Santorum was answering a voter’s question about his understanding of the Constitution, since Ron Paul is often framed as the Constitution expert candidate, and they often disagree. Santorum started by pulling out his pocket Constitution (which shows I’m not the only one carrying one around at all times, just in case). Then he followed up (without notes or speechwriter) with a serious philosophical answer:
Ron Paul has a libertarian view of the Constitution. I do not. The Constitution has to be read in the context of another founding document, and that’s the Declaration of Independence. Our country never was a libertarian idea of radical individualism. We have certain values and principles that are embodied in our country. We have God-given rights.
The Constitution is not the “why” of America; it’s the “how” of America. It’s the operator’s manual. It’s the rules we have to play by to ensure something. And what do we ensure? God-given rights. And so to read the Constitution as the end-all, be-all is, in a sense, what happened in France. You see, during the time of our revolution, we had a Declaration of Independence that said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, [that they are] endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
So we were founded as a country that had God-given rights that the government had to respect. And with those rights come responsibilities, right? God did not just give us rights. He gave us a moral code by which to exercise them.
See, that’s what Ron Paul sort of leaves out. He leaves out rights and responsibilities that we have from God that this Constitution is to protect. And he says, “No, we just have rights, and then that’s it.” No, we don’t. America is a moral enterprise….
My understanding of our founding documents and the purpose of this country is different. I would argue that [Paul’s] understanding of the Constitution was similar to the French Revolution and the French understanding of the Constitution. The French had 21, I think, constitutions, but their constitutions were initially patterned after the American Constitution. Gave radical freedom, like ours does. But their founding document was not the Declaration of Independence. Their founding watchwords were the words, “liberty” and “fraternity.” Fraternity. Brotherhood. But no fatherhood. No God. It was a completely secular revolution. An anti-clerical revolution. And the root of it was, whoever’s in power rules.
Rick Santorum is right. I don’t mean to say that Ron Paul personally is atheist; I don’t believe he is. (Actually, neither was Woodrow Wilson, the father of American Progressivism—i.e., movement toward Marxist socialism.) The question is, what is the philosophy underlying libertarianism?
The Spherical Model, by giving a three-dimensional view of philosophies, rather than the usual right/left paradigm, allows us to see where libertarianism fits. Instead of right/left, what we want to know about a philosophy is, does it civilize? The north/south orientation is between freedom (north) and tyranny (south). The west/east orientation answers the question of whose interests: individual and family, local community on the west, on over to state, nation, region, world in the east.
Libertarianism is always western oriented (western on the sphere, not related to western on our world map), toward local and individual. A principle of freedom is to limit government so that the most local level possible takes care of a problem. So, very often libertarians are right, because government has overreached. The west/east exception is when the state, nation, or region (our allies, so often beyond our vicinity) is in fact the best level, such as with international defense and trade policies.
The main problem with libertarianism is that it tends to occupy the entire western hemisphere of our model, including north (freedom) and south (tyranny). Santorum is right that following God’s law is essential for maintaining freedom. As soon as the libertarians start claiming we have a “right” to addictive mind-altering drugs, pornography, prostitution, and other vices. Even though they argue that those behaviors only affect the individual, those behaviors are savage; savagery overlays tyranny on the sphere. The only way libertarianism can avoid the chaotic tyranny of anarchy is if the people involved are so personally righteous that they never choose savage behaviors.
But what we saw with the French Revolution was that, when you have a people who take God out of the philosophical movement, you get savagery, not matter how much you talk about the rights of man. If the rights don’t come from God, along with the responsibilities He requires of us in His law, then they are just an invention of man, subject to whoever is in power. And that is a definition of tyranny.
I do believe we’d be better off if the political debate were entirely between Constitutional Republicans and Constitutional Libertarians—a northern west/east debate. The debate we actually have (once the primaries, with Ron Paul involved are over) is between northern freedom lovers and southern tyrannical power seekers.
But one thing we can thank Ron Paul for is shifting the debate, so it isn’t just about the degree of southeast-ness (statist tyranny quadrant). I working on a piece about that shift, coming soon.
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