Craig argues that Rick Santorum should focus on more relevant issues related to the election, rather than college students’ faith.
Attention you godless heathens out there polluting our institutions of higher learning: You just got Santorumed.
Gays had to scoot over a bit to make room for colleges on Tricky Rick’s list of demons to exercise on his witch hunt of a campaign, claiming that “college kills faith.” And who could blame him? All of us college students are keenly aware of how our professors continually shove their atheist agendas down our throats, taking our innocent young minds and molding them into tools of the godless, liberal army.
Now, some might argue that Santorum cited research out of context, considering that the number he used stating 64 percent of college attendees curb their church attending habits, but failed to state that that same study says 74 percent of young people who do not attend college stop going to church. This might suggest that the drop off in church attendance has more to do with age than going to school.
But facts be damned. It’s OK to skew the numbers a bit when you’re fighting for your faith.
And some may argue that Santorum insults the integrity of faithful young people in his statement, suggesting that they aren’t smart enough to learn different perspectives on religion and simply accept those views without radically changing their own. Considering Santorum attended four years at Penn State, one year at the University of Pittsburgh, and four years at Penn State Dickinson School of Law, these people might contest that if Santorum was able to keep his faith in all those years of higher education, why can’t other educated people of faith?
No. Our young Christians need to be completely sheltered from the outside world, protected from hearing any views that may be contrary to their own.
If you really want to stretch it, you could even suggest that maybe Santorum issued the statement with hopes of scoring cheap political points. We all know that his platform during this campaign has been to run as the true conservative, and maybe this is just another attempt at diverting voter’s attention away from the issues that really matter such as the economy and instead play on social fears.
Of course not. Santorum is simply pointing out that we can’t fix the real problems until we deal with the fact that colleges are killing faith, gays are destroying American families, and President Barack Obama favors pornographers over children.
If you weren’t already aware of it, those last three statements are all taken right from Santorum’s mouth. And if you haven’t already caught on, my satirical rant is not reflective of how I feel about Santorum’s social crusade he has conducted against anyone and anything that contradicts his religious beliefs.
Because if he’s such a devout Catholic, shouldn’t he be coming out and denouncing the use of the death penalty, since the sixth commandment clearly states “thou shall not kill?” Shouldn’t he be up in arms to protect universal health care and welfare, in order to protect the least of our brothers? It’s almost as if he picks and chooses the moral issues that will boost his poll numbers, not the ones that truly align with his religious beliefs.
I guess that’s the case, and it’s a pretty smart political strategy when you look at it. It looks like he may have learned a thing or two after nine-plus years of college education.
Daniel Craig can be reached at daniel.craig@temple.edu.
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