Santorum's Pre-Frontrunner View, an Insight

It's funny. You go to the trouble to learn about the candidates only to learn the've all been on many sides of the issues. This is just another blog of disclosure in follow-up discussing the problems I am finding with each candidate, and more specifically those problems that seem overlooked by everyone in listening to the candidates speak a set of words that, taken together, express their world view of America rather well. I use the Constitution as intended by Our Founders, pursuant to The Federalist Papers and other writing by them as a backdrop to ascertain their worldview, and moreover, looking for that Conservative and non-Libertarian candidate who comprehends the Constitution. There is a very serious need for a candidate who well appreciates the blood shed for this nation from even before Our Founding (1641 when the first Plantations tried to leave the Crown) to today.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have a predisposition against lawyers since they show a persistence to claim the Constitution and “Bill of Rights” as the ultimate entitlement documents “BAR” none. This is a gross misstatement of these documents, as the entire guarantee of rights of Our founding Documents, starting from the Declaration through The Federalist Papers, is Our engagement, and thereby Our enforcement, by civil process, or, if necessary, musket. WE are the only ones to safeguard our rights and this is why our representatives were given certain, specific, and limited powers by Our Written Constitution. There is little that is more natural in considering the notion of Republican self-government than this, and it is the crux of difference to representative Democracy as well.

Reason for my stated predisposition: Lawyer, Rick Santorum. Keep in mind lawyers learn every nuance of words and wordsmithery in their “craft,” which is why Obama pronouncing “Corps” as in “Marine Corps” as “corpse,” when read off a teleprompter, leaves myriad questions about him. Using this criteria I submit the following is a certain position of Rick Santorums in June of 2011, and yes, that's less than a year ago from the date of this blog post:

Now, RightScoop has made sure to claim “definitive proof that Rick Santorum has no concerns about the Tea Party” through showing he was answering a question about Libertarianism. Here's the problem: Rick Santorum had no need to mention the Tea Party and chose by his own words to include them himself. Basically, it appears the phrase “Libertarian,” triggered Santorum's need to include the Tea Party in his claims. TheRightScoop claims the whole thing had to do with Rand Paul and set forth a transcript of the entire dialog. I made a very minor change to how Santorum's words were put to paper in critique of how they were originally transcribed. Here's how I'd have done it:

24:05 Pennsylvania Press Club Moderator:

Should the Public Accommodations Section of the 1964 Civil Rights Bill be open for revision?

24:11-25:35 Rick Santorum:

No. Look I supported Trey Grayson over Rand Paul and there was a reason for that … I am not a Libertarian and I fight very strongly against Libertarian influence in the Republican party and the conservative movement. I don’t think the Libertarians have it right when it comes to what the Constitution is all about. I don’t think they have it right as to what our history is and we are not a group of people who believe in no government [obvious or we'd never have had a written Constitution]. We are a people that believes that government has a role to play: federal government has a role to play, state government has a role to play and local government has a role to play; and when there are clear wrongs in society, when there are injustices in society, sure you handle it at the local level if you can, but when the local and state level are in cahoots with the injustice, then the federal government has to step in and do something; and I’m just hopeful that is a mistake that will be corrected by Mr. Paul. But as I’ve said before, I have some real concerns about this movement within the Republican Party and the Tea Party Movement to sort of refashion conservatism and I will vocally and publicly oppose it and do my best to correct the record.”-- Emphasis mine, from theRightScoop, http://www.therightscoop.com/

It appears theRightScoop had it right about Rand Paul, but now the question is: Why? The question was about the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, and specifically the Public Accommodations section. Rick Santorum read into the question the need to defend his support of Trey Grayson over Rand Paul, but without stating that reason, his defense relied on explaining the specifics to the need for Public Accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – An act that has been exploited and abused to the point of Obama making an effort to bring “unemployment” within the definition of a Civil Right to be protected by this act (see http://changingwind.org/index/comment.php?comment.news.183). Santorum goes on to denegrate the Libertarian movement's position and I tend to agree with Santorum's view of Libertarians, as Our Written Constitution forming the first Republican form of Government is the settlement between the Independent State Sovereignty Anti-Federalists and those who wished to preserve the union. Both of these factions accepted the ratification by We The People after the matter had been submitted to us for Ratification and we agreed with this design.

However, the following sentence by Santorum is what should make any conservative's ears perk up with question, as it goes against the 10th Amendment, and to that degree, also against the 9th Amendment, claiming the National Government the heavy handed parent to straighten out children States, their local governments, and thereby the Will Of The People at the local level:

...when there are clear wrongs in society, when there are injustices in society, sure you handle it at the local level if you can, but when the local and state level are in cahoots with the injustice, then the federal government has to step in and do something...

Clear wrongs?” “Injustices in society?” “the federal government has to step in and do something?” The ugly head of “social justice” has been spewed by Santorum without the slightest notice. The ugly head of the Supremacy Clause as viewed by a Washington Insider, sadly, Santorum claimed with ease, treating the trespass upon the States for asserting their Sovereign Rights in relation to the Constitution we ratified, as a permissible, even required, act of the National Government over an Act alone, a far less standard than brought about the Civil War.

I hate to say it but this shows this blogger that Santorum is completely ignorant of the self-executing requirement that only acts (including treaties) of the National Government, that are pursuant to Our Written Constitution, have any Supremacy (Article VI, Clause 2, http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html).

This alone qualifies The Civil Rights Act of 1964 in total as an act subject to repeal. The only thing The Civil Rights Act of 1964 accomplished legally is to exacerbate the existing fact of trespass upon the States that was done by the 14th Amendment Civil War, as these are not in compliance with Article IV, Section 4 of Our Written Constitution:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.” -- Emphasis mine, Ibid.

An Abraham Lincoln Conservative” would be the appropriate view of Rick Santorum. He at least mentally suspended the Constitution in making his statements of the Federal Government's role in relation to the States after admitting Conservatives view the roles in a very specific way, which would indicate, a very Constitutional way. Santorum's explanation of the roles, to end with, “...the federal government has to step in and do something...,” is the epitome of the very role that the Obama administration is already playing out in pursuing Joe Arpaio, the State of Arizona, and others for making an effort to enforce America's immigration laws, let alone the recent contraception issue in Texas. Of course I have to assume Lawyer Rick Santorum knows the Constitution, and was hoping candidate Rick Santorum knew it other than in the lawyerly terms described above.

What must be mentioned, as it is ignored by lawyers and ourselves as well (per our Progressive NEA educations), is that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the result of Abraham Lincoln choosing to favor one faction over another, a power play provoked by the stubbornness of the Southern States and what they legally recognized as their People. This brings us to have to answer from Our Founders if what the South did from the inception of this nation through to the Civil Rights Act is a rightful assertion of their rights under the Constitution. Keep in mind our NEA educations never mention how one of the Civil War's actual “achievements” was the diminishing of States' Rights by the National Government dividing them, and resulting in the Civil War being also viewed as heinous D.C. encroachment on the Peoples' unalienable Rights, in no less way than the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

I assume this position here as it respects the first, reserving the proofs for another place. The federal and State governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers, and designed for different purposes. The adversaries of the Constitution seem to have lost sight of the people altogether in their reasonings on this subject; and to have viewed these different establishments, not only as mutual rivals and enemies, but as uncontrolled by any common superior in their efforts to usurp the authorities of each other. These gentlemen must here be reminded of their error. They must be told that the ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone, and that it will not depend merely on the comparative ambition or address of the different governments, whether either, or which of them, will be able to enlarge its sphere of jurisdiction at the expense of the other. Truth, no less than decency, requires that the event in every case should be supposed to depend on the sentiments and sanction of their common constituents. Many considerations, besides those suggested on a former occasion, seem to place it beyond doubt that the first and most natural attachment of the people will be to the governments of their respective States....”

...[S]hould an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions, would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter. But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole. The same combinations, in short, would result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced by the dread of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made in the one case as was made in the other. But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity. In the contest with Great Britain, one part of the empire was employed against the other.” -- Emphasis mine, Credited to James Madison, from Federalist 46, http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fed_46.html.

Thus, though I once said I'd settle for Santorum, this sort of direct statement that demonstrates his lack of knowledge of Our Written Constitution, Our Founders, and respect for our Individual Liberty as expressed through our State Governments and our local affinities, I find I cannot settle for him, that when he is honest he exudes the divisive power grabbing Northern attitude of Supremacy that is abhorrent to a Constitutional Republic, Freedom and Individual Liberty. There likely will be a time when a President Santorum would be a good thing, but, not after the first African-American President, Barack Obama, whose social justice agenda is based on having identical views of the Constitution, the 14th Amendment, and the Civil Rights Act as Rick Santorum displayed here, http://audio.wbez.org/Odyssey/CourtandCivilRights.mp3. We cannot have a “Commander-In-Hesitance” replace our current “Commander-In-Thief.”

Make no mistake, slavery and racism, as separate issues, remain joined at the hip as wrongs against mankind, in every form they carry, including, among these, prostitution, bullying, and intimidation, irrespective of the color, religious affiliation, race, etc., of the perpetrator. But, this doesn't mean the national government must be invoked to assert use of force, to continue, what are essentially Civil War Powers, in a post Civil War era ad infinitum; to only continue the illegal violation of Our Written Constitution until it is lost under such persistent trampling by a population uninformed of its intended design to end slavery by 1808:

The regulation of foreign commerce, having fallen within several views which have been taken of this subject, has been too fully discussed to need additional proofs here of its being properly submitted to the federal administration. It were doubtless to be wished, that the power of prohibiting the importation of slaves had not been postponed until the year 1808, or rather that it had been suffered to have immediate operation. But it is not difficult to account, either for this restriction on the general government, or for the manner in which the whole clause is expressed. It ought to be considered as a great point gained in favor of humanity, that a period of twenty years may terminate forever, within these States, a traffic which has so long and so loudly upbraided the barbarism of modern policy; that within that period, it will receive a considerable discouragement from the federal government, and may be totally abolished, by a concurrence of the few States which continue the unnatural traffic, in the prohibitory example which has been given by so great a majority of the Union. Happy would it be for the unfortunate Africans, if an equal prospect lay before them of being redeemed from the oppressions of their European brethren!” -- Emphasis mine, the bold to emphasize the affection held by Madison in 1788, i.e. “brethren”; James Madison, Federalist 42, http://thomas.loc.gov/home/histdox/fed_42.html, referencing the provisions under Article I, Section 9, http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html.

This above is the story that repudiates all claims of, “...the federal government has to step in and do something...” Our National Government today has given more leniency to Iran than has been given to our own member States of the Union of these united States of America in recognizing the rule of law over the rule of power, and it is high time we “stop voting for Barabbas” and vote in folks who understand, appreciate, and will be guided by us, with an adherence to Our Written Constitution in their role of administering Our Government. This alone will put an end to 90% of the woes, the “issues” we see emanating from the National Government and its encroachment in our lives. The Power of Rule is ours to behold if we can appreciate the Blessing of self-government bestowed upon us by Our Creator, akin to The Blessings of Abraham.


Thank you for reading,


Toddy Littman

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