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Obama's Untethered Values

Rick Santorum

August 28, 2008

Philadelphia Inquirer

Tonight, Barack Obama will accept the Democratic nomination for president. With the benefit of the TelePrompTer and impeccable choreography, the Illinois senator will bare the soul that he and his advisers have prepared for public consumption.

It will no doubt be a first-class production. Entertaining, even moving.

It's instructive, however, to review two other attempts by Obama to show the public his inner self.

The first came in a 2004 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times' religion reporter Cathleen Falsani when Obama ran for the U.S. Senate.

Obama embraced three radical liberationist theologian/preachers as his spiritual mentors - Jeremiah Wright, James Meeks and Michael Pfleger. Old news. But what was new here was the unveiling of Obama's moral compass.

Falsani asked the candidate, "What is sin?" Obama's response: "Being out of alignment with my values."

"My values"! I know many supporters see him as some kind of messiah, but what about God's values?

Obama's second soul-baring goes a long way toward answering this question. It came at the Saddleback Civil Forum hosted by Pastor Rick Warren. Obama was asked at what point a baby gains human rights. His answer: " That question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade."

The most debated moral issue of our time, and he feigns doubt before an audience of evangelical Christians.

But in front of abortion-rights groups, he promises with rock-hard certainty that he will sign into law the Freedom of Choice Act, a bill that goes beyond Roe v. Wade and would eliminate all restrictions on abortion such as parental consent for minors seeking abortions. It would allow the killing of unborn children through all nine months of the pregnancy. For any reason or no reason at all. No questions asked.

But Obama doesn't limit his denial of human rights just to babies in the womb. When he was an Illinois state senator, it was within his pay grade to vote against the Illinois version of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (a bill I authored that passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate). It prohibits the killing of a child after it is born.

Until last week, Obama contended that he never voted against such a bill. He even called those of us who said he did liars. Now, his campaign concedes that Obama voted against - and was the only senator to speak against - legislation to stop infanticide.

Having one's values untethered from external restraints does give one a certain moral flexibility.

"I think America's greatest moral failure in my lifetime," Obama said at Saddleback, "has been that we still don't abide by that basic precept in Matthew that whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me."

It takes a unique talent indeed to correct this "moral failure," not through the sacrifice of doing more for the "least of my brothers," but by narrowing the definition of who is a brother.

Another insight into Obama came when Warren asked about marriage. "I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman," he said. "As a Christian, for me as a Christian, it's also a sacred union."

Sounds good, but wait. Obama opposes a federal constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman. He opposes similar attempts at the state level. He has pledged to support judges that would redefine marriage from the bench.

Obama recently wrote a homosexual-rights group that "equality in relationship, family, and adoption rights is not some abstract principle. . . . That's why we have to repeal laws like the Defense of Marriage Act. That's why we have to extend equal treatment in our family and adoption laws."

The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act passed the Senate, 85-14, and was signed into law by President Clinton. It simply protects states from being forced to recognize same-sex marriages from other states. Repealing it would ultimately impose on every state a redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples.

All of this from the campaign that would elevate the debate, dispose of the "old politics," and bring people together to change Washington?

With Obama's nomination, Democrats will turn certain victory into an embarrassing and potentially huge defeat. As a Republican, I should be smiling, but I'm not. I am concerned for America when the Democratic Party is in a state that such a man could be its standard-bearer, however gifted he is in front of a TelePrompTer.

Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.