As someone who actually admired John McCain and even gave him money in 2000 (I thought I saw hints of Teddy Roosevelt in him), I have watched in dismay as McCain has steadily sold out everything he (supposedly) believe in to the fundamentalist extremists in the Republican Party. Sadly, McCain has now hit a new low, combining ignorance, religious bigotry and pandering in one fell swoop. See here, from an interview on Beliefnet:
...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. I don't say that we would rule out under any circumstances someone of a different faith. I just would--I just feel that that's an important part of our qualifications to lead.[...]
I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation...We welcome the poor, the tired, the huddled masses. But when they come here they know that they are in a nation founded on Christian principles.
Where do we begin with this heaping, stinking load of pablum? How about the Constitution, Article VI, which says that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States?" Or how about the first amendment, which declares, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion?"
Or how about founding father Alexander Hamilton, who responded flippantly "we forgot" when asked why the U.S. Constitution makes no mention of God?
Or how about Beliefnet columnist (and former Deputy Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under President Bush) David Kuo, who said, "McCain was 'pandering to what he thinks the Christian conservative community wants to hear' and predicted he 'will have a lot of explaining to do about this interview?'"
Or how about John McCain himself, who said in 2000 that religious right Reverends Pat Roberston and Jerry Falwell were "agents of intolerance?"
Or how about John McCain, already trying desperately to spin his ignorant, bigoted (against Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, atheists, agnostics, etc.) gaffe by claiming that he "would vote for a Muslim if he or she was the candidate best able to lead the country and to defend our political values."
Whatever, John, it's a little too late for that. As Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, rightfully remarked, "That kind of attitude [of McCain's] goes against the American tradition of religious pluralism and inclusion."
Sadly, John McCain apparently has decided that he will do anything to salvage his dying hopes of ever being president. Previously, McCain literally resorted to hugging the man (George W. Bush) who savaged him in South Carolina in 2000. Now, McCain's sunk to the lethal threesome combination of ignorance, religious bigotry and pandering. What next, McCain starts posting despicable, anti-Mark Warner videos on the RPV website? Nah, even McCain wouldn't stoop that low!
*"I was scarce fifteen, when, after doubting by turns of several points, as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself."
*"Think how great a proportion of Mankind consists of weak and ignorant Men and Women, and of inexperienc'd Youth of both Sexes, who have need of the Motives of Religion to restrain them from Vice, to support their Virtue, and retain them in the Practice of it till it becomes habitual, which is the great Point for its Security."
*"Revealed religion has no weight with me."
*"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."
*"I mean real good works, works of kindness, charity, mercy, and public spirit, not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing, and reading, performing church ceremonies, or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments, despised even by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity"
*"I have never been a communicant."
*"Thirteen governments [states & former colonies] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretense of miracle or mystery...are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind."
*"How has it happened that millions of myths, fables, legends and tales have been blended with Jewish and Christian fables and myths and have made them the most bloody religion that has ever existed? Filled with the sordid and detestable purposes of superstition and fraud?"
*"In every country and in every age the priest [any and every clergyman] has been hostile to liberty; he is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."
*"It is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist."
*"Christian creeds and doctrines, the clergy's own fatal inventions, through all the ages has made of Christendom a slaughterhouse, and divided it into sects of inextinguishable hatred for one another."
*"Christianity neither is, nor ever was apart of the common law."
*"Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, my be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their shorty history."
*"Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U.S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taqxes."