Get your Mitt off me

Mitt Romney, Osama Bin Laden, George Bush, Adolf Hitler, assorted "preachers," and fellow theocrats seem to have a lot in common. In December, Romney said that "freedom requires religion." Many would agree that religion is a control mechanism with the aim of keeping people from exercising liberty. Such a statement is clearly Orwellinan doublespeak and Romney's rhetoric echoes the very scary words of one of the most evil men the world has ever known:

"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life." -- Adolph Hitler (My New World Order, Proclamation to the German Nation at Berlin, February 1, 1933)

This whack-job right-wing German also said:

"We demand freedom for all religious confessions in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its existence or conflict with the customs and moral sentiments of the Germanic race. The party as such represents the standpoint of a positive Christianity, without owing itself to a particular confession...."

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But the United States Constitution and Founders disagree with Romney, Bin Laden, Hitler, and most sectors of the Republican party. Article VI of the U.S. Constitution says:

"No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any public office or trust under the United States."

Our First Amendment says:

"Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

The 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, unanimously ratified by the United States Senate and signed into law by the conservative John Adams, says:

"As the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion."

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Thomas Jefferson, the author of our most cherished Declaration of Independence said:

"The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves...these clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ."

And:

"Christianity has become the most perverted system that ever shone on man. Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and imposters led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus."

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George Washington, our first president and national hero, said:

"The American government was not founded on the Christian religion."

And:

"I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution."

And:

"Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society."

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James Madison, architect of the very foundation of our Nation, the U.S. Constitution, said:

"Ecclesiastical establishments tend to create ignorance and all of which facilitates the execution of mischievous projects. Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded project."

And:

"I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Gov will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together."

And:

"Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us."

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Thomas Paine said this,

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

And:

"It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man."

And:

"All our ideas of the justice and goodness of God revolt at the impious cruelty of the Bible. It is not a God, just and good, but a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes."

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A few relevant observations:

Number of times the Constitution mentions the word God: 0

Number of times the Constitution mentions any form of the word Christian: 0

Number of times the Constitution mentions the name Jesus: 0

And finally, this is the number of times the Constitution mentions the word bible: 0

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Conclusion: America is a secular nation governed by secular laws . Those laws allow people of all religions and, for that mantter, people with no religion at all, to share the same rights and fruits of liberty.

Romney's speech is at odds with our national values and everything our nation was founded upon. While such opinions might not be treasonous, he's treading on thin ice when he desecrates our national values in such a perverted way.