Santorum and God's Will: The Religionization of Politics and the Tyranny of Totalitarianism

Abstract

The possibility of an authoritarian and ethically dysfunctional family in the White House in 2013 certainly has caught the attention of a number of liberals and other progressives. After all, what progressive or decent conservative for that matter would support Rick Santorum’s rejection of the separation of church and state or his belief that it is better to live under the rule of a theocratic state than in a democracy? Of course, religious fanatics do not ponder these issues seriously because they get their information straight from God. One example comes from Rick’s wife, Karen, who told conservative talk show host Glenn Beck that it was ‘God’s will’ that her husband is running for president and that she felt that ‘God had big plans for Rick’.[1] And, of course, Santorum has no trouble doubting his wife because he believes that the ultimate confrontation between good and evil is akin to a religious crusade and he is the man to lead it. After all, Santorum, as he has stated publicly many times, is on a moral crusade to snuff out the work of Satan in a variety of areas extending from higher education to health care and women’s reproductive rights. For many moderate conservatives such as Rudy Giuliani, the likes of Santorum, Gingrich, Perry and Bachmann represent the flight of the current Republican Party from the real world. For Giuliani, the party has become anti-modernist. For Ed Rollins, a CNN regular and Republican Party strategist, the party has fatally turned itself into the party of Wall Street and country clubber, leading it to eventual extinction. Liberals such as Maureen Dowd and Robert Reich view the Republican leadership as either ‘barking mad’ or simply loony. As Reich points out, this is a party ‘of birthers, creationists, theocrats, climate-change deniers, nativists, gay-bashers, anti-abortionists, media paranoids, anti-intellectuals, and out of touch country clubbers [who] cannot govern America’.[2] Of course, there is a semblance of truth in all of these positions, especially in the recognition that politicians such as Rick Santorum represent a clear and present danger to promise of a real democracy in the United States. At the same time, terms such as loony, out of touch, anti-modernist, and the politicization of religion, while offering a categorical referent that highlights the extremism and fundamentalism that drives the ideological views of such candidates, run the risk of reinforcing a fatal psychologizing or a dead-end collapse into a narrow definition of religious fanaticism. Something far more serious and dangerous is unfolding in this current presidential election than the politicization of religion, a politics free from doubt, or the emergence of the loony squad. As Zygmunt Bauman points out in a different context: