Religious Freedom?

Something wicked this way comes - Political discussions of late are giving me a feeling of uneasiness. The hard hitting conservative candidates are coming across, in my view, as being the very antithesis of a Christian belief. Religious freedom is a wonderful thing but some people need to be reminded that this freedom also includes the right not to believe.

"For more than 200 years, the First Amendment has protected religious freedom, including the right not to believe." ~ From Freedom Forum  'Education for Freedom'

We should nip this rhetoric in the bud, it serves no practical purpose in the presidential election process and its very essence has an undercurrent to it that is evil and wicked. Oh, you say, how can evoking the name of God be evil and wicked?

Well let's look at a couple of things that were said by a powerful man in our not too distant past:

• This human world of ours would be inconceivable without the practical existence of a religious belief. (p. 152)  

• For this, to be sure, from the child's primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard, must be pressed into the service of this one great mission, until the timorous prayer of our present parlor patriots: ‘Lord, make us free!’ is transformed in the brain of the smallest boy into the burning plea: ‘Almighty God, bless our arms when the time comes; be just as thou hast always been; judge now whether we be deserving of freedom; Lord, bless our battle!’ (pp. 632-633)

The words of Adolf Hitler, Ralph Manheim, ed. (1998). Mein Kampf. New York: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0395951054.

We went through this innuendo-ing  back in the McCarthyism days. Remember the "Are you now or have you ever been a Communist?" badgering that took place?  I don't think that was one of our most proud moments in American history, let's not go back there again.