Santorum and Freedom

Wall Street Journal ^ | March 8, 2012 | Daniel Henninger

[Eva]

I went to Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Monday to find out. Out of 1,189,530 votes cast the next day in bellwether Ohio, Mr. Santorum lost to Mitt Romney by only 10,288, at last count. He's doing something right, and what one learned in Cuyahoga Falls, an Akron suburb, is that it doesn't have much to do with the famous Santorum controversies over social issues. It's about ObamaCare. And it's about the idea of freedom.

....Rick Santorum should stay in the race, repeating from now till summer the perverse link between the ObamaCare mandate and the American idea of freedom. It looks like the best argument the GOP nominee will have for a win in November.

[Finny]

Fair enough -- those are examples of folks who practice "family values" or not, as the case may be. But you still haven't described what "family values" ARE, and why people who, for whatever reason, don't have big, close families, should be moved by a "family values" candidate (as opposed to a Christian values candidate).

Think honestly about THIS, please: How do "family values" as you apparently see them, even if the government was able, through Santorum, to influence individual Amerians to practice "family values" -- HOW would it lower the price of gas, fix a horrible education system, reverse government health care, or roll back oppressive regulation that stifles the economy?

Santorum has a lot of talk about what's right and what's wrong morally, and whose fault it is, and on his website, he speaks in general terms about solutions and throughout refers to "families," as if those without families are irrelevant. Newt Gingrich -- who, unlike Rick, has turned things around to the right direction before -- has a well-thought, thorough, strategic plan that will make this country more free, prosperous, and moral.

Please do your DUE DILIGENCE and read for yourself, compare, the positions and political philosophy of Santorum and Newt, instead of letting other people inform you what they're saying. It takes some guts for a Santorum supporter to actually READ Newt's website, just as it takes guts for a Gingrich supporter to read Santorum's website. But the differences are stark and glaring, and clearly, Gingrich is just as good a Christian as Santorum and a much, much better political visionary.

Godspeed Newt Gingrich.

[Eva]

The only reason that you are having trouble separating family values from Christian values is that you seem to have bought into the post modernist relativity of Newspeak.

A family and marriage are not relative terms. It is the relativity and the amorphous definition that creates the confusion over values and degrades both the culture and the institutions, themselves.

[BillyBoy]

I met the "new Newt" face-to-face in 2007. He was doing a book signing in his "American solutions" tent and had a national tour at the time talking about how he "rediscovered God" in his life and was now happily married to Callista, blah blah blah. I was on the fence about whether or not I would support him for a Presidential bid. In order to meet him, you had to sign up for his newsletter so I've gotten bombarded with emails about all his "solutions" for $2.50 gas and so on. When I finally got up the front, I looked Newt right in the eye and shook his hand, and attempted to start a conversation with him about the '94 Republican revolution.

I'll be voting for Santorum.

[Finny]

Have you done the same “looking in the eye” with Santorum?

[Finny]

... the post modernist relativity of Newspeak. A family and marriage are not relative terms. It is the relativity and the amorphous definition that creates the confusion over values and degrades both the culture and the institutions, themselves.

Would you kindly translate?

Also, tell me how it would decrease prosperity and freedom-stifling nonsense regulation, lower the price of gas, and improve education?

[BillyBoy]

I hope to when he visits Illinois in a week. I'll let you know if Rick Santorum gives me the kind of cocky “I'm better than you lowly people so stop wasting my time talking and smile for the camera” attitude I got from The Smartest Man In The Room. But since I've never seen any other politician act so arrogant (whether or not they were running for office when I met them), I doubt it. I met 6 national known politicians in Ames, Iowa that day alone, and the former Speaker was easily the most pompous and smarmy of the bunch. For example, I looked Duncan Hunter right in the eye the same day and got to speak to him, and the contrast could not have been clearer. Class act all around.

[Finny]

Families are what make the world go 'round. They're the whole point of the whole business. But every Christian pulls his own weight on making the world a place where that can happen. Government doesn't tell him to do it -- his heart does, because, "testifying" or not, he embraces the Judeo-Christian ethic and does right by God, as set forth in the Constitution, that which is honest and right. For freedom, government's job is to make it possible.

If you want strong families, strong morality, strong righteousness, GET THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF THE WAY and let people be moral. For crying out loud, you can't even improve your own lot in life without being penalized by the government for doing what's right, whether it's having to get a building permit to improve your family's home, and the permit costs as much as the improvement being done, to trying to make a living farming, or fishing, or producing energy, without government crushing you on all sides -- taxes, codes, regulations, fees, requirements, oversight. Try openly rejecting open homosexuality in your schools, your churches, your workplaces, your military, your civic groups. Morally you know you have to do it for your children and for families ... and when you do, the government penalizes you. Morality is stifled. As a landlord, try refusing to rent to an unmarried couple because you don't want to enable that lifestyle. WHAT keeps you from behaving morally?

GOVERNMENT.

We don't need a candidate who can point out moral failings in people. We need a candidate who will slay government, weaken it in how it chokes and punishes, and create the freedom for moral people to prosper and thrive.

Godspeed Newt Gingrich.

[Kickass Conservative]

Funny, I met the Speaker some years back at CPAC doing a Book Signing. There were just a few people left in line and I found him to be quite pleasant. Spoke to him for about ten minutes and I didn't get the feeling he was anything but sincere. A haughty John Kerry type he is not.

Same with Tom Delay. Had quite a few conversations with him.The Hammer was a funny guy despite how the Media portrayed him. Too bad he got screwed over, but heck, he is a Republican after all so he must have deserved it. /s