Thursday, June 18, 2009
WTF?
Holy shit. I just watched Mike Huckabee try to argue that we need to make abortion illegal because he doesn't want to teach his kids it's okay for them to pull the plug on him if he gets senile and they don't want to deal with it.
Mike Huckabee: moron, super moron, or lying liar who lies?
Discuss amongst yourselves...
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11 comments:
He's not so much lying as he is making an unwarranted logical jump in a feeble attempt to support his argument (actually he makes two unwarranted logical jumps: first by associating abortion with euthanasia, and then by claiming because it's legal he'll be required to teach it).
Let's go with Super Moron on this one.
oh, forgot a third logical jump - that legalized abortion (which we have now) means the legalization of euthanasia (which we don't have now).
hmm, I supposed in this regard, he could be a lying liar who lies...
never trust an edited Jon Stewart interview. Even though the part you brought up was pretty crackheaded, the rest of what they showed was reasonably sensible. I haven't watched the full bit yet, but I'm going to, because what they showed as a whole made me respect Huckabee and his views a little bit. The problem is just that whenever anyone asks, "What's the next logical step?", like the euthanasia thing, What they mean is, "What's the most appalling thing I can bring up that has a chance in hell of looking somewhat related to the subject at hand?"
There's never a logical next step, and if there were, nobody would follow it.
"moron, super moron, or lying liar who lies?"
I've never been able to tell the difference, and on a practical level I'm not sure that it matters...
big a:
Of course some people do just dump their old folks in nursing homes and never visit. Of course, Stewart's follow-up comment that, "You won't be living inside your children," was entirely apropos...
Anon:
Sorry. Don't buy it. I'm not sure why I have to distrust something that Huckabee said and that I heard with my own ears before their were any edits when he easily could have gone with any of the usual anti-abortion talking points just because parts were cut out later. Huckabee's explanation gave all the context I needed for that one.
Michael:
The main issue, at least in my mind, is the question, "Is he actually dumb enough to believe this or is he just trying to get other people to believe it?" For people without a platform there's no real difference, but for some strange reason Huckabee has national exposure and people listen to him.
That's the best argument ever.
It sounds like he had a beginning and an end to the argument and no one told him how to link the two together. So he just winged it. Go him! Apparently that isn't his strong point.
Did you see the other Jon Stewart interview where he tears Huckleberry a new one over gay marriage? I've never seen goal posts moved so frequently.
The guys a douche. A nice douche, for sure. But a douche nonetheless.
ExPatMatt, I have seen that one, and I feel in love with John Stewart all over again. It did show how easily led Huckabee can be though, he walked right into the traps Stewart set.
"It did show how easily led Huckabee can be though, he walked right into the traps Stewart set."
most Fundamentalist Christians are extremely easily led since they are trained, conditioned, and reinforced to think in certain patterns a minimum of once a week. Over time, the human mind can't help but adopt certain logical courses.
Fundamentalism teaches that hating someone is tantamount to murder, so abortion must be tantamount to euthanasia - after all, they're along "the same general lines".
When I finally stopped being a Christian I was genuinely shocked at some of the simple, basic questions pertaining to faith and God that I literally never thought to ask. I had become a victim of continually reinforced pattern-thinking, pure and simple.
Unfortunately, it seems Mike Huckabee's been doing it so long it's entirely colored his worldview.
Usually if I see Huckabee I know to change the channel. But I remembered round one of Stewart v. Huckabee and I remember how efficiently Stewart tore him apart.
And big a is right. I remember the reinforced pattern thinking, too. I can't pretend to speak for him, but I know that my tendency to think for myself was pretty much what got me in trouble and, ultimately, caused me to leave.
In the Huckabee case it's the flip side of evangelism. The thinking is programmed in as a progression:
Original Sin, therefore damnation, therefore Law, failure of Law, therefore Jesus.
All of this is neatly packaged and Bible verses are attached to each point in the progression. The Bible is god's word and correct in all ways, so if the Bible says it, that has to be the case. It's why every evangelistic pitch is more or less exactly the same and why the evangelizer has such a hard time fathoming that the evangelizee just won't accept the message. It's a failure of critical or (ack! Pun!) outside the Book thinking.
Huckabee, in being enslaved to the fundagelical sales pitch, becomes the perfect fall guy for Stewart. He couldn't see it coming because he simply could not see that Stewart wasn't setting him up for a stroll through the talking points.
That, though, is why I was so surprised he went with the false abortion/euthanasia dichotomy. It's not that I think he should have recognized it's a bad argument. I'm surprised he recognized it's an argument at all. I've simply never heard that one before.
That euthanasia argument was shitty, yes, and it really isn't an argument. Nobody who gets listened to on the pro-choice side says we should kill old people who are potentially burdensome. My point was, the rest of it was a good clarification of the issue, for the vast majority of Americans- you know, people who only listen to what they already agree with. I'm as pro-choice as anyone, but Huckabee made me think a little bit. I have to hand that to him. Even Jon Stewart did.
But still, I remember the Jim Cramer bit, and how I had to watch it on the website. It was reported how Cramer crapped the bed, and it was an embarrassment for his network, but it wasn't really so- it was just edited that way by Jon Stewart, to show all the parts where he got to rip into Cramer, and make Cramer look like a whiny idiot when he tried to respond. If you and your readers see last night's show as a walk for Jon Stewart, then I need to say that it was a trick of editing. The euthanasia comparison was ridiculous, but Huckabee backed away from it, and I think he did fine after that. I don't think either side mopped the floor with the other, even if I implicitly agree with Jon Stewart about most things.
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