{"id":295,"date":"2011-11-30T21:42:05","date_gmt":"2011-12-01T02:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=295"},"modified":"2011-11-30T21:42:05","modified_gmt":"2011-12-01T02:42:05","slug":"an-honest-look-at-rick-santorum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/11\/an-honest-look-at-rick-santorum.html","title":{"rendered":"An Honest Look at Rick Santorum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rick Santorum is widely heralded as a real <\/em>\u201cconservative.\u201d\u00a0 Rush Limbaugh has praised him on the air, on multiple occasions, and another nationally syndicated radio talk show host, Bill Bennett, has had Santorum guest host for him regularly.\u00a0 To hear the Limbaughs and Bennetts of our generation tell it, a real \u201cconservative\u201d is one who favors \u201climited\u201d or \u201cconstitutional government\u201d and \u201cindividualism.\u201d\u00a0 Thus, presumably, Santorum must be an enemy of just the sort of Big Government ideology to which Barack Obama and the Democratic Party are beholden.<\/p>\n

But is this correct?\u00a0 A look at Santorum\u2019s positions on the issues of the day readily reveals that his rhetoric and the rhetoric of the party of which he has been a fixture for decades aside, Santorum is no less a champion of Big Government than President Obama himself.<\/p>\n

For one, Santorum is as vocal a supporter of \u201cthe War on Terror\u201d as anyone.\u00a0 This in and of itself tells us about all that we need to know about his view of government.\u00a0 As Ron Paul has pointed out to the former Pennsylvaniasenator, terror <\/em>is a means to an end, a tactic.\u00a0 It makes as much sense to speak of waging a war <\/em>on terror, then, as it makes sense to speak of waging a war on guns or other instruments.\u00a0 In all fairness, in spite of his continual use of the language of \u201cthe War on Terror,\u201d <\/em>Santorum concedes the soundness of Paul\u2019s position.\u00a0 Yet he maintains that we are, nevertheless, in a real war, but it is a war, not on terror as such, but against the terror of \u201cIslamists\u201d or \u201cRadical Islamic Extremists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three observations are here in order.<\/p>\n

First, the distinction that Westerners insist on drawing between \u201cRadical Muslims\u201d and \u201cmoderate Muslims,\u201d or \u201cIslamism\u201d and \u201cIslam,\u201d is the offspring of the union between considerations of political expediency, on the one hand, and those of wishful thinking, on the other.\u00a0 It is, of course, true that not all Muslims wish non-Muslims harm; but as Brigitte Gabriel and other students of Islamic and Middle Eastern affairs know all too well, the taxonomy in terms of which Westerners seek to characterize Muslims is nowhere to be found within the Islamic self-understanding.\u00a0 And what this in turn in means is that whether Santorum supports a war on terror <\/em>or a war on \u201cIslamist,\u201d he supports a war without end.\u00a0 <\/em>Terror, like greed, will always be with us, and since \u201cIslamists\u201d are at bottom orthodox Muslims, a war on them is nothing more or less than a war on Muslims.\u00a0 Since there are over a billion Muslims worldwide, a war on Muslims, like a war on \u201cterror,\u201d is also a war without end. <\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Second, war is the Tree of Life for government.\u00a0 It is the Mother of all crises, the Emergency of all emergencies.\u00a0 Libertyis always a precarious thing, but never is its condition more precarious, more imperiled, than during war.\u00a0 Now, when this war is a war in perpetuity, <\/em>liberty doesn\u2019t stand a chance, for the war will serve as an all purpose pretext for all manner of measures designed to grow the federal government ever more.<\/p>\n

Third, however undesirable any war may be, in our Constitutional Republic, wars must be declared.\u00a0 <\/em>That is, our Constitution requires that before our government embarks our country upon a war, the United States Congress must issue a formal declaration.\u00a0 This, though, it has not done with respect to \u201cthe War on Terror\u201d or \u201cthe War on Islamism\u201d or whatever Santorum and his colleagues are calling it these days.\u00a0 Nor, for that matter, have they so much as indicated a desire to do so.<\/p>\n

Importantly, Santorum is a self-avowed proponent of \u201cCompassionate Conservatism.\u201d\u00a0 This too tells us all that we need to know about his stance on government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2005 Santorum gave a speech to the Heritage Foundation in which he argued passionately for this ideology of Big Government.\u00a0 An excerpt from the speech was subsequently published at Townhall.com.\u00a0 \u201cIf government is to be effective,\u201d Santorum asserts, \u201ccharities, houses of worship, and other civil institutions\u201d have to be, not just \u201crespected,\u201d but \u201cnurtured<\/em>\u201d (emphasis mine).\u00a0 And because \u201cCompassionate Conservatism\u201d is \u201cfounded on an inviolable belief in humanity\u2019s inherent dignity,\u201d respect for the sanctity of human life means that \u201cending genocide, international sex trafficking and the oppression of minority groups, and promoting the respect for religious freedom around the world <\/em>will always <\/em>be top priorities<\/em>\u201d for the United States government (emphasis mine).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCompassionate Conservatism\u201d is oriented toward helping \u201cthe poor and [those] hurting for help, whether they are across the street or across an ocean<\/em>\u201d (emphasis mine).\u00a0 Thus, Santorum proudly proclaims, he and his colleagues in the Senate have assembled \u201ca domestic anti-poverty agenda\u201d to help the poor here at home.\u00a0 Yet they also are busy at work to help the poor around the world.\u00a0 Santorum states that \u201cAIDS has seared Africa into our moral vision.\u201d Apparently, not only is it \u201cmorally right\u201d to care \u201cfor the sick and dying in Africa,\u201d it is also \u201cgeopolitically prudent; if we don\u2019t help, someone else will and that someone else may not be friendly to our interests.\u201d\u00a0 How do \u201cwe\u201d care for \u201cthe poor and dying in Africa?\u201d\u00a0 Santorum\u2019s answer is to the point: \u201cWe need to embrace the challenge to dedicate a larger percentage of our GDP to foreign aid<\/em>\u201d (emphasis mine) [.]<\/p>\n

\u201cCompassionate Conservatism\u201d is about \u201cchanging the role of government in our lives.\u201d\u00a0 To this end, we should be \u201cnot only cutting old, tired programs, but also advancing new initiatives <\/em>like the CARE Act [.]\u201d\u00a0 The latter is \u201ca bold <\/em>package of expanded charitable-giving incentives that supports faith-based and community organizations\u201d (emphases added).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Santorum readily acknowledges that \u201cthis agenda will require a role for government that some conservatives find disquieting.\u201d\u00a0 But he assures us \u201cthat [this] is a discomfort worth confronting.\u201d<\/p>\n

From his endorsement of Mitt Romney in the 2008 GOP presidential primaries to his endorsement of Arlen Specter in the latter\u2019s senate race against the much more conservative Pat Toomey, from Santorum\u2019s sponsorship of the \u201cIran Freedom and Support Act\u201d\u2014a bill that sought to transfer ten million dollars <\/em>to Iran for purposes of \u201cregime change\u201d\u2014to his insistence that we must actually enlarge <\/em>our troop presence throughout the world, there is much more that can be said regarding Santorum\u2019s attachment to Big Government.<\/p>\n

But, hopefully, enough has already been said to establish that Santorum is a champion of Big Government through and through.<\/p>\n

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n

originally published at The\u00a0New American<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rick Santorum is widely heralded as a real \u201cconservative.\u201d\u00a0 Rush Limbaugh has praised him on the air, on multiple occasions, and another nationally syndicated radio talk show host, Bill Bennett, has had Santorum guest host for him regularly.\u00a0 To hear the Limbaughs and Bennetts of our generation tell it, a real \u201cconservative\u201d is one who…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAn Honest Look at Rick Santorum<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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