Among the more quoted passages from Mitt Romney’s speech today is found seven paragraphs into it. It’s a chiasmus: “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.” Now, the first half of that was another way of saying what John Adams did in the passage Romney had just quoted – saying that, in essence, a free people needs also to be a moral and religious people if freedom is not to become license. But the second half of Romney’s statement is simply wrong, as consider that, say, Wahhabism requires not freedom (meant here in the sense of civil liberty) but coerced conversion and of course death to those unwilling to yield. Much later in his speech Romney brought up “violent jihad” and pointed out how “we face no greater danger today than theocratic tyranny,” as devoutly wished for by the radical Islamists. It’s good to know that Romney doesn’t really believe that “religion,” or every religion, requires freedom.
