Madman on Romney and Religion

Today, among the most emailed articles at nytimes.com, I found the paper's editorial in response to Mitt Romney's speech in defense of his own faith. The editors let Romney have it with poignant references to the hypocrisy in his words at the Bush presidential library.

I must say, if there is one particularly disgusting candidate for the presidency it is Romney. The words "Gosh. I love America. I’m afraid I’m going to be at a loss for words..." still pain my mind (for those of you wise enough not to watch the first republican debate, this is what the governor said in response to the question What do you dislike most about America?). This disingenuous naïveté, coupled with his hypocritical wishy-washiness and convoluted views on national security (another heaping of Guantanamo, anyone?) have always cast this man in my mind as particularly distasteful.

Of course, he needed to confront the issue of his mormon faith at some point. In doing so, Romney came up with a muddled speech in which he tried to both defend religious freedom and play the victim of a cultural war (against religion). This snake charmer tried both to conjure up both separation of church and state while defending a profound place for religiosity in the public square, all while disgracing the foundational values of America and the founding fathers' intentions. In other words, he wanted to capitalize on the Christian voters deep rooted insecurities while assuring them his Mormonism didn't make him too much of a weirdo. Despite his sordid attempt at this, it seems even some right-wing commentators aren't buying Romney's brand of religious America (but many apparently are, so guess he'll keep at it).

To be honest, I know very little about the church of latter day saints, basically what South Park taught me. But I don't care to know, nor do I think anyone should consider the issue when electing the leader of the free world. It is the case, however, that the subject of faith has been of primordial importance in American politics, and for the past couple decades the Christian right has written some of the most retrograde chapters in the country's history. But haven't we had enough religion already?

You know what happens without a strict separation of church and state? Ayaan Hirsi Ali had a few particularly disheartening examples of such cases (not to mention her life's struggles). When will Romney & Co. stop reducing America's great roots to being able to practice medieval rituals? At its essence, America was founded on liberty and tolerance, not the freedom to be intolerant under the guidance of some faith. No, it's not called killing babies, it's acting on a woman's best interest under the circumstances. Gays are people too, free to love whomever they want to love, regardless of what went down in Sodom. Stop calling your blind convictions morality and go read some philosophy!

There is little defense for religion's stranglehold on the unknown, and you'd think it'd be radically unacceptable for government to be submerged in religion's murky waters since the Enlightenment. But alas, troops can be sent to war because it's the good war against the others, and if they catch a bullet, God's grace would lift them up to heaven. And I'm not talking only about jihadists (although they are the crazier of the bunch), but soldiers of the free world.

So God Bless America.