Here’s my favorite quotation from any article currently linked on WatchingAmerica.com. It is taken from an article in the Guardian (U.K.), entitled, “A Man Who Abides by Moronish Wisdom”
My residual problem with Romney being a Mormon is … that it seems such a wacky collection of man-made Moronical codswallop.
The statement speaks to something that sets the U.S. apart from the developed world.
One of the best recent treatments of the religiosity of candidates for High Office in the USA was actually given this year by Richard Dawkins not far from Falwell’s Liberty University. The English Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University was promoting his latest book, The God Delusion. Dawkins is an atheist, and would probably maintain that the religion of any of the current candidates is as irrational as that of any of the others. One of the themes of his talk was that the effective requirement for a candidate to profess a religion disenfranchises a large section of the country. It also effectively gives the lie to a Constitution which supposedly prohibits discrimination based on religion.
But you don’t have to be an atheist to perceive the “religious requirement” to be a fundamental problem. It is as much a concern to those of us who recognize a spiritual purpose, and may even understand ourselves to be in relationship with God. The issue is not with the holding of one particular faith over another – but that the belief expected of a true American is religious rather than spiritual. And they are decidedly not the same.
From Neale Donald Walsch,
What is the difference between religion and spirituality? One is an institution; the other is an experience…. Spirituality does not require you to believe anything. Rather, it continually invites you to notice your experience.
Noticing one’s experience is a prerequisite to good decision-making, and something I want a President to be doing.
This American tendency to political religiosity would elect Machiavelli over Goethe by a landslide. And lest that seems fanciful, let me quote each of them: from Machiavelli’s The Prince,
A Prince should therefore be very careful that nothing ever escapes his lips which is not replete with the five qualities… so that to see and hear him, one would think him the embodiment of mercy, good faith, integrity, humanity, and religion. And there is no virtue which it is more necessary for him to seem to possess than this last; because men in general judge rather by the eye than by the hand, for every one can see but few can touch. Every one sees what you seem, but few know what you are…
The Princely Machiavelli would thrash Goethe, who said,
To have a positive religion is not necessary. To be in harmony with yourself and the universe is what counts, and this is possible without positive and specific formulation in words.
Whether you agree with Goethe is not important. What is important is that Goethe wouldn’t even get a shot at a position in the local school district in many parts of the country, while Machiavelli’s blueprint works as well in Washington D.C. now as it did in Italy in the 16th century. Does the American electorate know who these men are – enough to be sufficiently horrified by this thought? If not, then perhaps America should be voting for the candidate who is most concerned with the state of public education, with the long-term goal of making America just that little bit less like sixteenth century Europe?
Political religiosity is dangerous not simply because the views professed may be wrong, or even “codswallop”, but because it actually inhibits the very openness on which not only individual but also national evolution depend.
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Robin Koerner is a British-born citizen of the USA, who currently serves as Academic Dean of the John Locke Institute. He holds graduate degrees in both Physics and the Philosophy of Science from the University of Cambridge (U.K.). He is also the founder of WatchingAmerica.com, an organization of over 100 volunteers that translates and posts in English views about the USA from all over the world.
Robin may be best known for having coined the term “Blue Republican” to refer to liberals and independents who joined the GOP to support Ron Paul’s bid for the presidency in 2012 (and, in so doing, launching the largest coalition that existed for that candidate).
Robin’s current work as a trainer and a consultant, and his book If You Can Keep It , focus on overcoming distrust and bridging ideological division to improve politics and lives. His current project, Humilitarian, promotes humility and civility as a basis for improved political discourse and outcomes.