On Monday presidential hopeful John McCain suggested that he would have trouble voting for a Muslim for president. The stumbling senator explained to reporters that since America was founded as a Christian nation, he preferred America to have a Christian leader. McCain said while campaigning in New Hampshire, “I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles … personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith. But that doesn’t mean that I’m sure that someone who is Muslim would not make a good president.” As someone who used to really appreciate John McCain’s candor, what on earth is he talking about. And when you’re polling 10 points behind Giuliani, you shouldn’t be talking about this stuff at all. While I don’t like the premise of voting for someone on the basis of faith, what bugs me most about McCain’s remarks is the part about how America was founded. It seems cheap that Christians use the founding fathers as a tool to make it seem like America is Christian country club where everyone else just has a day pass. Thomas Jefferson was a deist who rejected every religious premise that contradicted reason. Ben Franklin was also a deist and spent years attacking Judeo-Christian ideals and pointing out the difference between morality and blind faith. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, scripted the Declaration of Religious Freedom and pretty much invented the separation of church and state. The founding fathers were not Fundamentalist Christians. They were intellectuals and philosophers, men who thought long and hard about how America would succeed and decided that it would be best to leave religion out of government. And for the sake of argument, so what if American was founded on Christian principles. It was also founded as a slave nation and Americans certainly don’t hold that ideal as sacred. So John McCain, you continue to disappoint me. You are supposed to be the tolerable, free-thinking Republican candidate, not the Christian one. And if you find yourself in that situation again just say, “I’m a war hero, no comment.”
•AP: McCain Criticized for Religious Remarks
Yeah, I love it when people use our founding fathers to make arguments, especially reactionaries who don’t want to change the great ideals that this country was founded on. These are the same people who believed that everyone was free except blacks and Indians and women.
Yet again, it is hard to be proud to be an American when it is these type of idiots that get press. Yet again, the world can say “see, Americans are prejudiced and self-important and not tolerant of others”