Yes, that is right. Santorum’s statements could not be seen as anything but unambiguous arguments in favor of those positions.
On immigration, Santorum said that:
What I’ve said is, from the very beginning, that we have to have a country
that not only do you respect the law when you come here, but respect the law
when you stay here. And people who have come to this country illegally
have broken the law repeatedly. If you are here, unless you are here on a
trust fund, you’ve been working, illegally. You have probably stolen
someone’s social security number, illegally. And so it’s not just one
thing that you’ve done wrong, you’ve done a lot of things wrong. And as a
result of that, I believe that people should not be able to stay here.
This of course begs the question of what a child is supposed to do who was brought to this country without their knowledge or choice, who has followed the law, gone to school, and seeks nothing more than to go to college, raise a family, contribute to society, and have a piece of the American Dream? What would Santorum do with these children who have no ties to any other country, no familiarity with any other culture, and who have not done anything wrong. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to stay?
Given this, why do Rick Santorum and the Republican Party oppose the American DREAM Act?
* * *
Santorum was even better in responding to a question about how faith would affect his decisions if he were President, he gave one of the most eloquent explanations of our republic.. Santorum pointed out that the “foundational documents” of our country are not just the Constitution, but also the Declaration of Independence, which he explained is the “Why” of America, “who we are as a people.”
He then quoted that great declaration:
He then quoted that great declaration:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights.
As Santorum explained: “The Constitution is there to do one thing: protect god given rights. That’s what makes America different than every other country in the world. . . . If . . . rights come to us from the state, everything government gives you, it can take away. The role of the government is to protect rights that cannot be taken away. . . . But understand where those rights come from, who we are as Americans, and the foundational principles by which we have changed the world.”
In all honesty, anybody seeking to understand the American experiment would do well to listen to his answer on this subject. I obviously do not agree with Rick Santorum often—but I fully agree with him on this. The problem is that it begs the question—does Rick Santorum and the Republican Party believe in this?
Just this month, Santorum reiterated the basic concept that has been at the heart of the Republican Party platform for 40 years—that there is no right to privacy. In asking whether a state could ban a person from using birth control, Santorum said: “The state has a right to do that, I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right, the state has the right to pass whatever statues they have. That is the thing I have said about the activism of the supreme court, they are creating right, and they should be left up to the people to decide.”
This does not make much sense. If rights are a gift of god, then how can they be “left up to the people to decide”? Santorum, and the Republican Party in general, has held fast to the concept that, if a right is not enumerated in the Constitution, it does not exist. That has led Republicans to oppose the right to privacy (Griswold v. Connecticut), and the rights that naturally flow from that—the right of women to choose whether to have an abortion (Roe v. Wade); the rights of gay and lesbian men and women to have sex (Lawrence v. Texas).
Santorum did not finish his reading of the Declaration of Independence tonight. He forgot the next clause, where the Declaration said that “among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Declaration of Independence does not end its list of rights—rather it begins the list with some basic ones, and indicates that there are (potentially many) more. Indeed, as Sam Seaborn once pointed out, a founder from Mitt Gingrich's home state of Georgia was opposed to the Bill of Rights because “If we list the set of rights, some fools in the future are going to claim that people are entitled only to those rights enumerated and no longer.”
The framers agreed with Rick Santorum’s defense of human rights. They wrote in the Declaration of Independence “[t]hat to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” It is therefore confounding that a man who can so eloquently explain that the Constitution exists to protect rights—including privacy and choice—can spend his political career opposing these rights.
In all honesty, anybody seeking to understand the American experiment would do well to listen to his answer on this subject. I obviously do not agree with Rick Santorum often—but I fully agree with him on this. The problem is that it begs the question—does Rick Santorum and the Republican Party believe in this?
Just this month, Santorum reiterated the basic concept that has been at the heart of the Republican Party platform for 40 years—that there is no right to privacy. In asking whether a state could ban a person from using birth control, Santorum said: “The state has a right to do that, I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right, the state has the right to pass whatever statues they have. That is the thing I have said about the activism of the supreme court, they are creating right, and they should be left up to the people to decide.”
This does not make much sense. If rights are a gift of god, then how can they be “left up to the people to decide”? Santorum, and the Republican Party in general, has held fast to the concept that, if a right is not enumerated in the Constitution, it does not exist. That has led Republicans to oppose the right to privacy (Griswold v. Connecticut), and the rights that naturally flow from that—the right of women to choose whether to have an abortion (Roe v. Wade); the rights of gay and lesbian men and women to have sex (Lawrence v. Texas).
Santorum did not finish his reading of the Declaration of Independence tonight. He forgot the next clause, where the Declaration said that “among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Declaration of Independence does not end its list of rights—rather it begins the list with some basic ones, and indicates that there are (potentially many) more. Indeed, as Sam Seaborn once pointed out, a founder from Mitt Gingrich's home state of Georgia was opposed to the Bill of Rights because “If we list the set of rights, some fools in the future are going to claim that people are entitled only to those rights enumerated and no longer.”
The framers agreed with Rick Santorum’s defense of human rights. They wrote in the Declaration of Independence “[t]hat to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” It is therefore confounding that a man who can so eloquently explain that the Constitution exists to protect rights—including privacy and choice—can spend his political career opposing these rights.
0 comments:
Post a Comment