20.0: Rick Santorum, cultural warrior…

Here we go again.

It appears the race for the Republican presidential nomination has devolved into the standard fare: a colorless, faint image of a blown-dry professional politician as embodied by Governor Romney, against the more-conservative-than-thou standard bearer of the social right, Rick Santorum. The net effect will be the same regardless of who wins the nomination: in the fall we will be treated to another four years of profligate spending and economic brinksmanship courtesy of our current President.

Having belabored the point as to the intractable idiocy of both major parties in my previous posting, I thought I might spend a few moments examining a couple of direct quotes by Mr. Santorum so that I might adequately convey to my Libertarian-leaning friends exactly how ridiculous this man truly is. Recognizing that I am a Libertarian, I nonetheless believe that his thoughts on the true and proper role of government are instructive even to those who do not share my political leanings. At the end of the day, this man appears to believe that government has a right (perhaps even a duty) to directly intervene in the private lives of its citizens.

“I am not a Libertarian. I fight very strongly against Libertarian influence in the Republican Party and in the conservative movement. I don’t think the Libertarians have it right when it comes to what the Constitution’s all about. I don’t think they have it right as to what our history is.”

Rick Santorum: Press Club luncheon in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania ( June,2011)

The Constitution?

Having read the document dozens of times, I feel safe in saying that nowhere in it is a government charged with the moral imperative of socially legislating its constituency into submission to some listless, archaic vision of culture “as it should be.” The elephant in the corner speaks: ‘as it should be’…according to whom? Perhaps it may be more instructive to look at what the document does elucidate:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment I

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment IX

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Amendment X

Simply put, Mr. Santorum does not understand his would-be position as President of the United States. Rather than serve the people as a custodian and defender of our Constitution, it appears that he desires to be some sort of “social activist” sovereign (the diction here was purposeful). What Mr. Santorum fails to recognize is that we already have one of those in office- and it’s not working out all that well; simply swinging the pendulum to the opposite end of the social agenda spectrum is not a viable solution.

“They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do. Government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulation low and that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues, you know, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world, and I think most conservatives understand that individuals can’t go it alone, that there is no such society that I’m aware of where we’ve had radical individualism and that it succeeds as a culture.”

Rick Santorum: Interview with NPR (August, 2005)

His words are not simply indicative of a stunning ignorance of our founding documents; they reveal a profound misunderstanding of the national character. First and foremost, Americans have tended toward individualism, rapidly attacking anything that appears to encroach on our personal liberty. While Mr. Santorum seems to recognize this in some of his fiscal policies, he spectacularly fails to acknowledge this same tendency in the realm of social policy. As a deeply committed defender of the 1^st Amendment, I take no issue with Mr. Santorum holding the personal stances he takes on contraception, same-sex marriage, etc. I will not, however, consent to his personal views dictating my life choices. The United States is strong enough to survive in the world without the imposition of his “beliefs” into codified and binding legislation. This is simply not what our liberty-craving founders intended. Nor is it, I suspect, what the average American desires.

Our national image bespeaks of a freedom-loving populace driven to the top of the international food-chain, as it were, of our own accord: “government” did not get us here through the denial of liberty; rather, in its best form, it has removed obstacles to personal initiative and discretion. Our citizenry, patriotic though they may be, is leery (and rightly so) of additional government intrusion into their lives. Regardless of Mr. Santorum’s baseless assumptions that “a majority” of Americans agree with him, the imposition of majority will on the rights solely retained by an individual is anathema to our identity.

• I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

Thomas Jefferson, to Archibald Stewart (23 December 1791)

• It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Benjamin Rush (21 April 1803)

• Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Isaac H. Tiffany (4 April 1819)

• That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

• He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Thomas Paine, in First Principles of Government (1795)

• The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.

John Locke, in Two Treatises of Government, VI.57 (1689)

Allowing myself to nudge into hyperbole, I can’t help but think that Mr. Santorum finds the wisdom of these giants of political philosophy to be lacking. Are these viewpoints that have shaped our national consciousness to be suborned in favor of “Ricky Knows Best?” I had thought that institutionalized arrogance stemming from the assumption of intellectual superiority was largely confined to the Democratic Party; evidently I was wrong. In Mr. Santorum’s case, however, it is an intellectual intransigence born of inflexible adherence to gross generalizations. When this is evinced in an individual human being, it is regrettable. When it carries the potential to be foisted on an unwitting populace by a charlatan of a public servant, it is beneath contempt.