RE: Santorum: “States Do Not Have the Right to Do Wrong”
According to Mr. Santorum:
“Our country is based on a moral enterprise. Gay marriage is wrong. As Abraham Lincoln said, states do not have the right to do wrong. And so there are folks, here who said states can do this and I won’t get involved in that.”
My question for Mr. Santorum would be: what exact moral enterprise is this country based on? I sure hope that his answer won’t be “whatever belief that judges gay marriage to be wrong”, because then Mr. Santorum would be not only disagreeing with the 10th Amendment, but in fact the spiritual foundation of the entire Constitution, which I happen to think is what our country is based on.
Taking it a step further, I even hope that it is not the moral enterprise supporting Abraham Lincoln’s assertion that states do no have the right to do wrong, because I consider the mindset behind that assertion the same as the one that eventually led Lincoln to, and justified, his militaristically preserving a union which was not otherwise preservable. It essentially accepted the legitimacy of achieving moral goals with physically intrusive force. Such acceptance opened a huge can of worms in later history of the US – if what is considered “right” by whoever happens to have the power at the moment can be justifiably and forcefully imposed upon the rest with that power, what part of any moral enterprise can prevent people like President Santorum from banning gay marriage or anything else he considers “wrong”?
To me, no amount of good or “right” the preservation of the Union did could possibly be good enough for that kind of damage. In this sense, Lincoln’s words were a spiritual coup over the original intention of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.