Mitt Romney Archive: 05/2008

Another reason to vote for McCain

Susan Sarandon vows move to Italy or Canada if McCain elected...

Romney for Secretary of Defense

COMMENTARY: Romney for Secretary of Defense

By Craig Hammond

John McCain should, in my opinion, ask Mitt Romney to serve his country in a cabinet post where his skillset would benefit our country the most: Secretary of Defense.

Mitt Romney is a proven leader who understands how organizations and bureaucracies work -- and how they can work better.

Mitt Romney took a failing and almost bankrupt XIX Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City in 2002 and turned it in to an astounding success. He also skillfully managed, as Governor, the state of Massachusetts. Every one knows that state governments can be the most challenging and demanding operations to direct. Romney gears up for this kind of thing.

That's why McCain needs to put Governor Romney in charge of the world's largest and most complex bureaucracy -- otherwise known as the Pentagon.

Our nation's future wars will be mostly asymmetrical conflicts and our national defense strategy should reflect those new realities. Romney can make that transformation happen.

By making Romney Defense Secretary, McCain accomplishes two things. He puts the right person in the right job and gives Romney the coveted national defense credentials when he runs for President in 2012 - assuming McCain doesn't run for reelection.

There are a handful of Republicans who can keep the Vice Presidential seat warm for four years, but the nation needs Romney to guide, update, and improve our nation's greatest asset: The men and women who wear our country's uniform.

Craig Hammond is a former mayor of Bluefield, WV and host of Radioactive on WHIS (1440 AM) and WTZE (1470 AM).

philanthropy at Security National Servicing Corporation

Ann Corkery, who directs philanthropy at Security National Servicing Corporation, introduced Governor Romney as he received the Canterbury Award from the Becket Fund.
"As it turned out, the governor's speech of December 6th last year was the high point of the entire primary season. It was one of those moments when a serious thought managed to break through the noise. What left an impression was not just the power of the words, but also the qualities of the man, and of the wife beside him.
"One quality of note is surely their forbearance, at that moment and throughout the campaign. If you wonder exactly what it was like for Catholics, in other places and other times, Mitt and Ann could share some details from their own experience. At every turn, they had to explain their faith — to defend the good and venerable teachings of the Mormon Church. They were constantly called to account, even by people not usually interested in spiritual matters … and by others with creeds and churches of their own, but a lot less to show for it than Mitt and Ann Romney.
"The reality is that when we meet people of their quality, the most relevant questions are the ones we ask ourselves — about our own beliefs … and whether we reflect nearly as well on our churches as they do on theirs. Yet somehow the governor always remained calm and patient. And this was not just a political instinct. It was the humility of the man, a trait that has somehow survived all his success. Listening to his remarks in College Station, Texas, it wasn't hard to picture the young missionary who years before has gone door to door in Paris, explaining his beliefs and offering the hope of a better way."

How Does It Feel, Senator McCain?

How Does It Feel, Senator McCain?

May 16, 2008

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Senator McCain. I wonder how he feels today. Senator McCain went out there yesterday, made this speech in which he pretended it's 2013, the end of his first term, looking back at all the things that have been accomplished, and you just know that the attitude he has when he makes this speech is that, "I am a good person. I am an honorable person, and I have integrity, and we're all friends, we're all Americans. We're not from different countries. We all should just put aside this partisanship and get along." He gives this great flowering, in his mind, rolling speech. One of the elements of the speech is, in 2013, we've won the war in Iraq, and we're outta there. What are the Democrats saying today? They are saying McCain is for timetables. McCain is changing his position on Iraq, he's now for timetables. I'm sure he's looking at this, (doing McCain impression) "How dare they misrepresent what I said in honor and integrity! I said that with goodness in my heart, and now they mock me."

Get used to it, Senator! This is nothing. McCain's vision has most GIs out of Iraq by 2013. The Drive-Bys are parroting a Democrat press release that McCain is calling for a timetable. Senator, what's it like to get smeared like this? You might want to go ask Mitt Romney who was also smeared on a timetable for Iraq, I think by somebody, a couple days before the Florida primary.

END TRANSCRIPT

Read the Background Material...

• AP: Romney Accuses McCain of 'Dirty Tricks'
• WSJ: McCain Offers His Iraq Timetable

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Religion and Freedom

As prepared by Mitt Romney for delivery to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty Dinner

May 8, 2008

Thank you.

It is an honor for Ann and me to be with you this evening. We have a lot of friends who work with the Becket Fund. As you can imagine, that makes your recognition even more meaningful.

Your mission – and my topic this evening – involve the intertwining of religion and government. It's not a new topic. It was in the 12th century that Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett famously refused to allow Henry II to control the Church of England. As you are well aware, his conviction came with a high price: he was killed by the king's soldiers in his own cathedral.

Our religious liberty in America was bought in large measure by the sacrifice of men and women like Thomas Beckett.

The battle for religious freedom is not over, nor is it likely to ever be. I appreciate the work you do to protect a fundamental human liberty and to defend those who are modern victims of religious intolerance and persecution.

As you know, I gave a speech about religious liberty during the height of my campaign. This was not a speech I was forced to give, it was a speech I wanted to give. I felt that I had a unique opportunity to address in a very public way the role of faith in America.

In the days that followed, my remarks drew a considerable amount of congratulatory comment…and some criticism as well. The criticism was a good thing, of course. It meant that my words were not like the proverbial tree falling in the forest – unheard and unheeded. It also gave me the chance to go back and re-think, and that presents an opportunity for more learning.

Several commentators, for instance, argued that I had failed to sufficiently acknowledge the contributions that had been made by atheists. At first, I brushed this off – after all this was a speech about faith in America, not non-faith in America. Besides, I had not enumerated the contributions of believers – why should non-believers get special treatment?

But upon reflection, I realized that while I could defend their absence from my address, I had missed an opportunity…an opportunity to clearly assert the following: non-believers have just as great a stake as believers in defending religious liberty.

If a society takes it upon itself to prescribe and proscribe certain streams of belief – to prohibit certain less-favored strains of conscience – it may be the non-believer who is among the first to be condemned. A coercive monopoly of belief threatens everyone, whether we are talking about those who search the philosophies of men or follow the words of God.

We are all in this together. Religious liberty and liberality of thought flow from the common conviction that it is freedom, not coercion, that exalts the individual just as it raises up the nation.

Perhaps the phrase which elicited the most comment – and controversy – was this: "[the Founders] discovered the essential connection between the survival of a free land and the protection of religious freedom…Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom…Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."

Looking back, do I still believe that religion requires freedom?

History abounds with examples where religion has been imposed by the state upon a people – from the Greek city-state to the dictatorship of the Taliban. But that is not the faith of which I speak. True religious faith is a matter of conviction. It can only be discovered through personal communion with God, sought in the heart and in the heavens. And that path of personal discovery is of necessity free of constraint and censor. Yes, I believe religion requires freedom.

The more controversial assertion, however, was that freedom requires religion.

One critic dismissed this idea by pointing out that there are countries in Europe which have become godless but nevertheless remain democratic. But I was not speaking about Europe's recent experiments in state secularism, I was speaking about America and the larger family of free nations; and I was not speaking about a moment of time, but rather about a span of history. Would America and the freedom she inaugurated here and across the world survive – over centuries – if we were to abandon our faith in God?

I don't believe so.

This is hardly a novel view.

It was not lost on the Founders that rights that were recognized as having been gifted by God, not by kings, would defend individual freedom from tyrants and power-seekers of all kinds. "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure," Jefferson once asked, "when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God?"

John Adams offers an added perspective. Our constitution and freedom would only endure if the passions and destructive tendencies of man's nature were constrained by the bounds of religion: "Human passions unbridled by morality and religion" he said "…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."

Nor can we overlook the fact that people of faith have a unique appreciation for freedom. Because the practice of religion requires freedom, liberty is especially precious to people of faith. They are willing to sacrifice much to protect it.

"We and God have business with each other," William James once observed. "In opening ourselves to his influence, our deepest destiny is fulfilled." When a people's "deepest destiny" can only be realized in a land of liberty, you can expect that that land and its liberty will be preserved at any cost. As indeed it has!

We have recently been visited by Pope Benedict XVI. It was interesting to me that both he and Pope John Paul II, testified of the connection between freedom and truth. Pope Benedict quoted his predecessor: "in a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation." Calling those words "prophetic," he said they echo in some sense the conviction of George Washington's Farewell Address, that "religion and morality represent 'indispensable supports' of political prosperity." And then he added his own conviction: "Democracy can only flourish, as your founding fathers realized, when political leaders and those whom they represent are guided by truth and bring the wisdom born of firm moral principle to decisions affecting the life and future of the nation."

I love how plainly that thought was put by John Adams: "Without religion, this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell."

I don't mean to suggest that truth can only be found in religion or that morality exists only among believers. But I do believe, like Adams and Washington and Hamilton, that "national morality" as Hamilton put it, "require[s] the aid of…divinely authoritative religion." Or as Washington put it, morality cannot prevail "in exclusion of religious principle." I believe that religion is the most effective bulwark against moral relativism—which, as I have seen through my life, can be so malleable that it can label "evil good, and good evil;" in the words of Isaiah and "put darkness for light, and light for darkness."

I also believe that religion and the general precepts of morality defended by religion make us better men and women. And on the whole, I believe we are a stronger people and a stronger nation because of faith. Religion has taught us that there is something greater than ourselves, that we are equal in the eyes of God, that we are to care for those in need, that justice is a principle of salvation, and that marriage, children and family are a source of great joy. That last teaching alone may help us escape the demographic nightmare that is haunting Europe.

There is one more reason why I am convinced that our freedom requires religion.

One day as a boy when a sermon at church was unusually boring, I asked my Dad to give me a dollar bill so I could look at something more interesting. On the back, there is a curious picture of a single eye surrounded by rays suspended over a pyramid—the great seal of the United States. What's that, I asked? My father explained that it was the eye of God, and that the Founders believed that He watched over the affairs of this nation. And I later learned that the words on the seal were from Virgil - Annuit Coeptis – "God has favored our undertakings."

This may not be at all compelling to the non-believer, but it has been compelling to every president who has led this nation at a time of peril. It is that God has blessed America. It is that God will bless America if we continue to deserve His blessing. Washington saw the hand of Providence in the nation's founding: "No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States."

As our soldiers prepared to ascend the beaches of Normandy, Franklin Roosevelt led the nation in prayer: "we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph…with Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy." And triumph they did, through His blessing and through the holy sacrifice of young lives, now revered in beautiful cathedrals not of stone and stained glass but formed by row after row of simple, white crosses and stars of David.

God blesses America. Like millions of Americans, I believe that He has, that He does, and the He will, so long as we deserve His divine blessing.

Thank you, and may God continue to bless our great nation!

Obama says, “Yes we can”… Yes we can what?

Yes We Can, Bob the Builder?

Images are from : http://markcronan.livejournal.com/

From HotAir:

Beware the cult of personality in all its forms.

From Wikipedia:

A cult of personality or personality cult arises when a country's leader uses mass media to create a heroic public image through unquestioning flattery and praise. Cults of personality are often found in dictatorships but can be found in some democracies as well.

A cult of personality is similar to general hero worship except that it is created specifically for political leaders. However, the term may be applied by analogy to refer to adulation of non-political leaders.

Background

Throughout history, monarchs were almost always held in enormous reverence. Through the principle of the divine right of kings, rulers were said to hold office by the will of God. Imperial China (see Mandate of Heaven), ancient Egypt, Japan, the Inca, the Aztecs, and the Roman Empire (see imperial cult) are especially noted for redefining monarchs as god-kings.

The resurgence of ancient Greek democratic ideas in Europe and North America in the 18th and 19th centuries made it increasingly difficult for monarchs to preserve this aura. However, the subsequent development of photography, sound recording, film and mass production, as well as public education and techniques used in commercial advertising, enabled political leaders to project a positive image like never before. It was with these circumstances in the 20th century that the best-known personality cults arose.

Purpose

Generally, personality cults are most common in regimes with totalitarian systems of government, that seek to radically alter or transform society according to revolutionary new ideas. Often, a single leader becomes associated with this revolutionary transformation, and he becomes treated as a benevolent "guide" for the nation, without whom the transformation to a better future cannot occur. This has been generally the justification for personality cults that arose in totalitarian societies of the 20th century, such as that of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

Not all dictatorships foster personality cults, however, and some leaders may actively seek to minimize their own public adulation. For example in Cuba public images of Fidel Castro are rare, and a personality cult around Castro is not encouraged officially, although images, posters, and billboards of Che Guevara abound. Even in the totalitarian regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia the image of Pol Pot himself was rarely seen, though in the latter's case this was merely to perpetuate the image of a faceless, invisible, omnipresent state leadership.^{[citation needed]}

Examples from totalitarian regimes

The criticism of personality cults often focuses on the regimes of Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Josip Broz Tito, Mao, Saddam Hussein, Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il. During the peak of their reigns, these leaders were presented as god-like and infallible. Their portraits were hung in homes and public buildings, and artists and poets were instructed legally to produce only works that glorified the leader and their political movements. Other undemocratic leaders with such cults include leaders such as Eva Peron of Argentina and her husband Juan. The term cult of personality comes from Karl Marx's critique of the "cult of the individual" - expressed in a letter to German political worker, Wilhelm Bloss. In that, Marx states thus:

From my antipathy to any cult of the individual, I never made public during the existence of the [1st] International the numerous addresses from various countries which recognized my merits and which annoyed me… Engels and I first joined the secret society of Communists on the condition that everything making for superstitious worship of authority would be deleted from its statute.

Nikita Khrushchev recalled Marx's criticism in his 1956 "Secret Speech" denouncing Stalin to the 20th Party Congress:

Comrades, the cult of the individual acquired such monstrous size chiefly because Stalin himself, using all conceivable methods, supported the glorification of his own person. . . . One of the most characteristic examples of Stalin's self-glorification and of his lack of even elementary modesty is the edition of his Short Biography, which was published in 1948.^[1].

This book is an expression of the most dissolute flattery, an example of making a man into a godhead, of transforming him into an infallible sage, "the greatest leader," "sublime strategist of all times and nations." Finally no other words could be found with which to lift Stalin up to the heavens.

We need not give here examples of the loathsome adulation filling this book. All we need to add is that they all were approved and edited by Stalin personally and some of them were added in his own handwriting to the draft text of the book.

Journalist Bradley Martin documented the personality cults of North Korea's father-son leadership, "Eternal (formerly Great) Leader" Kim Il-sung and "Great (formerly Dear) Leader" Kim Jong-il.^[2] While visiting North Korea in 1979 he noted that nearly all music, art, and sculpture that he observed glorified "Great Leader" Kim Il-sung, whose personality cult was then being extended to his son, "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il.^[2] Kim Il-sung rejected the notion that he had created a cult around himself and accused those who suggested so of "factionalism."^[2] A US religious freedom investigation confirmed Martin's observation that North Korean schoolchildren learn to thank Kim Il-sung for all blessings as part of the cult.^[3]

Former President Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan is another oft-cited cultivator of a cult of personality.^[4]^[5]^[6] Niyazov simultaneously cut funding to and partially disassembled the education system in the name of 'reform,' while injecting ideological indoctrination into it by requiring all schools to take his own book, the Ruhnama, as its primary text.^[7]^[8] During Niyazov's rule there was no freedom of the press nor was there freedom of speech. This further meant that opposition to Niyazov was strictly forbidden and "major opposition figures have been imprisoned, institutionalized, deported, or have fled the country, and their family members are routinely harassed by the authorities."^[9] Additionally, a silhouette of Niyazov was placed on the screen of all television broadcasts^[10] and statues and pictures of him were 'erected everywhere.'^[11]. For these, and other reasons, the US Government has gone on to claim that by the time he died, "Niyazov's personality cult…had reached the dimensions of a state-imposed religion."^[12].

University of Chicago professor Lisa Wedeen's book, "Ambiguities of Domination" documents the cult of personality which surrounded late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad. Numerous examples of his glorification are made throughout the book, such as displays of love and adoration for the "leader" put on at the opening ceremonies of the 1987 Mediterranean Games in Lattakia Syria.

References

^ The Cult of the Individual. Retrieved on 2007-05-24.
^ ^a ^b ^c Bradley K. Martin. Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty. ISBN 0-312-32322-0
^ Thank You Father Kim-Il-Sung. Retrieved on 2007-12-09.
^ Government of the United States of America. March 2002. Report on Turkmenistan. Available on-line at http://www.ciaonet.org/
^ International Crisis Group. July 2003. Central Asia: Islam and the State. ICG Asia Report No. 59. Available on-line at http://www.crisisgroup.org/
^ Shikhmuradov, Boris. May 2002. Security and Conflict in Central Asia and the Caspian Region. International Security Program, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University. Available on-line at http://www.ciaonet.org/
^ International Crisis Group. July 2003. Central Asia: Islam and the State. ICG Asia Report No. 59. Available on-line at http://www.crisisgroup.org/
^ Soucek, Svat. 2000. A History of Inner Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
^ Government of the United States of America. March 2002. Report on Turkmenistan. Available on-line at http://www.ciaonet.org/
^ Eurasianet. 2007. The Personality Cult Lives On, Residents Take It In Stride. Available on-line at http://www.eurasianet.org/
^ BBC. December 2006. Obituary: Saparmurat Niyazov.Available on-line at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6199021.stm
^ United States Commission on International Freedom. 2007. Turkmenistan: Ending the Personality Cult. Available on-line at http://www.uscirf.gov/mediaroom/press/2007/january/20070103Turkmenistan.html

Mitt Romney Archive

Pages

Another reason to vote for McCain

Romney for Secretary of Defense

philanthropy at Security National Servicing Corporation

How Does It Feel, Senator McCain?

Religion and Freedom

Obama says, “Yes we can”… Yes we can what?

Background

Purpose

Examples from totalitarian regimes

References

See also