Archive | July, 2013

Welcome to the Desert of the Huckabee

Mike Huckabee projects such an aura of cuddly friendliness, and in reality he is such a vile, bloodthirsty creep.

Just saw him favourably quoting these words from MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail:

One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.” Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.

Huckabee conveniently omitted the lines that follow – “Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” – presumably in order to leave the impression that MLK would be down with Huckabee’s thumping-select-portions-of-the-Bible method of determining the content of the moral law.

The occasion for Huckabee’s foray into natural-law jurisprudence was his protest against the restrictions on political advocacy that churches have to follow in order to qualify for tax-exempt status.

Then after finishing up the tax-exempt issue, Huckabee immediately segues into a denunciation of “illegal” immigration, even to the point of condemning the placing of canisters of water in the desert where immigrants can find them. ’Cause nothing expresses the moral law better than laws requiring people to leave their neighbours to die of thirst.

Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among the thieves?


Warder of the Brain

I don’t have an opinion as to George Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence. (The usual method of arriving at such a judgment seems to be to take a look at the party affiliation on one’s own voter registration card, but it didn’t work for me.) But the latest argument against Zimmerman strikes me as pretty silly.

The claim is that Zimmerman must be a liar because he claimed not to be familiar with the legal concept of “stand your ground,” despite having once taken a course in which that concept was explained at length in class.

I mean – seriously? One thing I’ve learned in over two decades of teaching is that explaining something at length is no guarantee that anyone in the class – even the best students – will remember anything about it.


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