Posted under Alan Keyes & Conservatism & Ron Paul
Rick Santorum is trying to highlight differences between himself and Ron Paul because he knows another fourth place finish will cripple his campaign (especially if Newt Gingrich finishes ahead of him in South Carolina). In so doing he’s gone the Declarationist route according to Dan Larison over at Eunomia:
“(According to Santorum) Ron Paul has a libertarian view of the Constitution. I do not. The Constitution has to be read in the context of another founding document, and that’s the Declaration of Independence. Our country never was a libertarian idea of radical individualism. We have certain values and principles that are embodied in our country. We have God-given rights.
The Constitution is not the “why” of America; it’s the “how” of America. It’s the operator’s manual. It’s the rules we have to play by to ensure something. And what do we ensure? God-given rights. And so to read the Constitution as the end-all, be-all is, in a sense, what happened in France. You see, during the time of our revolution, we had a Declaration of Independence that said, “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, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
So we were founded as a country that had God-given rights that the government had to respect. And with those rights come responsibilities, right? God did not just give us rights. He gave us a moral code by which to exercise them.
Santorum’s position is a fairly common one among certain groups of Christian conservatives. It also confuses several things at once. It isn’t particularly “libertarian” to read the Constitution without referring to the Declaration. The Constitution is the federal republic’s fundamental law, and the Declaration was mainly a list of complaints, so there’s no reason why we should read the one in connection with the other. Constitutionalism as such doesn’t endorse “radical individualism.” Among contemporary constitutionalists, one is more likely to find people sympathetic to communitarian ideas and critical of social atomization.
The Constitution was originally a centralizing power-grab at the expense of the states, and until the Bill of Rights was added to it there was nothing very “libertarian” about it, except that it defined and limited the powers of a government. Incorporating explicit protections for the rights of individual citizens was a concession to critics of the Constitution. These protections were originally included solely to restrain the powers of the new federal government. The legal rights in the amendments to the Constitution are something different from the rights and responsibilities Santorum is describing, but he is muddling them together to tie his concerns about moral conduct to constitutional law.”
Indeed it seems Santorum is trying to claim the mantle for the Alan Keyes-wing of the GOP, which views the Declaration as the moral basis of U.S. government which therefore trumps the Constitution. This is nonsense of course and explains largely why Keyes has become a nobody in U.S. politics and why Santorum is heading this way (although I’m sure Keyes AIP would be more than happy to bestow its presidential ballot line is two or three states to Santorum this fall). To them , the Declaration is the pure example of Americanism (without all that messy, nasty stuff about slavery, which was added by the Northern states by the way) while the Constitution is just the instruction manual. No, it is law. It has the force of law and the authority of law while the Declaration, albeit a very nice document (written in humanistic language unfortunately), is basically rhetoric .
Of course you can’t convince the Keyes/Santorum crowd of this because they’ve staked their whole ideology around the Declaration. All men created equal? Are you sure about that? How does a someone who calls themselves “conservative” reach this point? Only because the Left turned secular that’s why. Keyes-Santorum wing is their opposite number, their flip side, their shadowy reflection. That’s why trying to equate Paul with Jacobins as Santorum does is utterly ridiculous. The true conservatives of France were as Catholic as Santorum but believed in France as an identity, a real place, not as idea. Santorum, on the other hand, does believe in America the Idea and believes, because of this, the Declaration exists above all else. Only a fool would believe a majority American patriots back in the Revolutionary War fought only motivated for the Declaration. They fought because the British Army was invading their land and using foreign mercenaries to kill them and their families. That’s is why they fought and joined the cause, eventually. The British violated blood and soil, not the “idea”.
The sad part is there exists on the Right a real set of Jacobins who have to be fought first and foremost before accounts can be settled with the rest.
BrockTownsend on 18 Jan 2012 at 11:25 pm #
From the 6th in case you haven’t seen it.
Santorum attacks the pursuit of happiness
http://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2012/01/santorum-attacks-pursuit-of-happiness.html
RedPhillips on 19 Jan 2012 at 1:21 pm #
I was going to comment on this but Patroon beat me to it.
I don’t necessarily think Keyes’ Declarationism hurt him electorally or that it will hurt Santorum. Keyes tends to be so esoteric and talks down to people so much that I’m not sure the average Joe who is only passingly interested in politics got what he was talking about. But to the degree that some people got it, I think many of them like it because people like to be told fairytales that reinforce their beliefs. The problem is that it is not intellectually serious and has ramifications that are profoundly unconservative.
RedPhillips on 19 Jan 2012 at 1:22 pm #
Here is the comment I made yesterday on the Larison thread.
Are we really supposed to believe that Santorum rattled that off as presented? That seems to be how the article presents it. At best this had to be seriously cleaned up.
This is Alan Keyes style “Declarationism” (I would recognize it anywhere.) and it wouldn’t surprise me if Santorum picked it up from Keyes. Why this obnoxious theory is often endorsed in Christian conservative (of which I am proudly one) circles is because it gives them a fall back against the States’ Rights argument re. abortion. But for Keyes it is also all tied in to his egalitarian, “proposition nation” Jaffa influenced brand of neoconservatism.
Patroon on 19 Jan 2012 at 8:46 pm #
Sorry to steal your thunder Red but I’m sure we were thinking the same thing when we saw Santorum’s comments.
James on 19 Jan 2012 at 9:25 pm #
Keyes absolutely voiced that Jaffa influenced brand of neoconservatism. His problem as a political candidate was the fact that he came off as a wacky nut. Rick Santorum, however, can sell that brand of Conservatism in a much more appealing manner, and, if you look back at all of the Republican debates during this campaign season, you will notice that on occasion he has taken shots at Paul precisely on these points. Unfortunately, while I love Ron Paul, he has not risen fully to the challenge. As for the other candidates, I am afraid they too have spoken at Jaffaesqe neoconservatives, although not as pointedly as Santorum. In fact, we have to admit that for the vast majority of Americans who consider themselves Conservatives today this “Declarationism” simply IS what they consider Conservatism. It is what is sold to them on Fox, it is what they hear in their churches and within the entire Evangelical community, it is what Conservative radio personalities like Mark Levin have been pushing and any deviation from it sounds to them like “liberalism.” This is a consequence of the Neoconservative takeover of the movement in the 1980′s. So called Conservatives today are so divorced from original Conservative thought, the Conservative movement itself is so corrupted (the Bush years were devestating, really!) that most American Conservatives simply have no clue about what they claim to believe. They cannnot see, and simply refuse to consider that, what people like Keyes and Santorum are talking about is in fact the door to Leftwing radicalism, and not true conservatism. That is where were are as a movement, folks. If there is to be any change, and hope, this strain of “Conservative” thinking has to be argued against, exposed for the fraud that it is, and defeated.
C Bowen on 19 Jan 2012 at 11:53 pm #
I have mentioned before, but there is always a danger in ‘dumbing’ down history to the point where alternative explanations become easy to write.
The basics are that the ‘rebels’ in New Hampshire and Massachusetts started (rather prepared over years looking for a retaliation to a first strike–where have we seen this?) a confrontation that was, via the media of the day, usurped for a nationalist cause by ambitious men.
The now 2012 conservative must acknowledge that the Loyalists had a point–more problematic down South where the Revolution, the founding war, was a real civil war with the constant switching of sides one would expect and empathize with–as a conservative.
Shredding the founding myths is a difficult task, but it relates strongly to the Anglo-Saxon founding of this country and is ultimately, the only real antidote.
Augustinian on 20 Jan 2012 at 1:09 pm #
In Thursday night’s “debate” Santorum made a special effort to bring up the Declaration as a defining document for America. Anyway, unless the South Carolinians do something stupid and Santorum wins the primary or comes in a close second (both doubtful), he’s finished, IMNSHO, and I’ll be greatly pleased.
RonL on 24 Jan 2012 at 7:02 am #
And Santorum is the only candidate left who supports reducing immigration. https://www.numbersusa.com/content/action/rick-santorum.html