Every time I hear Christopher Hitchens speak I think of the Bible verse, the fool has said in his heart no God.” I recently read an article in which Hitchens attacks the media for not going after Mike Huckabee because Huckabee said it was up to the people of South Carolina to decide their flag debate not his. In his article Hitchens said of Huckabee, “Gov. Huckabee is the self-anointed candidate of the simple and traditional Christian folk who hate smart-ass, educated, big-city types, and if you dare to attack him for his vulgarity and stupidity and bigotry, he will accuse you of prejudice in return. What he hopes is that his neo-Confederate sickness will become subsumed into easy chatter about his recipes for fried squirrel and his other folksy populist themes. (By the way, you owe it to yourselves to watch the exciting revelations about his squirrel-grilling past; and do examine his family Christmas card while you're at it.) But this drivel, it turns out, is all a slick cover for racist incitement, and it ought not to be given a free pass”. He concludes his article in part by saying Huckabee, “appeals to the uneducated racists and losers and to the fools who believe that Adam and Eve were real (and recent) people”.
While I am confident that racism, bigotry and prejudice exists in the small minds and hearts of a minority of people in this country, trying to castigate a whole state of people as racist over their support of the historical meaning of the confederate flag having everything to do with state rights and nothing to do with support of slavery demonstrates the ignorance of Hitchens. Support of owning slaves has long since passed and it is where it belongs, in the trash heap of American history. To be clear, owning slaves was never right, it was always wrong and to give Hitchens a little history refresher, it was the “simple and traditional Christian folk” as he refers to Christians as, that helped end slavery. It was that Martin Luther King Jr., a Christian that advanced civil rights in this country.
What Christians hate is not intellectual, educated, big-city types, but the proud and arrogant ramblings of someone that claims to be an intellectual but if fact is nothing but a mean-spirited and hateful man that neither understands the Christian faith or the people that practice its faith. For Christopher Hitchens to speak to what he thinks is the hearts of Christians is what galls people. When you know your heart and its motivations and have people like Hitchens paint you as a dumb, ignorant racist, bigot makes Christians blood boil. Christopher is so consumed by his hatred and personal bigotry that he in reality is the living example of the people he claims to loath.
Mike Huckabee is not a racist, he was not catering to racist and he rightly did not fall into the South Carolina flag trap. Some blacks see the confederate flag as a banner for slavery. The majority of people see the SC flag as a symbol of state rights and southern heritage. Outside of the handful of racist loons, the vast majority of people want to see the black community prosper and enjoy the great opportunities that America has to offer. The confederate flag debate is for the people of SC to decide, not a Presidential candidate.
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I hate to remind people that McCain lost a 9 point lead in a matter of a few days and edged Huckabee. This was due to the flag issue. Had Fred Thompson not grabbed so much of the conservative vote, Huckabee would have won.
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