Mitt Romney's speech on his religion and politics identified 'secularists' as the enemy within the state.

But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America - the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

This is grist for the mill of the sensationalists who adore the facetiousness of the 'war on christmas" and other absurdities. Romney is arguing that secularism has no place in constitutionalism.

Republicanism views liberty as an intrinisic property of being human, not as a gift from a nether world, nor an unprovable religious form.

Americans acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God, not an indulgence of government. No people in the history of the world have sacrificed as much for liberty.

he is also incorrect in characterising this to the American founders, who were in reality a mix of atheists and deists. The latter finding the idea of an omnipotent or omnipresent god repulsive.

Andrew Sullivan is insightful when he comments that and issue with the speech is that, "The first [issue] is the absence of any notion that religious freedom includes the freedom to have no religion whatever."

Romney's speech ahas to be taken as pandering to the evangelical base of the modern American Republican party. The evangelicals seem to not understand the basis for modern constitutionalism and want the injection of religion into political life. History has shown over and over again this is a bad idea which leads to dysfunctional governance if not tyranny.

It is particularly ironic as Romney did not make religion an issue in Massachussettes in his time as Governor there. The US North-East is a very liberal area of America that does not make decisions on religion, race, ethnicity or other discriminative components. Individuals are judged on their merit.

If Romney chose to run under the banner of liberalism he should be ahead on the US Republican side of politics as on merit he helped introduce one of the few working universal health care systems. Yet because he chose to pursue the evangelical base he has to run away from merit as his platform and instead embrace the uniting of God and Politics.

Very foolish in my opinion.

Andrew Sullivan links to a Ron Paul statement on the issue:

The recent attacks and insinuations, both direct and subtle, that Gov. Romney may be less fit to serve as president of our United States because of his faith fly in the face of everything America stands for. Gov. Romney should be judged fairly, on his record and his character, not on the church he attends."

In other words, a candidate should be judged on merit. Very republican, and very liberal.

Mitt Romney is a slick political operator who changes his political stripes with ease to suit the constituent's demands of the time. There is nothing really wrong with that, representatives are supposed to barter their electorate's demands in the legislative or executive under the boundaries of constitutionally limited government. It does cause voters to shy away though is it gives the impression of the politician being a phony. Not to mention the concern they are as morally and ethically malleable as they are politically. American evangelical voters need to take a hard look at themselves and what their pursuit of political power is achieving and doing.

David Kuo in Tempting Faith, summarises the issues quite succintly:

Since the mid-1970s an with ever increasing passion, Christians like me have looked to politics to save America. We though that the right president, the right congress, and the right judge or justice would stop abortions, strengthen marriage, create a safer country for children, and ensure that religious faith was respected.

Politics and governance often uses the tool of coercion. Especially when a minority is in governance and seeks to establish its agenda through legislation and executive force. The purpose of republicanism is to protect the rights of individuals from such legislative and executive intrusion by making rights inalienable. Evangelicals have sought to create a political monopoly through the US Republican Party in the Executive, Legislative and Judicial to enact their agenda. Despite their political success they have ultimately failed. The policies they sought to be enacted have not changed the underlying social system one iota.

Kuo continues:

Our motivations were good ones. We wanted to save lives, homes, and our country. We saw ourselves as heirs to the Christian political tradition that fought against slavery and for women's right to vote. We had every right to be in the political fight.

Unfortunately the evangelical view of a utopian society is a myopic one that is often hostile to competing lifestyles. Liberty is a miasma and ends in maximum heterogeniety, not legislatively informed homogeniety. Like any larger political movement it will come up against the wall of people doing what they want to do.

Now, however, it is time to take stock both politically and spiritually. Has our political focus produced the desired results? By 2008, we will have had a good conservative Republican in the Oval Office for twenty of the past twenty-eight years. Republicans have had outright control of both houses of Congress for most of the last twelve years.

Republican Presidents have appointed the vast majority of American judges and seven of the nine Supreme Court justices. In short, we've had almost everything we wanted politically.

But things are hardly better. Social statistics are largely unchanged. Divorces are rampant and more and more children are growing up in a home with one parent. Nearly a million and a half abortions are performed every year. There are more children in poverty today than there were twenty years ago. A great percentage of Americans lack health care than ever before. Educational achievement is hardly soaring. Millions of Americans live in what seems like utterly intractable poverty.

We have had great political success and marginal political success.

I would argue one of the problems with evangelical voting patterns is its lack of liberalism. Evangelicals, and especially their leaders, choose or back candidates based on the candidates confessional purity - not merit. Evangelicals helped elect one of the most incompetent Presidents in American history, not once, but twice. They also helped elect one of the most incompetent Congress' in American history as well. If they chose, supported and backed candidates based on merit they might have more chance of having some of their social policies enacted competently.

Kuo continues:

There there is the spiritual side of things. As one prominent pastor has written, "What we've done is turn a mission field into a battlefield." What he means is that by so passionately pursuing politics, Christians have alienated everyone on the other side, many of them good people with genuine policy differences.

People of goodwill of all faiths can disagree about tax cuts, health care policies, or the ware in Iraq. Yet the disagreements can prevent relationships, fellowship, and the chance to share Jesus.

In countless discussions I have had with people across the country and around the neighbourhood, the name 'Jesus' doesn't bring to mind the things he said he wanted associated with his followers - love for one another; love for the poor, sick and imprisoned; self-denial and devotion to God.

It is associated with antiabortion activities, opposition to gay rights, the Republican Party, and tax cuts.

It isn't just the politics, the evangelicals and US Republican Party have pursued politics in a Schmittian manner redefining liberal debate, deliberation and consensus into friend enemy relationships where political disagreements become treason; where disagreement with the executive's authority makes one an enemy of the state; where politically weak minorities becomes foes of the nation.

The repugnance for that type of politics in a liberal democracy cannot be understated.

Lee Malatesta has an interesting article on the Hobbesian nature of Mitt Romney's political thought and what it poses for the politicisation of the American religious right:

It isn't so obvious, at first, just what a Hobbesian political philosophy has to do with secularization. But we must bear in mind that one of the key premises of Hobbes is that strict materialism is the case and the notion that preservation of the body is the primary right of the individual follows from this supposition.

Persecution is a common basis for the preservation of religious morality in many off the myths that form the central truths of religions; including mormanism. So the 'all against all' nature of Hobees philosophy could possibly strike a chord with religious myth making and consequently worldview.

Lee continues:

If it is the case that the human soul survives the death of the body, as Christianity and many other faith communities argue, then there is no longer a good case for Hobbes' assertion that the primary civil right is the right to self-preservation with regards to the body.

In fact, if the single most important question to the individual is the question of where the soul will spend eternity, it seems fairly clear that preservation of the body becomes a secondary issue. To those who believe in heaven and hell, then, freedom of the conscience must always triumph over the right to self-preservation if for no other reason that freedom of the conscience is actually a higher form of self-preservation.

Religious conservatism, then, by nature stands in opposition to the Hobbesian materialism and the primacy of the right to self-preservation over all other rights.

Lee argues that the implicit materialism, or Hobbesian thinking, seen in the religious right is a result of the forces of secularisation. This is the liberal basis for universal rights where the individual's base political right is its existence as a distinct political entity in the polis.