Santorum's lies about Dutch euthanasia are part of a pattern of deceit that extends far beyond Santorum personally. (In Part One I documented the bare-faced lie that Santorum broadcast regarding Dutch euthanasia. Here in Part Two I will document another brazen falsehood disseminated by Santorum). Santorum is merely one member of a group of Obama’s political opponents whose have a global strategy of demonizing President Obama in particular and secular humanism in general. President Obama is almost literally being depicted as the “Great Satan,” the ringleader of a cabal who is destroying the moral fiber of America. Part of that strategy are claims that he is like the Dutch, ready to involuntarily euthanize your grandmother with the fictitious Obama Care death panel. Another element of the 2012 version of the St. Simon blood libel is that Obama is going to “socialize” or “Europeanize” our healthcare system and the American economy in general. Another facet of the slander is the preposterous “Birther” conspiracy claims that have experienced multiple viral replications on the internet. The “Birther” blather darkly hinted that, as a mulatto, Obama cannot be a real American, that he is really a Muslim mole, (As the Economist noted: “BARACK OBAMA is a Christian whom millions of Americans insist on thinking of as a Muslim.”) with a Muslim name who was brain-washed in Indonesian madrassas.
Fox News, right-wing talk radio, and viral email assertions repeated endless permutations of this charge. For example, Fox News featured a segment highlighting a right-wing report that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) attended an Islamic “madrassa” school as a 6-year-old child.
Then Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy breathlessly pointed out that madrassas are “financed by Saudis” and “teach this Wahhabism which pretty much hates us,” and artfully insinuated, “The big question is: was that on the curriculum back then?” Finally, (yet another illustration of the symbiotic relationship between the propagandistic media source and the masses the media is trying to whip into a frenzy), a caller to the show questioned whether Obama’s schooling means that “maybe he doesn’t consider terrorists the enemy.” In other words, wink-wink-nod, maybe Obama is really a Muslim terrorist friend/mole. Far from discouraging such outlandish slander, Fox anchor Brian Kilmeade responded, “Well, we’ll see about that.” In other words, “Yes, I think we all should consider this as a serious possibility. This needs to be investigated!”
Another building block of the blood libel is the slander that he is waging a great war on the Christian religion and secretly favors Muslims. (See Republican presidential candidate and Texas Governor, Rick Perry’s assertion for just one example). The complete disdain for truth telling in all this was foreshadowed in the unanimous Republican participation in the Terri Schiavo charade. (See my coming blog on this topic. Suffice it to say here that even Senator Frist, M.D. was willing to promulgate a bald-faced lie about Terri Schiavo for “religious” purposes and that the entire “religious” right-wing part of the Republican Party unanimously supported these unbelievable falsehoods).
Santorum's lie that I will examine today was picked up by the presidential candidate from an unreliable, biased source that was playing fast and loose with the truth. You will see that it is an integral part of an overall meta-narrative whose purpose is to depict Obama as un-American and un-Christian, as someone engaging in a great war against religion.
There really is no more polite way of saying it. Jesus himself would have labeled persons spreading such slanderous, Pharisaical hypocrisy as snakes, vipers and stinking whited-sepulchers. Sadly rather than following Jesus' example here, many of his purported followers reward such behavior by awarding Santorum primary victories in the Bible Belt.
The nucleus of the lie is quite simple. Santorum manufactured a completely false narrative claiming that Obama was a grave threat to everyone’s religious freedom simply because he had allegedly eliminated the phrase “freedom of religion” and substituted the phrase “freedom of worship.”
"When you have the president of the United States referring to the freedom of religion and you have the secretary of state referring to the freedom of religion, not as the freedom of religion but the freedom of worship, you should get very nervous, very nervous."
Santorum went on to say:
"Because there's a lot of tyrants around the world who will talk about freedom of worship, but they won't talk about freedom of religion. Freedom of worship is what you do within the four walls of the church. Freedom of religion is what you do outside the four walls of the church. What the president is now seeming to mould, in the image of other elitists who think that they know best, is to limit the role of faith in the public square and your role to live that faith out in your public and private lives."
So Santorum is claiming that President Obama and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton are trying to lock away Christians, imprisoning them only “within the four walls of the church,” the only place where they can have “freedom of worship,” while preventing them from “freedom of religion” which is “what you do outside the four walls of the church.” Even on the face of it, this nuanced difference is dubious. Only someone with a preconceived bias would be inclined to uncritically accept such an assertion. Yet, of course, Santorum knows he can count on those who control right-wing partisan media and those who control evangelical media (like Dr. James Dobson as cited in Part One), to fervently, yea, evangelically, repeat and amplify such falsehood ad nauseum. He also knows he can he can count on masses of evangelical parishioners to enthusiastically consume such propaganda and pass it on to all their email contacts, friends, and neighbors.
Paul Rosenberg (below) astutely described a textbook example of such behavior.
“A woman at a Florida town hall said [to Santorum]:
‘I never refer to Obama as “president” because legally he is not the president. He constantly says that our Constitution is passe and he totally ignores it; as you know he does what he darn well pleases. He is an avowed Muslim.’
“Santorum's response to this vomiting of lies? ‘I'm doing my best to try to get him out of the government, right? I am. And you're right about how he uniformly ignores the Constitution.’
Not only does Santorum fail to set the record straight - unlike McCain, he's far too much of a moral coward to do that - he actually supports the woman's lying, he agrees with her, even though he's careful not to specifically echo her most incendiary lies.”
But let's leave to one side a moment the mutually reinforcing symbiosis between the demagogue and the mob and return to Santorum's lie about Obama's words regarding "freedom of religion" vs. "freedom of worship."
First of all, Santorum’s claim was exposed by another blogger 1) as a groundless fabrication contradicted by the facts and 2) as being plagarized uncritically from a February 22, 2010 article in a right-wing Catholic journal entitled, First Things.
That article ominously asserted:
"Recently, both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been caught using the phrase 'freedom of worship' in prominent speeches, rather than the 'freedom of religion' the president called for in Cairo.
"If the swap-out occurred only once or twice, one might appropriately conclude it was merely a rhetorical accident. However, both the president and his secretary of state have now replaced 'freedom of religion' with 'freedom of worship' too many times to seem inadvertent."
Yet, as "Watch Rick Santorum Violate the Ninth Commandment!", demonstrates, the basic underlying factual claim simply isn't true:
Read carefully. One of the principles in seeking truth is that one cannot be intellectually slothful. Persons who are attracted to simple propagand in the form of 30 second sound spots and slanderous ad hominem labels like "socialist" don't have to cogitate. They only have to reflexively regurgitate. You, the truth seeker will have to engage your mind and actually examine the facts--in detail.
Our blogger noted that "when we search the White House website for 'freedom of worship', we only get five hits - four from 2009, and one from 2011. And when we search instead for 'freedom of religion', we get forty-three hits - including twenty from 2011, and three so far this year."
And it goes on to provide a couple of examples, which not only use the phrase that Santorum claims has been abandoned, but use it specifically to address the issue of religious oppression abroad that supposedly so worries him:
"Like this one, from January 6: 'As events in Egypt and elsewhere have illustrated, and as history repeatedly reminds us, freedom of religion, the protection of people of all faiths, and the ability to worship as you choose are critical to a peaceful, inclusive and thriving society.'
"Or this one, from ten days ago: 'Part of our goal with respect to this visit is for Vice President Xi to understand the issues that are important to us, and that includes issues like the situation in Tibet, like freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and so on.'"
The blog post also notes that Obama's predecessor, George W Bush, used the term "freedom of worship" more often than Obama does, 27 times.
Thus, both Santorum and his plagarized source, First Things, have clearly born false witness against their neighbor, Barack Obama. And not only did they lie, but it wasnt' even a particularly convincing lie. So why do eager evangelicals consume such fare as if it were gospel truth?
Paul Rosenberg is absolutely corrrect when he concludes:
“In short, what Santorum has done is to simply pick up right-wing anti-Obama gossip, and mindlessly repeat it, without any concern about whether it's true or not. This is precisely the opposite of what the ninth commandment intends. It is also a very good model of all the other right-wing slanders against Obama that Santorum has repeated. It's just sufficiently specific enough to be unambiguously refuted.
Isn't Santorum a very religious man? Isn't his deep faith a matter of public record? Isn't it constantly on display? Well, er, yes, it is. And that's precisely the problem:
"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
"But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly."
- Matthew 6:5-6
The theme of inward faithfulness and authenticity versus public preening and hypocrisy runs throughout the Bible. This is just one passage that makes the contrast between outward show and inward faithfulness particularly clear. And it is a passage that is absolutely devastating to the religious right as a whole, because it makes a mockery of all their pretended righteousness. Santorum is in no way exceptional. To the contrary, he is an entirely ordinary example of the profound hypocrisy that is the very foundation of the United States' religious right.
As Rosenberg notes:
"Here's a little lesson in theology, Mr Santorum, not to mention common sense: You don't have to lie to bear false witness. Just slap a liar on the back and say, "Good job." Even tacit approval makes the lie your own. "
Exactly the same principle applies to all Santorum's eager listeners who are not only are too zealous to believe a lie, but also too zealous to repeat it and be upset with persons who debunk their St. Simon of Trent style blood libel.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
- Exodus 20:16
Paul Rosenberg is absolutely dead on when he concludes:
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