Santorum: (2) Fetishizing the Crusades

Words. Fail.

If you thought that googling "santorum" left your mind dirty, you haven't heard enough Santorum.

Rick Santorum: The Crusades Get A Bad Rap! | TPMDC

If you were worried there wouldn't be a 2012 candidate touting the pro-Crusades platform, then today is your lucky day!

Zazzle t-shirt.

"The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical," former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) told a South Carolina audience yesterday. "And that is what the perception is by the American left who hates Christendom."...

"[American liberals] hate Western civilization at the core. That's the problem." Sanoturm also suggested that American involvement in the Middle East is part of our "core American values."

"What I'm talking about is onward American soldiers," Santorum continued. "What we're talking about are core American values. 'All men are created equal' -- that's a Christian value, but it's an American value."

He'll probably go the way of an uncharismatic Sarah Palin, but I'll still file this under Reasons Why I'm Embarrassed to Be a Christian. It's hard to see how someone can once claim that the Equality principal is a virtuous and Christian one - one from his own legacy - and then deny that legacy to Muslims and non-Westerners (read, White Europeans).

Or to claim that others have no sense of history while showing such a blatant disregard for current or academic or religious history outside what he learned in fourth grade.

To be fair, though, the Crusades are a lot more complex than current trends suggest. But to imply that they were not acts of aggression (at first, they were largely for protection. But then empires and bloodlust, etc, etc...) - much like whatever war there is between Christendom and Islam Santorum seems to be dreamily envisioning here - is pure Westernized, ahistorical, War-on-Brown-People Fetishism.

Which may well be another definition for Santorum.