Good morning! Blessings on you and your family, and from all the Huckabee staff!

Today's newsletter includes:

• “Huckabee” Preview
• How To Stop Students from Falling Prey to Socialism
• A disconnected media is trying to sell us a bill of goods
• And much more.

Thank you again for subscribing, I hope you enjoy today's edition! 

Sincerely,

Mike Huckabee

1. DAILY BIBLE VERSE

What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?

Romans 8:31

If you have a favorite Bible Verse you want to see in one of our newsletters, please email [email protected].

2. “Huckabee” Preview

Join me tonight on TBN for a terrific new episode of “Huckabee!” We’ll have a preview of “Together ’22,” a massive Christian gathering coming in June. I’ll catch up with one of our all-time favorite Huck’s Heroes. We’ll visit “Our Kind of Town,” laugh with comedian Mike Paramore, and visit with “Mountain Man” William Lee Golden of the country supergroup, The Oak Ridge Boys. To top it all off, the iconic vocal group The Vogues will perform one of their classic hits of the ‘60s.

So leave your 5 o’clock world and tune in to TBN at 8 and 11 EST, 7 and 10 CST, and Sunday at 9 EST/8 CST. To find out how to watch TBN, from local cable and broadcast channels to streaming, visit https://www.huckabee.tv. and click on “Channel Finder” on the top menu. You can stream previous episodes, highlights and online-only “Digital Exclusives,” including extended interviews, “In Case You Missed It” and “Facts of the Matter” segments, plus extra performances by our great musical and comedy guests and links to all their sites, at https://www.huckabee.tv. You can also find past shows, highlights and digital exclusives on YouTube and my Facebook page.

3. How To Stop Students From Falling Prey To Socialism

I got a comment from a reader arguing that one reason young people fall prey to socialism (aside from being brainwashed by their teachers) is that they feel the capitalist system is failing them. They were told they had to get college degrees if they wanted good jobs, and encouraged to take out huge student loans. Now, they’re saddled with crippling debt, and those degrees aren’t opening the doors to jobs that pay enough to ever get out of the hole.

I admit that’s a serious problem, but electing people who will expand the very policies that raise taxes, kill jobs and wages, and make college ridiculously expensive and degrees useless (is anyone other than George Soros hiring people who studied how to overthrow the US government? is not going to help.

And promises to pay off everyone’s student loans are just a bait-and-switch. Your student loan debt might disappear, but your tax bill will double or triple. Will that solve your problem? And talk about redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich! People who never attended college will pay higher taxes to pay off the college loan debts of lawyers and others at higher income levels.

We need action on a number of fronts for young people to be able to access the American dream. First, we do need to restructure student loans, so that rates are lowered and terms easier to handle. Government policies need to be aimed at helping grow the economy and encourage private sector expansion, so that jobs are plentiful and wages keep rising. And future generations need to be taught to be more judicious in choosing majors, or that maybe college isn’t the only alternative. There are many good-paying jobs in skilled trades that employers desperately need to fill (just ask Mike Rowe.) There’s dignity in all work, and it’s a heck of a lot better to be a busy, well-paid plumber or mechanic than an angry, unemployed poli-sci or gender studies major (they obviously have way too much free time on their hands these days.)

Besides, as many of our recent political leaders have proven beyond a doubt, having an Ivy League degree is no guarantee of superior intelligence, ability or even basic competence. It might just mean that your parents bought the school a gym. Academic credentials are fine, but they don’t mean as much to me as native intelligence, a strong work ethic and an eagerness to learn.

Before I entered politics, I worked with a fellow named Gary Underwood to build a community TV station on a shoestring budget. Gary had no formal education in television production, but he figured out things, like how to make work lights from Sam’s Club do as studio lights, and how to run lights and a camera off a car battery so we could do remotes. If he’d had formal training, he might’ve told me it was impossible on our budget and given up. But since he wasn’t a "trained expert," he found ways to do the impossible. Later on, he ran media operations for the Arkansas Governor’s Office for me.

There are people with more education than others, and who certainly think they’re smarter than the rest of us. But you’d be hard pressed to find people with more “smarts” than someone like Gary. Have you ever heard it said that someone was “educated beyond their intelligence”? We’ve got plenty of people like that. Washington is crawling with so many Harvard and Yale alums that if they could all get a tuition refund, they could probably pay off the national debt. And frankly, many of them should demand a refund.

As both a Governor and a business owner, I’ve hired a lot of employees over the years. Some would figure out how to get something done, while others would spend more time explaining why it couldn’t be done than it would’ve taken to do it! Give me a smart person with a can-do attitude any day over one with an expensive education who lacks the resourcefulness to solve problems with whatever is available.

Remember the story of the eminent scientist who proved through incontrovertible laws of physics, gravity and aerodynamics that it was impossible for a bumblebee to fly? The bumblebee ignored all his arguments about how flying was impossible and flew anyway. The moral: If you want to succeed, be like a bumblebee and don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t fly.

4. A disconnected media is trying to sell us a bill of goods

How can we all be so connected, and our government be so disconnected?

One of the benefits of living in the 21st century is that thanks to jet travel and the Internet, I constantly talk to Americans from every state and every walk of life. And believe me, they are not shy about sharing their opinions. It gives me a perspective that I wish more of our politicians and media people inside the Beltway Bubble could experience.

According to a recent Reuters Institute and University of Oxford survey, America ranked last among 46 nations in public trust in the news media. If I had to explain that subterranean approval rating in one word, it would be “disconnection.” I don’t think there’s ever been a time when the people in the media were so out of touch with the people they’re supposed to be serving (you’d think the shock they experienced on Election night 2016 would’ve caused them to reflect a bit and make some changes, but they only doubled down on the demonizing of people they never talk to.) They apparently really believed in 2016 that when voters asked for “change,” they wanted bigger deficits and a bloated, more powerful regulatory state. Trust me, based on what they told me, they did not. And they didn’t think they were getting that when they voted for Biden, either. They’re angry now because many believe they’re the victims of a bait-and-switch con.

If you ask most Americans what they want from government, it’s not to have every aspect of their lives regulated and “transformed,” including those that worked a lot better before the government “improved” them. They don’t want 2,000-page bills nobody’s read, or bureaucrats telling them which doctor they can see or how much money they’re allowed to make. The list of what most Americans say they want from government is actually pretty short: national defense, secure borders, safe streets; smooth highways; health care for veterans, seniors, children, the disabled (all those who genuinely can’t help themselves); good schools, firefighters and (yes) police – now more than ever - and it would be nice if the trash were picked up on time. That’s about it.

Yet somehow, the government finds so many ways to meddle in our lives that federal, state and local government spending combined now equals about 40 percent of America’s entire gross domestic product. And in some big cities, they don’t pick up the garbage at all. They just let people live in it.

In poll after poll, despite claims that socialism is on the rise, most Americans say they want less government and less spending. Even those who say they want government handouts like “Medicare For All” abruptly change their tunes when told what it will do to their tax bills and quality of services. They don’t give a hoot what the talking heads or the endlessly-surprised economists or the “too-big-to-fail” Wall Street failures say: they want government out of their lives, out of their wallets and out of their way.

Sadly, whenever political candidates support that philosophy, their opponents and the media paint them as cold-hearted and uncaring. Compassion has been redefined as the willingness to spend limitless amounts of other people’s money. The media also devote almost no time to examining political philosophies and a lot of time to gotcha games, gaffes, fake news and who’s ahead in the horse race.

But the horse is now out of the barn. For eight years, Americans experienced firsthand the results of so-called “progressive” policies. Government out of control, a health care boondoggle two-thirds of us didn’t want, and the economy still struggling long after it should’ve roared back.

The Election of 2016 was not a surprise to me. I predicted it months in advance because, unlike so many people who claim to represent or report on the American people, I actually talk to – and more importantly, listen to - people. Things were turning around quite well before a pandemic artificially shut down the economy and people let the media bamboozle them into blaming Trump and thinking they’d be bringing back moderation and “normality” if they elected Biden.

Now, they find themselves stuck with a combination of Obama and Jimmy Carter times 10. This isn’t what they voted for, but they’re getting it good and hard.

I predict that, despite the media’s best efforts to bamboozle us, politicians who try to sell Americans on socialistic, big government policies will eventually fail, for the same reason that a used car salesman has a hard time selling a lemon to the same customer twice. I think those politicians know it, too; hence their desperation to take over elections so they can control the results. I also predict that politicians who were elected on a promise not to “fundamentally transform” America will remain in office only as long as they remember that Americans did not elect them to turn the United States into Venezuela.

5. Don't buy the conventional wisdom

When a lie gets repeated so often that everyone thinks it’s true, it’s called “conventional wisdom” – maybe because it happens so often at political conventions. These days, the conventional wisdom from some politicians and their “news media” press agents is that European-style, cradle-to-grave Socialism Lite is immensely popular with Americans, and only a handful of evil fascist, racist Republicans are standing in the way of the glorious “progress” the people want. Don’t buy this load of manure.

Throughout the Bush-Obama era, the media kept repeating “failed conservative policies” until even a lot of so-called conservatives believed it. In truth, it’s socialist policies that have been proven to be tragic failures, everywhere and every time they’re tried.

During the Obama years, we tried leftist policies. They resulted in a sluggish economy, depressed job growth, rising income inequality, reduced wealth and opportunities for minorities, and abroad, a decline in US prestige and leadership and the advancement and emboldening of our enemies, including a terrorist “JV team” called ISIS growing and spreading into a worldwide threat.

Polls began to show that most Americans wanted the government to do less and spend less. In France, where an actual Socialist was elected President, his huge tax hikes crashed the economy and made socialism as popular with the French as cheese in a can. The media were shocked when voters turned right in the next election. They should’ve known that nothing turns people off socialism like actually experiencing it. (See “Venezuela.”)

Of course, they were even more shocked when Trump won in 2016. He immediately reversed Obama’s leftist policies. Despite a non-stop media barrage that brainwashed a lot of people into thinking that was the WORST TIME EVER, it was actually a time of nearly unprecedented peace and prosperity. Crime fell, ISIS was smashed, the borders became more secure (although Democrats fought tooth and nail to keep them from being truly secured), unemployment reached record lows, real wages rose for the first time in decades, and the Abraham Accords saw historic Middle East peace agreements.

And then came COVID and the unsecure 2020 election, the inauguration of President Biden, his reversal of all those policies. And the combination of shock and whiplash experienced by many Americans who never dreamed that leftist policies could destroy so much so fast. Let’s all hope and pray that the 2022 elections will reflect that hard-won lesson and dump socialism back on the trash heap of history where it belongs…at least until a new generation arises that doesn’t remember the lessons of history and has to learn the hard way all over again.

It is a shame that we have to keep relearning the hard way that top-down, big government solutions don’t work. Young people can almost be excused for flirting with socialism, since they are empty vessels who get filled with whatever their teachers tell them, and we’ve been remiss in allowing leftists to politicize our schools and fill those precious vessels with garbage. Let’s also hope that parents have gotten “woke” to that scam and we’re about to see some real changes in our school system, from kindergarten through college.

But Republicans who promised small government and fiscal responsibility should already know better. Instead, too many let deficits skyrocket, stuffed budgets with pork, and became cheerleaders for big government. These so-called conservatives slammed me in 2007 for not being a “real conservative” because I pointed out problems in the economy that were hurting working people and criticized the lack of oversight of Wall Street’s excesses. Just two years later, they wanted to spend $700 billion of our grandkids’ money to bail out Wall Street from its excesses. They abandoned government’s rightful role as a tough-but-impartial referee and wanted to use its power to pick winners and losers in the market. Is that “real conservatism?”

The truth is that voters didn’t turn their backs on conservatism, Republican politicians did. Democrats didn’t sweep to power in 2008 by claiming to be government-bloating tax-and-spenders, but by swearing they’d changed and were now fiscally responsible. Of course, once they gave the White House and Congress to the Democrats, voters quickly realized their terrible mistake and gave the House back to the GOP (now it’s déjà vu all over again.) But too many Republicans had already squandered their credibility, so when Democrats ballooned the deficit, they could deflect criticism by simply pointing at their GOP opponents’ own records.

From Jefferson’s belief that government closest to the people governs best to Reagan’s faith in free markets, from low taxes to fiscal restraint, from a strong military to secure borders, conservative ideas work whenever they’re tried. Obama mocked Trump for saying we could bring back manufacturing jobs and have growth of over 4 percent, saying that Trump didn’t have a “magic wand.” But the only magic needed was a simple disappearing act: getting government out of the way. Biden brought back Obama’s policies. Doesn’t anyone seriously believe things are better now, other than Democrat cronies who get rich off government money?

Gandhi once said, "If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today." I think if all politicians really followed the principles they espouse to get elected, all of America would be conservative today. (Much of it already is: look at the 2020 county-by-county voting map – and that’s an election Democrats “won!”)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2020_United_States_presidential_election_results_map_by_county.svg

Americans just need politicians who’ll actually do what they claimed they would do once they arrive in Washington.

6. The leaders we need

We all knew a kid in school who just had to run everything. Remember the classmate who insisted on picking the games you’d all play at recess, where you’d go after school, even who was “in” or “out” of your group? In high school, that kid had a compulsive need to be the leader of every student organization. You just wanted to say, “Hey! You’re not the boss of me!” Whatever happened to those kids? I wouldn’t be surprised if most ended up in government. We certainly have no shortage of people there who think they know how to live your life and spend your paycheck better than you do.

I’m convinced the world is divided into people who just want to live their own lives and those who, for some reason, have an uncontrollable urge to tell everyone else how to live. Unfortunately, to that latter group, government seems like the ideal place to work, and at the moment, they are getting 99.9% of all the attention from the media. As more of them gravitated toward government, Congress abdicated much of its legislating authority to unelected bureaucrats. Their bureaus grew like kudzu, and so did their regulations with the force of law (but no input from the people.) Then one day, we looked up and discovered we had a crushing national debt and were paying huge salaries to an army of people who enforce how big your soda should be and who couldn’t be fired and who is allowed to come into your daughter’s locker room. That’s when sane people realized that government is the LAST place these out-of-control control freaks needed to be.

The temptation for government to overreach is hardly new. In fact, it stretches back to the beginning of recorded history, and I bet even earlier than that. There’s a story in the ninth chapter of the book of Judges in the Old Testament about Gideon’s son Abimelech, who craved leadership and stature - not to serve the people but to control them and make them serve him. He said, “Give me dominion over your lives, and I will simplify your existence.” Wow, does that sound familiar? It’s basically the entire 2020 Democratic platform. Our government has taken us pretty far down that same road, but does your life seem any simpler -- or just a lot less free?

Anyway, back to Abimelech. He had a very smart younger brother, Jotham, who came up with a clever tale about three trees: an olive tree, a fig tree, and a vine tree. All three were fine trees that produced lots of fruit. All were offered the exalted position of “King Of All Trees,” but all three turned it down. The plant that wanted to be “King Of All Trees” was the bramble bush, a weak plant that produces no fruit at all. Jotham’s point was that only the weak and nonproductive have the desire to rule everyone else. Does that lesson not resonate like a gong right now?

When anyone aspires to a position of power, take a long, hard look. If that person seemingly crawled out of the cradle with an ambition to be President, then beware! Anytime someone talks about “running the country,” alarm bells should sound. No one – not the President, not Congress, no one person – “runs the country” or should aspire to. That’s why the Founders took such pains to divide and limit federal power, and why we need to reinstate those limits that have been blurred in recent years, whether by Presidents ruling via executive order or out-of-control judges legislating from the bench or unelected bureaucrats abusing their power to try to influence the results of elections. If we allow any one person or entity to ignore those limits and assume the power to run everything, we won’t be able to stop them when they run America into the ground.

We should pick leaders who resemble the trees in the Bible story that don’t need or crave power but that have shown they bear good fruit. As it is said, by their fruits ye shall know them. Government has more than enough nuts already.