MANCHESTER, N.H. – Former Arkansas Gov. and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee (R) spoke at the conservative “Freedom Summit” this weekend and offered audience members his take on how America can become a better, “more free” nation: learn from North Korea.

Huckabee, who will likely make another run for the White House in 2016, said that he wishes America would become more like the isolated communist nation because he often believes there is “more freedom in North Korea sometimes than there is in the United States.”

“We all know Kim Jong Un gets a bad rap,” Huckabee said. “Yeah, he might be a nominal communist, but he doesn’t let his people rely on the government. Nope, in North Korea, the government doesn’t give handouts, even during a famine.”

“As they say: Better to let people starve in freedom than enslave them with food stamps,” Huckabee added.

Huckabee’s remarks, which have already earned him significant criticism, began with a complaint about the TSA. “When I go to the airport, I have to get in the surrender position,” Huckabee said. “People put hands all over me. And I have to provide photo ID in a couple of different forms and prove that I really am not going to terrorize the airplane. Compared to that, North Korean concentration camps are like an all-inclusive resort.”

Urged on by an apparently receptive audience, Huckabee then explained another way in which “North Korea really has governing figured out.”

“They don’t terrorize their people by forcing them to witness gay people marrying,” the Fox News commentator explained. “That freedom alone makes a little torture and public executions 100 percent worth it.”

Huckabee took pains to make clear that he doesn’t want the United States to imitate every aspect of North Korean society, however. “They don’t have churches there, which is unfortunate, especially for a pastor like me,” Huckabee lamented.

“It’s not perfect,” Huckabee said. “All I’m saying is: If the Founding Fathers were still alive, I could see the whole lot of them packing up and moving to Pyongyang.”