Governor, You're No Jack Kennedy

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote, where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference, and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew, or a Quaker, or a Unitarian, or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you -- until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end; where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind; and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

JFK, 1960

Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.

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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.

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.

We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders – in ceremony and word. He should remain on our currency, in our pledge, in the teaching of our history, and during the holiday season, nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places. Our greatness would not long endure without judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our constitution rests. I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from 'the God who gave us liberty.'

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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.

WMR, 2007

JFK of course already had his party's nomination and was addressing his comments to the national electorate. He also knew that his base voters in the Democratic party would find his commitment to an "absolute" separation of church and state reassuring.

In contrast, Romney's target audience with smaller. Having positioned himself as a newly reborn religious conservative, his target with his speech was not even the whole of the GOP. The very people that he has chosen to stake his presidential hopes on - right-wing Christian fundamentalists - are uncertain of his Christian fundamentalist bona fides. And so he had to walk a fine line between stoking the sense of entitlement to cultural and political dominance that Christian conservatives have come to expect and a plea for religious tolerance, diversity and plurality.

He chose to do this not by appealing to America's long history of religious freedom and tolerance - although he made the requisite references to same - but rather by trying to redefine the boundaries of a more limited idea for religious liberty. Religious conservatives in America speak often and passionately about religious liberty. But when they do so generally what they mean is simply religious liberty for themselves. So long as everyone in America is free to believe just as religious conservatives believe then the religious conservatives believe that the requirements for religious liberty have been met.

And so Romney set out the schema in which religion was now a requirement for liberty. When Romney said that "any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty has a friend and ally in me", he wasn't so much pledging his alliance with voters of faith as he was asking for their alliance with him. Romney drew a picture in which there were acceptable and non-acceptable orientations towards faith. And he sought to put himself on the "good" side of that divide. On the "bad" side were the secularists, the nonbelievers."They are wrong," he told his audience, and presumably lacking necessary qualities to be free. In offering a new common enemy to Christian conservatives, Romney sought to tell them "I'm with you", at least where it matters. What matters is to be a believer, to the Christian-ish and to join in common cause against those who would deny the rightful upper place in the newly emerging American religious caste system for those who believe not only that their faith guarantees them a privileged place in the afterlife but also in the here and now.

That's Romney's vision of America. What's yours?

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Too.Many.Metaphors: Swiftboating the GOP

What goes around comes around.
He who lives by the sword...
Payback's a bitch.
Hoisted on their own petard.

There are just too many metaphors.

As new groups form to attack John McCain and Mitt Romney.

In 2004 it was Swiftboat Veterans for Truth and Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry smearing the service of John Kerry.

And John McCain continued to campaign for the man responsible.

Now a man named:

Jerry Kiley has formed the Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain, a non-profit, non-partisan group that will collect money for negative advertising in the months leading up to the primary.

Kiley, a Vietnam veteran, said that McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona and presidential hopeful, has abandoned the causes of Vietnam veterans and prisoners of war, despite being a former Vietnam POW himself.

Raw Story spoke to Kiley and fellow vet Ted Sampley who teamed up with Kiley in 2004 to found, yes, Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry.

"We will expose how McCain has supported the brutal and repressive Communist regime in Vietnam," [Kiley] said. "You have to ask why a man who was a POW would support this regime?"

"He led the way on normalizing relations with Vietnam, and it took away all our leverage on prisoner of war issues," Sampley said. "McCain has proudly touted for years that he and Kerry were saviors of the POW issue, but he's really the betrayer of the issue."

Sampley has also long hammered away at McCain's mental state and argues that his experience in a Vietnamese POW camp makes him unfit to serve as president.

"The Chinese and Soviets, the Communist Vietnamese, they had sole control over him, they know more about him than the American people or than he knows about himself," Sampley asserted. "He's done somethings that they're holding over his head, and with how that affects a man, should he really be president?"

Kiley also suggested that McCain had problems controlling his temper and challenged the senator's sincerity in his current presidential campaign.

"Our basic message is that he's a wolf in sheep's clothing, and he pretends to be something he's not," he said. "He pretends to be a conservative Republican but he's not the man that people have projected onto him."

Not to be outdone:

A group of Massachusetts Republicans is planning to launch a Web site on Monday that highlights flip-flops in the record of their former leader, presidential contender Mitt Romney.

The so-called Massachusetts Republicans for Truth is also pledging to run radio and television ads across the country as Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, seeks the 2008 GOP presidential nomination.

The Massachusetts Republicans for Truth claim on their web site that their "focus is on nonpartisan education and advocacy on important national issues. It is not our intent to support or come out against any one candidate. It is neither our intent to favor nor to come out against any one candidate." However, the The Romeny Report is apparently their first "educational" project.

They will go live on Monday, March 12, 2007. In the meantime, they've released a press release (.doc link):

As we are from Massachusetts, we felt that it was important to start with Romney so that voters across the Nation have all the facts regarding his real record on the issues. We cut through all the political rhetoric to get to the truth. Our report should help to educate voters as it shows a clear pattern of flip-flops and half-truths from our former Governor on the important issues.

Now anyone with a grudge, a plausible case, money and some web authoring skills feels free to enter the race to the bottom of smear politics. More gifts from the Genius of Karl Rove. (TM)

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