Friday, May 6, 2011

Trying to understand Rick Santorum

"America was born great. The President of the United States doesn't understand who we are." It’s a great line. It’s ignorant on so many levels that it makes the head spin. Rick Santorum spoke this out of outrage, so maybe it is understandable. The President had the gall to say that Social Security and Medicare have helped to make America great. How dare he say that we are a great country because we seek to look after all of our citizens? The nerve!

Santorum should be able to recognize nerve. In the wake of the most recent bout of birther ignorance, he manages to set the first Black President in this country’s history apart from the rest of America. It’s an appeal to fear and ignorance, an appeal to racism, and an attempt to discredit a political opponent by calling them un-American. At least he left the possibility open that Obama is part of Western Civilization, something he has questioned before (“The American Left hates Christendom. They hate Western civilization.”)

Asserting that America was born great is also something that has been done before, unfortunately. This idea that we are and have always been the greatest thing since sliced bread is harmful and false. When the United States of America became a reality, slavery was alive and well here. It was recognized in the Constitution. Women couldn’t vote until the twentieth century. Japanese Americans were put in internment camps during World War II. We were involved in the assassination of the President of Congo, the bankrolling of rebels in Nicauragua and Zimbabwe among many other places, and recently sanctioned the torture of suspected terrorists in violation of international law. We rank 33rd in infant mortality behind Slovenia, Brunei, New Caledonia, and Cuba. This is a great country, but we aint perfect and we weren’t born great, whatever that even means. The assertion that we were is either ignorance, an attempt to distract from real issues, or an appeal to fear and ignorance.

Appealing to fear and ignorance is something Rick Santorum does quite well. As a senator he practically staked his career on attacking homosexuals. He has made comments like this throughout his career: The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical. He is an impediment to serious problem solving, a man who has made a career relying on the fact that we the people won’t ever understand who he really is. Hopefully that faith will no longer be rewarded.

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