Santorum and Lieberman America's Crusaders

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/barry02272007.html

By TOM BARRY

Ideology and faith are stirring new calls to arms among influential political factions in the United States. At a time when the U.S. public is questioning the interventionism and unilateralism of the Bush administration, leading social conservatives and neoconservatives insist that the United States needs to militarily confront the purported threats facing the Judeo-Christian world order.

Leading far-right social conservative Rick Santorum, a devout Catholic and former Republican senator from Pennsylvania, is heading up a new initiative, called the "America's Enemies" program at the neoconservative-aligned Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), to awaken the slumbering public to what he sees as a "gathering storm" of adversaries. At the same time, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), a devout Jew who co-chairs the Committee on the Present Danger, is calling for a global political and military alliance to defeat the threat of "Islamic extremism."

Ironically, while the ideology and faith-based politics of "America's enemies" routinely come under attack by U.S. social conservatives and neoconservatives as dangerous manifestations of radicalism, the ideology and faith-based politics of America's would-be defenders are presented as redemptive forces in world affairs.

Perhaps nowhere does this merger of ideology and faith come together so clearly than at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where Santorum is a program director. A strong supporter of the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's war on terror, the EPPC has since the mid-1990s sought to mix religion and politics-or more specifically, to conjoin the Religious Right with a hawkish foreign policy. In its own words, the center aims to "clarify and reinforce the bond between the Judeo-Christian moral tradition" and the public policy debate.

Immediately after his electoral defeat in November 2006, Santorum announced his plans to carry his crusading politics into private life, which resulted in the creation of EPPC's "America's Enemies" program. The program focuses on "identifying, studying, and heightening awareness of the threats posed to America and the West from a growing array of anti-Western forces that are increasingly casting a shadow over our future and violating religious liberty around the world."

[BOSSHOG]

1. I'm a "devout" veteran

and I label rick santorum as an Enemy of America and a non supporter of her troops and her constitution. The man is a menace and ala limbaugh cannot make a living unless he is hating somebody or something. A man who would love to violate the religious liberty of every non christian in America is getting paid to promote hate and violence because of the violations of religious liberty around the world. Sounds like a fucking right wing dumbass "conserVative" "christian" asshole to me. Lets keep an eye on him.

I DID NOT SPEND 24 YEARS IN UNIFORM SUPPORTING AND DEFENDING THE BIBLE.

[GeorgeGist]

2. Note to Joe

First they come for the muslims, then they will come for you.