Willard "Mitt" Romney thinks you atheists and agnostics are not free. It sounds like he thinks you might even be detrimental to the cause of freedom.
As quoted by CNN:
"Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone," the GOP contender said.
As Walter Shapiro wrote:
The objectionable point here is the ill-concealed notion that only those who are truly religious crave freedom. Secularists may, in Romney's vision, give lip service to freedom. But when the chips are down, they will presumably sell out liberty for a pair of backstage passes to the MTV Awards or a chance to rip the Ten Commandments from a courthouse wall. That is the inescapable meaning of the sentence: "Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone."
And as Joan Walsh added:
But I wasn't reassured, I was alarmed. Romney blasted "the new religion of secularism," referring to those who continue to argue for strict separation of church and state, which apparently, like certain of the Geneva Conventions under the Bush administration, is becoming "quaint." I sometimes find the anti-God stridency of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens grating. Listening to Romney's speech I realized what a necessary corrective it is to corrosive political pandering. Calling secularism "religion" is a cheap shot worthy of Bill O'Reilly, not a major presidential candidate. I can't help hoping Romney's speech fails to soothe religious conservatives, because the sooner the Republican Party faces up to the destructive cost of its electoral dependence on religious extremists, the better off our country will be.
I'll add this: Romney is a bigot. Don't expect much criticism of Romney, for it, in the corporate media. Had he said that freedom requires one or another religion, he'd have been vilified. For this, he won't be.
Bigotry against atheists and agnostics is still allowed, in modern theocratic America. The framers of the U.S. Constitution were behind the times. Article VI includes the following:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
Apparently, the framers of the Constitution didn't understand the requirements of freedom.