Poop Shute

Mitt Romney Is An Arrogant Self-Righteous F*ck

He gave a speech the other day about his religion. Here are a couple choice quotes that make me want to projectile vomit.

"Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom."

Mr. Romney, I am a free citizen of this country and I am essentially an atheist. Philosophically, I subscribe to Buddhism/Taoism, but I do not buy into the whole reincarnation and nirvana business. It's just not for me. As you can see, I subscribe to no religion, and neither did key members of the founding of this land of ours, and yet we are all free. I am no slave, and neither was Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin.

Also, explain the Jews to me, please. They were slaves for a good, long chunk of time, and then there was the whole holocaust thing. Their religion seems to have weathered that freedom-less storm pretty well to me. I mean, they are one of the oldest religions in the world. So, we have a good example of religion without freedom, and freedom without religion. Your pretty little phrase is wrong on both counts. Freedom and religion can easily be exclusive of each other.

"Religion is seen as merely a private affair, with no place in public life. It's as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America. The religion of secularism. They are wrong."

This is from a portion of the speech wherein he is clearly trying to pander to ALL religious people, and I'm guessing he is trying to tug at the heart-strings of evangelical Christians specifically. He essentially accuses those of us who enjoy the separation of church and state of persecuting the religious in this country. As though we are forcing them into underground enclaves or something, and he is standing up for them with a righteous fist held high. Give me a friggin' break, Mitt.

Your first sentence is absolutely correct, in my mind. One's religion is a private affair, if we carefully define the word "public." I understand public to mean institutions that belong to all of us as Americans; the police department, fire department, schools, governing bodies, etc. I firmly believe that religion or religious symbols, rituals, etc of any kind has no place in that arena. But besides that, secularism (by definition) is not a religion. It is the absence of religion, of deities, of mythos, of ritual, symbol, etc.

The last point of that last quote that made me laugh out loud is "they are wrong." You have to wonder if he spotted his own irony there. This was a much-heralded speech that we all knew he was going to give in order to request we grant him religious tolerance. In that last bit of that quote he labels secularism a religion and then calls it wrong. But, Mitt, you've just been speaking with a somewhat relativist idea that we should all tolerate each other's beliefs as different, and you go and label one of them wrong? How tolerant are you?