By Quin Hillyer on 2.27.12 @ 11:45AM
The establishment media half-wits are now having a predictably crazy, breathless collective seizure about Rick Santorum's 2010 speech blasting JFK'sfamous "absolute separation" of church and state speech. Well, I actually wrote about Santorum's speech when he gave it. Read my take on it here, and Kathryn Lopez' equally timely report on it here. Alas, the link I had to the speech no longer works; if ANYbody can find a link either to a transcript or to a video of it, please send it to me at Qhillyer@Gmail.com.
Note that even then, one of the examples Santorum used about government interference against faith was this one: • The ACLU is currently pushing HHS to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions under the emergency care mandate of Obamacare.
He was ahead of the game on this issue.
Here was my key paragraph on the subject:
After JFK's bit of political jujitsu, the moronic cognoscenti taught as established doctrine that faith should be completely segregated from the public square. To which Santorum answers: "Our founders' vision, unlike the French, was to give every belief and every believer and non-believer a place at the table in the public square. Madison referred to this 'equal and complete liberty' as the 'true remedy.'" Repeat: The idea was not to divorce all faiths from the public square, but to welcome all faiths into it.
That said, there was something JFK said that Barack Obama should learn: "I believe in an America...where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all....It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that led 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 apart at a time of great national peril."
To date, the Catholic church along with Baptist and numerous Evangelical or Pentecostal institutions has fought back against the Obamacare abortifacient mandate, but the "mainline" Protestant churches have been silent. Shame on them. Religious liberty is being infringed, and they stand silent. How pathetic.
Rick Santorum is right: The separation of church and state is not meant to be absolute. What IS meant to be absolute is that the state should be completely forbidden from infringing on the free exercise of religion. That's what the Constitution says. That's what it means. It is a right worth fighting for.
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To read another article by Quin Hillyer, click here.
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To read another article about Rick Santorum, click here.
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