A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on December 10th, 2007 in Progressive Faith

David Broder takes up the mantle of apologist for Mitt Romney this weekend, by comparing him to his father:

Forty-two years ago, when he was preparing to run for president, George Romney, the Republican governor of Michigan, told reporter Wallace Turner of the New York Times, “I am completely the product of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

His son Mitt Romney could say with equal conviction that he has modeled his life on his father and built it on the foundation of his Mormon faith.

He did say that in his personally written address at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University last week — and in doing so addressed a major threat to his own presidential candidacy that was an echo of his father’s experience in another era.

The problem is that Romney didn’t exactly say that at all. If you blinked, you completely missed Romney’s reference to being a Mormon. In fact, you were twice as likely to hear Romney talk about being a Jew, and just as likely to hear him refer to evangelicals, Lutherans, or Muslims.

But you were likely to hear him use “faith” and “religion” as a mantra. If you only listened for keywords, it was a battering ram of faith. If you analyze what was said, you come away with a much different view.

Romney also invoked the image of his father marching at Martin Luther King‘s side. Left hanging free of context, we are free to associate brave George Romney with King’s Freedom March. But that isn’t the march in which George Romney participated. That doesn’t mean that George Romney didn’t fight racism or that he wasn’t brave for standing on the right side of the issue – it just means his son sees no reason to upset people by telling the real story.

By leaving the story hang, he can reassure southern racists away from the glare of the lights that his father didn’t upset their granddaddy’s apple cart. He didn’t force voting rights down the throats of the bigoted south. He can then turn around and wink at his friends up north and point out the truth of his father’s stand – and overlook his father’s responsibility in what was the worst riots in our country’s history.

By that last part, I mean that George Romney was governor of Michigan during the 1967 Detroit riots. While violence raged, Romney argued with Lyndon Johnson about formally calling the riot an insurrection. Romney was afraid that doing so would relieve insurance companies of their responsibilities – a legitimate concern, but when one puts insurance payments over lives, it’s bound to lead to problems.

Romney’s march with Dr. King the following year was to protest the mortgage lending practices in Grosse Point. While Romney was braving the electoral slings and arrows of outraged racists, he was never in any bodily danger. It should also be noted that Grosse Point is still incredibly segregated (only 45 blacks to the 5,670 whites as per the 2000 census – see previous link).

If Romney’s dad was there, his son seems to have been totally absent – and the elder Romney does not seem to have imparted to his son the wisdom of Dr. King’s words. Consider:

…so I want to use as a title for my lecture tonight, “The Other America”. And I use this title because there are literally two Americas. Every city in our country has this kind of dualism, this schizophrenia, split at so many points and so every city ends up being two cities rather than one, there are two Americas. One America is beautiful situations. In this America, millions of people have the milk of prosperity and the honey of equality flowing before them. This America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their
bodies, culture and education for their minds, freedom and human dignity for their spirits. In this America children grow up in the sunlight of opportunity. But there is another America, and this other America has a daily ugliness about it that transforms ebulliency of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this other America thousands and thousands of people, men in particular, walk the streets and search for jobs that do not exist. In this other America, millions of people are forced to live in vermin filled depressing housing conditions where they do not have the privilege of having wall to wall carpet but all too often they end up with wall to wall rats and roaches.

snip

The first thing Id like to mention is that there must be a recognition on the part of everybody in this nation that America is still a racist country. Now however, unpleasant that sounds it is still the truth and we will never solve the problem of racism until there is a recognition of the fact that racism still stands at the center of so much of our nation and we must see racism for what it is. It is a myth of an inferior people, it is a notion that one group has all of the knowledge, all of the incites all of the purity, all of the worth, all of the dignity. And that the other group is worthless, on the lower level of humanity, inferior. To put it in philosophical language, racism is not based on some, ah, empirical generalization which after some studies would come to the conclusio that these people are behind because of environmental condition. Racism is based on an ontological affirmation. It is a notice, it is a notion that the very being of people is inferior. And the ultimate logic of racism is genocide.

snip

It may be true that morality can not be legislated, but the behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law can not change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law can’t make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me and I think thats pretty important also. So while legislation may not change the hearts of men it does change the habits of men when its vigorously enforced. And when you change the habits of people pretty soon attitudes get to be changed and people begin to see that they can do things that their fears cause them to feel that they could never do. And I say that there is a need still, for strong civil rights legislation in various areas.

King then goes on to not just attack but totally destroy the “up by the bootstraps” myth that Republicans like Mitt Romney like to foist upon America. If George Romney was listening that day; then he either disagreed or figured that his son would figure out these truths on his own. Either way, he was wrong. Mitt Romney’s record in Massachusetts could hardly be said to have “put equality first”. Even when equality occurred during Romney’s term – such as the Massachusetts’ courts ruling that same sex couples could not be barred from marrying – Romney has been quick to distance himself from such things.

While Mitt Romney wants to double the size of Guantanamo Bay’s detention center, his father walked in support of Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign:

And I come by here to say that America too is going to hell if she doesn’t use her wealth. If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell. I will hear America through her historians, years and generations to come, saying, “We built gigantic buildings to kiss the skies. We built gargantuan bridges to span the seas. Through our space ships we were able to carve highways through the stratosphere. Through our submarines we were able to penetrate oceanic depths.” It seems that I can hear the God of the universe saying, “Even though you have done all of that, I was hungry and you fed me not. I was naked and you clothed me not. The children of my sons and daughters were in need of economic security and you didn’t provide it for them. And so you cannot enter the kingdom of greatness.” This may well be the indictment on America. And that same voice says in Memphis to the mayor, to the power structure, “If you do it unto the least of these of my children you do it unto me .

There’s a couple of candidates running for President that sound a bit lot Dr. King – and John Edwards sounds like he may have sat down at Dr. King’s feet and took notes – but Mitt Romney isn’t one of them. In a more just world, the name of Dr. King would choke in Mitt Romney’s throat. In such a world, journalists, such as David Broder, would report such a truth instead of spinning our heads the other way to look at a spectoral whisper of faith wrapped in a battering ram of rhetoric.

Technorati Tags: David Broder, Mitt Romney, Martin Luther King, George Romney

Sphere: Related Content