By the time most of you read this you will know that Senator Santorum, my favorite Republican presidential candidate, won two and maybe three of today's caucus states. I just listened to his victory speech and he again restated his belief that the government created our right to health care and even claims that President Obama agrees with him! If he is right then President Obama is in fact well to the right of the Senator on this issue (which I suspect is the case).
See my research and reading on Senator's position on human rights in the previous posting. I have probably bored you with the story of the courting I received from Republicans following my departure from the Democratic party in the early 1990s. The first issue relates to abortion and the fact that most republicans that approached me were pro abortion. The second most impressive position came from Republicans that claimed to be 'conservative' and their marketing talking point was that government created rights. Sometimes it was couched in terms a strange 'American Exceptionalism' that says that only Americans have human rights because only the America's government has created them.
I think I was always classified as a liberal because I believed that human rights accrue to all human person because they are human and I adhere to a matching religious world view that human are 'endowed by their creator' with such rights. Thus as in the first issue I found it incompatible with my liberal ideals to join with a party that argues against the idea of inherent or as our founders said, unalienable Rights that preceded any action by government.
Now Senator Santorum did allude to the Declaration and did state that he believes that human rights are from God, a view I share, but then makes a case by attacking the health care reform that we humans in fact have no right to health care. POW! Take that you poor people, here, one more for all the former middle class who who have been denied or lost their health insurance. I suspect that he is only the most articulate of the field which probably holds the same view.
The strangest aspect of the argument he made is that President Obama agrees with him about creating a right which has the effect of placing the President in a more 'conservative' position than Rick himself since he believes that rights are God given, a clearly more liberal view in my experience. In addition I suspect his 'conservatism' bars believing in the the phase, "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed." from the founding document.
If you are getting the idea that I'm really not impressed by the fuzz generated by our politicians this week (read my last several political postings critical of both Republican and Democratic candidates) you got it right.
