Salon Magazine: Alex Pareene: Rick Santorum - 'Liberal Penn State Punished Me For Being Conservative'

Source:Free State MD

If Rick Santorum is a Conservative, then Ron Paul is a Socialist and Ron Reagan was a Communist. Oh by the way I’m Santa Clause, right now its 100 degrees in Boston. And its snowing in Houston and before you take any of that seriously, keep in mind right now its March. And you want to know why Rick Santorum is not a Conservative, I’ll tell you anyway.

Conservatism in a political sense, forget about religion right now, but in a political sense conservatism is about conserving individual liberty. Not subtracting individual liberty or conserving a way of life from the 1950s and never modernizing. And its about limited government, especially the Federal Government, spending no more than you take in and always try to spend less than that. And devolving power back to the states and to the people. And a foreign policy that’s very limited and based around only protecting national security interests.

Not about “I and people who ally with me, no best how free adult Americans should live their lives. And if you don’t take our friendly advice on how you should live your own life, even though we have no idea who you are, we’ll get our friendly advice passed through law. And then if you don’t comply on how we believe you should live your individual lives, we’ll arrest you for your own good for living an immoral life. Even if your lifestyle is not hurting anyone else with how you are living”.

On all counts of what conservatism actually is from a political sense, fiscally and socially especially Rick Santorum doesn’t qualify as a Conservative. Not on social issues, fiscal policy or foreign policy. He has a record as a borrow and spender, porker, empowering the Federal Government. In his sixteen years in Congress, on social issues, he has a record of wanting to outlaw things that are currently legal. Limiting our social liberty and has even added to that in his presidential campaign, coming out in favor of a constitutional amendment to empower the Federal Government to define marriage.

Nothing Conservative about that and what happened to States Rights? The distinguished Senator is also in favor of outlawing pornography, gambling and birth control. On Foreign Policy voting for preventive war, hard to see either Barry Goldwater or Ron Reagan voting for the 2nd War in Iraq. So in a political sense Rick Santorum doesn’t qualify as a Conservative and never has. He meets the qualifications of a religious or neoconservative. But those are different from conservatism and on the Far-Right, where Senator Santorum is in American politics.

Rick Santorum or perhaps Ricky or Slick Rick, at least when it comes to trying to convince people who know better of his conservative credentials or the serious lack of them, is a big government Republican. A right-wing statist, the ultimate big brother or big government, or better yet Uncle Sam, no real Conservative’s favorite uncle, knows best how free people should live their own lives. I mean if he’s a Conservative the Queen of England eats Burger King whoppers for breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday. And when Burger King is unavailable, she gets her meals from McDonald’s. And it never rains in Seattle and a lot of nonsense that is simply not believable.