archived: 30 Dec 2007 - 5 Jan, 2008         Back                 Next

UPDATED: JAN 2, 2008

“MIT ROMNEY: MEET ANN COULTER”

In his recent speech on "freedom" of religion, Mit Romney really said: "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."

I have been a skier for close to 50 years. For the first 30 of those I skied in the Northeast, where I live. For the last 20 or so, I have been lucky enough to be able to ski in the Colorado Rockies, mainly at Breckenridge. I am occasionally asked if I have ever skied in Utah (which does have excellent skiing, so I am told). "No," I reply, hoping to be jocular, "I don't ski in theocracies." Well, now I know that I haven’t been being funny all of these years.

The true intent of Romney's speech was not to deal with religious freedom, which in the American tradition is as much about the freedom from religion as about freedom of religion. For Romney, it is now quite clear, what he oddly calls "freedom" requires religious belief, which, in his terms, in turn requires belief in something he calls "God." (The Mormons, I have only recently found out, actually believe in a flesh and blood God, in human form, and a male for sure.)  He also makes it quite clear that if you don't believe in a Goddist form of "religion" as he defines it (no Buddhists allowed, apparently), you are not entitled to freedom.

Freedom (with help from the Encarta dictionary http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/Freedom.html) can be defined as “a state in which somebody is able to act, think, speak, and live as he or she chooses, without being subject to any undue restraints or restrictions, as long as such expressions do not do not unreasonably impinge upon someone else’s freedom.”  In a nation with a government of laws, which lives under the rule of law, the freedom of all persons, which requires balance in the society, can be guaranteed only through the provision of liberty.

Liberty (again with help from the Encarta dictionary, http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/Liberty.html) is “a political, social, and economic right that belongs to the citizens of a state, and is guaranteed by it.”  Providing, protecting, and guaranteeing liberty, without which, in the modern state, freedom cannot exist, is a function of government.  Some governments do it better than others.  Under Romney, as noted above, unless you are a Goddist you are not entitled to freedom, and thus neither are you entitled to liberty, that is governmental protection for your beliefs and actions that do not unreasonably harm others.

Romney’s philosophy and thus his theory of government is the essence of theocracy: the melding of government and religion. He says that that would be any religion, just as long as it was a Goddist one, of course.  However, practitioners of what he later in his speech (http://www.mittromney.com/News/Speeches/Faith_In_America) most peculiarly characterized as the “secular religion,” wouldn’t qualify.  Even more importantly, historically it happens that it has always turned out that theocracy means government under a particular religion, with the formulation of that government's rules determined by what that particular religion says they should be. Contemporary examples are Islamic theocratic states such as (oh my, talk about irony) Iran and Saudi Arabia, which have no (in Saudi Arabia) or quite limited (in Iran) "freedom" in the traditional American sense.  For Romney, as he said in responding to Mike Huckabee’s direct and indirect attacks on Mormonism, “Attacking someone’s religion is really going too far” (Gordon, C., “Mike to Mitt: I’m Sorry,” Newsday, Dec. 13, 2007).  However, attacking someone for not being a Goddist and then going further to say that they are not entitled to freedom, isn’t going too far.

Although this statement of Romney's surprises some, we should not be surprised. The most important thing about him, the element of him that in my view totally disqualifies him to be President of the United States is that he grew up in a theocracy and obviously thinks that that form of government and governing is the most natural thing in the world. Unusually for this classic flip-flopper on so many issues, on this one he is being entirely consistent. Which brings us to the spelling of his nickname above with only one "T." Why on the belt buckle of every Nazi Wehrmacht soldier was the slogan: "Gott mit Uns."   Which brings us to Ann Coulter.

As I wrote on TPJ on October 3, 2007 and earlier, on July 13, 2006, Ann Coulter is the coming new face of the Republican Party.  Consider her recent book Godless: The Church of Liberalism.  In typical Coulter style, it is filled with rage.  In fact a discussion of Ann Coulter's rage became all the rage on the Left when the book came out. Even Hillary Clinton (hardly on the left of anything) went after her for the remarks she made about those 9/11 widows who have become strong critics of the Georgites on a variety of fronts.  But those remarks, intentionally in my view, distract from the book's central message: “Liberals” (undefined) are not like Coulter’s US; they are demons, they are untermenschen (sound familiar), they are, as Mark Levin a New York Right-Wing ABC Screamer who often sounds as if he were doing a self-parody, cockroaches who need to be squashed underfoot. 

In a previous book Coulter defined “liberals” as traitors.  In our country, the penalty for treason is death.  Coulter is wildly popular in the Republican Party.  Perhaps the worst thing about her remark some months ago at a Republican gathering in South Carolina that John Edwards is gay is that it was greeted with thunderous applause and gales of laughter from the assembled throng.  For the "goddist" of the Coulter variety one deals with the “godless” by force. If Coulter has her way, the "traitorous" and "godless" "liberals" (whoever they are) would be going perhaps to the camps, going perhaps before the firing squads, perhaps becoming the targets of Death Squads. (That, by the way, was advocated by the video game “Left Behind: Eternal Forces,” developed from the “Christian” Tim LaHaye’s best-selling “Left Behind” series, that came to a store near you in October, 2006 just in time for that year’s Christmas.)  Or perhaps it might be burning to death at the stake, which is what militant Christian Churches of a variety of stripes did to such persons who didn’t express their “goddistness” in quite the right way over a period of hundreds of years into the 17th century.

As Coulter has said, "Although my Christianity is somewhat more explicit in this book, Christianity fuels everything I write." Whatever else it is or is not, Coulter's version of Christianity is surely militant and doesn’t seem to have too much Christ in it.   While Romney’s does, their views of who qualifies as citizens are all too much the same.  For Romney, “freedom and religion” go together.  For Coulter, if you are “godless,” and “soulless,” and clueless,” as she has also defined what she calls “liberals” (that is, in fact, anyone who doesn’t agree with modern Republican, CheneyBush, policy), you are a traitor and therefore by definitely not entitled to either freedom or liberty.

Back in October, on these pages I said: “The face of Ann Coulter is not funny. In no more than a few years, even perhaps by 2008 at the rate Giuliani is going, all of the Republican veneer will be gone, with Coulterian rage, total intolerance of difference, rampant corporatism at center stage, and demonization of any opposition at the center of the message. The message will clearly be backed up by policy.  And force, it is clear, is to be used against any and all opposition. At least the target for those of us Americans who believe in Constitutional Democracy will be clear and clearly out in the open.”

I was wrong about two things.  We don’t have to wait until 2008.  And Romney got there first (with Huckabee with his “I’m in front of the cross, see” ad not far behind.  In fact, on “Morning Joe,” MSNBC, Dec. 20, 2007, Chris Matthews characterized the Republican Party as the “Christian Republican Party.”  In his 1996 book, The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022, Jonathan Westminster wrote that by 2004 the Republican Party would officially known as the Republican-Christian Alliance, and by 2008 as the American Christian Nation Party).  Mit Romney, meet Ann Coulter.  Soul mates, it would appear. 

Addendum:  But hey, you never know.  Here’s what Coulter had to say about Huckabee (!) in her weekly Human (sic) Events column for 12/20/07: “There’s a Huckabee Born Every Minute “

To paraphrase the Jews, [he] is "bad for the evangelicals."  As far as I can tell, it's mostly secular liberals swooning over Huckabee. Liberals adore Huckabee because he fits their image of what an evangelical should be: stupid and easily led. . . . The media are transfixed by the fact that Huckabee says he doesn't believe in evolution. . . . [But] Huckabee [has, according to Coulter] dropped his alleged skepticism of Darwinism. . . . Huckabee claims he opposes gay marriage and says Scalia is his favorite justice, but he supports a Supreme Court decision denounced by Scalia for paving the way to a "constitutional right" to gay marriage. I guess Huckabee is one of those pro-sodomy, pro-gay marriage, pro-evolution evangelical Christians. . . . No wonder Huckabee is the evangelical liberals like.  [WE DO?!?] 

It will be interesting to see who Coulter supports for the Presidency.  A resurrected Magister of the Spanish Inquisition, no doubt.

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This column is based in part on: “Dr. J.'s 'He Really Said That': Willard 'Mit' Romney and the Case for Theocracy,” which appeared on BuzzFlash on Tue, 12/11/2007, http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/jonas/087; “ANN COULTER: THE NEW FACE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY,” TPJ, July 13, 2006; and “UNDERSTANDING ANN COULTER,” TPJ, Oct. 3, 2007.

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