Rick Santorum, Communism, and the Separation of Church and State

Rick Santorum. Just when you thought he'd gone away, he's ba-a-a-a-ack! And true to form, he's whipping himself up into an ill-informed frenzy about shit that he knows nothing about.

Yesterday, in a radio appearance that not only telegraphs but also semaphores and bullhorns his intent to run for the presidency again, he ran off the rails about the separation of church and state, and how it's not "American" -- no, it's a communist idea that has no place in the good ole USA.

I'm sure that this will come as a surprise to the ghosts of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who were moldering in their graves long before Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles wrote The Communist Manifesto. (For those of you who were home-schooled, that was the "revolutionary year" of 1848.)

In addition, Santorum says that the words "separation of church and state" are NOT in the US Constitution, but are in the constitution of the former Soviet Union. True enough, that phrase does not exist in the constitution, but the idea, the concept, of separation of church and state is inherent in the document and in Jefferson's and Madison's writings about their "original intent".

A caller to the program which featured Santorum stated that “a number of the things that the far left, a.k.a. the Democrat [sic] Party, and the president is pushing for and accomplishing actually accomplishes a number of the tenets of ‘The Communist Manifesto,’ including the amnesty, the elevation of pornography, homosexuality, gay marriage, voter fraud, open borders, mass self-importation of illegal immigrants and things of that nature.”

I've actually read The Communist Manifesto in the past and -- because memory can be hazy -- I just now refreshed my memory of it by reading through the text again.

Funny thing, but I just couldn't find any "tenets" in that document that deal with the amnesty, the elevation of pornography, the homosexuality, the gay marriage, the voter fraud, the open borders, the mass self-importation of illegal immigrants and "things of that nature". Not even in an indirect way. And pornography? Really?

But maybe it's just me. Rick Santorum must see it in there; otherwise wouldn't he have corrected the caller?

Yeah, silly question.

I'm actually glad to see him running. It will give me and a bunch of other politicky-snarky people a lot of enjoyment, having such a fat and floundering fish in the barrel to shoot at.

And one more thing: Given that the collapse of the Soviet Union signaled the death knell of the Communist worldwide conspiracy -- in fact, consigned it to "the dustbin of history" -- why are we still trying to find communists lurking under every "red" rock?