Liberal Agenda Quotes
This may be one of the most anti-intellectual, anti educational statements made in the history of American campaigns. Santorum was one of 9 Republicans seeking the 2012 Presidential nomination. He was a favorite of the radical religious right which was an important constituency of the Republican Party at that time. The 9 candidates tried to outdo each other in how they could attack President Barack Obama, then running for a second term. While Obama had a very large percentage of Americans who “liked him” even when they disagreed with his policies, the right wing base of Republicans literally hated the man and would see evil in anything Obama did or said. One of the main positions of the President had been making college affordable for every American young person. Normally, this would be approved by almost all citizens and voters. However, this quotation illustrated the degree of hatred and paranoia. The audience, instead of laughing at the absurdity of Santorum’s accusation, roared its approval. There were not enough Republicans who shared the same degree of Paranoia about Obama, and Santorum was not elected as the nominee. There has always been in America a fundamentalist religious minority who feared college and higher eductation as not adhereing to the literal reading of The Bible, even when the colleges were Christian religious institutions which the early Ivy League colleges were: Brown, Yale, Princeton, Harvard and Columbia. As these schools have become secular, some religious fundamentalists opposed sending their children to them and saw the institutions in a negative light. Santorum’s constituency included those Americans.
From the earliest European universities, the conservative elements of the society has always felt that the universities were hotbeds of liberalism. Generally, the more education anyone obtains, the less he/she is susceptible to doctrine and control by others. However, far from liberal indoctrination, the leading conservative—including those like Santorum who castigate the universities, are themselves the products of the so called “indoctrination”. Generally, conservatives have tended to use the instruments of government and the access to wealth to control and shape the range of the political dialogue. In most societies, the University is a place where there is a much broader range of points of view available. In many nations today, the universities are censored, suspected, controlled by the establishment of the society to avoid rapid change which by definition, conservatives oppose.
