It's The Secular Left Versus The Christian Left

by Mark Steyn - January 5th, 2008 - Orange County Register

In The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan observed of Huck that "his great power, the thing really pushing his supporters, is that they believe that what ails America and threatens its continued existence is not economic collapse or jihad, it is our culture."

She's right. It's not the economy, stupid. The economy's fine. It's gangbusters. Indeed, despite John Edwards' dinner-theater Dickens routine about coatless girls shivering through the night because daddy's been laid off at the mill, the subtext of both Democrat and Republican messages is essentially that this country is so rich it can afford to be stupid – it can afford to pork up the federal budget; it can afford to put middle-class families on government health care; it can afford to surrender its borders.

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In the long run, the relativist mush peddled in our grade schools is a national security threat. But, even in the short term, it's a form of child abuse that cuts off America's next generation from the glories of their inheritance.

Where I part company with Huck's supporters is in believing he's any kind of solution. He's friendlier to the teachers' unions than any other so-called "cultural conservative" – which is why in New Hampshire he's the first Republican to be endorsed by the NEA. His health care pitch is Attack Of The Fifty Foot Nanny, beginning with his nationwide smoking ban. This is, as Jonah Goldberg put it, compassionate conservatism on steroids – big paternalistic government that can only enervate even further "our culture."

This is one of the great articles that Steyn constantly writes. He explains in simple words why Huckabee is not a conservative, and where he is leading his conservative supporters wrong. Compassionate conservatism is not conservatism. It is socialism. I have said this before but I think it important for Christians to remember, "Jesus rejected the idea that we could use government to collect and distribute tithes. Sending government bureacrats . . . and ultimately government goons . . . to take the money they are supposedly going to use to do good works, is incompatitble with the idea that God granted us free will."

Huckabee is a socialist, populist and a leftist. His embracing some parts of our morality does not mean he is conservative.