Who the hell is Richard Cohen? He is a columnist in the Op/Ed section of the Washington Post. And he is an idiot. In a piece published today, Giuliani’s JFK Moment,
he presents the argument that a person’s religion should not have an
impact on his or her qualification for president. Wrong, wrong, wrong!
Every man and woman has a religion. That religion may be
Catholicism, Islam, Wiccan, or even Atheism. It may be self, some
concept of a Utopian society or a set of rules or values by which to
live. Religion is basically the practices and beliefs that bind man to
his god. A person’s god is the thing he worships. The thing he worships
is what he devotes his time and treasure toward. To discover the
religion of any man or woman, understand what is important to them. Is
it power, financial security, family, preservation of a series of rites
and rituals, music in church, drugs, and this list is only limited by
the number of people to ever exist.
So as Mr. Cohen argues that a man’s religion is not relevant to his
ability to be the leader of this country, he goes on to describe how a
schizophrenic president will then benefit the guiding principles of his
own religion - rationalism, ending the war in Iraq, and homosexual
marriage. For a man that worships rationalism, he is most certainly
being very irrational. Man cannot be separated from his religion
without a tremendous amount of upheaval, angst, and violence. So to
take Mr. Cohen’s position is to deny a fundamental truth about the mind
and spirit of man. Rather than ignore the religion of the presidential
candidates, we should seek to understand them. Because by understanding
the religion of the candidates we can begin to understand the kinds of
decisions they will make. Mr. Cohen sees in Mr. Giuliani for what he
is, a rationalist and a secularist; and this agrees with Mr. Cohen’s
religion.
This posting and more like it can be found at The CommonMan Commentaries.