In a conference call with members of right-wing pastor E.W. Jackson’s STAND America that was posted online today, former senator Rick Santorum disputed the existence of the separation of church and state in the U.S. Constitution, dismissing it as a Communist idea that has no place in America.
A listener on the call told Santorum that “a number of the things that the far left, a.k.a. the Democrat [sic] Party, and the president is pushing for and accomplishing actually accomplishes a number of the tenets of ‘The Communist Manifesto,’ including the amnesty, the elevation of pornography, homosexuality, gay marriage, voter fraud, open borders, mass self-importation of illegal immigrants and things of that nature.” The likely presidential candidate replied that “the words ‘separation of church and state’ is not in the U.S. Constitution, but it was in the constitution of the former Soviet Union. That’s where it very, very comfortably sat, not in ours.”
Of course, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, among others, referred to the separation of church and state when explaining the amendment which they drafted.
Later in the call, Santorum continued to lecture President Obama on race in America, telling Jackson — who once criticized a desegregation plan as “social engineering” — that Obama harmed race relations and, ironically, failed “to do something transformational.”
“When you cavort with Al Sharpton, you certainly aren’t into racial reconciliation, that sort of sums it up right there,” he said. “You surround yourself with folks who are not healers but dividers, this president has been the divider-in-chief on so many fronts. You had hoped, as you mentioned, Bishop [Jackson], you hoped that on this front it was an opportunity for the president to do something transformational, that he could’ve been that figure that could’ve made a real difference in racial reconciliation, could’ve made a real difference just within the black community and he chose to take a different path, he chose to use it as a wedge issue as opposed to an issue that was one that he said he wanted to accomplish when he was going to heal the country. He has done anything but.”
