The Young Turks

<background>

in the movie, the v.p. candidate is questioned about some college sex-tape scandal involving a grainy film showing a woman who vaguely looks like her involved in a gang-orgy.

the v.p. candidate consistently refuses to confirm or deny or otherwise respond to these accusations during her senate confirmation hearings by simply saying that this was part of her private life and none of anyone's business.

in the end of the movie, we the audience (but almost none of the rest of the characters in the movie) find out that the person in the tape was someone else.

presumably, the moral of the story is that even though it would have been easy for the contender to boldly and truthfully say that "she was not, or ever will be, in a gang-bang sex tape", she stood by her principles and refused to even discuss the matter since it was not relevant to her present qualifications for office as vice-president.

</background>

my biggest beef with all of the back-and-forth accusations and smear about obama being a muslim or not is that no one seems to be even suggesting a contender-style response to this question.

instead of constantly listening to obama wax poetic about how he "is a christian who was a christian all his life and has been attending the same church for 20+ years", i would have liked to see him look at the questioner directly in the eye and say that the u.s. constitution protects the freedom _of_ and freedom _from_ religion, and his personal religious beliefs are of no consequence to the policies he is campaigning on, and as far as anyone cares, he, obama, could be an atheist, buddhist, mormon, or scientologist, for all anyone cares.

if the electorate is worried about a person's intelligence and rationality because someone idiotic enough to believe in _any_ religion is automatically unqualified to hold high office, then they should be voting only atheists (but that requires a rational electorate).

okay, it is unlikely that obama himself or any of his campaign people would ever say anything quite so direct and honest and legally correct (about the constitution's guarantee of religious freedom and religion's irrelevance to elected office).

however, why is it that none of the independent commentors are not forcefully highlighting this point---that even if obama were a devout muslim or an atheist, that is irrelevant to the issues at hand in the election.

i can understand cenk's frustration whenever this "muslim" smear comes up, but at least he should appreciate the point---obama's specific religious affiliation is not as important as is turning the question on its head and asking "so what if he is (muslim)". i feel that the "so what if he is" retort should be the first one (and only one) since it undermines the entire framing of the original smear---pointing to evidence of obama's devout christianity is simply playing into the bad framing.

finally, think about the point more broadly. does obama himself honestly and sincerely want the vote of joe.buffoon who would not vote for obama the muslim, but would happily vote for obama the christian?

this goes back to the famous groucho quip about how he would never be a member of a group that would accept him as one---if entry into a particular position requires the compromise of principles, or at least the willing suppression of the gag-reflex and the support of those whose core-values are completely anti-thetical to one's own, what does it matter anyway? 

must elections be fought and won on the backs of primitive irrationalities such as this?

is this not evidence of the deep-seated rot in the system, all of whose other ramifications will continue to thwart all hope of progress in the country? the same irrationality and intolerance that today manifests itself as a fear for one type of religion will tomorrow show itself in another way, in another context---making accommodations for one type of irrationality in one context is simply paving the way for encouraging even worse irrationalities in future.

i've had it---i will never ever vote for or support anyone who is not an atheist. anyone who believes in a layer of crap written 3000 years ago, or a second layer of even more crap written on top of it 2000 years ago, or a third layer of yet more crap written on top of all of that crap 1300 years ago, simply does not have the intelligence to run a country. not to speak of all of the other varieties of crap from the rest of the world.

on the other hand, it does take a moron believing in religious crap to govern a country of morons who also believe in the same crap. like prefers like, and they deserve each other.

huckabee needs to win and replace the constitution with the bible, and maybe someone somewhere will wake up from the resulting nightmare and beg to be taken back to the land of religious freedom.