The ignorance of politics
December 9th, 2007 • idiocy
The founders proscribed the establishment of a state religion, but they did not countenance the elimination of religion from the public square. We are a nation ‘Under God’ and in God, we do indeed trust.
-Mitt Romney
I guess the founding fathers decided we should make a state religion by purposefully writing into the Constitution that there be a legal separation of church and state. Opposites attract I suppose. It’s probably never occurred to him that the Pledge of Allegiance was not written until well after the country was founded and “under God” was added in after that.
This is a man running for President of our country who, time and time again, clearly displays no knowledge our country’s history or the laws this country was founded on. I wonder if he and Dubya will venture off to Candy Mountain once Dubya’s reign of terror is over and live there in blissful and ignorant harmony with the faeries and unicorns.
Now to the ignorance of secularists and politicians alike. Romney, Dr. Clinton, and Obama are appalled by non-theists. Non-theists are appalled at this appellation of claiming that non-theists are not Americans and are, effectively, not a part of this country. Both groups are missing another point entirely: not everyone believes in God. Why aren’t the Muslims of this country appalled by Romney’s recent speech? I’ve heard of no reports of Muslims being incredibly offended by the fact that we’re “one nation under God” and our politicians forcing this down our throats. Atheists are pissed about it but not our great Muslim population. Surely they must be offended since we’re not “one nation under Allah” (or Mohammed, if you will). What about the Hindu population or the Shinto population? Or Buddhists? Are these groups not as offended because, unlike theists and atheists, they’re religiously more mature than such a petty squabble?
Being a non-theist myself, I was not offended by what Romney said about religion. I’m far more offended by what he presupposes about our country’s well documented and wholly secularist governmental history. While a number of the founding fathers were indeed religious, they argued against each other about the inclusion of a deity in our country’s founding laws simply because religion was the reason the Puritans and Protestants came to this country in the first place. They came here to escape the religious persecution outset by the empirical heads of England. This is exactly why our founding fathers argued amongst each other to leave religion out of our laws. So why are we arguing about the exclusion of religion from law and how the country was founded on the inclusion of religion into our laws.
I’m not sure what version of the Constitution Romney has read (or Obama for that matter) but I know the one read that I’ve read clearly defines a separation of church and state. It clearly defines that there is no place for religion in the political public square. While Atheists are arguing for the removal of religion from the public square, we understand the freedom of speech — a right afforded to Americans at one point in time by our founding laws — but it seems the candidates at hand do not understand we want it removed from the political public square. Not because of our beliefs but because our country’s oldest laws dictate it’s meant to be separate. It’s spelled out in plain English, in modern English we can all read.
I’ve always heard, by those in law enforcement of any level, that “ignorance of the law is no excuse” so what’s Romney’s excuse for his ignorance?