David McElroy

When I got into politics professionally more than 20 years ago, I learned one thing pretty quickly. The worst people in the business to trust were the ones who talked a lot about being Christians and talked about being on a mission from God to change the world by getting elected.

Those were the people most likely to try to cheat me. They were the ones most likely to cut corners and justify their “little” dishonesties with the justification that they were trying to do God’s will. As a Christian, that sickened me. I learned that I could trust most of the rest of the folks in the business. If they had been around for awhile — even if you knew they were liars and thieves — you knew there was an “honor among thieves” that you could mostly count on.

Politicians such as Rick Santorum scare me. It’s partly because of his cavalier willingness to use government force to impose his judgment on other people while spouting rhetoric about liberty. But even more than that, it scares me that he seems to believe he’s on a mission from God.

In a speech four years ago at a Catholic university in Florida, Santorum laid out his view of the world. In his version, the United States is on God’s side. The parts of the world that oppose this country are evil. He seems to have missed the point that when God sees a sinful and fallen world, that includes us, too. Instead, he sees a holy and righteous United States — led by the U.S. government, of course — on God’s side. He said:

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We used to laugh in this country at the crude propaganda the the government of the Soviet Union used to brainwash the people under their rule. In the United States, we don’t call it propaganda. We call it education, but the government has a very conscious mission to brainwash Americans to buy into the system.

A reader who’s going to remain anonymous shared with me this scan from his kindergarten child’s homework, presumably for Presidents’ Day. The students had to read the material and then answer a question. Some of it is just factual, such as the White House being in Washington. Others aren’t so factual, such as, “Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President, was an honest man.” Oh, really? And, “The president works hard every day to protect our country, the USA!” Do they know the difference between opinion and fact?

Do you believe Barack Obama works hard to keep us free? Do you believe that George W. Bush worked hard to keep us free? Or do you believe that each of them had his own political agenda — and that achieving that agenda was far more important than “keeping us free”? (Of course, the question ignores the little matter of what freedom is, too.)

If you grew up in government-run schools and haven’t given a lot of thought to what you were taught, you might look at these statements and find it bewildering that anyone would object to them. But these statements have nothing to do with educating children about how the world works. They have everything to do with getting children to accept and believe national fairy tales.

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Conservatives keep telling us they want “limited government.” When you think about their positions, you might think they just don’t understand limited government. There’s a more serious problem, though. “Limited government” is a mythical beast that can’t exist.

Take this tweet from Rick Santorum last week. It sounds very appealing to those of us who love individual freedom. A libertarian or anarcho-capitalist could have said this. But think about the rest of what Santorum favors and you quickly realize he doesn’t mean what these words say.

If Santorum and other conservatives believe that government can’t force us to pay for things that violate our beliefs, does this mean he’s going to fight to get refunds for those of us who’ve had to pay for wars against our will? Is he going to try to get us refunds for the money that’s been taken from us to give to other countries in the form of handouts and military hardware? Is he going to prevent our money from being used to support various kinds of social and economic welfare programs that we don’t believe in?

“Government” is force, whether it’s open or hidden. By definition, if a government can’t force you to do anything, it’s not a government. It’s just somebody making suggestions. The real question is whether any kind of government has any moral right to initiate force against anyone.

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