predicted that the future would bring those devoted to “the impossible task of purging fascism of its ugly features, cleaning it up, offering us a polite, religious, democratic fascism.” (Emphasis added.)

Flynn's brief description of fascism was a dictatorial political system “in which the government assumes responsibility for creating adequate purchasing power through the instrumentality of national debt and in which militarism is adopted as a great economic project for creating work as well as a great romantic project in the service of the imperialist state.”

What Flynn describes here was known – until the phrase became an embarrassment – as “National Greatness Conservatism.”

Flynn went on to list eight defining “devices” of the fascist system, however labeled and in whatever country it has taken root:

* “A government whose powers are unrestrained” -- what, if any, are the limits on government power currently recognized by Republicans?

* "A leader who is a dictator, absolute in power but responsible to the party which is a preferred elite";

*An economy in which property is privately owned, but politically controlled;

* The all-encompassing influence of “great government bureaus which have the power to make regulations or directives with the force of law”;

* The “socialization of investment” through “comprehensive integration of government and finances” -- a characteristic that has become quite salient during the era of Bush the Lesser;

*The creation of “streams of purchasing power by federal government borrowing and spending as a permanent institution” -- once again, a process that has thrived under the reign of "Borrow-and-Bomb" Bush;

*Militarism as an all-pervasive cultural attitude, and the military as a pillar of the industrial economy;

*Imperialism as the organizing principle of national life, whether overtly embraced or tacitly understood, with the population constantly presented “with some national crusade or adventure on the heroic model touching deeply the springs of chauvinistic pride, interest, and feeling.”

"Where these elements are found," concluded Flynn, "there is fascism, by whatever name the system is called.”

Apropos of Flynn's final point – the central role of “heroic” national crusades in a fascist political system -- it's worth noting that Huckabee recently told the New York Times that (in the paper's paraphrase) “the next president of the United States will have to lead Western civilization in a worldwide conflict with radical Islam.”

Huckabee, like Romney and Giuliani, doesn't see the president's role as one of seeking to mitigate conflicts, but rather that of maximizing them. He believes in subordinating the rights and interests of the individual to the power of the State and the ambitions of the political class; he assumes that the lives and property of Americans (not to mention those foreigners who would be on the receiving end of his belligerent piety) would be his to dispose of in whatever grandiose ventures “God” lays on his heart.

Were he a genuinely Christian statesman, Huckabee would recognize that our government for decades has eagerly courted Ruin, and Ruin is about to grant the government's entreaties. He would understand, and tell the truth about, the economic consequences of Washington's imperial foreign policy, and demand immediate and dramatic changes to it.

Changes will come, as the value of our currency evaporates and foreign coalitions take shape to rein in Washington's arrogant adventurism. It would be more desirable, of course, for change to come on terms favorable to individual freedom and national independence, but this would require a measure of humility foreign to the make-up of those who embrace pseudo-Christian statism.

The version of “Christian” statecraft that has prevailed under Bush II, and that would be taken up by Huckabee, has no use for truth and justice: It is preoccupied entirely with power – the power to conduct aggressive war; to order and carry out torture and indefinite detention; to bend the law to the whim of the Chief Executive; to confer material blessings on the powerful and privileged through government redistribution, both vulgar (as in the Iraqi "reconstruction" effort) and subtle (through monetary inflation).

This is what is hiding in the shadow of Huckabee's cross. And that's why only an authentic Christian statesman had the wisdom to perceive it, and the boldness to call it by its proper name.

__________________

*As to the question of who “deserves” death, remember that “all the souls that were were forfeit once, and He that might the vantage best have took found out the remedy....” Or, as Clint Eastwood's character William Munny in Unforgiven put it, after being told by a youth that a man Munny had killed “had it coming”: “We all have it coming, kid.”

Dum spiro, pugno!

Beware the War Propheteers

Playing the Christian "Bass" with the skill of Cream-era Jack Bruce: Like his notorious predecessor in Arkansas, Mike Huckabee is a high-viscosity politician advised by Dick Morris. Like too many other Republicans, he's a Christian "pro-lifer" not unduly burdened by the death of thousands of children in needless foreign wars.

One is a former Southern Baptist Pastor, the other a one-time Mormon Bishop. One established a niche as a hard-line social conservative who is surprisingly “progressive” on welfare state issues; the other began his political career trying to out-flank Ted Kennedy to the left on abortion and gay rights, only to re-tool himself into the very model of a modern moral majoritarian.

There's a polygamy joke in here somewhere: A low-res photo of Mitt Romney with Reich-wing succubus Ann Coulter.

They are separated by a vast political gulf and have followed very different political vectors, but GOP presidential aspirants Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney are now the chief contenders for the support of the Christian Right. The only authentic conservative in the race, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, disqualified himself in the Christian Right's eyes by taking the teachings of the Prince of Peace too literally, and applying the Golden Rule to foreign policy. The Mullahs of the Mega-Churches, and many of their followers, are mortally offended by the notion that decades of bellicose interventionism by Washington might have something to do with the antagonisms that breed and feed anti-American terrorism.

Romney has already received an unction from some prominent Evangelicals, largely on the strength of his unqualified commitment to continue (and most likely to escalate) Bush the Lesser's war against the Islamic world. But as Romney faces the prospect of being eclipsed by the more orthodox Huckabee, he has made a pilgrimage to holy ground – the George H.W. Bush presidential library – to offer a speech on “Faith in America.” Romney's purpose is to assuage concerns that a follower of Joseph Smith would be an unsuitable vessel for the political purposes of the Christian Right.This isn't quite like Henry IV standing bare-headed in the snow outside Canossa, but Romney's gesture displays an element of plaintive desperation nonetheless.

On this day (December 5) when Romney's theological convictions and religious affiliation take center stage, we would do well to consider some of Huckabee's baggage – specifically, his attachment to the Rev. John Hagee, Pastor of San Antonio's Cornerstone Church, Founder and Director of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), and the most impassioned advocate of open-ended war with the Israeli government's enemies, beginning with Iran.

Hagee almost seems to be a genetically engineered caricature of the televangelist culture. As orotund as he is rotund, Hagee looks like a late middle-aged version of JB's Big Boy and behaves a bit like Elmer Gantry. Both his physique and lifestyle testify that Hagee is a stranger in the house of self-restraint. And this is quite odd, given the fact that he ardently believes in the Rapture, during which believers would be taken away to heaven, leaving behind all material encumberances, including the clothes they would be wearing at the time.

As C.S. Lewis noted, wealth knits a man to this world. Despite repeatedly admonishing his flock to prepare for the fast-approaching Rapture, Hagee remains thoroughly enmeshed with the world. He may well be the wealthiest of the war-obsessed clergymen we could call War Propheteers.

Stephen Strang is the human vinculum between Huckabee and Hagee. Strang, a long-time friend and business associate of Hagee, presides over a Pentecostal publishing empire; among Strang's imprints is Front Line books, which has published several of Hagee's books, including his latest, In Defense of Israel.

Late last Summer, a cover story in Strang's New Man magazine anointed Huckabee as the heir apparent to George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. In recent weeks, Huckabee has tapped Strang to serve on his “Faith and Values Coalition,” which is intended to attract money from, and consolidate support within, the Christian Right. Strang served a similar role in the early days of Bush the Lesser's first presidential campaign.

Strang is also a regional director of Hagee's Christians United for Israel, a pressure group that describes itself – without a detectable hint of irony – as a “Christian AIPAC,” as if one such organization weren't a sufficient burden and blight upon our land. Each year CUFI holds a "Night to Honor Israel" in dozens of cities nation-wide, events often organized in cooperation with the Israeli government. And each summer since its founding CUFI has dispatched thousands of its members to Washington to lobby Congress on behalf of a foreign power that is hardly without its own influence in the Imperial Capital.

Whatever one thinks of AIPAC and its works (which include espionage), the attachment of American Jews to the nation-state of Israel is organic and understandable. Hagee's devotion is largely abstract and theological, and colored with more than a hint of opportunism.

The Reverend is more or less a standard-issue radical dispensationalist of a familiar variety, but distinguishes himself by the near-monomania he displays in promoting the interests of Israel – at least as he and some Israeli factions perceive them. And there is a certain duplicity at work here, since the eschatology embraced by Hagee dictates that Jews have an obligation to gather into Israel as a prelude to an apocalyptic war in which most of them will be slaughtered.

By this time, as Hagee foresees it, he and his brethren will have been evacuated from the earth via the Rapture, and thus be able to observe the bloodbath from the safety of a celestial skybox.

Although he stoutly denies it, Hagee's convictions dictate that he do what he can to foment war, rather than promote peace. For several years he has been urging that the US wage a war of aggression against Iran for the purpose of preempting its nuclear program.

Rev. Hagee makes the case for endless bloodshed to Texas Senators John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, whose voting records suggest they were a receptive audience.

Hagee would doubtless insist that the recently published National Intelligence Estimate, which concludes that Iran froze its nuclear program in 2003 (the year Tehran offered to re-open diplomatic relations with Washington), was ghost-written by Satan. Other key voices of the War Lobby, such as Norman Podhoretz and Rush Limbaugh, are content to posit a wide-ranging conspiracy of “wreckers” in the CIA who produced the NIE, thereby undermining the drive for war. Only Hagee has the courage and insight to stalk the truth to its demonic lair: This is nothing less than a vast conspiracy led by the Devil himself.

For indeed, is it not written that the heathen will rage, the people imagine a vain thing, and the kings rulers of the world will take counsel together against the Lord and His anointed? Most Christians understand that passage from the second Psalm to be a prophecy of the advent of Jesus of Nazareth, whom we worship as the Christ, or messiah. Rev. Hagee, however, has repeatedly and passionately insisted that Jesus is not, and never claimed to be, the messiah.

Hagee visits General Ariel Sharon during one of his many trips to Israel.

There is “not one verse of Scripture in the New Testament that says Jesus came to be the Messiah,” writes Hagee in his new book In Defense of Israel (page 136), reporting a discovery unique in Christian history. Even “after his resurrection,” Hagee continues, Jesus made “repeated denials” that he was or would be the Messiah (page141).

All of this would be quite startling to the countless thousands of Christian believers -- including those who embraced the Gospel in the early first century -- who could have spared themselves the pains of martyrdom if they had been willing to disavow the Messianic status of Jesus of Nazareth.

After elaborating on this notion at length, Hagee makes passing reference to the fact that he and a long-time friend, Orthodox Rabbi Aryeh Schienberg, “agree to disagree” regarding “the nature and identity of the Messiah” (page 171), and that “when we stand in the streets of Jerusalem and see the Messiah walking toward us, one of us will have a major theological adjustment to make!”

Similar disingenuous comments are sprinkled through Hagee's book, intended to inspire a knowing chuckle from Christians and reassure Jews. But I think Hagee himself would also have to make a radical theological adjustment under the circumstances he describes, since he is careful only to insinuate that Jesus is the Messiah, and refuses to announce that conclusion clearly and unambiguously.


Arab Christians celebrate the birth of their Messiah at the Church of the Nativity in Gaza: From Hagee's perspective, these folks must not be considered "true" Christians.


It's also significant that a large section of In Defense of Israel consists of lambasting the Christian Church -- beginning with the New Testament itself -- for what he describes as history of relentless anti-Jewish persecution. Hagee describes the purported beliefs of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a collection of classic anti-Jewish notions, including the view that Jews "are essentially scheming to take over the world.... [and] are responsible for every negative situation in the world and that they are behind every international event or crisis, including the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany."


"If this sounds familiar, it is," he concludes. "It is no different than the teachings of the Christian church prior to the Holocaust." (Page 74.)


One of the reasons why Mitt Romney is unappetizing to many conservative Christians is the Mormon teaching that historic Christianity, prior to the advent of Joseph Smith, was hopelessly mired in apostasy. John Hagee teaches exactly the same thing, while placing the UN-created nation-state of Israel in a central position akin to that occupied by Joseph Smith in the Mormon view of history. This might help explain, among other things, why the Rev. Hagee has little if any sympathy for Arab Christians residing in the West Bank and Gaza.


How closely would Hagee be tied to Huckabee, were the latter to win the White House? During the reign of Bush the Lesser, Hagee has been on the presidential speed-dial. He has been among the most passionate defenders of the doctrine of the all-powerful president who can make war according to his sovereign whims. In an interview with the estimable Charles Goyette, Hagee declared: "We do not have a war declaration for Iraq, and neither does the president need one to expand it [the war] into Iran."


I suspect that if Mitt Romney is elected president, Hagee would have no difficulty reaching across the theological divide -- as long as Romney remains true to the gospel of militarist bloodshed. If Huckabee makes it to the Oval Office, it's likely that Hagee would be part of the Inner Court. Either prospect would be troubling to the Christian Right, were it more interested in defending Christian principles than in accumulating and preserving political power.


Dum spiro, pugno!

Huckabee Hound: The Face of the GOP "Honor-Killing" Cult

Christian statesman Ron Paul confronts Mike Huckabee, the War Party's Elmer Gantry.


"The word `honor' in the mouth of Daniel Webster is like the word `love' in the mouth of a whore." -- John Randolph

Despite the commendable achievement of losing roughly one hundred pounds of bodyfat, Mike Huckabee retains enough butter in his veins to ooze out oleaginous platitudes at will. Perhaps this trait, which he shares with another former Governor of Arkansas, is a prerequisite for holding that, ahem, august office. It certainly endears him to the sort of people who perceive high-viscosity insincerity as a form of charisma.

Huckabee Hound displayed this dubious skill to memorable effect the other night when he unwisely confronted Ron Paul about the Texas statesman's principled opposition to the war in Iraq.

However svelte he's become, Huckabee -- in an intellectual sense -- resembles a can of Spam, which is mostly fat. The whippet-thin Ron Paul, by way of contrast, is sharper than a Ginsu knife. The result of Huckabee's imprudent decision to take on Dr. Paul was as predictable as a clash between a ring bologna and a freshly sharpened slicer.



















Want Herr Huckabee to address your Bund meeting, but he's over-booked? This potted "meat" product will make a suitable substitute.

The Huckster got off to a bad start by committing an act of rhetorical larceny -- trying to steal some of the prestige John McCain enjoys because of his war wounds (which he received, I hasten to point out, in the course of an earlier illegal, immoral, undeclared and useless war).

Figuratively wrapping himself in the robes of McCain the Martyr, Huckabee insisted that we can't leave Iraq "until we've left with honor.... [W]hether or not we should have gone to Iraq is a discussion that historians can have, but we're there. We bought it because we broke it. We've got a responsibility to the honor of this country and to the honor of every man and woman who has served in Iraq and ever served in our military to not leave them with anything less than the honor that they deserve."

Rep. Paul -- who, unlike Huckabee, has served honorably in the military -- correctly pointed out that the "honor" of our nation would not be injured by withdrawal, since American people never committed themselves to the war in the only constitutionally legitimate fashion: A formal congressional declaration of war. With scalpel-like incisiveness, Dr. Paul likewise laid bare the fundamental obscenity at the heart of Huckabee's bromide-laden pronouncement:

"How many more [lives] do you want to lose? How long are we going to be there? How long -- what do we have to pay to save face? That's all we're doing is saving face. It's time we came home!"

Like Bill Clinton, the original "Man from Hope" -- who was actually born in Hot Springs, which Mafia defector Joe Valachi identified as a key spot in the Mob's southern network-- Huckabee is adept at disguising a huge, malodorous lie inside a bouquet of pleasant-smelling platitudes. (Once again I find myself wondering if such a facility is a mandatory prerequisite for those seeking to occupy the large, tacky building at 1800 Center Street in Little Rock.) The lie in this instance was that Huckabee is zealous to uphold our nation's "honor," when he is clearly and obviously concerned about the prestige of the ruling elite.

When one has been caught committing a crime, honor requires that he desist and pay the appropriate penalty.

The invasion of Iraq was essentially an act of armed robbery carried out by a rogue regime.

That crime is compounded by mass murder -- the death through state-sanctioned violence of American troops, Iraqi soldiers, Iraqi civilian non-combatants, and those legitimate resistance fighters who have taken up arms against the foreign invaders illegally occupying their country.

Honor requires, at the very least, an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. It may also require that Washington pay reparations to the people of that nation, although this would pose some serious constitutional problems. Rehabilitating our national honor definitely requires the prosecution of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their neo-Trotskyite retinue, for crimes against our Constitution and what that document refers to (see Article I, sec. 8, clause 10) as the "law of nations."

But Herr Huckabee, like nearly everyone in the political caste, is a stranger in the house of honor. Rather than confronting the unyielding moral realities of the Iraq war, Huckabee takes refuge in the notion that the acquiescence of a deceived public in an illegal war constitutes a morally binding act of consent, while insisting that neither the public nor its elected representatives can withdraw their consent once the deception becomes unambiguous.

We are "one nation," presumably under one quasi-divine Decider, maintains Huckabee. The subtext here is that the Grand and Glorious Decider (peace be upon him) had his "accountability moment" in 2004, and thus can be said to embody the common will. And he has decided to let the killing continue in Iraq for the cynical, self-serving purpose of avoiding an injury to his personal prestige: He wants his successor to deal with the mess Iraq has become, and preside over the withdrawal that inevitably must come. And Bush is supported by like-minded people from across the narrow partisan divide who wish to preserve the grotesquely bloated powers of the imperial presidency.

This is "honor" in the lexicon of the fascist cult that runs the Republican Party.

Apologists for the envisioned "Long War" against the Islamic world occasionally invoke the genuinely repellent spectacle of "honor killings" sometimes carried out by Muslim males against female relatives accused of disgracing the family name.

















Above, below: Iraqi civilians confront the threat from the Bush-bot "honor-killing" cult.

The Bush regime and its supporters, however, are engaged in an immeasurably larger and bloodier version of the same depraved exercise. They claim the right -- nay, the duty -- to kill thousands, or tens of thousands, of Americans and Iraqis simply to "save face."


Preserving the Regime's prestige an objective not worth so much as a papercut's worth of human blood, let alone the life of a single human being. One would expect that an individual like Mike Huckabee who professes to be "pro-life" would understand and act on that professed conviction by ending a useless war in order to save innocent lives.

If he did, however, he wouldn't be Mike Huckabee. He'd be Ron Paul.


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