Huckabee's Buds

It may be just because it's Xmas season,
(And allow me to stop for a second to say something. Contrary to know nothing right wing christianists, xmas isn't a slur. In fact it's one of the oldest abbreviations in the english language:
"The "X" stands for the Greek letter chi, the initial in the name Xristos (Khristos equals Christ).
In Latin manuscripts, Christus was often abbreviated by using the first two letters of Greek Christos, chi (X) and rho (P).")
but I'm sure seeing a huge push to shove religion in our lives. Sometimes I monitor the local AM foxified radio station and it was just chock a block christianity, more so than I've ever heard. What's going on? Are we being set up for some final holy war with muslims?

Huckabee's apparent (and I enter this caveat because the Huckster's recent big splash may have a tie in to all the holy water being sprayed on us in the media) rise in the polls means he get's more scrutiny and if a person should be judged by the friends he keeps, maybe his unapologetic aw shucks christo-demeanor is a tad more sinister than it appears.

Huckabee has close ties to a guy named Bill Gothard, an ordained minister and founder and director of a place called Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts located in the Chicago area. It isn't hyperbole to say that his organization is one of the most seriously insane xtian off shoots I've heard about. You may have come across this name just recently as the New Life Church shooter who went on a rampage several weeks ago was a Gothard protegee:

"Matthew J. Murray, the spree shooter in the Arvada missionary shooting and New Life Church shooting, was homeschooled and raised by his parents according to Gothard's teachings. Murray blamed this strict, isolated upbringing and Gothard personally for his mental and social problems in Internet postings in forums where other Gothard critics and former organization members would gather."


Mike and Bill at Houston fundraiser

Gothard's teachings may be, um, sort of radical, even to hard core bible thumpers. No divorce under any circumstance, strict authoritarianism and blind obedience, womenfolk not allowed to work outside the home, and demonic cabbage patch dolls. Recalcitrant children who "misbehave" get the prayer closet treatment:

"...the prayer closet is a little room where kids are taken when they disobey staff at the Indianapolis Training Center (ITC). Once locked inside, the misbehaving youths are forced to sit and pray to Jesus, sometimes for days at a time. Some juvenile ITC residents have said the evangelical Christian teens and young adults who staffed the center sometimes forbade them from going to the bathroom, forcing them to sit in their own urine for hours. Some have complained of beatings with paddles by untrained staff that left bruises and welts. When not in isolation, the kids are forced to march and chant and pray, with gospel music playing almost constantly."

Much more about Gothard and his christian empire can be found here.

Politicians seem to feel the need to ingratiate themselves with proponents of this aberrant if not insane behavior and Mike Huckabee appears to be tied at the hip with Gothard, going back all through his governorship of Arkansas. The two disciplines, pun intended, politics and religion have found common cause in our slide down fascism's slippery slope. If Huckabee gets anywhere near the white house one wonders if we'd have little prayer room treatments of our own sometime in the future.
And to answer my own question, yeah, I believe we're being set up for a worldwide war against muslims, hence the steady little drummer boy for jesus always playing softly in the background.