Wherein I give the Mitt-ster the asswhupping what he been asking fer.
Your secular sermonizer hesitated to open a can of whuppass on Willard. It was too easy, and others have done it with great skill here. Your pastor here has been busy with major life distractions, and could have taken a pass. But Mitt, my Mitt, called to me, begged me to step away from other stressful tasks to release a little stress on Willard's ample chin.
Mitt, my Willard. My Utah Jello Belt pandering plastic Jesus.
Thank you for your comments.
I find it interesting that you would claim that "freedom requires religion." We will get back to that.
But more interesting to me is the claim that "religion requires freedom." Of course a brief examination of history will show a frequent negative correlation between religion and freedom. Is Saudi Arabia threatening to go atheist? I mean, if all those Muslim men with no movies to go to, no beer to drink, no magazines to read not approved by the decidedly freedom-hostile "Promoters of Virtue and Opponents of Vice" censors, no due process, almost no right to vote, no freedom of religion (!) or of assembly, free speech, surely they must all be atheists by now, right? Surely a society ranked (7,6) (almost the absolute worst of the worst) by Freedom House must be about as religion-free, religion-starved as the day after Christmas at Christopher Hitchens' house, right?
Yet the freedom-loving countries of Europe - including the ones you criticized for their mild historical oddities of a nominal state church - are both breathtakingly irreligious and quite free. But if you want an example of a mostly non-religious society that is very free and lacks even a nominal Scandanavian-style state church, take France. Surely you know France, Mitt; you were there as a missionary (and suffered a terrible car accident in your youth.) France is a very secular society and is very free, arguably freer in some ways than the USA. It's not perfect; they do prosecute marijuana possession there, for example, though with less viciousness than here in the U S of A.
Your contempt for the American Civil LIBERTIES Union - slandering the "ACLU" in other speeches as opposing rather than protecting the "USA" - makes you an unreliable source for discussion of liberty. Indeed, I think you use the word "freedom" in the same way that I use a diaper wipe on my child's ass: to get rid of a short-term problem and to throw it away when done.
WHAT particular freedom does religion "require," other than freedom from forcible government interference in its own sphere? Sure, Mitt, I will go to bat to protect your right to believe in the religion founded by an upstate New York drifter and "dowser", the golden plates, Nephi, the Lamanites, hieing to Kolob, you got it. Cops shut down your Ward, I got your back, replete with injunction petitions and habeas writs, if you are in DC or Maryland, no charge. Theology, paraphrasing a famous quote that I wish I could source, is a farcical search in a pitch-dark room by a blindfolded man for a black cat that cannot exist and is not there. But it is unfair for the government to punish one such farce and not all, or even to punish any farce for being a farce. So I am there.
Your problem, Mitt, is that you think like a short-term-focused businessman, which is how you have been trained and how you have increased your wealth. You are hardly alone. When I am wiping my son's ass with "freedom" a handy wipe, he engages in more philosophical reflection than you do most days. You are our new Plastic Jesus, made in Utah but basically of a familiar mold, sitting on our national dashboard of intellectual vacuity and bad taste. This qualifies you perhaps to run a large corporation and extract profits (including surely the Motha of all options bonuses for yourself) before escaping Wall Street-style to an immunized well-ensconced retirement, like Tyco and Enron or, even better, like the Shitpile merchants. But for those of us who use English to express ideas, rather than to blather some plasticity to get some votes of Republican primary voting fools, your claim that "religion requires freedom" is either pandering blather or a commonplace. (Everything requires freedom to function at its maximum capacity, whether religion or tire-retreading.)
Now back to your claim that freedom requires religion, and your claim that there is a new "religion of secularism." Now, Mitt, I would hope that if there actually WERE a religion of secularism, you would not condemn its adherence for their religious beliefs but would extend to them the same "tolerance" [sic] as you claim for yourself, your faith and your religious community - as a matter of fairness, constitutional principle and good prudence. But of course to be meaningful in the Mitt-ster world, one must have organized political power, a tribe. One must be a swing vote block, ideally a sellable, marketable, segmentable block, to matter. After all, that's what they taught Mitt in Harvard Business School.
Since there is IN FACT no religion of secularism, it will get no respect from Mitt; were there such a religion, the Mitt would respect it only according to Mitt's principle enunciated in Mitt's favorite radio station: WII-FM, What's In It For Mitt? Utah Plastic Jesus gets to have it both ways: characterizing his likely unpopular critics as a "religion" enough to make them appear powerful but not enough to extend them a semblance of the constitutional rights and basic civic respect that he demands for himself. Since this "religion of secularism" can deliver no reliable block votes for himself or his opponents, it is a straw man at whom to attack that cannot attack back, cannot sue and cannot raise a constitutional or moral argument because it, well, does not exist.
As for freedom requiring religion, it doesn't. It requires a restrained government acting as a neutral arbiter (not a thumb-on-the-scale ref paid to throw the fight, Mitt), individual self-ownership, due process, a meaningful ability to organize and redress grievances, the meaningful ability to keep many things private and free from interference, private or public. Religion has nothing positive to do with any of these things and has been outright hostile to all of them at different times and places. The genius of the Constitution is its preservation of these priorities. Mitt knows this; he studied the Constitution at Harvard Law School and is fully responsible for every scornful backhand he delivers to it.
Mitt is not stupid. He is absolutely not stupid. He simply does not care about freedom or, I suspect, religion. He cares about winning, the finish line. Religious people who take their beliefs seriously (and are not Plastic Jesus seeking public housing near Lafayette Park) would never suggest that the morality of their religion would be substantially interchangeable with that of another, as the Mitt-ster did. Many religious people have enough respect for the uniqueness of their faith so as not to arrogate that all religions resemble their own, or that a non-religious person would be a freedom-hater or freedom-opponent (a logical conclusion from Mitt-ster.)
What we will have if we elect Mitt-ster is Bush II, but smarter and more willing to prostitute himself to the theocrats with the most cash. Mitt made his millions by reliably turning a profit for his investors, and he will deliver a profit to his political investors if elected, no doubt. To maximize his theocratic political capital base, he needs to be as plastic as possible. Ergo, our own Utah Plastic Jesus.
UPDATE: Mitt Romney spent 30 draft-age months in France in relative comfort doing missionary work for his church instead of serving his country, until a car accident very seriously injured him. Both before and after that, he spent time in college and then law school, including time at the LDS flagship university BYU. So for Romney to claim that "freedom requires religion" may be more accurate for Romney - his freedom from the draft - than for the rest of our general freedom.