The Republican Media- No. 37


Salon's Alex Pareene, describing in February, 2011 a trip by former Arksansas governor Mike Huckabee to east Jerusalem, wrote

Huckabee is not just moved by the inspiring story of the Jewish people. His support for the Jewish State is tied up in his apocalyptic religious beliefs. He’s had the “Left Behind” nut on his show. Huckabee is an evangelical Christian — he loves Israel because he associates it with the coming of the End Times. He supports the most right-wing elements in Israeli society because he believes that “half way through the Great Tribulation, Antichrist will enter the restored Temple and declare himself to be God.”

Whatever he's motivated by, it's not by a generous, or even open-minded opinion, of Jews.   The Raw Story reports that Huckabee spoke before the Celebrate Life event of the Iowa Republican Party last month and stated

And now we are called into this incredible Holocaust of our own in America.  Fifty-five million babies. Fifty-five million babies since 1973 have died in what ought to be the safest place in the world, their mother’s womb. It has become one of the most dangerous places for a baby to be. For us, this is not about the politics of Democrat or Republican, winning or losing — it is about our capacity to one day stand before a holy God and give an account for whether we stood between life and death for those who had no voice but ours.

Huckabee believes abortion is the taking of a life, and there would be no reason not to compare it to the annihilation of more than six million Jews by the Nazis... if abortion were a holocaust.  But it's not.   Merriam-Webster defines "holocaust" as

1   a: sacrifice consumed by fire
2   a: thorough destruction involving extensive loss of life especially through fire
3   a: often capitalized : the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially Jews by the         Nazis during World War II —usually used with the
     b: a mass slaughter of people; especially : genocide


Obviously, abortion has nothing to do with fire.  Nor is it "a thorough destruction..." nor "a mass slaughter of people."  "Slaughter" is the killing of a large number of people; a "mass slaughter" may be redundant, and emphasizes the elimination of many people in one incident.  Abortion, to the contrary, is the killing, or not the killing, one-by-one, the result of an individual decision by an individual woman in isolation from other women considering the procedure.

Abortion clearly is not a "holocaust."  There is, however, good reason for rabid anti-abortion rights fanatics like Huckabee to use the incendiary word.  It fires up the activists and, because it veers into the area of religion, there is little chance the media, aside from attentive bloggers such as Kaili Joy Gray, will give it more than a passing glance.   And given the way in which the mainstream media is intimidated by the GOP, 'passing glance' probably exaggerates the response.





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