“God did not just give us rights,” pontificated His HighHoliness Rick Santorum duringa January 17 campaign stop in Lexington, South Carolina. “He gave us amoral code by which to exercise them. See, that’s what Ron Paul sort of leavesout. He leaves out [that the] rights and responsibilities that we have comefrom God…. And he says, `No, we just have rights, and then that’s it.’ No, wedon’t. America is a moral enterprise.” And morality, Santorum believes, is best instilled through State coercion, including officially sanctioned murder.
Santorum presented that assessment just a few hours after aGOP debate in which Dr.Paul precipitated torrential booing from the pious Republican crowdby insisting that government is bound by the central tenet of the Christian moral code – the Golden Rule.
According to Newt Gingrich – whose General Urko actdrove the assembled Republicans into a simian frenzy of bloodlust – it is “irrational”of Paul to insist that there are limits on the government’s powers ofdiscretionary killing.
Elaborating on that idea in a January18 interview with South Carolina pastor Kevin Boling, Gingrich assertedthat Dr. Paul’s insistence on applying the Golden Rule to foreign policydemonstrated that he had absorbed the “anti-American, self-hating attitude ofthe American Left.”
That accusation of moral lassitude against Dr. Paul – who servedin the military as a young father with two small children – dribbled down themultiple chins of an impenitent Chickenhawk who used his wife as a draftdeferment, then spent the last few years of the Vietnam Era schtupping collegegirls. ("We would have won in 1974 if we could have kept him out of theoffice, screwing [a young volunteer] on the desk,” lamented hiscongressional campaign director.)
In the same interview, Newt -- who is the Hogarthian embodimentof several of the deadly sins – reiterated the indolent smear that most of Paul’score supporters are young people obsessed with recreational drug use (somethingin which Newt indulged before emerging as the self-appointed “Teacher ofCivilization”). Perhaps inspired by Santorum’s example, Newt used thatcaricature as the basis for his own little collectivist homily.
“We have been endowed by our Creator with certain unalienablerights, but that means we have to be citizens,” Newt decreed, claiming that “aheroin addict or a methamphetamine addict [has] lost the ability to be a truecitizen.”
There is nothing in the Declaration of Independence thatdescribes rights as contingent on citizenship. According to that document, individualrights are innate and unalienable; government, on the other hand, enjoys acontingent existence, and can be altered or abolished whenever it imperilsthose rights. In that scheme, the purpose of citizenship is to restrain thegovernment, rather than to submit to its supposedly ennobling influence.
Like most of the people who support him, Dr. Paul has nointerest in drug consumption, recreational or otherwise. He simply understandsthat the federal government has no constitutional authority to wage war on drugconsumption, and that no government anywhere has the moral authority toregulate what individuals choose to ingest. He likewise understands thatprohibition always engenders lethal violence – something vividly illustrated bythe horrendous death toll exacted by Washington’s proxy drug war in Mexico,which has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 2006.
Once again, Dr. Paul’s perspective on this question isinformed by the New Testament: “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth aman; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man…. Do not yeyet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly,and is cast out into the draught? But those things which proceedeth out of themouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heartproceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, thefts, false witness,blasphemies....” (Matthew 15:10-12,16-19)
While Jesus of Nazareth neveruttered a syllable endorsing drug prohibition, He had a great deal to saydenouncing war and related violence. To judge from the priorities and behaviorof the “Christian” Right, one would assume that exactly the opposite were thecase.
Although Rick Santorum’s politics are detestable, he is arobustly decent husband and father. That certainly isn't true of the humanpustule called Newt Gingrich. Although sharply different in terms of theirpersonal deportment, Santorum and Gingrich share a totalitarian worldview: Theyassume that while nobody is virtuous enough to govern himself, they belong to aconsecrated caste that is holy enough to rule over others.
Reaching for a big historical idea and falling badly short,Santorum attempted to depict Dr. Paul as a Jacobin:
“I would argue that [Dr. Paul’s] understanding of theConstitution was similar to the French Revolution…. Their founding watchwordswere the words, `liberty’ and `fraternity.’ Fraternity. Brotherhood. But nofatherhood. No God. It was a completely secular revolution. An anti-clericalrevolution. And the root of it was, whoever’s in power rules.”
Bear in mind, once again, that Santorum offered thatdescription of the candidate who – just hours earlier – had been publiclyridiculed for insisting that God’s law, the Golden Rule, applies to everybody,including those who preside over the criminal enterprise called the State.Furthermore, among the current GOP presidential contenders, Dr. Paul is theonly candidate to extol the Constitution as a law that restrains thegovernment. Santorum, on the other hand, consistently seeks to restrain theindividual and emancipate the State. While he insinuates that Ron Paul is ananarchist (he isn’t -- none save One was perfect, after all -- but he should be), Santorum has giddily celebratedState lawlessness.
During an October visit to SouthCarolina, Santorum endorsedassassination as an instrument of policy when employedby the U.S. government.
“On occasion, scientists workingon the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead," he explained, broadlyintimating that the U.S. government was responsible. "I think that's awonderful thing, candidly….I think we should send a very clear message that ifyou are scientist from Russia or North Korea or from Iran, and you are going towork on a nuclear program to develop a nuclear bomb for Iran, you are notsafe."
Santorum,who is regarded by somemisguided conservatives as a champion of the pro-life cause, warned thosewho doubt that the U.S. government would assassinate civilian scientists shouldtake heed to the way it treats American citizens designated enemies of theState: "When people say, `You can't go out and assassinate people' — well,tell that to al-Awlaki…. We've done it. We've done it to an Americancitizen."
Actually, the Obamaadministration not only assassinated U.S.-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki —who was never charged with a crime of any kind, let alone convicted andsentenced by a court -- but also al-Awlaki's 16-year-oldson, Adbdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was killed by a drone strike in Yemenwhile he was having dinner with a cousin (who also perished).
The Obama administration circulatedthe story that the 16-year-old was actually an adult “suspected” of being a“militant,” thereby redefining the killing as a strategic success. But thefamily was able to document that the youngster — who hadgone to Yemen in a frantic search for his father, known to be on a U.S.assassination list — was born inColorado in 1995.
Behavior of this kind isgenerally associated with the likes of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-Il.Proponents of an aggressive foreign policy often characterize the regimesruling countries such as Iran, Syria, and North Korea as despotisms thatroutinely "murder their own citizens," and thus pose a threat to thepeace of the world. Yet Rick Santorum — who yields to nobody in his zeal towage war against distant and relatively powerless regimes — openly celebratesthe summary execution of U.S. citizens, and describes it as a model for similar"wet work" operations against citizens of other countries.
For Santorum, the definingprinciple of politics is power, not liberty. His chief ideological inspirationis not the imperfectly realized individualist James Madison, or even thecentralizing constitutionalist James Madison, but the arch-authoritarian Josephde Maistre, the 18th Century apostle of absolutism. His role modelin policy terms could well be the murderous “Operative” from the film “Serenity.”
Maistre taught that “allgreatness, all power, all social order depends on the Executioner; he is theterror of human society and tie that holds it together. Take away thisincontrovertible force from the world, and at that very moment order issuperseded by chaos, thrones fall, society disappears."
Santorum visibly shares the fearthat society will disintegrate if the State is deprived of the discretionarypower to kill people. In the film “Serenity,” the Operative acted as Maistre’sExecutioner on behalf of a galaxy-spanning bureaucratic empire called theAlliance. He spent most of the film pursuing River Tam, a brilliant and irrepressiblyindividualistic young girl with psychic abilities who had been abducted by theregime and programmed to be an assassin.
River’s brother, a giftedphysician named Simon, sacrificed his future to free River, and the two of themwound up aboard the Serenity, a merchant ship commanded by a noble butembittered man named Malcolm Reynolds. Years earlier, Malcolm (or Mal) hadfought with the “Browncoats,” a group of separatists who waged a valiant butlosing battle for impendence from the Alliance.
In his pursuit of River and Simon,Alliance forces commanded by the Operative lays waste to an outpost calledHaven, where Mal and his crew had briefly found refuge. Similar Allianceattacks have destroyed every other colony where Mal might have taken cover.
“I’m sorry,” the Operativeexplains to Mal following the massacres. “If your quarry goes to ground, leaveno ground to go to…. [D]id you think none of this was your fault?”
“I don’t murder children,” Malreplies with frigid disgust.
“I do,” the Operativeunblinkingly replies. “If I have to.”
“Why?” Mal demands. “Do you evenknow why they sent you?”
“It’s not my place to ask,” theOperative wearily explains. “I believe in something greater than myself. Abetter world. A world without sin.”
Although he possesses none ofthe Operative’s fearsome martial prowess, Rick Santorum likewise believes it ispossible to build a better world through State murder – not just Iraqi, Afghan,Pakistani, and (soon) Iranian children, but American children like Abdulrahmanal-Awlaki.
It’s little wonder that Santorum – like Newt Gingrich and the deathcult adherents who compose much of the GOP’s rank and file -- finds Ron Paul’sdevotion to the Golden Rule to be morally unsatisfactory.
Thanks, once again...
... to everyone who has donated so generously, and expressed concern on behalf of Korrin during her most recent hospitalization. We really appreciate your help and your kindness.
Dum spiro, pugno!
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