Yeah, I’m still going on about this
Published December 7th, 2007My blog, and yeah, I’m pissed. The more I think about the things Romney said, the more angry I get. It’s no surprise he gave his speech at the George H.W. Bush library - the library of a man who once said, “No, I don’t know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.” This quote is somewhat disputed, but has never been outright denied by Bush or his teams.
So who else is talking? Well, not surprisingly, bulldog atheist Christopher Hitchens, saying the speech was “worthless, windy.” No doubt. His column is one of exasperated contempt, as Hitchens tends to exude towards the religious. I personally don’t go as far as him in my feelings, but he has one very poignant section, which I will quote here:
“Romney does not understand the difference between deism and theism, nor does he know the first thing about the founding of the United States. Jefferson’s Declaration may invoke a “Creator,” but, as he went on to show in the battle over the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, he and most of his peers did not believe in a god who intervened in human affairs or in a god who had sent a son for a human sacrifice. These easily ascertainable facts are reflected in the way that the U.S. Constitution does not make any mention of a superintendent deity and in the way that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention declined an offer (possibly sarcastic), even from Benjamin Franklin, that they resort to prayer to compose their differences. Romney may throw a big chest and say that God should be “on our currency, in our pledge,” and of course on our public land in this magic holiday season, but James Madison did not think that there should be chaplains opening the proceedings of Congress or even appointed as ministers in the U.S. armed forces. Trying to dodge around this, and to support his assertion that the founders were religious in the Christian sense, Romney drones on about a barely relevant moment of emotion in 1774 and comes up with the glib slogan that “freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.” Any fool can think of an example where freedom exists without religion—and even more easily of an instance where religion exists without (or in negation of) freedom.”
The constant and continuing mis-characterization of the Founding Fathers - who were truly revolutionary minds and should be respected for what they created, warts and all - drives me absolutely insane. The Religious Fanatics who want to turn America into a Christian wonderland, everyone else be damned (literally), simply fabricate outright lies about the founders. It’s incredibly disrespectful and downright pathetic.
At Salon, a posted column discusses and points out that secularists and the non-religious have, throughout history, been FAR MORE tolerant than any religion can claim.
“We can begin with Romney’s speech Thursday, in which he declared, as Joan Walsh noted with alarm, that there can be no liberty without faith. “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom … Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.”
This statement is so patently false that it scarcely deserves refutation. If Romney has studied the bloody history of his own church, then he knows that the religious fervor of its adversaries drove them to deprive the Mormons not only of their freedom but their lives, and that the Mormons reacted in kind. If he has studied the bloody history of the world’s older religions, then he knows that the most devout Christians of all sects have not hesitated to suppress, torture and murder “heretics” throughout history. Only the strictest separation of church and state has permitted the establishment of societies where freedom of conscience prevails — and those freedoms are firmly rooted in societies where organized religion has long been in decline.
Surely Romney knows that Mormonism, in particular, was historically hostile to liberty for blacks as well as women. The founders of his church believed that God had cursed the world’s dark-skinned people. They rejected abolitionism and later the civil rights movement. And their acceptance of full membership for African-Americans in the LDS church dates back only 30 years.
If Romney is going to attack humanists and secularists as “wrong,” then let him explain why they were so far ahead of his church on the greatest moral issues of the past half-century.”
If he wants to say his morals are based in his religion, then it’s fair game to examine what those morals really are rooted in. Their final paragraph really drives home the theme of the column:
“Phonies like Huckabee and Romney complain constantly about the supposed religious intolerance of secular liberals. But the truth is that liberals — including agnostics and atheists — have long been far more tolerant of religious believers in office than the other way around. They helped elect a Southern Baptist named Jimmy Carter to the presidency in 1976, and today they support a Mormon named Harry Reid who is the Senate majority leader — which makes him the highest-ranking Mormon officeholder in American history. Nobody in the Democratic Party has displayed the slightest prejudice about Reid’s religion.
Liberals and progressives have no apologies to make, or at least no more than libertarians and conservatives do. Cherishing the freedoms protected by a secular society need not imply any disrespect for religion. But when candidates like Romney and Huckabee press the boundaries of the Constitution to promote themselves as candidates of faith, it is time to push back.”
Damn right. I’m pushing back as best I can.
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