Drudge’s big headline is “SANTORUM’S SATAN WARNING” where he links to his own write up of a 2008 speech where Santorum talked about Satan attacking America:
“Satan has his sights on the United States of America!” Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has declared.
“Satan is attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.”
The former senator from Pennsylvania warned in 2008 how politics and government are falling to Satan.
“This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country – the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age?”
“He attacks all of us and he attacks all of our institutions.”
Santorum made the provocative comments to students at Ave Maria University in Florida.
The White House contender described how Satan is even taking hold of some religions.
“We look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.”
First of all, why in the world does this deserve the headline treatment? The other week when Romney played the class warfare card and said he only wanted to focus on the middle class, I don’t think it even got mentioned at Drudge. But a 2008 speech where a Catholic, a Christian, talks about Satan attacking America and its institutions deserves headline treatment? C’mon. This is an all out attack on Santorum that I would expect from the left. Drudge’s headline might as well be ‘SANTORUM IS A CHRISTIAN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!’.
As to what some see as the only controversial portion, where Santorum states, “We look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.”, I’m not even sure I understand exactly what Santorum means by mainline Protestantism. I know that within the protestant church there is a lot of liberalism that is not based on the Bible. Heck, even the Presbyterian denomination is split into a more conservative PCA vs a more liberal PC-USA. And there are other protestant churches that don’t even hold up the Bible as an absolute. Truth is only relative and the main sentiment is compassion for all.
If that is what Santorum is talking about, I might be inclined to agree with him. Satan absolutely has liberalized our institutions, including the church.
But again, demonizing Santorum for all of this is nothing more than demonizing him for his faith. So maybe Drudge isn’t a Christian, but does he respect those who are?
Also, the left picked this up last week and was touting it first. Just google it. And my guess is Drudge is now getting it from them. Way to go Drudge.
Here’s the clip that Drudge links:
This is not a political war at all. This is not a cultural war. This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country – the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age. There is no one else to go after other than the United States and that has been the case now for almost two hundred years, once America’s preeminence was sown by our great Founding Fathers.
He didn’t have much success in the early days. Our foundation was very strong, in fact, is very strong. But over time, that great, acidic quality of time corrodes even the strongest foundations. And Satan has done so by attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.
He was successful. He attacks all of us and he attacks all of our institutions. The place where he was, in my mind, the most successful and first successful was in academia. He understood pride of smart people. He attacked them at their weakest, that they were, in fact, smarter than everybody else and could come up with something new and different. Pursue new truths, deny the existence of truth, play with it because they’re smart. And so academia, a long time ago, fell.
And you say “what could be the impact of academia falling?” Well, I would have the argument that the other structures that I’m going to talk about here had root of their destruction because of academia. Because what academia does is educate the elites in our society, educates the leaders in our society, particularly at the college level. And they were the first to fall.
And so what we saw this domino effect, once the colleges fell and those who were being education in our institutions, the next was the church. Now you’d say, ‘wait, the Catholic Church’? No. We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christian ethic, sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism, and of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it. So they attacked mainline Protestantism, they attacked the Church, and what better way to go after smart people who also believe they’re pious to use both vanity and pride to also go after the Church.
After that, you start destroying the Church and you start destroying academia, the culture is where their next success was and I need not even go into the state of the popular culture today. Whether its sensuality of vanity of the famous in America, they are peacocks on display and they have taken their poor behavior and made it fashionable. The corruption of culture, the corruption of manners, the corruption of decency is now on display whether it’s the NBA or whether it’s a rock concert or whether it’s on a movie set.
The fourth, and this was harder, now I know you’re going to challenge me on this one, but politics and government was the next to fall. You say, ‘you would think they would be the first to fall, as fallible as we are in politics,’ but people in political life get elected by ordinary folks from lots of places all over the country where the foundations of this country are still strong. So while we may certainly have had examples, the body politic held up fairly well up until the last couple of decades, but it is falling too.
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