Paul Elisha – To follow truth wherever it may lead

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Living a long life, while retaining one’s faculties, is both a blessing and a curse.  The curse is to see and hear history of the most disturbing kind unnecessarily repeated.  The blessing is still being able to rebut and rebuff the misstatements of deceivers and zealous would-be despots, in time to deter them.

Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are not the first to turn a misdirected political campaign into a contorted crusade, draping lies and convoluted history on a counterfeit Cross.  Of the three, Santorum is the most dangerous, twisting historic truth, to suit his own political ends.  This commentator can still recall the vitriolic Father Charles Coughlin and a Silver-shirted William Dudley Perry, both spewing baseless vituperative venom about those of other faiths, to incite partisan proselytes.  Fortunately, they were countered and silenced by courageous officials, armed with facts and fortitude.

The stark and simple truth is that this nation’s founders intended and designed a secular government, from the outset, having witnessed the danger posed by couplings with devout despotism.  James Madison warned against zealous contention over religious differences, by ambitious leaders, “… more disposed to oppress each other than to cooperate for the common good.”  Benjamin Franklin observed that “… Any religion dependant on government to maintain its supremacy, is an evil religion.”  Thomas Jefferson said he’d “…sworn eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”   “We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead,” he said, “so long as reason is free to combat it.”  Though Jefferson and John Adams differed on much, they agreed on this.  “The fundamental article of my political creed,” Adams wrote, “is that despotism or unlimited sovereignty is the same in a popular assembly, an oligarchical junto, and a single emperor.”

Santorum, Gingrich and Romney need to be reminded that for all these reasons, this nation’s founders sought to place an unbreachable wall between Church and State, at the very outset of our National Constitution, which guaranteed freedom of religious belief and practice for all — equally.  That meant no precept or prerogative for any single faith.

Of all the current presidential contenders, Rick Santorum, especially, is most lacking in both historic and Constitutional grounding; else he’d be aware that his religious beliefs on procreation cannot be imposed on any citizen of his own or a differing faith.  As to a Catholic as President… here, too, his historic dearth is glaring or he’d be aware, that J.F.K. was the first such candidate and President, to reassure American voters his religious beliefs would neither take nor set precedence over his Constitutional obligations.  J.F.K. was true to his word. An example of which not just Rick Santorum but other Americans, of varying beliefs, leave too many of their fellow citizens woefully unconvinced.

WAMCRadio

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