Santorum: A Massively Expanded Welfare State is ‘The Genuine Conservatism our Founders Envisioned’

"I believe what I've been presenting is the genuine conservatism our Founders envisioned. One that fosters the opportunity for all Americans to live as we are called to live, in selfless families that contribute to the general welfare, the common good."

Despite strident opposition from supporters who maintain that Rick Santorum is a “true conservative” in the mold of – you guessed it – Ronald Reagan, the already huge mountain of evidence that he is, at heart, a ‘big-government conservative’ continues to grow. As Erick noted previously, in 2008 Santorum said:

This whole idea of personal autonomy, well I don’t think most conservatives hold that point of view. Some do. They have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want. Well, that is not how traditional conservatives view the world and I think most conservatives understand that individuals can’t go it alone.

Now, consider these two quotes from Santorum’s 2005 book It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good, both of which are very telling:

What was my vision? I came to the uncomfortable realization that conservatives were not only reluctant to spend government dollars on the poor, they hadn’t even thought much about what might work better. I often describe my conservative colleagues during this time as simply ‘cheap liberals.’ My own economically modest personal background and my faith had taught me to care for those who are less fortunate, but I too had not yet given much thought to the proper role of government in this mission.

I suspect some will dismiss my ideas as just an extended version of ‘compassionate conservatism.’ Some will reject what I have said as a kind of ‘Big Government Conservatism.’ Some will say that what I’ve tried to argue isn’t conservatism at all. But I believe what I’ve been presenting is the genuine conservatism our Founders envisioned. One that fosters the opportunity for all Americans to live as we are called to live, in selfless families that contribute to the general welfare, the common good.

Though the second quote is the “money shot,” as it were, the value of the first is that it sets the stage for Santorum’s exploration of the role of government in the book. As the second quote demonstrates, Santorum has not only concluded that it is the role of government to ensure that “all Americans…contribute to the general welfare, the common good” by acting as the chief arbiter of charitable resources and their distribution.

This is wrong on several levels. While there is absolutely a role for government in creating and maintaining a social safety net (Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, etc.) for the population that cannot take care of itself (whether that should take place at the federal, state, or local level, and in what measure each, is a different discussion), Santorum’s instinct appears to be to use government to expand that safety net to all who may be in need or want of charity. Further, he accuses conservatives in Congress who disagree with a significantly expanded role of government in enforcing redistributive charity and welfare of being “cheap liberals” who haven’t “though [enough] about” the issue of “the poor” to recognize that making decisions about charity is clearly government’s job to do.

Not only does Santorum argue for an expansion of the welfare state as the proper way to ensure that “all Americans…contribute to the general welfare,” and not only does he dismiss criticisms that his view represents “an extended version of compassionate conservatism” or “big government conservatism,” but he actually claims that increasing the size and scope of government, and its role in growing the welfare state, represents “the genuine conservatism our Founders envisioned.”

I’m not criticizing Rick Santorum for being concerned about his fellow man. However, instinctively turning to government to cure all that ails our society and individuals within it – and calling that a “conservative” instinct – shows a lack of understanding about the role of government itself within our society. Further, his belief that only government is able (and benevolent enough) to ensure that “all Americans…contribute to the general welfare” in an acceptable manner reveals a lack of faith in, and understanding of, conservatism and conservative Americans. Were he to step outside of his more-government-is-the-solution bubble, he would learn, for example, that conservative Americans voluntarily contribute to the “common good” by donating to private charities at a very high rate – much higher than liberals who, like Santorum, look to an ever-expanding government to take care of the poor using Americans’ tax dollars.

Santorum certainly isn’t unique within the community of current and former lawmakers in his faith that government has the answers and the moral requirement to make fiscal decisions (including where charitable contributions are to be made, and in what amounts) for the American people as a whole. However, denying that such a belief is “big government conservatism” (if it is conservatism at all) is only surpassed on the absurdity scale by the claim that such a belief truly represents “the genuine conservatism our Founders envisioned.”

C. Edmund Wright:

Well, actually, I care about many conservative issues but the "money" issue is not very high on the list. Putting on a green eye shade and sleeve garters to join the old money changers and coupon clippers in the back room at the bank on Main Street (or BAIN Street?) and reducing the federal government to the significance of the corner store ala RuPaul is not my idea of political romance. Conservatism is a much richer tapestry than that cramped view.

I do not consider and shall not consider for one moment the obscene notion that the conservative movement exists to serve and protect the likes of Bain Capital and the Mittwit practicing vulturedom at the expense of people's jobs, families and the normal American way of life. We have been toting this sort of albatross from the days of the Federalists, the Whigs and throughout the history of the GOP. It drags upon us in every election and for what???? Likewise, the notion and relentless policy of "free trade" which has destroyed the American middle class by sending their jobs to Bangladesh and tells American factory workers that, if they and their families want to survive, they had better learn to become investment bankers, at least until that job is also outsourced to Bangladesh so that even those with banking functions can be paid 74 cents an hour with no benefits, all in service to the mega-stockholding elites.

Correction! WITHOUT LIFE, you have no rights and no property rights. If your mother aborted you, you would not be making foolish arguments on the internet.

I believe that the #1 priority of this nation must be to end the holocaust of American unborn infants. 50+ million sliced, diced and hamburgerized babies is more than enough, thank you very much. We are slaughtering our future. This nation is already paying a price for government subsidized libertinism that has for nearly forty years included murdering the babies that result.

You and I and every person reading our posts were allowed to live. We must extend that same courtesy to the next generation that God is preparing to inherit the Earth. And without carefully calculating how many dollars it will cost J. Random Citizen not to allow another 1.3 million innocents to be slaughtered in 2012.

I am informed by my youngest daughter that Rockford, Illannoy's one and only abortion mill has announced today that it will not re-open after its license had been suspended for about four months. I hope she is right.

Next comes putting a stop to the spreading acceptance of sexual perversion as a somehow legitimate lifestyle. I understand that this sort of thing is going to occur but it need never be accepted socially, nor subsidized by tax provisions or benefit packages and we certainly do not need to tolerate the perverts parading their evils in the face of our formerly civilized society.

Next, I believe in a citizenry armed to the teeth without gummint interference, as envisioned by the Founders in enacting the Second Amendment.

I believe in a military that is armed to the teeth as well with the best technology the government can buy and is used whenever necessary or desirable for advancing and protecting American interests.

I believe in civil liberties and stripping federal and state agencies of their recently accumulating unconstitutional powers to ignore search and seizure protections, arrest people without accountability or appropriate warrant to do so. I believe in freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of worship and freedom of the press, including the electronic press.

I believe in putting courts, all courts and their judges, federal, state and local back in their box and making them go back to applying the laws and the constitution rather than re-inventing them and to refusing to apply laws clearly violative of the constitution. In that regard, we will have to understand that it will be a long road to bringing back the 10th Amendment which has been broadly ignored for centuries now and will, itself, probably need to be amended by the process provided in the constitution itself and not by judges.

If you want to obsess on money, begin by abolishing all of the utterly unnecessary and undesirable government agencies created in the last forty years or so or ever. Environwhacko Protection Administration, school breakfast, lunch and dinner programs for kids whose families already receive food stamps, the food stamp program itself and watch grocery prices slide downward, National Endowment for the Arts (an upper class entitlement program), National Public Television and Radio (again an upper class entitlement program), The Edjamakshun Department (which exists to guarantee incorrigible ignorance and brainwashing of those crumb crunchers incarcerated in gummint skewels), any program of "affirmative action," the Energy Department (which produces no energy), White House speechwriters (for anyone not just Obozo), the First Lady's "staff" (all of it no matter who is First Lady), speechwriters for ANY federal official, the civil rights division of the Justice Department since we are no living in 1948 and the Klan has long been suppressed, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (which ought to be a convenience store in the private sector as someone has observed), the jobs of anyone in the military wasting tax money investigating pissing on dead Taliban, the entire Homeland Security Department (which produces no such thing), the Transportation Safety Administration in case it otherwise survives the demise of DHS, provision of SSI monthly payments simply because the recipient is a drunk, a recreational drug addict or similar excuses, VISTA, the Peace Corps and similar leftist training (at taxpayer expense) operations of national and international do-goodism, the Labor Department, the Commerce Department, the Interior Department, the Agriculture Department, most of the State Department and particularly the diployakkers, federal subsidies of any sort to gummint skewels, foreign aid, each and every unnecessary foreign military base (many are necessary, many are not), consulates and embassies in hostile foreign nations where Americans ought not expect gummint protection while traveling, whether sightseeing or on business, any program designated as "green," all money for propaganda posing as "public service" announcements which also serve the purpose of homogenizing the politics of radio and television and even newspaper outlets dependent on this form of subsidy, each and every unnecessary (and that is most of them) IRS job, ridiculous obsolete agencies like the Mohair quality Board and the Tea Tasting Board; Smoky the Bear; substantial numbers of federal judges by attrition by ignoring and tabling Obozo's attempts to appoint new judges to replace old; the National Labor Relations Board; each and every nickel of the trillions of American dollars provided by the Fed to prop up the Euro or any other anti-American "government" abroad and maybe most that are used to prop up the currencies of allies, and so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Utilize the savings to pay off the IOUs held by the Social Security "Trust Fund" and make it an actual trust fund.

After all of that, cut taxes, first and foremost, on folks of modest means after decades of focus on the terrible privations suffered by the trust fund baby set. If there is anything left, establish a rainy day fund for the federal government. If anything is left after that, then engage in very modest continued coddling of the spoiled and privileged. Then call it a day.

I am not limited to two issues. I did not miss my point. It just differs from yours. And there is a lot more where that came from.

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