Enough
of Rick Santorum’s sermons
“Mullah Rick has spoken.
He wants religion returned to “the
public square,” is opposed to contraception, premarital sex and abortion under
any circumstances, wants children educated in what amounts to little red
schoolhouses and called President Obama a “snob” for extolling college or some
other kind of post-high school education. This is not a political platform. It’s a fatwa.”
It’s a College, Not a Cloister
By FRANK BRUNI
Published: February 27, 2012
“What good are ideas formed and fortified in a
protective cocoon, without exposure to other ways of thinking? Or convictions
that haven’t been tested by, and defended against, competing ones?
Not
much, I’d submit. And in this, as in so much else, I apparently part company
with Rick Santorum.”
Cassi Creek:
I recall the
1960 election very well. The fear of a
Catholic in the presidency was quite real and quite un-necessary. JFK understood what all rational Americans
did. The government of the United States
had to be composed of men and women who placed and maintained their nation in a
position superior to their religion. Kennedy
made his awareness and acceptance of that quite clear. As a result, enough people overcame their
fears of the Vatican to allow an election based upon political matters instead
of how who prayed.
That issue
should have been settled for good in 1960.
However, the professional evangelicals, mostly Protestants who
considered Catholics and Mormons to be idolatrous non-Christians, discovered
that they had no problem with a de facto state church as long as it was
bringing in fortunes to the front men. Therefore,
they’ve spent decades building up organizations that are nominally churches but
are little more than political parties clothed in choir robes, ready to rise up
and vote as directed from the pulpit.
The Roman
Catholic Church has always been about controlling government. The current American branch is willing to
lock arms with the evangelicals in order to circumvent the 1st
Amendment. Thus, we find our election
campaigns bringing up questions that were politically and ethically determined
and settled decades ago in order to stir up a voter base that is suddenly more
afraid of a black man in the presidency than it is of the Vatican’s insistence
upon restoring divine right government.
Such
vehemently argued campaign issues should be allowed to burn out in rational
discussions between qualified and logical candidates for office. But this cycle the number of religious
fanatics, candidates who have no clear platform beyond their desire to push
their creation mythos and religious codes of misconduct onto everyone else, is
far higher than usual.
Palin
believes that humans and dinosaurs co-existed.
Perry held official prayer events that failed to produce rain. Bachmann does not accept evolution but
believes that a supreme being told her husband what she should study. Gingrich shift religions as often as he
shifts wives. Romney and Huntsman both
wear magic Mormon underwear, and Santorum is the favored candidate to head up
the next inquisition. Collectively they
all wish to roll back the social, political, and cultural calendar to the 7th
century or earlier.
Santorum now
claims that Kennedy’s pronouncement concerning the place of religion in American
politics makes him vomit. Dan Quayle was
once brutally put down by Lloyd Benson, being told that he was not qualified to
follow on in JFK’s footsteps.
It is too bad
that Benson is here to stand one against one with Santorum. The fight would be quick, bloody, and Santorum
would be sent packing. He’s not only no
Jack Kennedy, he’s not even a Dan Quayle.
No comments:
Post a Comment