The Public Eye Continues To Glare, Palin Not Serious, and more…
Romney Remains Front-and-Center…
…funny how a book tour does that. We’ll start with a sampling of the headlines:
- Mitt Romney Makes No Apologies – Greta Van Susteren interview
- Interview: Romney grilled on health, policy and private life – Fox Utah coverage of the Cavuto interview. Special note, Ann Romney tackles “the Mormon Question” and she is a converted Episcopalian.
- Mitt Romney Says He Will Make 2012 Presidential Decision At Year’s End – FOXNews – and relatedly – Romney Ties Decision on Presidential Bid to Outcome of November Elections
- Mitt Romney Offers Ideas And ‘No Apology’ – NPR audio and transcript
- Romney in the Wilderness, Waiting – Robert Costa at NRO
- Romney: GOP’s 2012 nominee must be Reaganesque – The Washington Times
- Mitt Romney: Rejecter of Populism – The Atlantic
You just have to love this letter-to-the-editor out of Des Moines:
Had Republicans set aside their problem with Mitt Romney’s religion, I have no doubt we would now have a president leading our nation with honesty and integrity, who actually understands fiscal responsibility and who has a track record of fixing institutions that are broken.
And some coverage just won’t help. Consider this from The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room on comment by Orrin Hatch:
Hatch endorsed Romney, a fellow Mormon, for the Republican nomination for president in 2008, though Romney eventually lost the GOP primary to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
Why the “fellow Mormon” crack? Do we read such things about Episcopalians or Presbyterians or Catholics? Clearly the press, at least some of the press, is not through playing with this particular toy . . .
and “Flip-Flop/Inauthentic” is still out there . . .
Mitt Romney is still trying to be what he isn’t – Jay Bookman, Atlanta Journal Constitution
Mitt Romney, version 2012 – The Boston Globe (hey, there’s a surprise!)
Compared To Other Possibles . . .
. . . Romney looks pretty good though. Palin is shopping a reality TV show. That’s new, and inadvisable, ground for a presidential possible, but then we have contended all along, she’s not running. In London they think she came out ahead in last Tuesday’s late night wars, but conclude with this stunner:
Neither candidate has yet said whether they will stand. Romney told Fox News: “I’m not going to make that decision until I have to . . . and it’ll be after November.”
He was given a boost from the blogging sphere by claims that the Tonight Show manipulated Palin’s performance by adding laughter tracks to cover up audience groans and silence. “I can recount many portions where there was little or no laughter or response,” wrote Michael Stinson, who was at the recording.
“But at the later broadcast they are smoothed over with applause and laughter that were not there at the taping.”
And poor Tim Pawlenty, he has gone from losing traction to spinning on ice.
Meanwhile the assault on religion generally continues . . .
. . . although it is getting “grayer.” There was this story out of Tennessee covered by a couple of different Catholic bloggers on a tract put out by a Baptist church proclaiming Catholics not be “Christian” and calling Eucharist wafers “death cookies.” Just a couple of comments. Thankfully this is not political debate – it’s religious, and religions differ. But this is just ugly. Talk about places where Catholic doctrine is wrong, argue, but “death cookies” is just over the edge!
Which brings me to this interesting piece from a blog featuring religion conversations between Mormons and more conventional forms of Christianity:
A common characterization of the difference between Mormonism and Evangelicalism is the idea that Evangelicals emphasize orthodoxy (right belief) and Mormons emphasize orthopraxy (right action). If you ask an Evangelical and a Mormon “what is more important a correct understanding of God or the proper mode for baptism?” you will most likely get different answers from each.
Catholics, like Mormons, emphasize orthopraxy and it is funny how the conversation seems to get really ugly along that othropraxy/orthodoxy line. Of course when all you have is the intellectual ascent of orthodoxy, it is very hard to do much but argue.
Which brings me to this interesting piece of health care reform:
Now I do not object to those whose opposition to even indirect funding of abortion is unrelated to matters of faith. If they feel strongly about abortion as a public policy issue, fine. I can live with that. More important, so could James Madison. (Although I absolutely have nothing but contempt for those who argue that all life is precious while supporting war and capital punishment — and opposing free health care for every child in America out of concern for “life”).
But if the issue is one of personal faith (i.e., the particular religion a Member of Congress adheres to), legislators must not consider it in the making or unmaking of policy. Frankly, I apply the same logic to Jewish Members and Israel. Their belief — if some actually hold the belief — that God gave the land to the Jews should be utterly irrelevant to US policymaking.
The views of the various religious orthodoxies on any of the so-called social issues like abortion or marriage should be confined to their respective house of worship and their homes, not the houses of Congress.
Interesting statements. Policy is based on the will of the people and if the majority of the people have a particular religious view, or multiple religious views arrive at the same policy conclusion forming a majority, then it seems to me that religious view should prevail and become policy. Also, his argument is somewhat self-defeating. If you cannot form a policy based on religion, you cannot reasonable reject one based on religion either.
But there is an interesting hypothetical in all this – what is an elected official to do if his personal religious views are at odds with his constituency, or the law? It seems to me that unlike most politicians, Mitt Romney had to face this very dilemma when it comes to same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. I think he made the right choice – follow the law.
Speaking of Interesting . . .
I found this really interesting about freedom.
And this is interesting as well. A leading Evangelical blogger is quoting one of the preeminent Calvinistic preachers trying to sum up that preachers views on political action. Quoth the preacher (John Piper):
My main job is not to unite believers and unbelievers behind worthwhile causes. Somebody should do this. But that is not my job. Some of you ought to be doing that with a deep sense of Christian calling. My job is to glorify Jesus Christ by calling his people to be distinctively Christian in the way they live their lives.
[Emphasis added.] So many preachers use politics as a lever to gain converts or at least proclaim their viewpoint, never understanding that such is politically self-defeating. It is great to see a preacher that understands the inter-relationship between the two.
Lowell adds . . .
The blog post about Mormons, Orthopraxy and orthodoxy caught my eye. Not surprisingly, I think most Mormons would find it an oversimplification at best, flat-out wrong at worst. But that is how religious discussions go. There is just so much nuance and it is so hard to convey. For the record, Mormons believe that the foundational principles of the Gospel are first, faith in Jesus Christ and second, repentance. Not much orthopraxy there. After a person has, by faith in Christ, repented, next are the first “ordinances” (a term unique to Mormons, I think) of the Gospel: baptism by immersion and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost. So practices (ordinances) are preceded by belief (faith) and are animated by it. But I’ll stop there. This little discussion is an excellent reason why such “inside baseball” aspects of religion are not appropriate for evaluating candidates. Indeed, I daresay that my theological cousins among Evangelicals who promote the idea that such nuances are in fact important are much more familiar with their own faith’s nuances then those of others. Not pointing fingers, just trying to analyze the problem. By the way, if you ask two Mormons “what is more important a correct understanding of God or the proper mode for baptism?” you will still probably get different answers from each.
Regarding Orrin Hatch’s endorsement of Romney, by the way, I am still waiting for the MSM to report that Chuck Schumer has been endorsed by one of his “fellow Jews.”
Posted in Reading List | 2 Comments » | 
Print this post
| 
Email This Post
Recently Posted:
- Some Official Commentary on Mormons, Glenn Beck, Politics, and the Public Square
- When Mormons Disagree, Beck Dominates The Discussion, There is an Election – all that and maybe more
- Civic Religion and How To Lose
- News Of The Week – Romney and The Field, Presidential Religion, Rallies, and more…
- Crossing Weak Bridges and Blaming The Wrong Party
coltakashi on 09 Mar 2010 at 10:54 am #
The blogger who objects to a legislator’s religious views affecting how they vote on legislation is objecting to the very religiously motivated movement called abolition, that first ended the slave trade across the Atlantic, then ended slavery in Britain and her empire, and then ended slavery in the United States. (And for those who claim that this was not the reason the Union fought against the Confederacy, please explain why 100,000 black men, most of them former slaves, fought for the Union.) Ending slavery was not a matter of economic arguments, it was not a matter of trying to appease a growing black minority of voting citizens, and it was not a matter of foreign policy to please African governments ruled by locals. It was purely a movement of Christians, who called on the better angels of other Christians to join them in legislating limits on slavery, and eventually abolishing it altogether.
We need also to remember the distinction between the legislative, executive, and judicial functions of government. Each role has a different balance between personal judgment and enacted law. The legislature expresses the will and judgment of the people through their elected representatives. They are constrained only by the fundamental laws governing elections, procedures and voting, and the subject matter entrusted to them, and withheld from them, by the Constitution and the body of common law that articulates our common heritage of civil rights and duties.
The executive must execute the law enacted by the legislature, and confine its discretion within the limits set by those laws.
The judiciary must be even more constrained, recognizing its sole authority emanates from the laws themselves, not from any inherent authority of their own. the most salient aspect of the Constitution is that the judiciary must defer to the discretion of the Executive and the Legislature unless they are in clear conflict with the more fundamental law of the Constitution. It is the role of the legislature to determine the intent of the people and act as their conscience, not the judiciary, which does not stand for election and is insulated from the full give and take of public discussion by the constraints of the litigative process and has no expertise except in the practice of interpreting the words of laws.
In the work of the judiciary, religious views have little room for play because, where law has not spoken, it is the province of the legislature and, secondarily, the executive to express the views of the people. The opportunity to apply religious views to judgments of the executive are limited by enactments of the legislature. In the legislature, the fact that there are many different views on religion and much else allows the full panoply of opinion to be set out, with an opportunity to persuade others to one’s own view, not through any coercion but through reason. We do not ask the source of any legislator’s views, because it does not matter. No view, no matter how sincerely held by one legislator, can create a law. Specific legislation is a group effort in which a myriad of viewpoints, religious, secular, economic, regional, or what have you, interact and produce the result.
If one adopts the principle that policy views that are rooted in religious beliefs must be suppressed, we are still left with policy views that are based in any random notion or fad that comes down the pike. As one sage observed, when people leave religion behind, they do not believe in nothing, but they believe in anything. Marxism and Nazism and Fascism are three varieties of the totalitarian impulse that claimed to leave behind that Christian nonsense about the divine origin, and therefore divine accountability, of mankind, and treated the masses of mankind as fodder to be expended in creating the masters’ dreams of heaven on earth.
The doctrine that unrestrained sexual activity is the key to happiness, and that any restraint on it must be suppressed and even criminalized, has become the core religion of the progressives of the 21st Century. It is their only path to enlightenment, to transcendance of the mundane. Like their Marxist and Nazi predecessors, they have been willing to kill millions in order to achieve their goal. Anyone who is physically or mentally impaired to the point of being unable to participate in their worship is considered unworthy of life. Their goal is so important to them that they cannot tolerate dissent or nonparticipation. Anyone who would limit sex to the confines of normal marriage between man and wife, or promote any period of celibacy, temporary or permanent, is anathema and a heretic. All must worship at the altar of sex, or at least pay a tithe to support the human sacrifice that energizes its god. No one must be allowed to speak out against their state sponsored church. All who are unorthodox must be hounded out of government or any role in medicine, adoption, or other social services. Their belief system has all the characteristics of a theocracy whose god is the sexual experience. Aldous Huxley envisioned such a future in his novel titled Brave New World, and the progressives of 2010 are doing their darnedest to make it a reality.
Romney In A Box | Article VI Blog | John Schroeder on 10 Mar 2010 at 5:46 pm #
[...] on Telling The Story – Part III – ‘Clowns To The Left Of Me’coltakashi on The Public Eye Continues To Glare, Palin Not Serious, and more…coltakashi on Romney Returns To The Public Eye, Religion and Law – More…CarlH on Romney [...]