Mike Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, is bearing false witness.
“It’s becoming increasingly clear to a lot of believers that this administration is not just indifferent to people of faith, it’s hostile,” Fox News personality and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said last week.
I take it that by “it’s becoming increasingly clear” what Huckabee really means here is something like “it’s become increasingly popular to say this as a talking point for dishonest people who would sell their last ounce of credibility for a nickel if they still had an ounce of credibility.”
Mike Huckabee is bearing false witness. What he’s saying there is garbage and he knows it’s garbage. Huckabee knows it’s ridiculous to claim “this administration is … hostile” to “people of faith.” He knows this. He knows that this administration is, in fact, made up mainly of “people of faith” and “believers” and that he can’t cite a single legitimate example of the alleged hostility he’s complaining about.
Oh, sure, he can cite plenty of illegitimate examples. But Huckabee works behind the curtain and he knows those arel trumped up nonsense fabricated or exaggerated beyond recognition to chase ratings or fundraising dollars. Huckabee has worked at the executive level in government, religion and media. He knows this.
“This administration is not just indifferent to people of faith, it’s hostile,” Mike Huckabee said, knowing that it is neither hostile nor indifferent — knowing that he is saying something untrue and saying it anyway in the hopes of harming those about whom he is saying it.
But he got the memo and he knows this is something he’s expected to say, and his willingness to say it is not dependent on it’s being accurate, honest or true.
“That’s not something I say lightly,” Huckabee continued. And this also is not true.
This was followed by more false witness, spiced up with a bit of folksy charm. Again, these are things Huckabee knows to be untrue — inaccurate, misleading, factually incorrect, false, bogus, wrong — but that he has made himself willing to recite:
If the government can tell the Catholic Church what it must do, how it must practice, what it must do to accommodate the government mandate then the next time the government may say that Baptists can’t — maybe the Baptist won’t be able to immerse because the EPA will determine that’s using too much water.
The government says that women can’t be denied the health insurance they have earned. Calling that a “mandate” doesn’t change the fact that all this mandate requires is equal health insurance for women.
I get that women’s equality rankles the Catholic bishops and Southern Baptist clergy like Huckabee, but tough luck, boys. This ain’t about religion or religious liberty. The “mandate” doesn’t require sullen bishops or Southern Baptists to start ordaining women in their churches — that would be a violation of their religious liberty. The mandate isn’t about that. It’s about employers not being able to screw over some of their employees just because those employees happen to be women.
Mike Huckabee seems smart enough to know that’s nothing like the government telling “the Catholic Church what it must do.” He knows he’s spouting misleading nonsense just as surely as bishops Lori and Dolan know they are doing so too. The business about baptisms is a witty bit of hogwash, but it’s still hogwash.
Mike Huckabee is bearing false witness.
I think what’s at work here for the reverend governor is the mistaken belief that the Ten Commandments offer an escape clause. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,” Exodus 20:16 says.
Mike Huckabee seems to think that means it’s perfectly fine to bear false witness against anyone who is not his neighbor. Such as Barack Obama, or Kathleen Sebelius, or “the government,” or “liberals,” or women who expect the health insurance they work for to cover their health care.
This is an old dodge, but it’s still just as dodgy. “Who is my neighbor?” is an old question, and it has always really meant the same thing: “Who is exempt from my having to treat them as a neighbor? Who am I allowed not to love?”
If you’re asking those question, you’re weaseling. If you find yourself asking such questions, stop talking immediately and back away slowly before you get yourself into a Huckabean mess.
Huckabee’s practice of cheerfully bearing false witness against “non-neighbors” is a fairly widespread doctrine among his fellow leaders on the religious right. Alvin McEwen discussed several cases of this belief in action in a post yesterday titled, “Anti-gay groups peddling discredited information, bearing false witness.”
That biblical phrase — “bearing false witness” — is useful in that it helps us dispense with the sophistry of those who insist that lies must never, ever be named as such because intent can never be proved with empirical certainty beyond all unreasonable doubt. It’s always possible that a person spreading demonstrably false accusations might be innocently mistaken and might even have some other potentially innocent reason for passing along these demonstrably false accusations without taking even the slightest effort to confirm them first.
But it doesn’t matter whether or not we can empirically prove that the American Family Association, Randy Thomasson, John Diggs, Joseph Nicolosi, NARTH, Paul Cameron and the other bearers of false witness McEwen discusses are willfully “lying” in a way that would meet the standards of the Mustn’t Ever Say Lie apologists.
The simple fact is that these groups and individuals are all bearing witness and the witness they are bearing is false.
They are bearing false witness in the hopes that such witness will cause harm to others. But since those others are not people whom they regard as “thy neighbor,” they seem to think this is perfectly acceptable behavior.
And I suppose they’re right about that. It’s certainly not moral behavior, but it clearly is widely accepted.
You can make a good, respectable living in this country deliberately lying about LGBT people or about women, telling lie after lie intended to disenfranchise, marginalize and otherwise harm them. Such lies will bring you great rewards — your own radio show, your own parachurch organization, cable guest spots and a multi-book deal. And such lies will almost never be condemned as a violation of “civility.”
The condemnation of “incivility” is reserved, instead, for the forbidden act of pointing out that the liars are lying.
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