Santorum, Catholics, and Obama

During his victory speech in Missouri last night, Rick Santorum addressed Obama's assault on Catholics and religious freedom.

RICK SANTORUM: Look what happens when the government gives you rights. When the government gives you rights, unlike when God gives you rights, the government can take them away. When government gives you rights, the government can tell you how to exercise those rights.

And we saw that just in the last week with a group of people, a small group of people, just Catholics in the United States of America, who were told you'd have a right to health care but you will have the health care that we will tell you you have to give your people, whether it is against the teachings of your church or not.

I never thought, as a first generation American, whose parents and grandparents loved freedom and came here because they didn't want the government telling them what to believe and how to believe it, that we had a First Amendment that actually stood for freedom of conscience, that we'd have a president of the United States who would roll over that and impose his secular values on the people of this country.

And it's worse than that. When one of the Catholic bishops tried to communicate that through Army chaplains, the Obama administration said, 'No you can't do that. No, because your language is seditious.' And they made them change the language of a letter from a bishop to his people.

Ladies and gentlemen, freedom is at stake in this election. We need to be the voice for freedom.

In that founding document, the Declaration of Independence, at the end of that document, those founders signed their names. But the last clause of that document says we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

Ladies and gentlemen, every generation of Americans doesn't create freedom, but they have, in many respects, a harder job. They have to maintain freedom.

Your charge tonight, your charge tonight here in Missouri - because we're not done yet with you here in Missouri, you've got a caucus coming up next month - is to go out and pledge, pledge, no, not your lives. (Maybe your fortune. RickSantorum.com is the website.) But your honor, the honor that you stand on on the backs and the shoulders of your ancestors, the people here in St. Louis, the people here in Missouri, the people across this country who sacrificed for this country, for the freedoms we have.

America's honor, your honor, is at stake. Go out and preserve the greatest country in the history of the world.

That's stirring.

Santorum is an excellent speaker. I think it's because he sincerely believes what he's saying. It's easy to sound sincere when you are.

This election truly is about freedom.

I am horrified that my rights are under assault.

Obama is rolling over the First Amendment. I won't accept this oppression.

Nothing he can do now can change what he's done. Every American knows with certitude that Obama will shred the Constitution, attacking religious liberty.

If Obama voluntarily reverses his unconstitutional mandate attacking Catholics, that won't alter the fact that he's a tyrant.