The crisis in America today is not simply an economic one, it is a moral one, former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said at the fourth annual University of Mobile (UM) Scholarship Banquet.
“While we sit here tonight, Washington is buzzing with this financial meltdown. The problem is a lot of them really do believe that the issue is a money issue. Let me be so bold tonight as to suggest that the crisis in America is not a money crisis, it is a moral crisis,” Huckabee told an audience of more than 600 at the Arthur Outlaw Convention Center in downtown Mobile.
The former Baptist pastor and governor of Arkansas was the keynote speaker for the banquet, which raised more than $264,000 for the annual scholarship fund. The event featured entertainment by the UM Center for Performing Arts groups RamCorps and VOICES of Mobile.
Prior to the banquet, Huckabee borrowed a bass guitar and joined students for an impromptu jam session.
He then addressed reporters and UM students, faculty and staff at a press conference on campus.
“What I’d like for somebody to do, whether it’s President Bush or Barack Obama or John McCain, is to come out and level with the American people and say the heart of this is greed,” Huckabee said, responding to a reporter’s question. “This is not just a fact that there was some government oversight that was missing. This was the fact that there was an incredible collusion between members of Congress and the very industry they were supposed to regulate and oversee, and they didn’t do it.”
He added, “We ought to be addressing the fact that the heart of this is not just a matter of market conditions, and it’s not just a matter of some poor management decisions. At the heart of this is the evil, selfish nature of greed. That’s what we’ve got to address.”
He continued the theme at the scholarship banquet and praised UM for raising up a generation of moral leaders. “On this campus there is no apology, none at all, no retreat and no flinching from creating the atmosphere in which a student is clearly reminded that you are the creation of God — it is from Him you have come, it is to Him you will return, and you are responsible for the life you live.
“My friends, you really want to talk about saving America? It might just be that it starts at the University of Mobile in the next student’s life who enrolls here next fall and says, ‘I want to see what can happen with my life,’” Huckabee continued.
“That’s why every time a student gets a scholarship and gets to make this their college home instead of maybe a place that will train their mind but not their soul and their spirit, we’ve done more than give a kid an opportunity for an education. We’ve given that student an opportunity for life itself.”
Huckabee said the only real hope in this nation is not in reforming Washington.
“It’s in reforming the everyday men and women who live in our own communities and who grow up in our own homes. What we really need, more than we need political reform, is we need spiritual revival. It’s the only thing that will lead to true political reform,” he said. (UM)
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