Mitt Romney proudly stood up for himself today. He boldly told a large Florida crowd what kind of president we need to elect in 2008 [1]:
“One of the great things about this land is that we have people of different faiths and different religions, but we need to have a person of faith lead the country,” he said, as the audience gave him a standing ovation.
Romney’s statement really makes me wonder because, by all accounts, we already have a “person of faith” serving as president. And our current “person of faith” is an unmitigated disaster. In fact, Bush has qualities that remind me of most of those other swaggering shallow-minded Muslim and Christian “persons of faith” who are busy leveling the Middle East in an attempt to save it. If they keep at it, these “persons of faith” will eventually pull the entire world order into a war that will so obviously be a religious war that we will no longer be able to pretend it’s something else.
That a person is a “person of faith” means nothing to me. That one should be a “person of faith” to be president is certainly not a prerequisite found in the U.S. Constitution.
When someone brags to me that he or she is a “person of faith,” I hold onto my wallet. People of true and deep reverence don’t go around bragging that they are people “of faith.” They are silent about their beliefs. They show who they are, rather than telling.
For the upcoming presidential election, how about replacing the current “person of faith” with a good-hearted person of competence? Someone who doesn’t start needless wars. Someone who will preserve the environment for future generations and also manage the economy. How about electing someone, whether or not a “person of faith,” who is not a dry drunk? [2]
How about electing a president who doesn’t wear his religious bigotry on his sleeve? How about electing a president who shows respect for all of the good-hearted people of the world, regardless of whether those people honor his God or whether they have joined an ossified bureaucratic religion–a county club with a steeple?
I can think of many qualities we desperately need in our next president. Striving to elect another “person of faith” to replace W doesn’t guarantee that our next leader will have any of those qualities.
Print this post [3]
[4]