Even a great many of Huckabee's fellow fundamentalists, as suggested by the victory of John McCain in South Carolina, know that when you start talking about a godly amendment to the Constitution, you've ruled yourself out as a viable maintream presidential candidate.

Since the Constitution was written in the 18th century, and its most revolutionary provision was in fact an omission--the omission of any acknowledgment of God in favor of "We the People"--one can only presume that Huckabee wishes to return to an older standard in which governments (all of them monarchies) were presumed to govern by divine right instead of the will of the people. I assume that Huckabee has not found the time to read any serious books on the writing of the Constitution, or he would know that Article 6--the provision that forbids any religious test for public office--was thoroughly debated at the state ratifying conventions. Religious conservatives argued, as one Massachusetts delegate did, that unless the chief executive was required to take a religious oath, "A Turk, a Jew, a Roman Catholic, and what is worse than all, Universalist, may be President of the United States." Yes, that's exactly what the Constitution does mean. Even atheist can be elected--in theory, of course.

In New York, a fiery conservative, the Reverend John M. Mason, described the absence of God from the Constitution as "an omission which no pretext whatever can palliate." Mason warned that Americans "will have every reason to tremble, lest the Governor of the universe, who will not be treated with indignity by a people more than by individuals, overturn from its foundations the fabric we have been rearing, and crush us to atoms in the dust."

There were many attempts, in both the 19th and 20th centuries, to pass some sort of a "Christian amendment" to the Constitution. The most serious one took place during the Civil War, when a bunch of conservative Protestant ministers met with Abraham Lincoln in 1864 and proposed that he support an amendment replacing the Preamble with the following: "Recognizing Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, and acknowledging the Lord Jesus Christ as the Governor among the nations, His revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government...." The canny Lincoln observed the "the work of amending the Constitution should never be done hastily" and promised the ministers to "take such action upon it as my responsibility to my Maker and my country demands." Lincoln's action was to take no action at all--yet another reason why he should be considered our greatest president.

In a way, I'm sorry that no one outside the far-out religious right is going to take Huckabee's proposal seriously, because it would offer a good deal of high and low comedy to hear the candidates debate which of "God's standards" should be written into the rewritten Constitution. And which god's standards should be used. Do we want the standards of a god of war or a god of peace written into our Constitution? Should God be referred to with a masculine pronoun? Surely not if President Hillary Clinton presides over the debate. Where does God stand on taxes? Does God prefer Huckabee's proposed 23 percent national sales tax to the income tax? What would Jesus do? Is it good for the Jews? Oh, I'm sorry that this debate is never going to take place. It's such a long time until baseball season begins, and I would so love to hear politicians devote the next few months to arguing about which theological propositions to include in the Constitution instead of questioning baseball players about steroid use.

In a pluralistic religious society, the idea of amending the constitution to conform to some god's standards is so ridiculous that it is likely to offend a great many religious conservatives as well as liberal religious believers and secularists. Huckabee is done. That's my only political prediction at this point. The devil must have made him say it.

Addendum: The Seven Deadly Sins

I'd like to tell those of you who commented on the seven deadly sins that this was one of the most stimulating discussions I've seen on my thread. Thanks to all of you who were arguing about Einstein's views, I'm rereading some his essays and reading others for the first time.
In addition to being a scientific genius, the man could scarcely write a dull word. I wonder what he'd have to say about our current political and cultural scene?