Rick Santorum Has Become Obsessed With The Guillotine

With the GOP primary battle changing, instead of the insanity of Newt Gingrich, we now get to hear more of the insane views of Rick Santorum. We already knew about his desire to use government to regulate the sex lives of Americans and nationalize each woman’s womb, but it goes much further than this. Santorum now has a thing for guillotines–which should be very scary to those who realize how often conservative attacks on liberals are actually cases of conservatives projecting their own faults on liberals, such as the conservative propensity for big government and irresponsible government spending when in power.

Another important distinction between Obama and his Republican opponents is that Obama supports separation of church and state and freedom of religion (the two are inseparable) while the Republicans do not. (So much for their false claims from conservatives of supporting the views of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution.) Sticking with the generally valid premise that conservatives generally attack liberals over matters that conservatives are actually guilty of, the Republicans have fabricated an imaginary war on religious freedom. Santorum has even tied this into health care reform. I guess he thinks that God wants insurance companies to be allowed to deny coverage to those with preexisting conditions and terminate coverage for the sick.

First there was this statement from Santorum yesterday:

They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is the government that gives you right, what’s left are no unalienable rights, what’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re a long way from that, but if we do and follow the path of President Obama and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.

Today Santorum suggested that the left wants public decapitations and that the Affordable Care Act is the first step:

It was a secular revolution on which we relied on the goodness of eacother. This is the left’s view of where America should go. And of course where did France go? To the guillotine. To tyranny. If there are no rights that government needs to respect, then what we see with ObamaCare is just the beginning of what government will do to you.

Beyond all the obvious insanity in Santorum’s statements, he ignores the fact that the Founding Fathers created the United States as the world’s first secular state. We have far too many examples of how the religious fanaticism of people like Rick Santorum leads to the destruction of liberty.

10 Comments

  1. 1
    Fritz says:

    I’m not sure that disestablishment is the same thing as separation. You’ll also notice that the First Amendment only prohibited Congress from establishing a religion and interfering with its free exercise. States weren’t so prohibited, and if I’m not mistaken some had established churches.

    Also, I think the founding generation made more of a distinction between church and religion than you’re allowing here. By Church they meant something like the Catholic Church, a particular institution. By religion they meant something like moral values.

    It would be odd to require that moral values, however derived, not be part of one’s moral/legal/ethical calculation. If we both wanted to see welfare benefits expanded, would it be wrong for me to want expansion on the basis of a religious impulse as opposed to some secular calculation? How would you know which I was following if I didn’t tell you? 

  2. 2
    Fritz says:

    Two cautions. First, you should be careful, when you use “separation” you’re using Thomas Jefferson’s metaphor, not anything that was in the original Constitution. Maybe Jefferson was right, maybe he war wrong, but we tend to get caught up in his phrasing without thinking about eh question afresh.

    Second, and more problematic,if you were to poll 10 Founders regarding the importance of religion to a free people, and the roll of the state as a consequence, I’m fairly sure you would get 10 different answers. There may be no authoritative Founder’s opinion.

  3. 3
    Ron Chusid says:

    Writings at the time made it clear that separation of church and state was what was meant. Initially this applied to the federal government and not the states. The 14th amendment extended such liberties to the states. There is definitely a large gray area in which it is not always clear if values are based upon religion, but people such as Santorum make it quite clear that it is their religious views which they are attempting to impose.

  4. 4
    Hugh Jassol says:

    “what’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it.” This, of course, is exactly what Santorum wants. With his anti-gay and anti-choice views, for him to suggest that he is in favor of liberty or any type of personal freedom is the epitome of hypocrisy. Add to that the “lay your hands on Rick” scene in that Texas church on Wednesday and this guy is flat-out frightening, not to mention batsh*t crazy.

  5. 5
    Fritz says:

    What writings do you have in mind?

  6. 6
    Ron Chusid says:

    See the relevant links in the References section on the right. Also see post linked in this post re Joseph J. Ellis’ writings on the founding fathers creating a secular state. There certainly was not 100% agreement at the time, but the writings of the founding fathers and respectable historians on the subject show a completely different situation than people like Santorum and Gingrich describe with their theocratic revisionist histories.

  7. 7
    Ron Chusid says:

    One quote from American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies At The Founding Of The Republic by Joseph Ellis:

    “…they created the first wholly secular state. Before the American Revolution it was broadly assumed that shared religious convictions were the primary basis for the common values that linked together the people of any political community, indeed the ideological glue that made any sense of community possible. By insisting on the complete separation of church and state, the founders successfully overturned this long-standing presumption.”

    Contrast this with Santorum’s claims of a religious basis for American liberties and claims that Obama’s views would lead to the guillotine.

  8. 8
    Jesus Christ says:

    Rick Santorum Has Become Obsessed With The Guillotine Liberal …: Another important distinction between Obama a… http://t.co/EyNnnc5u

  9. 9
    Anthony McCarthy says:

    Oh, I’m quite certain that there are religious bases for American liberties,  but Santorum would pop a gasket if those were pressed.   And all of those same bases are the ones that underlie liberalism and the liberal, as opposed to the materialist and libertarian left.  You can start with the basis of equality and the basis of liberty in free will.  You can continue in rights and the right to justice.   The historical foundations of those are religious.  You can see that  is true whenever materialism addresses those and inevitably ends up in distorting them out of existence or of denying that they are real.   Conservatives, in each and every case, also deny those have real existence, especially equality.  

  10. 10
    Jodi Jacobson says:

    I blv its time 4 a collection so Rick gts help he needs. RT @Dustyo87: Santorum sggsts left wnts public decapitatns… http://t.co/fdGoBvmP

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