God Forbid...

Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has done it again. He always seems to come up with the line that grabs the headlines and sends the Commentocracy into apoplexy when a little thought might be healing salve for their Christophobic tendencies.

This time, the former governor of Arkansas gave them something to think about, which they failed to do before they launched into talking about it:

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it‘s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the Living God and that‘s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so, it‘s God‘s standards rather than try to change God‘s standards so it lines with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat our family.

Almost instantly, the blogosphere was flooded with liberal cries that The Huck intended to rewrite the Constitution to comport with the Bible. A new epithet was invented for the purpose, "TheoCon", and the usual fretting and gnashing of teeth about church & state wasn't far behind. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe", emphasizing that he has not endorsed a candidate, and tried to explain the comment in light of our nation's historical Judeo-Christian heritage. Dan Abrams and Lawrence O'Donnell were having none of it.

The problem with this kind of rhetoric in our era of civic ignorance is that the ignorati themselves refuse to avail themselves of historical documents that might shed light on Huckabee's position. Tony Perkin's attempt at putting it into language even liberal Commentocrats can understand proved to be futile. Stupid old smelly documents in the Smithsonian were probably the source of Huckabee's TheoCon rantings, right? Well... sort of. Thanks to AlGore, I didn't have to get a bus ticket to Washington so I could visit the Smithsonian. The musty old document I needed is available by Googling, "Declaration of Independence". The text we were looking for wasn't hard to find. It's right at the beginning:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Wow! Those old dead white guys really had a way with words. For the full treatment, visit the Declaration of Independence article on Wikipedia. The short version is that the Declaration was influenced by the writings of British philosopher, John Locke. The signers and the framers of our Constitution understood that there is a law that is higher than the positive law that enables human governments, called "Natural Law". The higher law comes from a higher authority, identified in the Declaration as "nature and nature's God", leaving the character of the Deity ambiguous, I believe for a reason. Natural Law is the foundation of British Common Law, and both can probably be traced all the way back to the ancient lawgivers, among them a guy named Moses.

When The Huck is suggesting that we should amend our constitution to match God's standards, he may be engaging in a colossal case of poorly chosen rhetoric, but essentially the concept is not only "Constitutional" -- why We the People choose to amend our Constitution matters less than the process -- it is also consistent with the original thinking of those original thinkers who framed our founding documents: If the governing bodies enact laws or write judicial opinions that violate Natural Law, our Constitution has a healing provision tucked away in Article Five.

The Bill of Rights amounts to a manifesto of natural rights, and it was amended to the Constitution to win ratification. Many of the amendments since also deal with rights which are not enumerated in the original text, but which their proponents thought important enough to enshrine there. The 13th through 15th amendments come to mind.

Far from a TheoCon, Mike Huckabee is an original thinker at best; at worst he's an original thinker who sometimes speaks in the language of the pulpit when he's communicating the ideas of the political prophets of our nation's founding. Should his advocacy of a Constitutional amendment protecting the natural rights of the unborn disqualify him from the presidency? God forbid!