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This Is Not a TestIt's perfectly reasonable to reject a candidate because of his religious views.

By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Dec. 17, 2007, at 12:03 PM ET
Mike Huckabee. Click image to expand.

Just before this gets completely out of hand and becomes a mantralike repetition, let us please recall what the careful phrases of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution actually and very carefully and deliberately say:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

As so often, the framers and founding fathers meant what they said, said what they meant, and risked no waste of words. A candidate for election, or an applicant for a post in the bureaucracy, could not be disqualified on the grounds of his personal faith in any god (or his disbelief in any god, for that matter). This stipulation was designed to put an end to the hideous practice of European monarchies—and the pre-existing practice of various American colonies—whereby if a man did not affirm the trinity, or deny the pope, or abjure Judaism (depending on the jurisdiction), he could be forbidden to hold office or even to run for it. Along with the establishment clause of the First Amendment, and the predecessor-language of the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, it forms part of the chief glory of the first-ever constitution that guaranteed religious liberty, religious pluralism, and the freedom to be left alone by priests and rabbis and mullahs and other characters.

However, what Article VI does not do, and was never intended to do, is deny me the right to say, as loudly as I may choose, that I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate but who does not have the elementary intelligence to recognize the fact that this is what he is. My right to say and believe that is already guaranteed to me by the First Amendment. And the right of Huckabee to win the election and fill the White House with morons like himself is unaffected by my expression of an opinion.

So, can we please have less of this deliberate misunderstanding of Article VI, which, if it goes much further, will actually seem to prevent or even to criminalize any criticism of theocratic candidates for high office. I ask you now, does it seem likely that any article of the U.S. Constitution was specially written so that you could not publicly and freely and fearlessly say that you would most decidedly not vote for:

  • A candidate who followed the "Rev." Jim Jones to a Kool-Aid resort in Guyana (don't forget that this did actually happen)
  • A candidate who said that the pope could excommunicate other American candidates with whom he disagreed
  • A candidate who said that the above-mentioned pope was the Antichrist
  • A candidate who said that L. Ron Hubbard was a visionary
  • A candidate who said that Joseph Smith was a visionary
  • A candidate who said that any holy book was scripturally inerrant
  • A candidate who was a member of Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood or the Nation of Islam
  • A candidate who was a supporter or member of the Orange Order or the Ulster Unionist Party
  • A candidate who was a supporter or member of Opus Dei or the Phalange Party
  • A candidate who was a supporter or member of Lehi or the Jewish Defense League
  • A candidate who was a member of the Aryan Nations, the KKK, or any other white Protestant "Christian Identity" faction
  • A candidate who said that the Quran was dictated by the archangel Gabriel

The above list is not exhaustive. But, in merely saying that an adherent of any such belief would certainly influence my vote and also be sure to sway it negatively, I myself apply no "religious test." To do that, I would have to be a legislator or policeman who was urging or upholding an alteration in the law of the land. And, as previously noticed, I would have to demand, and get, an amendment to the Constitution in order to bring this about. To put this simply enough, if I turn to a JDL fanatic and tell him that I will not cast my vote for him, and he responds by saying that I am deciding my vote on the unfair basis that he is a Jew, he is welcome to the meager consolation that this may afford him, but he is legally entitled—as am I—to fight another day.

Isn't it amazing how self-pitying and self-aggrandizing the religious freaks in this country are? It's not enough that they can make straight-faced professions of "faith" at election times and impose their language on everything from the Pledge of Allegiance to the currency. It's not enough that they can claim tax exemption and even subsidy for anything "faith-based." It's that when they are even slightly criticized for their absurd opinions, they can squeal as if being martyred and act as if they are truly being persecuted.

In a breathtaking profile of Huckabee published in the Dec. 16 New York Times Magazine, we read under the byline of Zev Chafets the following euphemistic drivel:

Nowadays, Huckabee has more policy positions, but his campaign is really all about his Christian character. His slogan is "Faith, Family, Freedom," which Huckabee, who was once public-relations man for the Texas televangelist James Robison, wrote himself. Huckabee is no theocrat. He simply believes in the power of the Christian message, and in his ability to embody and deliver it. "It's not that we want to impose our religion on somebody," he wrote in Character Makes a Difference, a book first published in 1997 (as Character Is the Issue) and reissued earlier this year. "It's that we want to shape the culture and laws by using a worldview we believe has value."

Nice work, no? Can it really be true that "no theocrat" Huckabee wrote that whole slogan all by himself? While you ponder this massively impressive claim, I suggest that you look up the life and times of "the Texas televangelist James Robison" and ask yourself if, in voting against him or his smarmy underling, you would be acting or thinking unconstitutionally.

Awarding his subject a prize for performing the same cheap media trick that he has just performed himself, Chafets (who might also be described as a former public-relations man, but this time for Jerry Falwell's old friend and patron Menachem Begin) concludes by asserting that "Huckabee has become a master at disarming secular audiences." This big fat lie becomes a slender and wispy half-truth only if enough fools can be brought to believe it. One of the ways the propaganda trick is pulled is to insinuate, and to keep on insinuating, that it is the enemies of religious intolerance who are themselves the intolerant ones. That's the way to undermine, and eventually to demolish, the wall of separation.

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Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.
Photograph of Mike Huckabee by Darren McCollester/Getty Images.
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Remarks from the Fray:

Thinking of candidates as examples of our personal prejudices saves us all time from tiring analysis of what they will do with the responsibility of public office. Like fast food, it save us time, and it feels good. It also corrodes us.

Thinking of Mr. Huckabee as a "hick" sets us free from the irksome pastime of ferreting out what he will do about...oh say... peak oil, or poverty. Freed from that tedium, we can now have more time to research important items of knowledge, such as football scores and what Paris Hilton is up to.

And why stop at just religion. Why, let's judge on race and sex as well. Now we don't need to sift through tons of material about what Barak Obama will do about health care...those who are bigots now may feel guilt free and vote against him because he is (after all) just another simpering field hand who is only capable of picking cotton and chasing white woman. Those of you who are misogynists can proudly assume Hillary Clinton is just another hysterical woman who'll blow her top and launch a first strike on Russia during a bad hair day.

Ah yes, we Americans really know how to save time. Makes you proud to be an American.

--nemo

(To reply, click here.)

Mr Hitchens, if, in referring to the "candidate who followed the "Rev." Jim Jones to a Kool-Aid resort in Guyana (don't forget that this did actually happen)," you meant Rep Leo Ryan, you were not only way off-base (and snotty about it, to boot), but actually obscenely off-base, and owe Rep Ryan's family--and the families of those lost at Jonestown he was trying to save--a substantial apology. I suggest you do a wee bit of research into the matter so your apology is better-reasoned than was your initial ignorant snark.

--hongdb

(To reply, click here.)

The U.S. Constitution actually doesn't give Christopher the right to say anything "as loudly as I may choose" and no Supreme Court decision has ever said so. In fact, the Constitution doesn't say who gets to decide what it says, the Supreme Court simply usurped that authority.

It may be true that "the framers and founding fathers meant what they said, said what they meant, and risked no waste of words," but that hardly constitutes a point of persuasion. They said black folks were fractions of people, gave no guarantee women could vote, and authorized poll taxes to keep out the common folk. They didn't authorize direct election of U.S. Senators, and many of them owned slaves. The document they drafted has been significantly altered over the course of time, so attempting to stand on one of its provisions per se is rather silly.

Above all, the Constitution created the political system that allows a classic commoner like Huckabee to rise to the presidency, something unique in world history and untouched by the polity over the course of two centuries. It's called "democracy" and when the people speak, they sometimes make big mistakes. What those who criticize the system don't seem to realize, but the founding fathers did, is that dictators are people too. Our system has never produced a Stalin or a Hitler or Mau, though it has produced a number who would have liked to become so. If we must endure an occasional Huckabee, it's a small price to pay.

--TheLightofDwight

(To reply, click here.)

Well, Hitch spends a lot of words defending a right that no one is really threatening to take away from him: The right to vote or not vote for any candidate for whatever reason he wants to.

Who is telling him he can't? Yeah, the Constitution forbids a religious test for any appointment, but an individual voter can choose to withhold his or her vote for any reason. They can vote against a candidate because they don't like his taste in clothes or the part of his hair or the distance between his eyes.

Hitch has written columns attacking the religious views of both Huckabee and Romney. Of course, others have responded and said that his attacks are not appropriate. But saying something isn't appropriate is a far cry from trying to prevent Hitch from expressing his opinion. As far as I can tell, no one is preventing Hitch from writing what he thinks of Mormonism, Evangelism, Catholicism, or any other religion. Indeed, he's managed to make a tidy sum of money through his besting selling book which attacks the whole concept of religion.

All of which is his right and I fully support him. But he should come back when someone has actually tried to prevent him from criticizing candidates for their religious views.

--Greatbear452

(To reply, click here.)

I'm a Christian. What I don't understand, based on this article and others where Hitchens makes it clear he finds people like me distasteful, is how he would like me to respond. Does he want me to acknowledge (as others have in the past) that I'm guilty of intellectual suicide? Sure, I'll cop to that. Does he want me to admit that I'm a fool for believing in God and a Messiah? That's fine--it wouldn't be the first time I've been accused of being foolish. Or does he want me to cast aside my faith and say that he's right?

It seems to me that this is the key to the whole discussion. I firmly believe that a heaven exists and that, to get there, I have to accept Jesus as my savior. The tenets of my faith imply that I'd like others to believe this for themselves, but I don't demand it of them, and I certainly don't need them to in order to ensure my salvation. I think that that's the point of faith--believing something without scientific or even social reinforcement. I try to be as open and honest as I can be about my faith with others, and as much as they'll allow, but I certainly don't think I'm capable of saving anyone--only Jesus can do that.

Guys like Hitchens, though, seem to need to hear that they are right, or seem to need the constant assurance that they are smarter or more enlightened than believers of any faith. That's what I don't get--he's free to think he's smarter than I am (and, I'm sure, he probably is in a great many ways), but why does he have to hear it from me? So I believe I'm going to heaven, and he believes I'm an idiot for thinking so. Why not just leave it at that?

Or is this just an exercise in name-calling?

--EDGONZA6

(To reply, click here.)

(12/20)