I don’t like to be too hard on Diane Sawyer because she’s a hometown girl. Her father was well-respected here in Kentucky and I have fond memories of taking my kids to the park named after her father. Her response to Rick Santorum’s remarks about John F. Kennedy’s speech on “separation of church and state” was disappointing to me, to say the least. In fact, I find it mind-boggling.

DIANE SAWYER: Which brings us, by the way, to Good Morning America anchor and host of This Week George Stephanopoulos who interviewed Rick Santorum yesterday, and I watched every minute of it, George. Couldn’t believe that he was going on the offensive on church and state and the separation of them against John Kennedy.

Her dismay is surprising to me considering that someone of her intelligence and her status as a “journalist” should be able to figure this out pretty easily. Santorum said that the “separation of church and state” is not “absolute” as John F. Kennedy claimed. As he said today in an appearance on Sean Hannity’s radio program, JFK’s job was to assure those afraid of his Catholicism that the Catholic Church, and specifically the Vatican, would not be directing the president what to do, but JFK went way beyond that important point and claimed that no church officials should ever let their will be known in the public square. He specifically mentioned the Pope and the National Council of Churches. [Emphasis mine.]

From JFK’s speech:

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

This “imposition of will” clearly refers even to a religious person letting their views on issues be known, whether “upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials.”  He specifically mentions, as emphasized above by me, that presidents should not be advised at all by either the National Council of Churches or the Pope. Both are mentioned.

The National Council of Churches are “Mainline Protestant”, generally speaking, the very people Rick Santorum called out in a speech at Ave Maria University in 2008 when he was speaking as a Catholic to a Catholic audience at a Catholic institution. His remarks have been widely mischaracterized as if he was referring to all Protestants. Rather he was referring to those who have embraced “liberation theology” which is Marxist in nature. The NCC is so far to the Left, they have even been apologists for the Communist regime of Fidel Castro. In other words, he was calling out the radical Left.

While JFK said that these people should never be “requesting or accepting instructions on public policy,” Barack Obama has done exactly that, and the NCC even offered their stamp of approval to Obamacare and other initiatives of the President.

Washington, November 1, 2010 — Prominent American Christian leaders met today with President Obama to speak for the millions of Americans struggling to find jobs, make their next rent or mortgage payment, and put food on the table.

Leaders with both the National Council of Churches and the global humanitarian agency Church World Service thanked President Obama for passage of historic health reform legislation and robust engagement with the faith community, while also pressing him to take a strong stance on behalf of families facing poverty and hunger.  

The National Council of Churches is part of the World Council of Churches which funds Marxist insurgencies around the world.

The NCC are the very same people JFK said no president should ever listen to, along with the Pope, and yet, the leftist media defends Barack Obama at every turn and rails at Rick Santorum for his remarks that “separation of church and state” is “not absolute” as JFK claimed, and that people of faith have the right to make their views known, even if they are making those arguments from a place of religious faith.

An example is the claim of people of faith that the Ten Commandments should hang in our courthouses, or that kids should be able to pray in school. Another very current, ongoing example is that the government should not be directing churches about how they should spend their resources, something we see in Obama’s HHS mandate.

Surely, if the media is so aghast by Rick Santorum’s criticism of JFK, they should at least be fair about this and go after Obama for being in bed with the National Council of Churches which JFK warned against. But, they won’t do that. No, they won’t, because to the Left, the end justifies the means. Saul Alinsky, whose radicalism Barack Obama found a home in, was in no way opposed to the end justifying the means.

That perennial question, “Does the end justify the means?” is meaningless as it stands; the real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends is, and always has been, “Does this particular end justify this particular means?…The end is what you want, and the means is how you get it…The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work.”(Rules, page 24)

So it is with the leftist media. They will use whatever works in defense of Obama, which means they will employ a double standard which they will hammer away at in order to make you believe lies about the only candidate willing to turn the tide against them. That candidate is Rick Santorum.

Don’t listen to them! Vote for Rick.