Minister, Mormon, Muslim?

Mitt Romney gave his "don't disqualify me because I'm a Mormon" speech today, trying to fend off Mike Huckabee's surge among evangelical Christians. He spoke some moving words about religious freedom and tried to convince listeners that people of faith are all alike (until he talked about Muslims later in the speech). But he indicated that the president should be a man of faith, and should represent all people of faith in America. What he did not say is that the president represents all people in America, period. In fact, for blatant political reasons, he attacked people who profess no religion. He said:

"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."

In this deliberate slap at atheists, agnostics, and also people of faith who believe in a much clearer separation of church and state than most of the republican candidates, Romney is saying it is important to have religion in politics, and those who wish to have less religion in politics are somehow less worthy as Americans.

Romney also referred to the founders' determination not to have a religious test for candidates for public office, but instead of agreeing with them, Romney was basically implying that there is a test, and he has passed it. By saying a president must be a person of faith, Romney was instituting his own test, which would exclude atheists and agnostics as viable candidates for the presidency.

What Romney, and many in the Republican Party don't seem to grasp is that it is possible to consider oneself a member of a religious faith, or a very spiritual person with no specific religious affiliation, and still desire a secular society. There is no secular "religion" that I know of, but there is a desire on the part of some of us, including some with deep religious faith, to keep religion out of politics, because when you don't keep religion out of politics you get two things: insisting God has anointed you as candidate, or using religion as a weapon against an opponent.

The current religious test that many evangelicals seem determined to administer is one that says one must be an evangelical Christian to be president. This is why Romney, a Mormon, felt he had to give this speech today. It is also why you hear ordained Baptist minister Mike Huckabee saying, in response to a question about what accounts for his rise in the polls, that it was God responding to all the people praying for his candidacy. "It is the same power," he said, "that helped a little boy with two fish and five loaves feed a crowd of 500 people."

When politics and religion get all mixed up together you get this kind of response. You get Mike Huckabee in 2007 implying that God wants his candidacy to succeed, and you have George W. Bush in 1998 saying he believed God was calling him to be president.

At the same time, you have slanderous emails saying Barack Obama, a devout Christian, is a secret Muslim, who is hiding his real faith and who is a tool of al Qaeda who will help them destroy America from within. Anyone who has followed the candidacy of Barack Obama knows this to be absurd, but if you mix politics and religion, (and in this case paranoid fears of terrorism) and if you set up an informal religious test for the presidency, then all you have to do to succeed in getting yourself or your candidate elected is to prove you meet the test and your opponents do not.

Huckabee, like Bush before him, is sending signals to evangelicals that he passes the test, while Romney and Obama are faced with an uphill climb just to prove they are worthy. Romney, a Mormon, must prove Mormonism isn't that different from Christianity, while Obama, a Christian, must prove that he did not adopt his father's Muslim faith.

If we really honored the intent of the founders to disavow any religious test for public office, they wouldn't even be in that position, and those who are attacking them wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

I do not believe what the Mormons believe, and as an outsider I view some of their beliefs as more like science fiction, but I also don't think Mitt Romney would bring his religious beliefs into the presidency, nor allow leaders of the Mormon Church to tell him what to do. I know Barack Obama is not a Muslim, and having a Muslim father (who left the family when he was a baby) and having lived in a Muslim country for a few years doesn't make him one. And I also don't think Obama would allow his Christian pastor to influence his decisions as president.

There are many things worse than promoting a secular society where people are free to practice any religion they want even as they keep it out of politics and government. One of them is ending up with George W. Bush as president. The others are voting for candidates because they profess the "right" religion, or demonizing them in the name of religion.

God, guns, gays, torture and taxes

I forced myself to watch the CNN You Tube debate last night because I wanted to put down my partisan loyalty for two hours and see if there was just one candidate on the Republican side that I could support in his bid to be president.

There wasn't.

In fact, my allegiance to the Democratic Party is stronger than ever, even with all of its weaknesses and flaws. How anyone could support any of those ridiculous white men after two hours of dissembling, flip-flopping, taunting, muscle flexing, Bible interpreting, Hillary hating, and gay and immigrant bashing I don't know.

What I learned by watching the debate was not only that I have no respect for any of the candidates as candidates (as people some of them might be okay) but that I simply cannot identify with any of the issues the republicans are obsessed with.

Since this was a debate in which ordinary people (except for Grover Norquist who appeared mid-debate) asked the questions via home made videos, the questions were representative of what republican voters care about. Sure, CNN picked the videos, and obviously slanted the topics to those they thought would be of interest to republicans, so there may have been other videos about other topics. However, these seem to be the topics the candidates always talk about, so I think it was representative of the republican mindset.

The debate began with a question about illegal immigration and immediately Rudy and Mitt were in a schoolyard name-calling contest about who provided sanctuary to illegal immigrants. It was embarrassing. The candidates all insisted they wanted a secure border (who doesn't?) but couldn't come up with any real policy to solve the problem of illegal immigration. No one seemed to want to touch the idea that corporations lure people here with the promise of jobs and that the Mexican economy is a big part of the problem, but that would involve having a sophisticated answer and apparently these candidates think their supporters only crave the red meat of immigrant bashing. It was shameless.

There were the inevitable questions about guns. The other candidates wanted to trip Rudy up on all the gun laws he supported, and the crowd actually booed when he said he thought there should be reasonable regulations. The answer was in response to a video where a young man caught a rifle that was thrown to him by someone off camera, at which point the ridiculous Duncan Hunter gave everyone a lecture about gun safety and the importance of not throwing guns to people.

McCain talked about all the guns he used when he was in uniform but, in response to an absurd question about what guns each candidate owned, he said he didn't own any now. I guess that means he can appeal to gun lovers and gun haters, I'm not sure. Maybe it just means "I'm so tough I don't need a gun." Romney, in one of his many more ridiculous moments, also tried to appeal to gun lovers and gun haters by saying there were two guns in his home, but they belonged to his son.

I wanted to get on You Tube and ask this question: "Do any of you know the psychodynamic significance of bragging about your guns?"

The blood thirsty crowd also liked questions about war and torture, although they did not look kindly on the retired gay general who asked when gays would be allowed to serve openly in the military. By far the most absurd answer of the evening was given by Duncan Hunter who claimed all the people in the military are Christians and they should not have to put up with gays in the military because it violates their moral code. Really?

I lived next to Camp Pendleton for nearly eighteen years and I can tell you that a great many of those Marines violated as much of the Christian moral code as was possible.

No one seemed willing to channel the father of modern conservatism, Barry Goldwater, who said it shouldn't matter whether you are straight as long as you can shoot straight.

From there it was on to torture. Again, Mitt wanted to have it both ways. He wouldn't ever torture anyone, but he refused to say waterboarding was torture. McCain jumped all over him and said waterboarding was most definitely torture and if a president won't condemn it and refuse to use it, the U.S. might as well withdraw from the Geneva Conventions. Good for you, John. If you weren't such a warmonger, and so contemptuous of the American people, whom you blame for the "loss" in Vietnam, I might be able to support you. (Note to John: it's those American people who opposed Vietnam and now oppose Iraq that you want to vote for you. Might not be such a good idea to attack them.)

One of the questions was from a very menacing looking young man who fit the stereotype of the Hollywood mass murderer. He held up a copy of the Bible and demanded to know who on the stage believed every word in the book. This struck me as a really stupid question. Does a candidate for president really now have to profess to a belief in the literal interpretation of the Bible? Only Mitt, Mike, and Rudy answered this one. The others (except Duncan Hunter) probably wanted to hide under their podiums. As much as I dislike Rudy, I believed he answered this best, saying the Bible is instructive but much is allegorical and metaphorical. Mike the preacher said he believed everything in the Bible although he couldn't claim to understand it all as he isn't God. Then flip-floppin', please-let-me-have-it-both-ways Mitt just kept saying he believed the Bible, hoping no one would ask him about those extra Mormon scriptures he also believes in.

There was another God question, this one asking whether Jesus would support the death penalty. No one gave a direct answer, because the answer would have to be "no," and the candidates know that republicans love the death penalty. Huckabee talked about how many people he executed as Governor of Arkansas and how difficult that was. Until this question, I was going to say Huckabee should run for preacher of a megachurch rather than president, but I'm not sure he qualifies for that either with his record on executions.

Grover Norquist had all the candidates falling all over themselves pledging not to raise taxes. A few said they wouldn't make the pledge to him but to the American people, while the mostly silly Duncan Hunter said he wouldn't make a pledge because there might be a national emergency. What a ridiculously absurd thing to take a pledge not to raise taxes, unless these eight old men can see into the future and know what we might face two or four years down the road. And they all must know that even if one of them becomes the president and keeps his pledge, everyone's children and grandchildren will be faced with higher taxes.

Republicans are so clever. They all lower taxes and pledge never to raise them, creating huge deficits and enormous economic problems for the country, knowing full well that eventually a responsible democrat will come along and be forced to raise taxes, whereupon they can point to democrats as those evil people who always raise your taxes. Brilliant!

So there you have it: God, guns, gays, torture and taxes, the big topics of the night. There was no discussion of the deterioration of the middle class, how to save Social Security and solve the health care crisis, how to shore up the economy, create jobs, and improve education. The one question about how each candidate would repair our image in the world was answered universally with statements about protecting America from "Islamofascists," and continuing the "war on terror," which is to say the question was not even understood by the candidates.

Another topic that was not addressed was the man they wish to replace as president. George Bush was not even mentioned, although Hillary was nearly a half dozen times. Mike Huckabee made the most hostile (though the audience thought it was quite humorous) statement of the evening when, in a question regarding the space program, he said he would like to send Hillary Clinton to Mars. I can't imagine a democrat saying the same thing about Laura Bush were she to run for president or any other office. For sheer nastiness, no one can beat a republican candidate, even one who calls himself a preacher. In fact, that's one of the defining characteristics of the Republican Party and one that came out quite vividly in this debate: their members claim to be Christian, but act in the most ugly, hostile, bullying, and unchristian ways imaginable.

As for my assessment of the individual candidates, I see each as fatally flawed. While Giuliani makes sense in terms of regulating gun ownership and not criminalizing abortion, he is too much of an imperialist, agressive warmonger. He truly scares me.

Mitt Romney is a joke, trying to be on both sides of every issue and trying to explain away positions he held years ago when it was necessary to hold those positions to win. He will do or say anything to get elected and so nothing he says can be trusted.

Mike Huckabee is a fundamentalist who, in spite of absolute evidence to the contrary, believes the world was created 6000 years ago. What other insane things might he believe and act on?
Ron Paul may have it right on the war, but he has it wrong on everything else. You can't just abolish all governmental agencies in a country this big and this interconnected. Libertarians who hate government shouldn't be in the business of governing.

Tom Tancredo is off the radar and should drop out soon. Thompson's candidacy makes no sense to me, nor does he. Hunter is a nutjob. And McCain is too old, too bitter, and too single minded about the war. It doesn't help that he despises the American people.

The question I was left with at the end of the debate was this: Couldn't the Republicans find any better candidates? I would still probably disagree with them on policy issues, but it would be nice to listen to one of them who was honest, decent, and who also made sense.