Outchurched

The pithy proverb is: “It’s better to be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”

Mitt Romney, December 6, 2007 - “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.”

As Carl adeptly points out, Romney is exactly dead-wrong.

Apparently, Mitt hadn’t farmed out a study of history to his staff to discuss in committee and prepare an executive summary of religion throughout history.

Indeed, a cursory glance at history shows that religion thrives where freedom is denied. This is part of the reason that Marx called religion the opiate of the people.

Even today, no one would deny that Islam is a religion, and that fundamental Islamists are against freedom. Yet, there’s religion, being used to both terrorize nations, as well as pacify them.

I’m fairly sure that’s not what Romney meant, yet his words echo hollow in the corridor of current events.

Too, Christianity has its fair share of tyrannical popes and autocratic kings, both of whom used the cudgel of the Bible to keep their people in line, while cynically holding out the carrot of “life everlasting.”

“Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone” is one mighty sentence. Sadly, it’s a bit too verbose to perfectly fit with its brethren:

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

I know it’s blasphemy to add to the Canon, but I can’t resist, especially since it’s perfectly accurate:

FAITH IS REASON

This entry was posted by Rev. Dan on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 5:15 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.