Well he is right. The rights we have are not unlimited: 1) We have a right to free speech but not to libel; 2) We can bear arms but not a nuclear weapon; 3) we can be secure in our home but can be served a warrant; 4) Goverment cannot take private property for public use UNLESS just compensation is given. Etc...
Either something is an inalienable right or it isn't.
If there is no inalienable right to own a nuclear weapon but there is an inalienable right to own a gun, then the inalienable right to own a gun is absolute.
If there is no inalienable right for a felon to own a gun but there is an inalienable right for others to own a gun, then the inalienable right by non felons to own a gun is absolute.
Santorum claims that there are no absolute rights.
An inalienable right by definition is an absolute right.
Santorum doesn't understand inalienable rights, or at least he didn't back in September.
Your problem is you do not know the word “right”. Had you ever read the Magna Carter (which was written in Latin), you would know that English word “right” comes from the Latin word “jus” from which we also get the English words justice and law. Therefore our inalienable rights cannot extend wider than natural law.
Do you think you have an inalienable right to libel?
So you think you have an inalienable right to own any arm including a nuclear arm?
Do you think the Declaration of Indepence is part of Sacred Scripture?
It is the Declaration of Independence written by men who says we have the rights. But where in Sacred Scripture are these rights found?
I guess that means that Santorum knows that Thomas Jefferson is also a subject to God.
You are saying that an “absolute right” is an absolute right, and defining an “absoute right” as a right that you have stripped down to the point where it is absolute.
So for example you say “if you have a right to own a gun, it’s an absolute right”. But a felon can’t own a gun. “Oh, well then the non-felon has the absolute right”. But you can’t own a gun if you are crazy, or if you have a restraining order on you. “Well yes, but they just didn’t have the absolute right to own a gun that the other people who DO have an absolute right has”.
So I guess you win. If you have an absolute right, it is absolute. So there are “absolute rights”, in the sense that until you reach the circumstance where your right to something ends, it appears to you at least to be “absolute”, by a bizarre definition of absolute that has no value.
Because if I, as a non-felon, non-crazy person, have an “absolute right” to own a gun, and then I do something stupid with the gun, I could lose the “absolute right” to own that gun. And if the right can be taken away from ANYBODY due to a change in circumstance, then that right is not “absolute” by the rational definition of that term.
You should also look up the word “inalienable”. It doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means.