Stories by Hunter Baker
Posted at 12:07am on Feb. 8, 2008 Dobson Endorsing Huckabee
More Strange Timing
By Hunter Baker
Dobson will endorse Huckabee for the GOP nomination.
If not for letting the cat out the bag too early months ago and sending Dobson scurrying away, Huckabee might have actually gotten some steam out of this endorsement. Now, it's a little late.
Posted in 2008 — Comments (129)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 12:47am on Jan. 25, 2008 Make Mine McCain.
Moral Authority and Leadership
By Hunter Baker
Some of our esteemed Redstate contributors have made formal endorsements this year. I've held off, not because I hate the field, but because I liked different things about different candidates.
Rudy performed a miracle in New York.
Huckabee has turned fewer dollars into more results than anyone in modern electoral history.
Romney is an obviously decent man, a top notch practicing capitalist, and loves America despite America's ambivalent attitude toward his church.
Fred could order the death penalty for Michael Moore and America would buy it.
But none of those candidates are going to close the deal with me (especially since Fred's out). I'm going with McCain.
Follow me under the fold . . .
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Posted at 7:59pm on Dec. 23, 2007 On Cutting Huck Some Slack . . .
He's Taking Flak because He Scored a Lot of Points
By Hunter Baker
Though I haven't done a magisterial Pejmanesque endorsement, I continue to support Fred Thompson for the GOP nomination. However, maybe it's a form of ethno-religious identification that leads me to stand up for Mike Huckabee.
Okay, Huckabee is taking money from churches to speak. The guy, as he has pointed out in his own speeches, is not wealthy. He can't afford to run while resting on interest from a fortune. I don't think that's a big strike against him. I question whether churches should spend their money that way, but I don't see this as some great demerit against the Huckster.
And yes, he has agreed to speak at John Hagee's church, which is more or less very hard on Catholics. Hey, so is Bob Jones University and nobody is jacking up Mitt Romney for courting the endorsement of top officers at BJU. Neither were many, outside the McCain campaign, complaining when G.W. Bush spoke at Bob Jones in 2000. Bob Jones University has been a standard campaign stop in South Carolina for GOP hopefuls for decades.
There may be a very strong moral case against Huckabee's character, but I don't think we're seeing it just yet. This is still pretty thin gruel.
END.
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Posted at 6:19pm on Dec. 8, 2007 On Rationality and Religion
Jason Lee Steorts Gets It Wrong at NR
By Hunter Baker
I'm amazed that National Review published the following by Jason Lee Steorts:
Imagine that scientists in a lab have engineered a perfectly rational robot. This robot appears human in every way: He speaks articulately and spontaneously, is capable of advanced learning, and can pass for human in all social commerce.
The only difference between the robot and human beings is that the robot is perfectly rational. “Rationality” is here defined as the refusal to form beliefs without having sufficient reason to think they are true. It is the nature of reasons that they are capable of clear expression. To believe something rationally is to be able to say why you believe it — and to say so in such a way that an intelligent listener would understand how the “why” supports the belief.
Now imagine yourself trying to persuade our perfectly rational robot that the following statement is true:
Everything was created by an all-powerful and all-knowing being who exists outside of space and time. This being impregnated a human woman through non-physical means and was born as her offspring. Within space and time, the being was executed as a criminal and spent three days in a tomb. But then it came back to life and went up to a place called Heaven, which we cannot detect or observe. We eat this being’s body once a week. By doing this — and sundry other things, such as getting sprinkled with water by a man in a robe who utters an incantation, or telling the man in the robe all the bad things we do — by doing this, we too can go to Heaven after our own bodies come up out of their graves.
What will you tell the robot? Can you marshal empirical evidence demonstrating that these claims are true? Can you show their truth by logic alone?
Utterly necessary analysis below the fold . . .
Posted in 2008 — Comments (124)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 3:25pm on Dec. 6, 2007 Romney's Kennedy Moment
Successfully Defusing that Mormon Thing
By Hunter Baker
I have not seen the speech, but I have read it. Religion and politics is my academic specialty. While I would quibble with the way Romney presents the founding of the Republic and what it did or didn't settle about religious liberty, I think he did an outstanding job of framing the overall discussion.
1. The United States has traditionally been a nation that recognizes freedom must be paired with religion and morality if it is to persevere in political society. Mitt said it. Libertarians need to hear it. So do secularists. When Mitt embraces that point of view, he puts himself squarely in the conservative camp, not only the religious conservatives, but the traditionalist Burkeans, too.
2. Though his faith has some unique features (so unique that thinking of it as "Christianity, but different" is a BIG stretch), he plants his flag on American values such as freedom, democracy, human rights, religious liberty, and limited government. He is right to do so. It is perhaps imperfectly understood that Mormonism is an American religion with a major preference for American values. Mormon missionaries spread their faith and its unique doctrines, but they also spread pro-Americanism. I think you'd be hard pressed to find Mormons abroad who hate America.
3. He correctly recognizes that while the church must always seek to encourage the state, to critique the state, to urge the state toward justice, it must never be part of the state. When the church is part of the state, it either becomes a useless Department of God, as is the case of European established churches, or it becomes a dangerous theocracy of the sort we find in many Muslim lands.
Overall, this speech showed tremendous sophistication on religion and politics. I'm not a Mitt supporter. But he listened to someone who understands the issues well.
A+++ for this one. Attaboy, Governor Romney.
END.
Posted in 2008 | politics | religion | Romney — Comments (50)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 12:19pm on Dec. 6, 2007 A Big, Hairy Huckabee Question
Has Huckabee Lost His Conservative Card?
By Hunter Baker
I tend to like Mike Huckabee. I admit that I appreciate him mostly because he's a pro-lifer who doesn't sound like an idiot when talking about his faith.
There are lots of knocks on Huckabee. The big one is that he's not an economic conservative and that his record in Arkansas proves that. Here's my question:
Did Mike Huckabee do anything in Arkansas other than make some marginal tax increases in order to fund a state government that is still probably much-underfunded per capita relative to other states? Are we suggesting there is never a time a conservative, free-market politician would do such a thing?
Let's deal with only that question. I'd love to hear what you have to say.
END.
Posted in 2008 | huckabee | Small Government | taxes — Comments (77)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 2:46am on Nov. 14, 2007 Real Climate Change for HillaryCare
The Next Big Entitlement is Becoming Low Hanging Fruit
By Hunter Baker
Hillarycare was probably a major reason the Democrats experienced historic losses in 1994. The Contract with America was important, but not necessarily more so than the recoil from an attempt to socialize 12% of the national economy.
Back in 1992, Americans weren't nearly as antsy about their health care as they are today. HMO's produced inconveniences but lowered premiums substantially. People who were covered by their employer were generally okay with their out of pocket costs and with what they were getting. Certainly that was the case with white collar types.
Today, I think the picture is different.
Please continue reading . . .
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Posted at 11:16am on Aug. 15, 2007 Ames, Brownback, and Huckabee
What's It All About SoCon's?
By Hunter Baker
Mitt Romney won the straw poll in Ames thanks to a well-funded effort and a lot of upfront work in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Of course, the script didn't play out exactly as expected. Sam Brownback was supposed to take second place because he put in a big effort, spent money, and is from Kansas next door.
Mike Huckabee, who had no big Ames operation that anyone knew about, placed second.
This is a post designed to structure debate in the comments section, so here's the question:
Has Mike Huckabee demonstrated that he should carry the banner for social conservatives in the primary and that Sam Brownback should resign from the field? Make your case.
END.
Posted in 2008 — Comments (50)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 3:17pm on Aug. 1, 2007 Happy 19th Anniversary, Rush!
First, Came Reagan. Then, Came Limbaugh.
By Hunter Baker
Several years ago, I wrote the following about Rush Limbaugh for The American Spectator:
While a graduate student at the University of Georgia in the early nineties, I had the privilege of attending a speech given by William F. Buckley. The elder statesman of the movement amazed the large crowd with both his wit and his wardrobe. To this day, I remember his navy sportcoat, yellow shirt, khaki pants, and RED belt. You’ve got to be good to pull that look off, but Buckley was equal to the task.
At the end of his presentation, he allowed questions. The first supplicant approached the microphone and hopefully inquired, "Mr. Buckley, what do you think about Rush Limbaugh?" This was during the time when Rush was still something of a rising star. His rhetoric was bombastic, hard-edged, and wickedly funny. Members of the audience shifted forward in their seats expectantly as Buckley answered by telling the following story.
There were two Spaniards sitting in a bar. One asked the other, "What do you think about General Franco?" Instead of answering, the man gestured for his friend to follow him outside. Once on the sidewalk, he motioned for the friend to follow him to his car. They got in the car and drove to a forest. Deep in the woods, he parked the car and beckoned the friend to hike with him down to a lake. At the edge of the lake, he pointed to a boat which they boarded. He grabbed the oars and rowed to the center of the lake. Finally, he sat still, looked his friend in the eyes and paused for a moment. "I like him." Buckley told the story so brilliantly and created so much suspense, the denouement brought the house down amid gales of laughter and happy applause.
We all share Buckley's appreciation for an amazing phenomenon in the modern history of conservatism. Just as we hope for longevity on the bench for Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito, we hope for an inexhaustible supply of broadcast minutes emanating from the Golden Microphone. Thanks for everything.
END.
Posted in Miscellanea — Comments (40)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 3:38pm on Jul. 24, 2007 2007, Meet 1978 . . .
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Warns Us from Our Past
By Hunter Baker
Sometimes, it's good to write. At other times, it is good to merely repeat. I'll repeat Solzhenitsyn speaking at Harvard in 1978 (he was booed if I recall correctly):
However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there should be room for national, or communist, self-determination in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity. But members of the U.S. anti-war movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear? The American Intelligentsia lost its [nerve] and as a consequence thereof danger has come much closer to the United States. But there is no awareness of this. Your shortsighted politicians who signed the hasty Vietnam capitulation seemingly gave America a carefree breathing pause; however, a hundredfold Vietnam now looms over you. That small Vietnam had been a warning and an occasion to mobilize the nation's courage. But if a full-fledged America suffered a real defeat from a small communist half-country, how can the West hope to stand firm in the future?
END.