My head is spinning because of an email that Mike Huckabee sent out to his followers that claims that the economic stimulus bill is “anti-religious”. His gripe is that the bill prohibits higher education construction grants to be used for “… modernization, renovation, or repair of facilities — used for sectarian instruction, religious worship … or a school or department of divinity; or in which a substantial portion of the functions of the facilities are subsumed in a religious mission.” Not only that, but Huckabee calls not allowing stimulus money to be used to rebuild divinity schools “damaging to our country and our freedoms”!
So, religious freedom isn’t about being able to follow any religion you want? Instead, it is now about the right of big religions to suck at the federal taxpayer’s teat? Isn’t giving government money to religious groups exactly the “socialism” that conservatives are complaining so loudly about?
An excellent post at Bullseye Rooster points out the hypocrisy here: “Anything that isn’t explicitly religious is — to Huckabee & Co. — anti-religious.” The post also talks about an interview with the airline pilot who landed that crippled plane in the Hudson River. Katie Couric asked him if he prayed during the three minutes. He didn’t; he was busy doing his job:
Working your ass off. Exercising your training. Putting your phenomenal mortal skills to work. That’s Prayer. Because you’re serving a calling so lofty that many never achieve it: Competence.
One Comment
The pilot was very calm in that interview and I thought he did a good job of avoiding the little hooks to get him to sensationalize what he did. But I knew he was in trouble when Katie Couric asked him if he prayed and he said he thought the people behind him were probably taking care of that.