I admit that I am at my wit’s end. For now, even I am embarrassed for Rick Santorum, who in his egotistical, almost maniacal desire to be president, threw his fellow Catholic President John F. Kennedy under the bus, on the Sabbath no less.
Imagine my surprise (OK, so I wasn’t surprised, really) that I would read that Rick “The Prick” Santorum said this about Kennedy’s famous 1960 speech were he pledged to keep his religion out of the White House: “It made me want to throw up.”
Why let it go at that? Rick had to soldier on in his march of idiocy, “This idea that we need to segregate faith is a dangerous idea, and we’re seeing the Obama administration not only segregating faith but imposing the state’s values.”
Uh-huh! Ever the student of history it seems, Rick seems to ignore Thomas Jefferson’s own warnings that there must be a wall between the church and the state and that the state must not get into the business of establishing a “national religion.”
I would love to paraphrase Jefferson, but let’s admit it, the guy is a far better writer than I am, so I will let him do the talking:
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
Since information gets twisted in the wind so these days, let’s take a look at what that vomit-inducing presidential candidate said back in 1960 about him being a Catholic, which is Rick’s religion of choice as well, and my one time religion of birth.
“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
“But let me stress again that these are my views. For contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.
“Whatever issue may come before me as president — on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject — I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.”
Well, Rick, I am about to hurl too, not only out of embarrassment that you and I share the same birth year, but that you can be so out of touch with our world and the importance of not only religious tolerance, but of keeping religion out of government.
While you preach religious tolerance, what you really want to do is make your religion and religious viewpoints the only one that we should tolerate. Just like your intolerance for gays and lesbians who want to have the right to be just as miserable in a relationship as heterosexuals by marrying, you want to foist your archaic, Dark Ages views on the rest of us. I really have to go with Johnny Depp on this one, Whether you are Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, Protestant, Jew, Hindu or Mormon, all doors lead to the same God, so you really shouldn’t think you’re the perfect spokesman for his will.
That same guy who made you vomit went on, by the way, to say some other important things in his speech, things any president should embrace readily.
Just so you don’t feel a need to find that thinking cap you obviously misplaced Rick, I will share two other key parts of his speech.
“I want a chief executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none; who can attend any ceremony, service or dinner his office may appropriately require of him; and whose fulfillment of his presidential oath is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation.”
“But if the time should ever come — and I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible — when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same.”
Rick, I know you desperately want to be the next president, almost at all costs it seems. But you really don’t get there by selling your vial rhetoric of religious intolerance for any other religion or person who doesn’t share your beliefs. Sure, the religious right will lap up your political diatribes like thirsty dogs who just found a bowl of holy water. But you have shown yourself that you are not now and never will be presidential material. Attacking one of the most respected presidents, and certainly one of the smartest, isn’t going to get you any votes outside of your pitifully small circle of high-fiving white guy friends who think we should have a government based on religion – your religion.
I leave you with one other part of that puky speech, Rick. I know you don’t want me to share it. But you’ve left me no choice.
“It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson’s statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.”
Come to think of it Rick, you I do want to vomit now. But only at the thought of you putting our once harmonious country at such great peril by running for an office you could never deserve.
Out on the Treasure Coast, getting my affairs in order in case I need to ex-pat in November,
– Robb