God, Guns, and Hucksters

Today, the world mourns the loss of 27 people slaughtered by yet another mentally disturbed man with easy access to armaments. Is the problem that, as The Onion put it, our "government-protected right to own a portable device that propels small masses of metal through the air at lethal rates of speed"? No, says Snakeoil Spokesbot Mike Huckabee:

We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we’ve systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage because we’ve made it a place where we don’t want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability? ...one day, we will stand before a Holy God in judgment. If we don’t believe that, then we don’t fear that.

That's right, it's all about God--and fear thereof. Presumably, the Lack of God in movie theaters, malls, and other public spaces is also to blame for our nation's pastime of wholesale murder. Given that by "God" Huckabee means the personal kind that is "holy" and judges people for doing shit, as if they somehow stood separate and apart from Him (not Her!), one wonders what Huckabee thinks of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids the government establishment of religion.

That said, let's assume for a moment that Mr. Huckabee is right. We need more God in public schools. There is a simple way to do this while remaining within the strictures of the First Amendment: teach Comparative Religion. Students can learn to define God as practically anything they want, from the fundamental energy of nature, to Shiva the Destroyer, to Lucifer, to The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, to their inner selves. Students can learn that somehow by "becoming gods," they answer to no one yet are fully responsible for their actions. They can learn to pray for trinkets from a Universal Santa--and be sure to pray correctly, lest His Bearded Eminence fill their stockings with West Virginian coal. They can learn to appreciate the impersonal connectivity of all that exists and to "be" the moss in the back yard. They can learn to ask favors of Voodoo's Papa Legba in exchange for pouring cane syrup on the floor. Or they can ask Jesus to save their hellbound souls. 

They can also learn that there is zero need to believe in any God at all.

But it's clear that such a broad religious education would not satisfy Mssr. Huckabee and friends. For some reason, they think that returning a vague monotheistic deity to His (never Her!) Rightful Throne on the local school board will somehow prevent people from massacring each other, even though massacres happen the world over. Somehow they reason that supposed knowledge of "God" in American schools will solve the problem of easy availability of firearms, despite the fact that the Middle East is awash in both arms and God, and God knows everything's hunky-dorey over there.

That's a monotheistic God, by the way, whether He's called Allah or Yahweh, who is presumably holy and before whom devotees must live in fear of judgment. And yet that doesn't stop the locals from butchering women and children. Does anyone in their right mind think that more God would bring peace?

Why then would more God bring peace here?

I imagine such a God might offer the following advice for Mr. Huckabee: "Have you thought of doing something about all those guns?"