You cannot completely put aside your beliefs but when the choice is between a candidate who shares some or most of your beliefs and one who shares none of your beliefs and who would in fact try to remove rights and freedoms from you sitting out an election or voting for the other guy to send your party a message is a stab at the heart of our constitution and republic. Your right to your beliefs can be taken away from you if you actively or through inaction allow a candidate who believes in nothing you do to take power. The only reasonable perspective in the current election is that McCain may not share some or even most of my beliefs but he will not or will be very unlikely to make us into a socialist state as BO will. I would be just as fiercly against any candidate who wanted to transform America into a theocracy. The constitution I swore to protect and defend is set up to keep us from becoming both a socialist state as well as a theocracy.
Our country, based on democracy, is as good as its people. If most of the people try to live the Gospel or at least live according to their God with a good will, then we will end up with a government that tries to enact laws according to the Gospel or according to God as one believes, hopefully of good will. If most of the people want God to BUTT OUT, then we will end up with a government that tries to enact laws that reflect this desire to eliminate God from our laws. The European Union did not even want the word “God” or religion in their constitution.
I see this stamped toward irresponsible “freedom” and personal pleasure (i.e., no regard for ones neighbor, especially the weaker ones) and the rejection of God far more of a danger today than falling into a theocracy, as you put it. As I indicated before, the US government has been forced to acknowledge atheism as a religion; this has helped to slow down this use of “separation of church and state” to justify the promotion of atheism since atheism too is a “religion”. In a very real sense, I totally agree with you (about the danger of a “theocracy”) but perhaps NOT in the way that you might have considered. Are we able to imagine the incredible tyranny of a “theocracy” of the religion of “atheism”??? “The truth shall set you free”! Only God can give true and lasting freedom. If we do not follow God and His laws of love of God and neighbor, we will end up being slaves to ourselves, to the world or to the devil. This is true slavery under the dictatorship of a “theocracy” of atheism!
As I wrote in my article: “But I do not think that Americans have any idea of what it means for God to remove His hand which has kept major disasters from befalling us until now!” And I think these “major disasters” will also come from God-less men who have no respect whatsoever for you and me or anyone else as was indicated by the quote from Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. May God help America!