* Republican = Religious

The Republican debate tonight was, in part, a love-fest of religious "faith": as Mitt Romney put it, "everyone who's a person of faith holds values deep in the heart," whether one is Mormon, Catholic, etc. But I know that such a grand "blanket" hardly covers the Lakota on the Rez doin' the Sun Dance, or the "pagan" deep ecologist, or the Wiccan, all of whom "worship" the natural processes that maintain this planet. I, too, perceive the wonderful mystery that is the cosmos around me every day—and feel awestruck—and treat my fellow humans and other species accordingly; but I suspect that such a "religion" doesn't count in the quarters that are a Republican primary precinct. But then, they called P. B. Shelley an "atheist" (and he had to call himself such, as a youth), who was, I would claim, one of the most truly "spiritual" people of his day. . . .