#1631: Charles Fuqua

Charles Fuqua (I don’t know how it is pronounced) was a candidate for the state legislature in Arkansas in 2012, and garnered substantial financial support from the Republican party, at least until someone close-read his book God’s Law: The Only Political Solution, which advocated not only a theocracy based on Old Testament Law, but even tried actively to justify some of the more unsavory elements of that suggestion. So for instance, Fuqua did argue for the idea that unruly children should be put to death like it says in the Bible. Yeah, that’s right: Death penalty for disobedient children at their parents’ discretion (as long as they follow “proper procedure”, which was presumably filing the request with the elders of the town). Oh, but it’s not really bad: You see, it would have (probably unlike the death penalty for adults) a deterrent effect and wouldn’t be used often since parents love their children so much that they would probably almost never want them to be put to death. Which would, according to Fuqua’s own reasoning, presumably defeat the purpose, but there is reason to think that Charles Fuqua at this stage in his argument would have had some trouble recognizing “conflicts of reasons”. He is also firmly opposed to abortion.

In the same book, Fuqua also advocated expelling Muslims from the U.S. (we know: fairly anticlimactic at this stage), saying it would solve what he described as the “Muslim problem.” We haven’t bothered to figure out precisely what that problem is, but he has described liberals and Muslims as the “anti-Christ” and said that he believes they are conspiring to create a “bloody revolution.” The uniting principle is, of course, that they are enemies of Christianity, and follow the principle that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend.”

It is worth mentioning that the Arkansas legislature was at this time already saddled with Loy Mauch, who has defended slavery and denounced Abraham Lincoln as a Nazi and Marxist. We’ll return to him.

Diagnosis: Whoops. I guess it’s a tough game to stand out among the fringe nutters in the state legislatures. Fuqua has hopefully crawled back into whatever hole he emerged from.