By Rabbi Ben Kamin
SAN DIEGO –He was often called “Rooster” by his college chums, due to a stubborn cowlick and a kind of “in-your-face” attitude. He has unquestionably suffered grievously in his lifetime, having lost a child even as he and his wife Karen have raised another youngster that struggles with Edwards syndrome (Trisomy 18), a usually fatal genetic disorder. On a personal level, these trials may explain his protracted and sharp religious and social views. On a national level in 2012, they are dangerous, myopic, and a threat to the American way of life.
I’m not concerned about former Senator Rick Santorum’s political career, though it’s worth noting that he lost his final bid to retain his Senate seat in a landslide to pro-choice Bob Casey Jr. I even agree with the supposed theme of his rally-cry against extremist Islam pronounced in a “Gathering Storm” (stolen from Winston Churchill) preachment in 2006 although I don’t believe he actually understands other cultures or that he is philosophical on any level.
His personal crucibles and raging ambition notwithstanding, Rick Santorum represents a kind of mindset that verily negates the very principles of the Founding Fathers of this nation. Not only did the likes of Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams not apply religion or religious values into the transcript of American liberation, they energetically sought to separate sectarianism from the fabric of the new republic. Jefferson, the laureate of American doctrine, clearly considered freedom of religion to imply freedom from religion. The birth of this unique nation was not called the American Revolution because of the arduous and bloody war against the British that dragged on from 1775 to 1781 and was narrowly won. It was called the Revolution because it completely turned our society around. On a spiritual level, the Revolution was about inclusiveness and civic equanimity. The founders were secular and pragmatic; they had little use for priestly zealots.
If John F. Kennedy’s momentous 1960 speech to the Houston Ministerial Conference makes Santorum “throw up,” then he is not eating history. Kennedy had the guts to declare: “I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the candidate for president who happens to be Catholic.” JFK made it known that the papacy would not be managing the decision-making process at the White House.
Any nation vulnerable to, or heaven forbid, manipulated by religious tyranny, becomes yet another Iran or Afghanistan. Beyond this, Santorum, like so many professional conservatives, claims he wants to limit government involvement in our daily lives. Yet on every personal issue, from a woman’s body to which faith is genuine (“I am the Jesus candidate”) to where we send children to school, he jumps in, head over heels. He invokes intelligent design, disdains ideological diversity, and dismisses the epidemic of church pedophilia as a product of “Boston liberalism” and “the liberal culture” in general. He is decidedly against the equal citizenship of gay people and once compared Senate Democrats to “Nazis.”
Rick Santorum seems to lack the discreet, ruminative demeanor that is required of anyone who wishes to the leader of the Free World. On a spiritual level, he is a fanatic in a vest.
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Rabbi Kamin is a freelance writer based in San Diego. He may be cocntacted at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com