Mike Huckabee: school "carnage" caused by having "removed God" from schools

nvlady

Because Christian faith has no ties to violence of any kind? Gotcha.

Preston Sturges

Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children. (Ezekiel 9:5-7 NLT)
Preston Sturges

Make ready to slaughter his sons for the guilt of their fathers; Lest they rise and posses the earth, and fill the breadth of the world with tyrants. (Isaiah 14:21 NAB)
Preston Sturges

Anyone who is captured will be run through with a sword. Their little children will be dashed to death right before their eyes…..They will have no mercy on helpless babies and will show no compassion for the children. (Isaiah 13:15-18 NLT)
Preston Sturges

The Bible has several passages where God himself orders the wholesale slaughter of children, not to mention all the other times where a parent is encouraged to kill the lazy or disobedient child.
- http://www.facebook.com/wgacsi Wendy Gacsi
  
  I just love when those who don’t believe pick and choose passages from the bible to sway others into their way of thinking. Does the word context mean anything to you at all? That’s a rhetorical question. I already know the answer!!
  - chgoliz
    
    Why do you assume Preston Sturges doesn’t believe? Because s/he knows biblical quotes by heart? That’s an interesting context to consider right there.
  - http://redesigned.com redesigned
    
    i can only assume you are refering to all the people against gay rights or abortion and not the quotes above. i mean, surly you aren’t angry at people cherry picking verses to make good points instead of horrible ones.
    
    seriously, don’t get angry that people cherry pick verses for good, they are merely copying the type of arguments of the people they are rebutting. ironic eh? no one cherry picks verses more then the modern hate-their-neighbor psudo-christians, like mike h. those type of d-bags always argue that whatever happens is because of the (muslim/gay/atheist/immigrant/scientists/whatever).
    
    if they get a small taste of their own style of argument, good, maybe it will make them take pause and stop. all the people above are doing with their verses is saying: “be careful that you aren’t equally guilty before you cast the first stone”
    
    before you pick at splinters, remember the parable of the splinter and the log.
  - wysinwyg
    
    Does the word context mean anything to you at all?
    
    “OK, so give me the context.”
    
    “Well…you see, this is the one of the parts where God commands his chosen people to completely wipe out the population of a neighboring kingdom except for the little girls who He commands should be brought back and made harem slaves.”
    
    “One of the parts?”
    
    “Yeah there’s a few like that.”
    
    “I’m not really sure the context is doing you any favors, here.”

GawainLavers

Do you suppose we could all agree, and media organizations accept, that we should never have to hear from Mike Huckabee again unless we make the horrible mistake of straying within earshot of him?

Or is it too soon to bring up such topics?

unit_1421

No, it’s not. Fox News and the NRA must be removed from the conversation about gun control, because THEY ARE NOT ON OUR SIDE. Asking them to be a part of the discussion is like asking the scorpion to suck out the poison it just injected you with. They must be shunned and ignored so that we can implement solutions that will let us save our own lives.
- William Jones
  
  That’s not really appropriate though, because without dissenting opinions discussions turn into echo chambers.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Flugfrei-Jones/1403604860 Flugfrei Jones
    
    dissenting opinions implies that the opinions are reasonable, and truthful, and given in good faith.. and that completely rules out FOX and the NRA. their arguments are full of politically motivated half-truths, deliberate ignorance, and outright lies. (this is not an opinion.)
  - ontheedge
    
    I agree with William, but our discussions need to focus on evidence. Instead we tend to scream (in one form or another) our beliefs. Intellectually honest discussions of the evidence are all too rare. Hell, even an understanding of what should count as evidence seems out of reach often times. Maggie Koerth-Baker’s post earlier (go read it if you haven’t) was so very refreshing compared with anything else I’ve heard or read today that related to any type of solution to these horrific acts.
  - Shane Simmons
    
    In almost all these mass murder incidents, I can’t help but notice that there are two common factors: 1.) guns, and 2.) mental illness. For whatever reason, we seem to seek to remove 2.) from the discussion and go straight to 1.)
    - Gilbert Wham
      
      Well, you are always going to have the mentally ill, in numbers you are just gonna have to deal with, but it is somewhat easier to have less guns.
    - jackbird
      
      Prior to the 1980s we had a system of government-run inpatient mental health facilities in this country. Many of these places were cesspits of horrific abuse, although many others were not.
      
      In an attempt to address the former (and cut budgets), the “deinstitutionalization” model favoring community-based outpatient mental health came into vogue.
      
      Except that they closed the institutions and never set up a community mental health system to replace it.
      
      The number of severely mentally-ill people in the general population, getting by with whatever treatment their insurance may or may not cover, is absolutely something government can, has, and should address.
    - BillStewart2012
      
      Jackbird, few if any of the mentally ill people who’ve committed crimes like this would have been in those institutions before their crimes, because the crimes are how society found out they were mentally ill as opposed to just “delinquent” teenagers or “the quiet guy next door” or whatever.
      
      Yes, having a wide-open community mental health system could have benefited some of them, but only if they’d decided to go there or been sent there by their families or the police.
    - http://redesigned.com redesigned
      
      ironic that the same people that are pro-gun are also against a health care system that supports and treats the mentally ill.
    - http://www.facebook.com/matthew.david.sweeney Matthew Sweeney
      
      This is absolutely the most important thing that people are NOT talking about.
    - wysinwyg
      
      Except that almost everyone is talking about it.
    - http://profile.yahoo.com/JK746TE2L3DJP5HY7PJEOPF2GU J
      
      Ever notice the gun deaths in Japan? They have the most restrictive gun laws in the world and the lowest gun crime incidence as well. Interesting eh? Seems Canada, Sweden, Belgium, Norway and England might have a few things to teach the almighty Americans
    - wysinwyg
      
      Funny, this time around people — people who seem to have a thing for guns — can’t stop talking about (2) and flat-down refuse to talk at all about (1). It’s almost as if there were some coordinated media campaign, perhaps funded by the NRA and US gun manufacturers, to prevent the conversation from being about restricting the sales of guns in any way.
      
      Can we talk about both? It seems to me like people on the pro-gun control side are willing and even eager to talk about both. Are we allowed to talk about controlling access to guns at all, o! mighty pro-gun person?
  - http://twitter.com/dethbird dethbird
    
    Well said. I am actually inside this particular echo chamber but seriously you are right. Even to just treat the opposing opinion as “devil’s advocate” is actually useful in forming your own intelligent counterpoint/opinion. But seriously fuck the NRA members still insisting guns are cool.
  - Niel de Beaudrap
    
    Dissenting opinions are only valuable if the people offering them are acting in good faith. I think perhaps letting them frame the discussion for well over two decades is generous enough, don’t you?
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      As I’ve pointed out before, there’s a whole internet full of people who think that the earth is flat and vaccines are a reptilian conspiracy. We don’t need to host them here.
gracchus

The fact that he said this vile thing within hours of stunned parents losing their young children needlessly makes your suggestion too late rather than too soon. But the sentiment is definitely appreciated.

Sadly, media outlets of all political stripes will continue to put Huckabee and his ilk on their panels, because: content! controversy! sensation! viewers! ratings!
- elusis
  
  Oh, Limbaugh has already leaped straight for the “pre-emptive victim” stance: http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2012/12/14/rush-limbaugh-liberals-already-hatching-a-plan-to-blame-newtown-shooting-on-conservatives-republicans/

tiredofit

So how do we explain the molestation of children by priests?

technobach

Evidently we must remove God from churches and put him into our schools.
- Wreckrob8
  
  Then the gunmen will only massacre Christians.
  - Ipo
    
    The gunmen typically are Christians.
    Can’t they shoot it out amongst themselves?
unit_1421

They don’t want to explain it. They’re just trying to figure out how to keep the kids from reporting it.

Child sexual predators of all flavors follow the path of least resistance. They find closed groups full of naive, gullible people, infect themselves into positions that give them access to kids and go to work.
jimh

Well, having removed the guns from our churches…
kmag

I’m not Catholic, but statistically speaking, children are more at danger from teachers and coaches. However, molestation by priests makes for better headlines and the Catholic church has much deeper pockets than schools.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Agenbroad/100002463876063 James Agenbroad
  
  Mostly I think that the higher irony factor is the reason. When people who’s stated mission in life is to be the arbiters of what is good and what is evil commit such evil it’s the frisson make for more drama.
- gracchus
  
  Don’t forget the part about the RCC turning itself into a haven for desperate paedophiles with its celibacy requirements, and then putting them in positions of authority over young people, and then engaging in an institution-wide cover-up when the problem of their succumbing to temptation made itself evident again and again.
  
  All that might have a little to do with why the RCC gets more press. That and the moral high ground it’s so fond of claiming. When teachers’ unions start doing those things to keep those greedy, greedy molestation victims from dipping into their not inconsiderable coffers, we’ll talk.
- http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland
  
  According to this APA fact sheet:
  
  ~60% of perpetrators are non-family but known to the victim (including teachers, coaches)
  
  ~30% are family members
  
  ~10% are strangers
  
  http://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/child-sexual-abuse.aspx
  - http://redesigned.com redesigned
    
    so preists would fall under the same 60% as teachers and coaches, non-family known to the victem. we need a breakdown of that statistic in order for this to be at all meaningful to the conversation.
    - http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland
      
      Sorry about that. I started writing it before I did the fact check, expecting family to be the largest share of risk.
      
      The fact sheet doesn’t answer the question at hand, but it supports the conclusion that a child is more likely to be molested by someone they know personally, rather than a stranger.
      
      It’s kind of a Good News/Bad News situation. I’m relieved that incest isn’t the majority, but learning that 9 times out of 10 the attacker is someone that the victim knows and presumably trusts… I honestly don’t know if this is worse news or “less bad” news.
- Mitchell Glaser
  
  You only think you know the statistics. The Church is better than the CIA at covering up.
- tiredofit
  
  That completely misses the point regarding the presence of God.
- http://www.facebook.com/kevin.mackle.56 Kevin Mackle
  
  The issue in the Catholic Church is not necessarily that priests molest kids more than others. It is the reaction of the bishops to the molestation. And the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church in what is says about itself and what it demands of others. If the official position of Little League was to move coaches around and then blame the victims they would deserve the same level of disgust as the Catholic Church. You make a lame attempt to excuse the hierarchy and you fail at it. It is the institutional church that bears most of blame for failing to protect children by protecting the reputation of the Church. The reputation of the priest is more important than the suffering of a child.
  - $19428857
    
    You are correct. The institutional coverup is the biggest thing driving the scandal. Catholic priests are no more likely to molest than clergy in general, and according to a John Jay College of Criminal Justice study, American priests offend at a far lower rate than American men in general. They estimated that 2.7% of priests compared to estimates of 10 – 20% of the male population as a whole.
    
    http://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/2004_02_27_JohnJay/
    
    “We don’t see the Catholic Church as a hotbed of this or a place that has a bigger problem than anyone else,” said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. “I can tell you without hesitation that we have seen cases in many religious settings, from traveling evangelists to mainstream ministers to rabbis and others.”
    
    “Since the mid-1980s, insurance companies have offered sexual misconduct coverage as a rider on liability insurance, and their own studies indicate that Catholic churches are not higher risk than other congregations. Insurance companies that cover all denominations, such as Guide One Center for Risk Management, which has more than 40,000 church clients, does not charge Catholic churches higher premiums. “We don’t see vast difference in the incidence rate between one denomination and another,” says Sarah Buckley, assistant vice president of corporate communications. “It’s pretty even across the denominations.”"
    
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/04/07/mean-men.html
    - jandrese
      
      Wait, 10-20% of American Males are pedophiles? Where in the hell did this statistic come from?!?
- chgoliz
  
  Where are you getting those statistics from?
  
  A legitimate news source, please, not a mouthpiece for the Catholic church.

http://twitter.com/tnielsenhayden tnielsenhayden

As I said on Twitter as soon as I saw that story, Mike Huckabee is a whorish cynical opportunistic lying ideologue who’s sold out his religious faith for the NRA.

Rob’s nailed it. This isn’t religion in action. Huckabee’s statement is purely political.

jimh

I don’t know what nauseates me more, the incident itself, or the immediate rush to spin it for personal and political advantage.
- http://plantsarethestrangestpeople.blogspot.com/ mr_subjunctive
  
  It’d be surprising if everybody didn’t immediately rush to spin it. Everybody’s had an awful lot of practice. :^(
- tiredofit
  
  The incident, I hope.
Shane Simmons

I think Mike Huckabee’s Bible has the Sermon on the Mount crossed out.
BillStewart2012

Hi, Teresa – In the past I’ve generally felt that Huckabee was a decent guy who’s wrong about a lot of things, unlike many of his fellow-travellers who are blatant hypocrites. But this is really appalling, and I guess I’ve been wrong about him.

(By contrast, for Rush Limbaugh, it’s just another day, another dollar, didn’t expect anything better.)
- Petzl
  
  I completely agree. We knew the other ideologues were crass hacks. But Huckabee seemed slightly more decent. No more invitations to the Colbert Report for him.
  - tiredofit
    
    Huckabee only seemed more decent if you ignored his history.

http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty

“…life, what responsibility means, accountability…” and so on are great. You could argue that they are not taught enough. But to suggest that your religion is the only way they can be taught? What a self-centered view. Listen, Mike: Your holy book does not apply to everyone.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Flugfrei-Jones/1403604860 Flugfrei Jones

matter of fact, it doesn’t apply to most people. by a long shot.
BillStewart2012

But it does apply to Mike, and he’s not following it.
giantasterisk

I have a Christian friend who is baffled and amazed that I, as an atheist, am able to be a good person without God in my life. I told him that, for me, the Golden Rule covers most things. He’s quite impressed that I came to that “all by myself.” o_O
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Simon-Champion/659808798 Simon Champion
  
  The Golden Rule (TM) = He who has the gold makes the rules.
  
  Just kidding, I’ve been in the same situation, and explaining that the idea that morality comes from a book is insulting will only go so far with these people.
  
  Wil Wheaton summed up the golden rule best (and in only four words), “Don’t be a dick”.
Ms. Anne Thrope

“But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers. Third grade con men telling the poor suckers that watch them that they speak with Jesus, and to please send in money. Money, money, money! If Jesus came back and saw what’s going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up. ”Hannah and Her Sisters

Don Smith

The Collective Voice of the Internet to Mike Huckabee: “Shut the fuck already you irrelevant douchebag.”

dmc10

I would ‘like’ this 1000 times if it were allowed.
- Petzl
  
  I will allow it.
http://twitter.com/MountAquaFresca MileHighBroheem

Nicely said. Thank you.

http://twitter.com/RoyceSimpson Royce Simpson

It’s simple. In order for God to exist, “he” must have believers. The best way to gain believers is to convince people that bad things won’t happen if they believe and to castigate them for their decision to not believe.

God is on the way out, which, for those that still believe, is of the ultimate concern. Therefore “they” will use every means possible to try to maintain “his” existence via the standard and age old techniques of fear and guilt.

That is all.

Petzl

On the theist/atheist tack, I love how Huckabee gets traction coming and going:

If it’s a secular school, he can claim “God was removed from the school.”

If it’s a religious school, and if the shooter had any atheist leanings at all, you can bet his story is “atheist killer.”

If he was religious but troubled, he’s still atheistic, because, you know, No True Christian would commit that crime. (Anders Breivik was a rabid christian massacring secularists, but of course religion can’t be blamed.)

http://twitter.com/markmcan Mark McAndrew

He actually said that?

A human being actually said that?

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

GawainLavers

I’m not sure one of those statements is true.
Ms. Anne Thrope

He’s not a human being, He’s the smegma on a schmuck. A shill of the gun lobby. A fatuous fool. Repellent, Repugnant. A boor. Next, I expect the Pat Robertson types to step up with their opportunistic ramblings. These people are all vile and disgusting and there will be more to come in the days ahead. Have we lost all civility and decency? Must there always be these types seeking to twist and turn tragedy in their pulpits.
- rattypilgrim
  
  I call him Schmuckabee.
- gracchus
  
  While I loathe Pat Robertson, I take comfort that he makes his own vile statements at least in part due to his brain being slowly but steadily consumed by the syph he caught in Korea 60 years ago when he was a REMF “liquor officer.”
- elusis
  
  Limbaugh’s already on it. http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2012/12/14/rush-limbaugh-liberals-already-hatching-a-plan-to-blame-newtown-shooting-on-conservatives-republicans/

BarBarSeven

Has this Huckabee looked at Twitter? Tons of people are praying right now! Today! Thanks to this @$%#ing massacre. Religion found… KA-CHING!

darladoon

“Religious” leader

Sigmund_Jung

I wish there were any place safe from these people. Somewhere you could just turn on the TV and see any crap but this. Anyone wanna chip in on some island to build a new country that is not only officially atheist, but where religion is actually prohibited?

Antinous / Moderator

Josef? Is that you?
- Sigmund_Jung
  
  This whole tolerance idea is clearly not working and being abused. Deep down in their hearts, even the most moderate and avant-gard religious person is thinking “well, you know, he probably has a point somewhere, maybe not in those words, but yeah, god should be mentioned at some point”.
  
  It is just that this kind of huckadoucherie makes me so sad and angry.
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Kristofer-Peterson/100003624673897 Kristofer Peterson
    
    Actually, I’m not. I’m fairly deeply religious and right now all I can think is that Mike Huckabee is an inhuman sack of monkey excrement.
    
    How ever, I will pray that your island project is a roaring success. Will it be a Mediterranean climate? Will you accept cross cultural visits, or is this more of an Iran grade of fundamentalism? Because I really like Mediterranean Climates.
kmag

Do you mean making religious speech illegal, or actually banning thoughts and ideas? Can we beat confessions out of people we suspect of secretly harboring religious ideas? We can call it the Freudian Inquisition. We can force people to publicly say loyalty oaths to our dear leader and denounce religion 5 times per day. It will be great! I’m sure we’ll make tons of money in tourist dollars. What the world really needs at this point is a less enlightened nation state, where we can shed some of the less convenient lessons of the enlightenment.
- Shane Simmons
  
  A league could be formed to do this. Call it, say, the League of the Militant Godless. Since we have a number of religions to contend with, you can’t really have a Christian Purge, and surely the co-mingling of conservative and religious ideas has tainted those who are conservative but non-religious, so it probably can’t be a wholly religious purge, just the people who don’t agree with the new leadership…and it’s bound to be a lot of people…how about the Great Purge?
Petzl

Just build a time machine, go to 1859, and let the South secede, then we’d have that country.

Harbo

Where was the omnipotent one? coffee break, perhaps? Omniscience fail?

peregrinus

Composing tweets for the pope.
Vian Lawson

Omniscient and omnipotent but not benevolent, is all I am coming up with.

And we should worship such a being, why?
- gracchus
  
  ‘Cuz, y’know, that’s a real nice family ya got there. Shame if something, hehe, *happened* to it.

Boundegar

Wait… so these kids didn’t pray enough in school… so God sent a madman to shoot them? Is that what Huckabee thinks?

Also, he seems to think “we” are powerful enough to “remove God.” His God is too weak to get into school, but has assassins at his beck and call. A strange god, this one.

millie fink

Wait… so these kids didn’t pray enough in school… so God sent a madman to shoot them? Is that what Huckabee thinks?

I’m sure whichever works for you works for him. As long as you’re on board the Jesus Train.
eldritch

“A strange god, this one.”

Have you SEEN the stuff that’s in the bible? Children mock a pious old man, so Yahweh has a pair of bears come maul them. He destroys a grieving woman for looking behind her at the home she is forced to flee in order to escape his indiscriminate moral punishment of an entire city. He destroys the entire human population except for a single breeding pair, again as moral punishment. He creates a superman figure in the form of Samson to serve as a tool of rape, slaughter, terror, and lies.

The Old Testament is a collection of the masturbatory power fantasies of a race of xenophobic warrior nomads who historically were the whipping boys of every major civilization in their region. Nearly every single section of it is designed and constructed to 1) separate the ancient hebrews from everyone else and 2) depict them as superior to everyone else because of these differences. It’s all one giant superiority complex blown up to catastrophic proportions.

Growing up in a world divorced from the madness of the Abrahamic faiths, people would find them and their god incomparably “strange”. The only reason we ourselves don’t dismiss them outright as mere insane ravings is because of the sheer cultural catabolism they have wrought over two very bizarre millenia.
- Petzl
  
  But you don’t understand. The bible isn’t meant to be taken literally.
  
  Er, until I pick a quotation to use against you, that is.
- oasisob1
  
  To be fair, she was warned not to look back.
  - Snig
    
    And if she’s virtuous and looks back, the body has a way of shutting that whole thing down.
fenester

Seriously. Folks claim to believe that their god is omnipotent and omniscient, and exists everywhere. But apparently any building where prayer doesn’t occur is like Kryptonite.

On a less sarcastic note: Religious belief might help prevent some of these killings. A person who completely believes in the afterlife, hell and sin might act differently. For an interesting and somewhat morbid example see Episode 473 of This American Life. In 18th C. Germany people would sometimes kill a child so they could be sentenced to death (instead of just killing themselves) to avoid hell.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/473/transcript

http://twitter.com/spockosbrain Spocko

Luckily God Puts a magic bullet proof force field around Christian and Catholic Schools. My aunt teaches at one, I’ll ask her about it. /sarcasm

elusis

But not Amish ones.

Diogenes

What a vile vengeful god they worship. If you don’t pray in the right places, he allows your little kids to be murdered.

Ipo

Omnipotence?
If he causes you to not pray in the right places, he causes your little kids to be murdered.
- Diogenes
  
  Or he has the power to cause it but doesn’t bother with that either. It’s hard to duck responsibility when you are a “father” who knows all, and has unlimited power.

EH

I need some hope for a future without all of this. BRB, going to see “Zero Dark Thirty.”

http://profile.yahoo.com/6IOUGPFXUL4SCJX4UQFBZA75RA CliffordS

Mike Huckabee is what my grandmother would call “a real piece of shit”.

dmc10

Grandma is wise.
gracchus

Don’t f*ck with grandma:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-i06nXwk5vig/T-tiMPn69VI/AAAAAAAABfM/meHvk2LRlbM/s1600/grandma2.jpg

Ambiguity

I don’t heart Huckabees.

gracchus

Just when I was losing hope that there was a public figure willing to take up Jerry Falwell’s mantle as a victim-blaming arsehole so opportunistic he’ll paint his own god as a two-bit extortionist, Huckabee steps up.

Way to go, scumbag. I can see where your psychopath son got his values.

dave3

How many people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ, Mike?

Daniel Griffin

no. be angry. very angry.

http://twitter.com/amanicdroid Dr. Chronobiologist

I guess God was pissed off about something else when he let this shooting at a Christian college happen http://news.yahoo.com/cops-7-dead-3-hurt-christian-school-shooting-214742437.html

Probably all the cotton polyester mixes on campus.

http://redesigned.com redesigned

the christinan college must have served shellfish in the cafeteria. that alone is enough for them all to be wiped out.

remember their god describes himself as wrathful, vengful, and jelous, those are his own words. in another verse he describes himself as petty.

Henry Pootel

Don’t be angry. Just understand what he understands: that this is political

That’s quite good Rob.

http://profiles.google.com/stryxvaria Stryx Varia

It seems that when Huckabee lost all that weight he accidently lost his soul too.

If this is political, it needs agitprop:
http://postimage.org/image/loppcr5q1/

EH

To be sure, weight-bigotry is one of the still-acceptible social opprobations. I can imagine him having a shit-ton (pun not intended) of resentment against “people in general” built up from his larger years.

http://funisforassholes.com/ funisforassholes

Will the secessionists stay the fuck out of this debate?

http://bhtooefr.org/ Eric Rucker

What about blue-state secession? Because that could actually neatly solve both the firearm and mental health (including delusions about omnipotent sky beings) problems. For the blue states, anyway.

Graysmith

This explains the thousands of children killed every week in European schools.
Oh wait..

EH

I have to wonder how much of the US political attitude has to do with never having been conquered before.

rastronomicals

“Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”

Oh, I’m definitely not surprised. But Huckster purposely misunderstands why.

Let me give another thumbs up to what Mr. Beschizza says, though. Those who seek sensible gun laws need to be as coldly manipulative as the oppostion. Righteous anger, despite its ease, despite its temptation, despite its *comprehensibility*, will not serve. Regardless of Mr. Obama’s cowardice today, the recent election shows that good people, and good people who can think things through, are in the ascendancy.

Press the matter with all the logic you can muster.

Mister44

So where is god during church shootings? Removing him from schools didn’t cause this. Crazy people having free will caused it.

BarBarSeven

Where was “He” when this lunatic shooters mom purchased an assault rile & handguns? Was “He” hovering over their shoulder saying, “You are doing my will… Buy the guns!”
I really wish there was a more powerful entity out there who could come down to Earth & say, “Look, I gave you tools to make things to help you grow. The decision to make this thing [points to gun] was yours. Stop praying to me & deal with it.”

EH

Society keeps “be nice” and “more powerful” as far away from each other as possible. “Why” is left as an exercise for the reader.

http://twitter.com/fossilfuels Funk Daddy

If it’s all the same to you Rob, I’m going to go ahead and be angry while also understanding that it’s political.

Go fuck a sheep Huckabee, and don’t get it pregnant or I promise it’ll get one of those abortions you abhor too.

cavalrysword

Stop trying to fix the blame, TRY TO FIX THE PROBLEM.

Which is VERY difficult. First, you have to get general agreement as to what the problem is. As we have already seen, the regular suspects have already begun pitching their personal agendas: the problem is “godlessness”, or “guns”, or “crazy people” or “?”

GOD

I, personally, just dismiss the God crowd. They apparently don’t read their own propaganda. If God is omnipresent and all-powerful, how can he NOT be in the schools, regardless of what laws mere mortals pass? Requiring people to chant His name en masse is not religion, it is a particularly pathetic attempt at sympathetic magic.

“God” won’t work

GUNS

Guns have a lot of emotion and role-playing attached to them. But it is undeniable that they are a consistent presence in these mass murders. Please understand, I am ex-Army, ex-Deputy Sheriff, hold an F.B.I. Firearms Instructor Certificate and have been hunting since I was a 7-year-old in rural Minnesota. Where my dad was a Chief of Police and everyone I knew and played with had fathers that had and/or carried guns. Quite safely and responsibly.

But guns keep showing up, and that has to be addressed.

Let us assume for the sake of argument that we could manage to remove guns from the civilian population of the United States. (We can’t, too many of them. And too many ways to make them on your own.)

Does this solve the problem?

Nope.

Was any firearm used in the mass murder in Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing in 1995? No. But it claimed 168 lives, including 19 children under the age of 6.

If you were to stand up from your computer right now and set out to make a 6-pack of molotov cocktails, how long would it take you and how much would it cost? Not long, and not much. You could dumpster dive and siphon a gas tank and do it for free.

There are other ways to accomplish mass murder as well.

Taking the guns would just result in a change in methods. Where there’s a will…

Banning guns won’t work.

CRAZIES

Maybe instead of indoctrinating school children with God we should indoctrinate them with a revulsion against murder. Especially murder of innocents. If you simply MUST kill someone, kill someone you know who has committed some kind of offense against you, if only in your own mind. Write it down so it is found. Make the act comprehensible on some scale. Otherwise you are just a rabid dog, and should be shot as such.

We need to convince the crazies that the “punishment” must be somehow proportional to the “crime”.

I have talked armed subjects into setting down their guns. It isn’t done by threatening them. Or by appealing to their better natures, which they may not have. I’ve done it by sympathizing with them. Getting them to tell me what they are upset about, and understanding their pain. I talked one guy down from his proclaimed plan to commit “suicide by Deputy” and had him unarmed and crying by the time my backup arrived. So instead of going to the morgue, he went to the psychiatric ward for an involuntary mental health examination.

We need a system to find the people who are under so much pressure that they are about to crack, and who show tendencies to crack along these particular lines. There is a kind of “forensic history” to it. For example, torturing animals as a child seems to come up fairly often.

We need to find the “forensic precursors”. Then we need to educate people in a position to encounter these subjects (teachers, cops, medical personnel) so that they may recognize them. And enact a reporting system, perhaps similar to what we do for gunshot wounds. Then we need to learn how to treat them.

This might work.

It won’t be as satisfying as standing up, holier-than-thou, and yelling “God!” Or self-righteously demonizing inanimate objects and the people who own them.

And it will certainly cost more than either of those approaches.

But I think this is a case where you get what you pay for.

http://www.facebook.com/bill.goldsmith Bill Goldsmith

Wow. Creatively reasoned & eloquently put. Thank you.
http://twitter.com/markmcan Mark McAndrew

The Aussies banned semi-automatic weapons in ’96. Before then: over a dozen mass shootings. Since then: one event in 2002, two dead using pistols.

Isn’t an outright ban, but does seem to have done the trick. Must be something about the power trip, the gunmen are always sad losers wanting to be Rambo.

Wouldn’t interfere with legitimate reasons for civilians owning a gun either. Bears and burglars don’t attack in squads.

http://twitter.com/dethbird dethbird

This makes me sad :(
I can’t even …
what the fuck is anyone doing with their lives that they think … man.
just trying not to be cynical … meh

http://twitter.com/dethbird dethbird

what the fuck are you doing that you think you need firearms. nice life choices.

snagglepuss

Huck may have a point – There is certainly no “god” in the GOP, and look what heartless crazy-ass motherfuckers THEY’VE turned into.

Shane Simmons

The ones that make my blood boil are the ones who try to somehow meld the Bible and Ayn Rand together. As if that’s remotely possible, but they try, like that douchebag mine operator who did a board meeting prayer about how he had to lay people off because the righteous makers lost to the sinful takers.
- snagglepuss
  
  The ugly truth is that Huckabee’s nauseating comments are – probably – less an example of his cynicism and/or his political opportunism than they are examples of his religious “thinking”: The faithful believer’s oblivious, knee-jerk response to ANYTHING, be it a school shooting, a deranged ex-husband shooting up a divorce court or Afghanistan – “if GOD were there, then this wouldn’t have happened !”
  
  It is, of course, absolutely moronic and heedless of any reality or honest truth, but that’s the brainless fervor that keeps all religions in business. Who can expect good things when offering rational thinking to a person who has chosen to worship an imaginary being because it will reward him just for believing in it ?
  - EH
    
    If you’ve got a better idea for improving the world than an all-powerful benevolent being, I’m sure we’d all like to hear it.
    - snagglepuss
      
      Getting rid of all the people promoting the idea of “Obey the imaginary benevolent all-powerful being – Or Else” might be a good place to start.

lucian303

God doesn’t exist, so logically he can’t be removed (or any action performed on him). Mike, perhaps you should get help as your brain seems to be devoid of basic logic skills.
Your argument is fallacious.

yadayada

Yeah, well, fuck him.

Just wanted to say that.

EH

“I got a solution: you’re a dick!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dky9voxjmCs

freshyill

So, let me get this straight:

The Second Amendment, which enables stuff like this tragedy, is awesome.

The First Amendment, which keeps religion out of public education, is bad.

Got it.

Petzl

One expects this from Pat Robertson or the late Jerry Falwell or Ken Ham or, well, any of the many sanctimonious christian mouthpieces…

But Huckabee? Isn’t he smart enough, politic enough, to keep his mouth shut and keep these beliefs to himself?

tiredofit

No.

Wreckrob8

The US has become a very fractured society (or so it seems from outside). If the mass shootings carried out by a very small number of mentally ill people are symptomatic of fracturing then isn’t the polarisation of the political debate also symptomatic of fracturing?
Finland, an apparently deeply homogeneous society at the opposite end of the spectrum to the US has also recently begun to have similar mass shootings in schools despite one of the best public health care systems in the world.
Perhaps, happily and unhappily, like many crimes, it is simply a matter of fashion which has caught the ‘popular’ imagination leading to ever more extreme outrages until it has run its course.
As a Brit I would actually be more concerned about the greater number of accidental deaths and maimings caused by the easy availability of guns which aren’t quite so ‘newsworthy’.
This is a meaningless act up for political grabs. Shouldn’t care of the mentally ill be sought for the sake of the mentally ill themselves? Shouldn’t the debate on gun control and ownership be about what enables the majority of law abiding citizens to go about their normal business with a sense of freedom and be a part of everyday discourse?

disqus_F42m9Ppx3k

And this vile fundamentalist jerk wanted to run for President…? Jeeze…

allonsy

I can’t help but think about all the pardons that Huckabee granted to violent criminals during his time as Arkansas’ mayor. One of the people granted clemency went on to shoot and kill 4 Tacoma officers in 2009, and while not entirely Huckabee’s fault, he is still responsible for that. Keeping convicted felons in jail is going to prevent shootings much better than throwing religion at people.

EH

Uh, that kind of recidivism is so exceedingly rare as to be irrelevant in this context. Have some perspective.

max00

It’s a mistake to give Huckabee and the other Fox News personalities credit for service to some political agenda. It’s a mistake because their agenda is strictly to pander to the people that watch Fox News.

(I’ll give Rove credit for using Fox to shill for his political goals, but he would do it less if they weren’t giving him big piles of money)

chumpmeat

Aah, point taken Mike.
That settles it – I’m off to Israel, which logically must be the most peaceful place in the world.

DisGuest

Interesting, then why didn’t this occur in ALL of the public schools? So Huckabee thinks that this kid was an instrument of God, and this is supposed to be an incentive to join this god? Worst PR ever. I’d pick a different god brand. It’s so nice of this asshole to try to throw shame at these parents (as sinners), on top of their unbelievable grief. What a douchey devil.

Florian Bösch

Fucking parasites, the lot. These eaters of souls latch onto any tragedy, any drama, any missfortune and immediately turn around and spin it into a web of elaborate absurd fantasy.

And you, yes you, and you, and you, you empower them, by listening to them. Everybody is free to say what they want, but nobody is entitled to an audience.

pete_darby

“God does not go where he’s not invited” – that’s vampires, you prick.

Paul Renault

Rick Mercer talking to college-educated Mike Huckabee on This Hour has 22 Minutes’s Talking to Americans (“The most watched TV News Program in Canada”):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHw0FqD3RFw

In case you miss the words, Huckabee congratulates Canada on ‘Preserving your National Igloo’.

You’all may remember Rick Mercer from his segment featuring Pierre Berton on how to roll a joint.

Stephen Potts

Um, that is a parody/comedy program not a news program, and it’s not the top TV program in Canada.
- Paul Renault
  
  Don’t understand sarcasm much, do you? Do you think that Fox News’s “Fair and Balanced” is factual?

Dave Horton

Taken God out of the schools? How can you take God out of anywhere?! I was told he was omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. You’re saying we can tell him where to be or not to be?

Milo

As a former Christian, I find Mr. Huckabee’s statement not only ignorant but also pessimistic. When I was Christian, I felt God was with me wherever I went. I didn’t pay attention to the complaints of God not being in school for the simple reason that I already had God in me. Where’s your faith, Mr. Huckabee?

http://twitter.com/perizade Perizade

So what do you think the Amish children did wrong, Huckabee? Is it because they weren’t your specific brand of Christianity? They didn’t have televisions to watch your show?

http://twitter.com/kpkpkp Kevin Pierce

Insane son kills school teacher mother then goes on to slaughter and hurt as many as possible before killing self. Son apparently viewed as dangerous for quite a long time. Was school teacher mother in a teacher’s union? Does the teacher’s union have medical / mental health benefits? Did she use hers? Did she exhaust her supply of help?

Antinous / Moderator

His mother wasn’t a teacher.
- http://twitter.com/kpkpkp Kevin Pierce
  
  Thanks – I just learned that she had only worked at the school in some way, at some point in the past.

yeahyeahwhtever

Huckabee is a shameless manipulator, using fear to promote his beliefs.

BillStewart2012

Unlike many of you, I’m old enough to remember mandatory prayer in US public schools. After doing not-quite-mandatory flag worship, we had to close our eyes and pray along with the teacher. (The prayers were consonant with my religion, and as a first grader I wasn’t doing enough critical thinking to ask how the Jewish kids* felt about The Somebody-Else’s-Lord’s Prayer, though we also did the 23rd Psalm for them.) Huckabee was a year ahead of me in school, and lived in Arkansas, so he may have had a couple of years more school prayer than I did.

Flag worship wasn’t quite mandatory, because the Jehovah’s Witnesses had gotten the Supreme Court to acknowledge that the First Amendment really didn’t permit establishment of idol-worship as a civil religion (and that was before the Red-Scarers added “under God” to the Pledge.) Much more recently, the Supremes responded to one of the anti-pledge lawsuits by saying it was ok to keep “under God” in the official wording because everybody understands that nobody actually means it. In other words, millions of school kids are being asked (but not forced) to “take God’s name in vain” every school day.

So if Huckabee were being honest and religious, he’d be offended by school prayer, not in favor of it. And if he wants to be political about it, he could contribute to Fox’s Fairness and Balance by taking a position against having secular schoolteachers mis-educating kids about religion. (Especially in places like California, where multiculturalism would force us to take turns, so the Muslims get to lead school prayer on Friday and at lunchtime, and the Wiccans get their turn at Full Moon, and Catholics get lots of saints’ days if they’re not in parochial school, and…)

* About 20% of the kids were Jewish, maybe 75% Protestant (including Unitarians and unacknowledged non-religious), and a few Catholics who weren’t in parochial school. The Chinese kid was a couple of years younger, so I don’t know if she was Buddhist, Protestant, or other.

http://profile.yahoo.com/JK746TE2L3DJP5HY7PJEOPF2GU J

I believe 100% and like Christ, I have no tolerance for the money lenders and their whores on the temple steps

Kerouac

More douchebaggery from the Right, please… It will delay your comeback.

Shaw_Bob

I live in a country – Scotland – where guns are pretty tightly controlled, and you’re considered to be somewhat weird if you like ‘em. We had a very nasty incident at a school here a decade and a half ago, which hardened attitudes against guns. We still get nutters, but generally they can do relatively little harm. Who needs guns at all, and rapid-fire ones in particular? Nobody!

Paul Renault

I spent a few months in Scotland. Loved it!

A fellow boarder at one place I was staying, a policeman, told me that if he had to carry a gun to do his job, he’d quit.

http://redesigned.com redesigned

Yeah…

“god” is all powerful and could have stopped this, but he didn’t because he was miffed that kids weren’t praying to him in their school, so he allowed it…christ what an a-hole.

…is this the same god that sent his own son to earth for the express purpose of being brutally murdered? the same god that dicked with his most faithful servant job only because he was betting (gambling) with the devil? the same god that wiped out villages of women and children, and prescribes capital punishment for everything, even eating shellfish, or mixing fabric types? seems to me if you believe in that a-hole, then he could have very well been the cause of this over something so petty as not being prayed to in the school.

jhertzli

Just get wrong what he got wrong? No thanks.

Just remember that after the next election there will be a 50% chance that a Mike Huckabee clone will be administering any political solution.

Stephen Potts

23 year old shooter? I think he’s been out of school for a while!!

Antinous / Moderator

He’s 20.

Phil Grainger

Mike is just double dipping, one hand in the NRA pocket and one in the evangelical pocket. And those pockets are deep.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Holmen/562023961 Robert Holmén

Mike Huckabee has a tough task trying to carve out a spot between the hatefulness of Ann Coulter and the grammatical preposterousness of Sarah Palin

Al_Packer

As an ordained “Christian” minister, Mr. Huckabee should have known better. What he said is bad theology and shows a lack of compassion for the victims. I’d suggest he read the Book of Job in the Bible, and then the book “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People” by Harold Kushner.

Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: 2 “Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?

millie fink

one’s ethical behavior stems from one’s ontology

Don’t you mean epistemology?

gracchus

You’re correct, Millie, as much as he would have preferred to play semantic games. If you don’t mind, I’ll post my response to the deleted comment under yours.

Huckabee’s offense, as usual, is conflating Christianity with state policy. This is America: we can have a policy debate on the Second Amendment at a more appropriate time (or even right now) regarding this matter, because gun control has direct relevance to a grown maniac opening fire on kids; having a policy debate on the far more clearly worded First Amendment (Clause 1, specifically) is pointless, because prayer in public schools has diddly squat to do with a grown maniac opening fire on kids. Huckabee’s cruel timing is a big flaming turd of a cherry on an already sh*tty sundae.

Shorter version: false equivalence is false.

http://spellgage.tumblr.com/ Caleb Adkisson

No, I mean ontology. You believe something to be true, and your understanding of reality influences your ethics. Your justification for believing what you believe is your epistemology.

http://spellgage.tumblr.com/ Caleb Adkisson

Not that it really matters, since someone decided to take my comment down…

gracchus

In other words, you’re claiming that Huckabee is as delusional about reality as the shooter will no doubt turn out to be. I can buy that, but not to the point that I equate their levels of sociopathic insanity. Unlike the shooter, Huckabee was not deep enough in his own delusion not to know exactly what he was doing and why he was doing it.

Mike Huckabee: school "carnage" caused by having "removed God" from schools

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