It seems that a lot of people are misunderstanding a specific moment in Mitt Romney’s “Faith in America” speech today. In a speech nearly devoid of intellectual content, he did say one substantive thing; but unfortunately, rather that paying attention what his words meant, the blogosphere and also the talking heads on TV are completely misconstruing it, indeed flipping its meaning around 180 degrees.
I’m refering to this assertion:
Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom.
Person after person seems to be taking this to mean that, according to Romney, Atheists can’t be free. But that’s not what Romeny meant; in fact it’s nearly the opposite of what he meant. Romney was here interpreting a previously-offered quote from John Adams and asserting a specific thesis on the nature of humanity and political liberty.
Romney’s point was that people, on their own, can’t be trusted with political liberty. People are too chaotic, too libidinous, too unpredictable, to be granted full autonomy in the absence of an outside religious check on their actions. A government that does not impose its will upon the desires of a population requires another institution that will, in order to keep things from spinning out of control.
Let me explain. Here’s what Romney said.
Minute 2:50 of the “Faith in America speech:
There are some who may feel that religion is not a matter to be seriously considered in the context of the weighty threats that face us. If so, they’re at odds with the nation’s founders, for they, when our nation faced its greatest peril, sought the blessings of the creator, and further they discovered the essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom.
In John Adams’s words, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution,” he said, “was made for a moral and religious people.”
Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. Religion 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.
Now, I’m not familiar with John Adams, particularly, but it seems like I ought to say at least this much. Here is what Adams said, more fully:
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
Keeping with this aside for the moment, Adams also said that the US governments were not religiously inspired.
Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses
So much for the aside. What’s pertinent here is not Adams but Romney, and the claim that this Presidential candidate was making, when he used Adams’s words.
When Romney said “freedom requires religion” he was asserting that human freedom is too unruly to be left alone; humanity too unpredictable to be left to its own devices. A system of government must either impose restrictions on its population or else rely on another institution which does. Any government relying on merely human spiritual and philosophical resources will surely fall into a ruinous and chaotic decadence.
No other “freedom” is sustainable for our benighted species.
We can’t be trusted with ourselves; much less can we trust other people. In a similar vein, we are told that “radical Islamists” “hate us for our freedom”. Romney, I assume, doesn’t hate us for it, but he assuredly thinks something needs to be done about it.
That’s what Romney meant. It was a substantive, philosophical point about humanity. That it was utterly disgusting and wrong-headed is no reason not to attend to it, or take it seriously.
I realize that political speeches, especially speeches not directly concerning policy, and especially coming from Republicans, make one’s eyes glaze over. But this moment was worth noticing, and worth debate. It’s too bad that everyone has misconstrued it.