The joint press-conference of Republican presidential candidates that was staged by CNN and mislabeled a "debate" was filled with the softest of soft-ball questions, but a little bit of interesting information came out of it -- accidentally, I assume. The Republican candidates all had a few words to say about the separation of church and state; unsurprisingly, few of those words were positive or supportive.
The CNN transcript:
PAWLENTY: Well, the protections between the separation of church and state were designed to protect people of faith from government, not government from people of faith. This is a country that in our founding documents says we're a nation that's founded under God, and the privileges and blessings at that we have are from our creator. They're not from our member of Congress. They're not from our county commissioner.
And 39 of the 50 states have in the very early phrases of their constitutions language like Minnesota has in its preamble. It says this, "We the people of Minnesota, grateful to God for our civil and religious liberties," and so the Founding Fathers understood that the blessings that we have as a nation come from our creator and we should stop and say thanks and express gratitude for that. I embrace that.
So if church/state separation is only designed to protect "people of faith" from the government, doesn't that entail that it doesn't protect atheists? This means that Tim Pawlenty doesn't believe that atheists are covered or protected by the First Amendment -- that we atheists have no First Amendment religious liberty rights that can be violated by the government. What other constitutional protections do you suppose he thinks atheists are exempted from? Do we have free speech rights? Do we have a right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures?
Note that Tim Pawlenty essentially rejects the idea that our constitutional rights come from the will of the people. That's what it says in the Constitution, but Pawlenty believes that rights come from his god. This belief is popular with Christian theocrats, but it's a belief that denies that we humans are in control of our own government and future. It's a belief that denies that rights are our own responsibility.
SANTORUM: I'm some who believes that you approach issues using faith and reason. And if your faith is pure and your reason is right, they'll end up in the same place.
I think the key to the success of this country, how we all live together, because we are a very diverse country -- Madison called it the perfect remedy -- which was to allow everybody, people of faith and no faith, to come in and make their claims in the public square, to be heard, have those arguments, and not to say because you're not a person of faith, you need to stay out, because you have strong faith convictions, your opinion is invalid. Just the opposite -- we get along because we know that we -- all of our ideas are allowed in and tolerated. That's what makes America work.
The second path is a pretty respectable position -- it's one I wish more believers adopted, and that's the only nice thing I think I've ever had to say about any position Rick Santorum has ever adopted. I don't agree that "faith and reason" always arrive the same place; on the contrary it's nonsense because if it were true you wouldn't need both. That aside, though, Rick Santorum shows a lot more respect to nonbelievers than Tim Pawlenty because he explicitly says that they are protected as equals alongside believers.
It's a shame that so many of his fellow Republicans deny it.
PAUL: I think faith has something to do with the character of the people that represent us, and law should have a moral fiber to it and our leaders should. We shouldn't expect us to try to change morality. You can't teach people how to be moral.
But the Constitution addresses this by saying -- literally, it says no theocracy. But it doesn't talk about church and state. The most important thing is the First Amendment. Congress shall write no laws -- which means Congress should never prohibit the expression of your Christian faith in a public place.
Ron Paul is well respect among atheists who have a libertarian political philosophy, but as I've written elsewhere Paul's "libertarianism" has a strong theocratic inclination that is incompatible with secularism, church/state separation, or real liberty for anyone who doesn't submit to an ecclesiastical institutions. Paul reinforces that conclusion here with his denial that the Constitution protects the separation of church and state and his straw man complaint that some want the public expression of "Christian faith" to be prohibited. That's a complaint raised solely by the grossly ignorant or the deliberately deceitful.
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