How Can Rick Santorum Be The Next George Washington?

January 5th, 2012 | Posted by Truman in Buttons | Election 2012 | Politics | Republicans - (11 Comments)

Like most Americans, I was shocked at the results of the Iowa caucuses. How, I wondered, could Rick Santorum rise to the top of the Republican presidential contest? Santorum is among the most ideologically extreme leaders in the GOP.

Searching for insight, I found one explanation for Santorum’s success in the words of another Republican radical: Glenn Beck.

Glenn Beck said on his radio show, “I think the next President has got to be Abraham Lincoln, he has got to be somebody who knows exactly who he is, knows exactly where he stands and is willing to, in the end, turn those reins of power back over. The temptation and the pressure is going to be absolutely enormous. If there is one guy out there that is the next George Washington, the only guy that I could think of is Rick Santorum.”

If you take Glenn Beck at his word, and you trust Glenn Beck’s judgment, then you shouldn’t vote for Rick Santorum. After all, Beck says that the next President of the United States has to be Abraham Lincoln. But, Beck then says that Rick Santorum isn’t Abraham Lincoln at all. He’s the next George Washington instead.

Of course, Glenn Beck’s logic simply got garbled, as often happens for him. If we take the larger attempted point that Rick Santorum would make a great next President of the United States, though, we’re still left with a problem.

How can the next President of the United States be the next George Washington? The very essence of George Washington, the reason that he’s significant in American history, is that he wasn’t the next anything. George Washington was the first President of the United States. There can’t be the next first President. That doesn’t make any sense.

anti-santorum campaign button 2012Rick Santorum isn’t like George Washington in any other way, either. He isn’t a great military leader. Santorum wasn’t an effective leader in Congress. George Washington was never voted out of power. Rick Santorum was.

Most importantly, George Washington was regarded as an effective leader because he was absolutely non-partisan. George Washington was the only President in American history who rejected the idea of political parties. Rick Santorum has always been a strident Republican partisan.

What on earth could Glenn Beck have been getting at when he compared Rick Santorum to George Washington? The thing George Washington was most famous for was his leadership in the violent overthrow of one government in order to establish a new kind of government. Is Glenn Beck trying to suggest that Rick Santorum would begin an armed revolution against the democracy of the United States of America?

Whichever way you look at it, this George Washington meme can only expose Rick Santorum’s profound inadequacies. Santorum is no Washington, and he’s not up to the task of commanding the Oval Office.

We’ve created a new collection of anti-Santorum political buttons to aid in the effort to resist Santorum’s growing regressive force. Take a gander.

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If Religion-Free Inauguration Was Good Enough for Lincoln…

January 2nd, 2009 | Posted by jclifford in Barack Obama | Election 2008 | Liberty | Religion | Video - (0 Comments)

There was no religious benediction or invocation prayer at the Inauguration of America’s first President. George Washington’s Oath of Office did not include the words so help me God. Neither did Abraham Lincoln’s Inauguration ceremony include these religious elements. In fact, the use of Christian preachers to give prayers at the Inauguration, and the addition of the phrase so help me God to the Oath of Office didn’t really take hold until the 1930s.

If George Washington and Abraham Lincoln didn’t need to insert Christian religious rituals into their inaugurations, why does Barack Obama feel the need to break with the weight of American tradition, as well as the Constitution, in order to do so?

Sadly, the reason Barack Obama is mixing Church and State with his very first act as President is that he’s seeking to build a political coalition with activists on the Religious Right. That’s a sad statement on the difference in stature between Barack Obama and America’s truly great presidents.

Barack Obama ought to remember that the Oath of Office is a promise to uphold and defend the Constitution, which includes passages outlawing religious tests for public office and banning the government establishment of religion.

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Spirit of 1776 remixed like Obama on the FISA Amendments Act

July 4th, 2008 | Posted by Truman in Barack Obama | Fiction Experiments | Liberty - (0 Comments)

What if the Founding Fathers had decided to take Barack Obama’s approach to liberty, as demonstrated through his support of the FISA Amendments Act? What if they sought to compromise their freedom with King George, as Barack Obama has done with George W. Bush? Here’s how things might have been different:

Patrick Henry:
“Give me liberty, or give me compromise!”

John Paul Jones:
“I have not yet begun to compromise.”

Thomas Paine:
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, compromise. I promise to review the British rule over America after I am elected, and have my Attorney General issue recommendations.”

Benjamin Franklin:
“We must all hang together, per se.”

Benjamin Franklin:
“”They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, will pick up swing voters and get elected.”

Nathan Hale:
“I only regret that I have but one chance to compromise my liberty.”

Thomas Paine:
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, let someone else defend them.”

Israel Putnam:
“Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes! Then shoot at the ground!”

George Washington:
“Remember officers and Soldiers, that you are free men, fighting for the blessings of Liberty – that slavery will be your portion, and that of your posterity, if you do not acquit yourselves like men. Slavery isn’t all bad, though, if you think about it.”

George Washington:
“The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the Tyranny mediated against them. Let us therefore give King George whatever he wants.”

Thomas Jefferson:
“When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, well, what are you going to do about it?”

Jonathan Mayhew:
“No taxation without representation… is an extremist position. We’ll move to the center, and support taxation without representation, but with a court that can observe our money going on the ships back to England.”

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