Civility and Religion and Politics

Amanda Marcotte stepped down from the Edwards campaign yesterday, and while TBogg probably has this right, that expecting to graduate to the "big leagues" without your past coming with you is kind of a fool's errand, I have to feel a little depressed about the occurrence. Mainly because religion has now taken a place in this society that is completely unassailable, impossible to be challenged or even rationally discussed without cries of bigotry.

Today Mitt Romney announced his campaign for the Republican nomination, and he did so at the Henry Ford Museum in his hometown Dearborn. I'm well aware of Ford's ugly history of anti-Semitism, but the Ford Museum is a showplace of cars and objects of American history. Lincoln's chair from the Ford Theater is there. So is Kennedy's limo from Dallas. Does that make them and their families anti-Semites? Romney's from Dearborn and the Museum is pretty much the only public space in that town you could hold such an event. Dave Neiwert writes:

The peculiar thing about this is that Romney is LDS, and Mormons are notably Judeophiles and have a history of rejecting anti-Semitism. Either he is unaware of this aspect of Ford's background, or he simply doesn't care.

But might it be that he doesn't view something like a campaign appearance through that lens? I think the left and the right need to be able to have civil discussions about religion without having the charge of bigotry constantly thrown in their faces. Romney's Mormonism, like John Kerry's Catholicism in 2004, became campaign issues, and so has of late Barack Obama's predominantly black church. Can we all remove the collective sticks from our behinds with regard to religion? The country was founded on not forcing your personal spiritual beliefs on others. This hands-off viewpoint is exactly how political campaigns should be run. I don't want to hear the rage of the perpetually wounded anymore, no matter who it is. The political correctness over religion is now practically an unscalable wall. It's profoundly un-American.