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Rick Santorum On Religious Freedom: What He Has Forgotten Since Law School
February 23, 2012 |
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Samuel Johnson famously wrote, in 1775, that a false “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Now, it appears that modern scoundrels – politicians and their puppet masters – have added another disguise to their wardrobe: false constitutional scholarship.
Not content to wrap themselves in the flag alone, financial wolves are now relying on politicians, wrapped in the sheep’s clothing of uninformed constitutional platitudes, hoping to sway the voting masses who lack the inclination to study the Constitution themselves. Nowhere is this more true in 2012 than with pronouncements concerning religious freedom, especially those made by my fellow law school graduate, Rick Santorum.
How might extremely wealthy, largely Republican power-brokers sway the financially challenged middle-class to vote for Republican candidates who will serve the interests of the very rich? White House insider, David Kuo, wrote that, back in 2001-2002, Karl Rove and his White House staff routinely referred to fundamentalist Christians as “nuts,” “ridiculous” and “out of control,” even while cultivating their loyalty. The Office of Faith-Based Initiatives operated by the White House under Rove was, according to Kuo, a veiled get-out-the-vote machine in targeted races, not an instrument of policy. Every Sunday, the devout place money in the collection plate, an effective rehearsal for reliable voting habits.
By convincing Joe Lunchbox that there is a war on Christianity by Barack Hussein Obama, Muslims, ethnic groups, immigrants, the welfare class, and godless elite liberals, etc., and by arguing that our “national religion” can only be saved by Republicans, the GOP is working to ensure that the real cargo – deregulation, tax cuts and other forms of control over the corporate/financial system – may be delivered into Republican hands.
Enter Rick Santorum. In 2008, Santorum claimed that America was under attack by Satan, in a “spiritual war.” In South Carolina last month, Santorum left no doubt as to his desire to conform American law to the law of Santorum’s God: “So don’t claim His rights, don’t claim equality as that gift from God and then go around and say, ‘Well, we don’t have to pay attention to what God wants us to do. We don’t have to pay attention to God’s moral laws.’ If your rights come from God, then you have an obligation to live responsibly in conforming with God’s laws, and our founders said so, right?”
On Feb. 18, 2012, Santorum questioned President Obama’s Christianity, claiming that Obama’s agenda was based on “some phony theology, not a theology based on the Bible.” Santorum went on to complain that Obama “is imposing his values on the Christian church.” In Florida, recently, Santorum declined to correct a voter who called Obama an “avowed Muslim.”
Onward, Christian Soldiers
Through the conflation of freedom of religion, with the more nuanced concept of freedom from religion, Republican king-makers have schemed to sway middle-class evangelicals to rally around a Constitutional Trojan horse.
Santorum and I attended Penn State, Dickinson School of Law, and studied constitutional law with the same professor. Our professor, now retired, declined to respond to emails inviting her input, but a brief constitutional law lesson is called for here, one that Santorum seems to have overlooked.
A Constitutional Lesson in a Paragraph
The Declaration of Independence (1776) invokes, as justification for the dissolution of the United States’ political bands with Britain, “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them...”
This is Santorum’s ostensible anchor. Reference to the “Creator” which has endowed us with certain unalienable rights such as “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is the only other mention, in the Declaration of Independence, of God or religion, other than an invocation of “the protection of divine Providence” in declaring independence from the British tyranny. Reference to God and religion in the Constitution itself is even scantier: Article VI (1787) provides that “No religious test shall ever be required” for a public officer, and the First Amendment provides “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Amendment I (1791).
That’s it.
'The Impious Presumption....'
Like the Bible, Supreme Court pronouncements interpreting constitutional law may be parsed to support nearly any proposition, but the summary above constitutes the totality of references to God and religion found in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. At the risk of venturing onto this slippery slope of interpretation, the treaty America entered into with Tripoli in 1797, during Washington’s presidency, and approved by the U.S. Senate under the leadership of John Adams, declared that “the Government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”
The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779), authored by Thomas Jefferson, one of the primary authors of the Declaration of Independence, stated, in pertinent part,
“Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free . . .LIKED THIS ARTICLE? JOIN OUR EMAIL LIST
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