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Oh, and to heap up the insults, he quotes John Adams to support himself:
There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they are at odds with the nation's founders.... In John Adams' words: 'We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion... Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.'
Of course, before you make an appeal to authority, you ought to check that the authority actually agrees with you. Here are a few more Adams quotes:
The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature... [In] the formation of the American governments ... it will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of heaven.... These governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. - A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America
As I understand the Christian religion, it was, and is, a revelation. But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed? - letter to F.A. Van der Kamp, December 27, 1816
Adams, like Jefferson, was a deist who rejected the divinity of Jesus. He'd certainly be no fan of Mr Romney, and he'd unquestionably be one of those "secularists" that Romney's trying to distance himself from.
Romney's message? "I hate non-Christians as much as anybody."
Please tell me you nabbed this from the Onion or some other satirical publication. You have absolutely nothing to back this statement up - either from the speech itself or from Romney's personal life.
Another example, which is not preposterous to the point of humor, but is still significant: Romney discussed the idea that freedom requires religion, yet you interpret this to mean he claims religion causes freedom, citing places with religion and little freedom as counterpoints. I'm not sure why you need me to point out the irrationality of this.
The message of the freedom/religion statements are clear: Without freedom, the people are not able to worship according to their desires, and without religion the value of freedom is compromised. You may not agree with the second half of that, but that's not the way you presented your argument.
This speech should be seen for what it is. It's an attempt by the Romney campaign to frame a message for the American religious extremists who think Romney's not Christian enough for them.
And in this sense it's very much the same as Kennedy's goals. The target audience is not religious extremists, however, but "mainstream" Christians. (Yes, their views might be extreme in your eyes, but they are not on the fringe of U.S. society by any means.) These Christians, in a general sense, do not understand the LDS church, and because of this they fear having a Mormon in the White House. Just as they feared the influence of the Pope in the 60s, they fear the influence of the LDS Church President today. Romney addressed these concerns, and I think did so as well as could be expected.
Yes, the doctrinal issues will not be disolved, but hopefully people will better understand Romney's ability to be both Mormon and an effective, independent President. Of course, this depends on them being able to take a step back and look at things objectively - rather than responding with the knee-jerk "I don't like him because he doesn't believe like me" response you seem to have adopted.
The usual hypocritical religious load of junk
One last thing - Where exactly is Romney being hypocritical? I know you think everything religious is categorically a "load of junk," so I see where you got that part of your title, but did you throw in the hypocritical bit just for good measure?
So here's the problem with this whole rhetoric... People complain about how wikipedia is flawed because it is open... and they might be right -- in a rhetorical sense. In practical application, they are dead wrong. Experience is just way more powerful than rhetoric. What does experience teach us? Wikipedia is damn useful, and Mitt Romney, Harry Reid, etc. have not gone off the deep end. They are pretty much normal guys.
What about when the prophet says "Do This, says God!"? Good question. What happened when the LDS church encouraged its people to vote against the repeal of prohibition? The members voted their conscience and repealed prohibition.
The reason has a certain subtlety that will probably be lost on many of you. The LDS church actually actively promotes thinking on the part of its members.
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The usual hypocritical religious load of junk
Early in the speech, Romney says,
He's referring, of course, to John F Kennedy in the 1960 presidential campaign. I find the comparison insulting.
Kennedy's message was, "Don't judge me by my religion, because my religious beliefs are private, and are simply not relevant to my capacity to be a good president." Romney's message? "I hate non-Christians as much as anybody."
I don't need to judge him by his religion. This one statement from the speech is plenty for me: "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom."
Really? Can he really believe that? They've got plenty of religion in Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the like, but damn little of what we'd call freedom.
And freedom requires religion? Then why on earth would the authors of our constitutional freedoms have insisted that we must not make laws respecting the establishment of religion? Why would they have demanded that no religious test be required of those who would hold office? They knew damn well that what freedom requires is restraint of religion, and that religion is inherently opposed to freedom.
Romney's notion of the first amendment:
Well, he's invited us to compare him to Kennedy, let's see what Kennedy actually said:
Well, Mr Romney, you, too, are no Jack Kennedy.
This speech should be seen for what it is. It's an attempt by the Romney campaign to frame a message for the American religious extremists who think Romney's not Christian enough for them. Of course, in those terms, it's still an abject failure. These people want to tear down the wall of separation, so an appeal on those grounds is useless, and he can't actually address the issues they really care about, which are primarily doctrinal, because they're right. For example, Mormons are not trinitarians - as far as your basic Baptist evangelical wingnut can see, that's basically polytheism.
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