Rick Santorum is full of it

[Redmonton_Rebel]

Santorum: By 'Pursuit of Happiness,' The Founders Meant 'To Pursue God's Will' | rightwingwatch.org

Rick Santorum spoke at the iPledge Sunday prayer gathering where he explained to the audience that our Founding Fathers knew that our right came from God and that is why they explicitly protects our rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

But by "happiness," Santorum declared, the Founders didn't mean "enjoyment" but rather doing what God has commanded and serving His will:

As interpreted by wingnuts like Pat Robertson no doubt.

First Amendment to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Everson used the metaphor of a wall of separation between church and state, derived from the correspondence of President Thomas Jefferson. It had been long established in the decisions of the Supreme Court, beginning with Reynolds v. United States from 1879, when the Court reviewed the history of the early Republic in deciding the extent of the liberties of Mormons. Chief Justice Morrison Waite, who consulted the historian George Bancroft, also discussed at some length the Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments by James Madison, who drafted the First Amendment; Madison used the metaphor of a "great barrier."[2]
Justice Hugo Black adopted Jefferson's words in the voice of the Court, and concluded that "government must be neutral among religions and nonreligion: it cannot promote, endorse, or fund religion or religious institutions."[3] The Court has affirmed it often, with majority, but not unanimous, support. Warren Nord, in Does God Make a Difference?, characterized the general tendency of the dissents as a weaker reading of the First Amendment; the dissents tend to be "less concerned about the dangers of establishment and less concerned to protect free exercise rights, particularly of religious minorities."[4]

The American Founding Fathers intended the nation to be religiously neutral to avoid the kind of repression and bloodshed caused by religious fanaticism in Europe. It's also where the ban on cruel and unsual punishment comes from. The separation of church and state was created as much to protect the state as it was religious freedom.

These "patriots" don't even understand the founding principles of their own nation.

The founding fathers really did mean individual happiness and Americans were free to choose what that meant to them, something the religious fanatics in America like anywhere else in the world always seem to have a hard time grasping.

 

[eh1eh]

America is descending into ignorance.

 

[Kreskin]

200 hundred years from now the Pat Robertsons and Rick Santorums of the world will claim that Barack Obama insisted the same. It seems the more distance that evangelicals put between them and dead people the more magically biblical past generations become.

 

[eh1eh]

Or 2000 years from now, lol.

 

[Walter]

The founding fathers really did mean individual happiness and Americans were free to choose what that meant to them, something the religious fanatics in America like anywhere else in the world always seem to have a hard time grasping.

Good. Use your aggressive feelings, RR. Let the hate flow through you.

 

[gopher]

For any right wing delusional who still believes this was founded as a "Christian" nation all they need do is to look up my past links to Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance. I have posted it numerous times.

 

[damngrumpy]

The founding fathers were in a bind like every other generation. They were dealing with the
superstitious and the ignorant. yes they wanted to have the country neutral on religion.
They also wanted to keep their revolutionary base that was ignorant superstitious and religious.
Make if free indivisible under God, right from the lips of politicians.
As for screw the right, the left needs the right just like the right needs the left. If there was no
choice the people would turn on who ever was in power. Secondly there is the right and then
there is the right. Fiscal conservatives provide some serious insight into certain situations.
There is the left and then there is the left. I know some left wing people who are even crazier
than the evangelical right and that is saying something.
The problem is the right wing currently at the helm will drag America over the cliff of progress
into the depths of social and economic despair, and the people will react by going further left
which is as bad as the guys on the right at the moment. Instability is what they call it.
If Romney wins some poor basta*d will have a huge mess twice the size of Obama's mess.
The problem is, America merged ignorance with money in many but not all cases. In terms of
human progress, they progressed very little. When things were good it was not important but
when the sled comes off the rails, reason goes out the window. For good or ill the only hope
they have is Obama, without him their problems will deepen. If you cut people off from the safety
net in a renewed recession, there will be blood in the streets as desperate people do desperate
things and that tear civilizations apart. Ever read about Rome and Greece, and well you get
the picture. Even the Russian Federation couldn't stem the tide once the economy collapsed
they are heading back to dictatorship slowly but surely

 

[EagleSmack]

Looks like the left has really got the FEAR thing down. It's a shame Conservatives aren't as gullible as US Liberals to buy it.

If you cut people off from the safety
net in a renewed recession, there will be blood in the streets as desperate people do desperate
things and that tear civilizations apart.

Yup, take their flat screens, free everything EBT cards, free housing, free cash, free vacations to exotic places and there will be hell to pay.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Looks like the left has really got the FEAR thing down.

Yep, and the right seems to have a lock on the ignorance thing.

 

[darkbeaver]

the founding fathers were simply inclined to use the width of the Atlantic to shield themselves from the ruling houses (bankers). It worked for a bit and then it became a banking paradise. Now it's becoming dust.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Yep, and the right seems to have a lock on the ignorance thing.

Except some of them manage to get past it and turn into people worth talking to. The Political Awakening of a Republican: 'I Had Viewed Whole Swaths of the Country and the World as Second-Class People' | Alternet

 

[gopher]

Except some of them manage to get past it and turn into people worth talking to. The Political Awakening of a Republican: 'I Had Viewed Whole Swaths of the Country and the World as Second-Class People' | Alternet

At last! A Republican sees the Light!

 

[taxslave]

Yep, and the right seems to have a lock on the ignorance thing.

Red & Beaker are right wing?

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Red & Beaker are right wing?

I dunno, but the statement doesn't reverse that way anyway. Not all the ignorant are right wingers, but in my experience all right wingers are ignorant. That didn't used to be true, people like Robert Stanfield and Dalton Camp and Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley were well informed and thoughtful people you could honestly disagree with without being demonized, but the current crop of right wingers seems pretty mediaeval to me. When they're not just dumb.