Anyway, he said the following just recently.
Before I go any farther, I'd like to offer a quick message to my Republican friends (by which I mean people I personally know who are conservative and support the GOP for lack of a better option). I hope you all know how much I love and respect you. I also hope you know I am aware that not one of you is this stupid. In fact, living in deepest-of-deep-red Arkansas, the vast majority of my friends (family, too, for that matter) are conservative and serious-minded, devout Christians so I've had the opportunity that so few non-conservatives seem to avail themselves of these days—namely, actually talking to people who disagree with my politics. You are all, to a person, good and decent folks who are willing to accept that we can disagree on important issues without either of us being a degenerate. You have no idea how much I appreciate that fact. So, having said all those things, please understand that I'm not lumping you in with the likes of Rep. King up there. Now, onward we go.
The thing I'd like to point out about what Rep. King has to say in this clip is the exceptionally abysmal logic at play in his unspoken assumption that only Christians have any sort of morals therefore any display of morals is, by default, a conspicuous display Christianity. I see that assumption at work throughout much of the political right in the U.S. today, and it troubles me for several reasons. I won't go into them all right now, but I will describe one of them.
The attitude in question is a covertly hostile declaration against non-Christians whether we're talking about theists who believe in a different god or atheists who believe in none. In some cases, this declaration applies to theists who believe in the same god but do so in a slightly different way. I find this sort of bigotry (let's just call it what it is) deeply troubling since it necessarily means that those who hold this attitude operate under the assumption that anyone who doesn't share their conviction is a lesser person, and as such certain rights simply don't apply to that person.
As a somewhat different manifestation of this same bigotry, consider for a moment the current simmering scandal over the Obama administration assassinating U.S. citizens overseas. I have to admit that it took me a little while to come around on this issue because, let's face it, Anwar al-Aulaqi and his ilk are awful human beings. Al-Aulaqi, in particular, wasn't awful because he was a Muslim. I've known lots of Muslims who are just the finest people you'd ever want to meet. No, al-Aulaqi was awful because he decided that it would be a good idea to encourage other people to engage in suicide-murders in the name of an idea that he particularly liked. I hold that people who do such things have forfeited their right to breathe, but I don't get to make those decisions all on my own. Neither does anyone else, including our president. We established a system of justice in this nation when we ratified the constitution that guarantees certain rights, and if anything it's all the more important for us to uphold those rights when we're dealing with someone as terrible as al-Aulaqi was. The fact that it's difficult to do it is what makes it meaningful. If these things were easy then everyone would do them. We like to think we hold ourselves to a higher standard so it's a good idea that we actually do that.
So what does all of that have to do with our Rep. King? Well, other than offering a bipartisan example of really problematic attitudes toward people we don't like, what I'm attempting here is to show how much easier it is to dehumanize those you believe have somehow disqualified themselves from being worth the effort to respect, if nothing else, their basic humanity. I doubt very seriously that Rep. King would agree that he's dehumanizing people, but when you demote someone who doesn't see things your way to a lesser status that's exactly what you're doing. So when Rep. King argues, albeit implicitly, that morality equals Christianity he also implies the corollary—namely, that non-Christians cannot be moral by default. I suspect that the Honorable Gentleman believes he's being admirably ecumenical by sweeping up every moral person into Christendom, but some people don't want to be a part of Christendom. Sweeping them into it violates their right to make those decisions for themselves and debases them as a result.
Of course, doing what Rep. King is doing here is not the same as murdering U.S. citizens with flying killer robots, but the kernel of the idea is basically the same. When you make the mental shift to consider the rights of everyone who (insert thing you don't like here) to be beneath consideration, you've stepped onto a very dangerous path. You may only go far enough down that path to decide that it's just dandy to ignore the deeply held convictions of other people so you proclaim that governing according to your religious convictions is the only right thing to do because, conveniently, everyone really agrees with them whether they admit it or not. Or you may decide that it's a good idea to start murdering people with flying killer robots, but let's all hope things don't get that far out of hand.
As to the problematic nature of Rep. King's specific argument in this case, the logic only works if the neighbor whose dog you killed happens to be Jesus. Otherwise, you're just a decent guy with a decent neighbor.
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