Crush Liberalism

As a follow-up on my prior post about Mike Huckabee’s lobbying to release rapist-murderer Wayne Dumond, we get a little more insight into Huck’s mentality:

Pastor Jay] Cole, meanwhile, was working to help DuMond. Cole said he talked to “probably a hundred people” about his hope of winning DuMond’s release, turning foremost to the evangelical community. He said many evangelicals were encouraged that DuMond had claimed a religious conversion, and that many joined Cole in writing to Huckabee about DuMond’s situation.

The clincher, he said, was their belief that DuMond had been “saved.” 

To be fair, it wasn’t only Huckabee that wanted the guy paroled, but many others in the evangelical community.  However, this doesn’t excuse Huck, since he took quite the proactive role in securing Dumond’s release.

Here’s a question that chaps my posterior: where in the Sam Hill does the Bible say that we are to not only forgive murderers and rapists, but to free them from incarceration?  I mean, sure, the Bible is crystal clear on the matter of forgiveness, but for the love of God, there is a gi-normous difference between forgiveness of sin and a legal absolution of one’s crimes against society!

I seem to recall a number of years ago where a woman in Texas (sorry, don’t recall her name) was on death row for brutally killing someone.  While in prison, she was saved by Jesus.  She demanded that her attorney drop all appeals, though her attorney and the evangelical community wanted her spared from death (the latter because they thought her newly found salvation should have been reason enough to spare her life).

She told everyone that while she was thankful for their concern and efforts, she (a) wanted to bring some closure to the victim’s families, (b) she needed to be punished for her crime, though her soul would be spared due to her salvation, and (b) she was ready to leave Earth to be with God.  In my view, she was sincere in her beliefs, and she was probably truly saved.  However, even she acknowledged that while her salvation may have changed her afterlife’s fate, it did not and should not change her Earthly life’s fate.

There is no Christian directive to impose legal benefits in our Earthly lives when we achieve salvation.  Were that so, I’m sure there would be hundreds of thousands of inmates who would, as luck would have it, just so happen to be saved while in prison and demand their release accordingly.  Forgive on a personal level, yes, but imposing that forgiveness on society (and with tragic consequences) via the powerful hand of the state?  Absolutely not.

Huck has used his power in government to satisfy his Christian impulses on countless occasions, even granting clemency to more convicts (including violent criminals) than six neighboring states combined!  Hell, prosecutors had to beg him to stop granting clemencies!  While he and I may believe in the same God and the same Bible, one would think that he would take his governmental responsibilities a little more seriously than he apparently does.

As far as I’m concerned, Mike Huckabee has shown a horrid dereliction of his duty, and for that (among other reasons I’ve outlined here before), he will never have my vote.