Tom’s Big Picture

I do apologize to my readers that this blog has become a running commentary on the Presidential race, but I think we are witnessing one of the most interesting races in a generation. Among the recent topics was this ad by Mike Huckabee:

As a student of political tactics, I’m going to take some time here to respect Huckabee the politician. I don’t know if there’s been a man with more natural political charisma since Bill Clinton. And in many ways, Huckabee is more likable than Clinton. This is precisely, of course, why Huckabee is so dangerous. Like Clinton, he has floated through life on his natural people skills, believing he can talk his way out of any situation (and often succeeding) such that he never is forced into the political inconvenience of standing on any real principle.

Unlike Clinton, who was intelligent enough to adapt to changing political winds, Huckabee is Dubya dumb, not necessarily of particularly low intelligence (Dubya’s 95th percentile SAT scores exceeded Kerry’s, a little known fact; I seriously doubt, however, Huckabee approaches either, the high academic standards of Ouachita Baptist University notwithstanding [average SAT score of about 1085, at about the 60th percentile]) but given to a particular type of self-righteous stubbornness, based not on principle but on himself. Witness Bush’s description of himself as “The Decider” as other such nonsense.

But let me just focus on this political ad in particular. Many were offended, assuming Huck’s intention was to say that he was the only Christian in the race. Even if he intended it, it is true, though, vis-a-vis Romney (Mormon), Giuliani (open adulterer), Thompson (see previous) and McCain (questionable as an Episcopalian, a group whose gay-marrying Scripture-denying theology is infamous). The only other known Christians in the race are Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter, both Baptists.

I am a Ron Paul supporter, but the reaction of some of the Ron Paul people and even Paul himself (who quoted the liberal culture-critiqueing Sinclair Lewis: “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”) reflect a sort of libertarian blindness to and (among some) sympathy for the 20th-century culture destroyers like Lewis and their penchant for declaring healthy family relationships as repressed petri dishes for fascism. It’s the same Freudian pseudoscience perpetrated by the Frankfurt School in their fraudulently-conducted “Authoritarian Personality” studies: families with strong religious values and strong fathers are inherently defective because of sexual repression which inevitably expresses itself as hostility to the “other”, particularly Jews.

The disproportionately Jewish Frankfurt School researchers read into American Christianity evidence of fascist tendencies. Never mind the fact that if not for American Christians willing to die on their behalf, the pagans of Germany would have had their way with them.

The argument works because it is subtly circular. Neurotic psychoanalysts like Freud, who are obsessed with sex, power relationships and defecation, assume everyone else shares their mental illness. Since we aren’t neurotic and crazy like them, it must be because we’re repressed. Thus the naturally neurotic define normal Western psychology as deformed, while simultaneously defining their neurosis as evidence of normality! (Aside: when one considers the prevalence of deviant sexuality in Hollywood movies, at seemingly random moments in no way adding to the plot, we get a window into this mindset: these people literally think about sex and potty humor all day long.)

The American people are tired of being told that their traditional culture and religion are defective. And they’re particularly tired of the repression of Christmas. In this ad, the real message was not “I am the only Christian” but rather “I am not ashamed to publicly identify myself with your culture despite pressure from the media elites”.

Unfortunately, many libertarians, as Tom Fleming put it, “run gagging to the sink” at any suggestion of religious, cultural or ethnic solidarity. Paul should have been out front with an ad like this, and he missed an opportunity.

I have to give it to Huckabee on this one tactically: he hit the bullseye and the other candidates just got schooled in the art of identity politics.