Apathy Sketchpad

A few days ago, M. le Prof d’Anglais nominated Mitt Romney (as if that’s a proper name) for January’s Religious Crackpot of the Month. I thought about this, but eventually decided that I wasn’t going to lump him in with people of other faiths, purely and simply because that’s what he wants us to do.

Romney, for those of you who don’t know, is one of the 2008 presidential candidates. He’s hoping to be the Republican candidate, and if successful (which he probably won’t be), he’ll have to face an election against the Democratic candidate — probably either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as I understand these things from watching The Daily Show.

Recently he made a speech about faith in America, hoping to get the votes of the huge numbers of Christians in America  by pretending to be one. He was introduced by a man who’s noted for saying that an atheist could never really be a true patriotic American (which is offensive in itself but is downright terrifying when you consider than man used to be the president), so to drive the point home, Romney is shown on his website standing in front of no fewer than eight American flags. I shall now paste a cut down version of his speech, which is available in full on his website, because he’s actually proud of his insane beliefs.

Today, I wish to address a topic which I believe is fundamental to America’s greatness: our religious liberty.

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There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation’s founders, for they, when our nation faced its greatest peril, sought the blessings of the Creator. And further, they discovered the essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom. … Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people. Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.

Just to interrupt Mr Romney there, this argument is fantastically weak. He’s implicitly equating “religious freedom” with religion itself, and he’s implicitly equating “in the context of the weighty threats that face us” with “in politics”. It’s cunning phrasing, and if I’m generous then I assume he doesn’t know he’s doing it (not least because he’s got a team of lackeys to write this stuff for him).

A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith.

Remember this, and see if he goes back on it.

Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions. Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin.

Ah, so he’s a secularist, that’s good to know–

We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

Ah, no, no, in fact he’s an idiot. “The religion of secularism”? That’s a bit like saying “the number minus” or “the colour invisible”.

We cherish these sacred rights, and secure them in our Constitutional order. Foremost do we protect religious liberty, not as a matter of policy but as a matter of right. There will be no established church, and we are guaranteed the free exercise of our religion.

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And you can be certain of this: Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me. And so it is for hundreds of millions of our countrymen: we do not insist on a single strain of religion – rather, we welcome our nation’s symphony of faith.

Throughout his speech, which you can watch on his website and which sounds more like a sermon than a political address,  you may notice he keeps making implicit anti-atheist remarks like “freedom requires religion” and “our constitution was made for … religious people”.  Now antisemitism is not encouraged, so how does he think America would tolerate an anti-atheist president? Well, the fact is that for the most part they would (and have done before), because America has a very strong anti-atheist brigade, to the point where many atheists face much the same problems telling their parents of their apostasy as gay people did admitting their homosexuality all those years ago.

He says  “any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty has a friend and ally in me”, implying that he is no friend or ally to atheist Americans, or indeed agnostic or Buddhist Americans. That’s a pretty large chunk of the population — I think it works out around 10%. One in ten Americans would not have an ally in the president. That’s alarming. He repeatedly asserts that religious freedom is important, but the idea that someone might exercise that freedom by opting out of the whole ridiculous charade seems to offend him — which is a bit fucking rich when he said in the same speech that “religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree”.

He said this, you see, because he is a Mormon*. He wanted to make sure that everyone was clear that he was a religious man of faith, and that they should support him because he’s religious and has faith, but he wasn’t going to start telling them exactly what his faith is, because of course that “would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution”. I think he imagines that the First Amendment is something he can apply as and when is convenient, which makes sense considering his wholesale support for Guantanamo Bay, torture, wiretapping and basically whatever else anyone feels like doing to those nasty fundamentalist Muslims (who apparently are also not covered by the phrase “any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty has a friend and ally in me”).

Instead, I have created a special award, Specifically Mormon Crackpot, just for him, and as he’s the only Specifically Mormon Crackpot we’ve had, and since it’s December, I can safely award him the award for the entire year, all at once. Which is quite fair, I think, since he so plainly deserves it.

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*Apparently, Mormonism is one of those religions that don’t let you have any fun. It seems that someone once decided that Christianity was doing it wrong, and that they had the proper version, so in that sense it’s kind of like a cult version of Islam. And here’s a support site for its victims. Most religions have one or two of these.