The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 57 – Rick Santorum

Episode 57: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Dr. Jeff interviews former Senator Rick Santorum at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. Their discussion covers the necessity of integrating Christian faith into every aspect of life, rather than confining it to the private sphere. Santorum urges listeners to overcome fear of cultural opposition and materialism, arguing that Christians should be willing to sacrifice possessions and even jobs for their beliefs.

He strongly advocates for protecting children from what he terms “progressive ideology” in public schools and media. The conversation concludes with a detailed explanation of the Convention of States Project, which Santorum presents as a constitutional mechanism for states to reclaim power from an overreaching and authoritarian federal government.

Episode Transcript

Ryan Dobson (00:00):
Hey everyone. Ryan Dobson here for the Dr. Jeff Show. I’ve got great news for you. Some summer programs are back in person this summer. That’s right. You can send your kid to learn about Christian worldview in Colorado Springs and in Georgia. It’s amazing. It’s transformative. It totally changed my life when I was a teen and my parents sent me. I was so thrilled with that program. I’ve been back every year for 35 years.

If you sign your child up online at summit.org for a summer program, you can get $200 off before March 31st and a special deal for listeners of the Dr. Jeff Show. If you use the code, Dr. Jeff 22, you get another hundred dollars off an in-person conference, sign up at summit.org for $300 off before March 31st by using the code, Dr. Jeff 22. It totally changed my life. I can’t wait to see what it does for your child’s life too. God bless and welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:05):
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show. This show’s available on Apple, Google, Spotify, Edifi, Liftable, wherever you get your podcast. Could you do me a favor and review the show right now? We want more people to see it and tell your friends. We are at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, doing the show where I interview major thought leaders from many fields of influence to show how our worldview changes everything.

My guest today is a former United States representative, United States Senator and presidential candidate, now a NEWSMAX contributor. He’s seeing that the progressive movement has taken over universities, the news media, Hollywood public schools, foundations, organized labor, big business government bureaucracies, and he’s offering insights on how to protect our freedoms and response. Get ready for a no hold barred interview and welcome Rick Santorum to the show. Senator Rick Santorum, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show.

Rick Santorum (01:56):
Well, Dr. Jeff, it’s good to be on your show. Thank you.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:57):
This is kind of an unusual setting for us for our show. You’re the first show that we’ve recorded at the National Religious Broadcasters Conference, so usually we’re in a home studio in Colorado and it’s all very quiet and peaceful. This is a pretty active place. A lot going on right here.

Rick Santorum (02:14):
Well, it’s still in the morning, so it’s not as active as maybe it will be later, but it’s a heck of a big convention.

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:21):
After the attendees get five or six cups of coffee, it’s going to be nuts.

Rick Santorum (02:24):
That’s great.

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:25):
But we get a chance to chat for a little bit, and I’m really grateful. I want to say thank you for all of the work that you’ve done on behalf of the West, on behalf of the United States of America, and you’ve done this as a man of faith. You have said that I’m a Roman Catholic first, I am a husband, I’m a father, I’m an American. I’m a conservative, I’m a friend, a colleague in that order, in that order.

Okay, so your faith informs everything that you do, and I’d love to just have you talk about that a little bit because I think a lot of people say it’s fine to be a person of faith. It’s America, it’s a free country, but don’t bring that into the public sphere. You have a very different approach to that.

Rick Santorum (03:03):
Well, first off, I mean, faith was not always the center of my life, and it wasn’t always the most important thing in my life. It’s one of those things where over time I realized what, as I said, what are the most important things in your life? And obviously the most important thing in life is the thing that’s eternal, right? I mean your soul. And the older I get, the more I realize how quickly life goes and how long eternity is.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:38):
Wow.

Rick Santorum (03:40):
And this is, I think I heard someone say, you have two lives, one life that you live. And until you realize that you only have one life to live, and then you live a different life. And I reached that point, thankfully about 30 years ago in my life, and my life has been completely different as a result.

And so it’s been to me, how do you take, what is the most important thing in your life that your relationship with Jesus Christ, you are following his path that he laid out in his life as to how to lead a good moral decent life. Understand the truth. How do you take things that are at the essence of who you are and say, oh, I’m only going to apply that when it comes to after five o’clock at night. I mean, it’s a ridiculous thing to even contemplate that.

Dr. Jeff Myers (04:40):
Imagine I’m a soldier saying, I’m a soldier during the week for the United States of America, but on the weekends I work for Russia. It’s crazy.

Rick Santorum (04:46):
Or that I’m in battle and I’m sorry it’s five o’clock. We have to sort of stop here and I’ve got to go do my other thing. Your life, as Jesus said, he said, pick up your cross and follow me. Life is a struggle. Life is a battle. It’s a battle that we are all engaged in, and we have to be in that battle and accept that every moment of your life. And I think that’s one of the biggest problems we have in America today, is that the people don’t integrate their faith.

First off, maybe the biggest problem is that people don’t have the proper formation and actually get faith. And that’s maybe hopefully organizations like this will help. And then the second is even those that do, they’re, they’re not all in. They see this as sort of a part-time gig.

Dr. Jeff Myers (05:51):
Rick, a lot of the students we work with at some ministries are, most of them are going off to a college or university. Most of them are going to college or universities where their faith is going to be challenged. We just did a poll and found that one third of Americans say they’re afraid of losing their job because of what they believe. A third one out of every three people.

And I’d love for you to speak to that because you’ve been United States representative, two terms, United States Senator, you were the guy who was in the arena, and there may be 10% of the people in this country for whom you’re public enemy number one, they hate you. They really hate you.

Rick Santorum (06:31):
I hope it’s only 10%. I suspect it’s a lot more.

Dr. Jeff Myers (06:35):
Could be more.

Rick Santorum (06:35):
Yeah. Here’s what I would say.

Dr. Jeff Myers (06:37):
Talk about that though. How do you grapple with that fear and the challenge and knowing that you’re hated?

Rick Santorum (06:44):
Again, Jesus said they will hate you because of me, but remember they hated me first. That the world will hate you. They will criticize you. They will condemn you. That means you’re probably doing the right thing, right? If you’re hanging on to the principles of Jesus Christ and his moral teachings, you are going to be ostracized because the world is broken.

And so I look at it as you said, a third of the people are worried about losing their job. They have to stop being worried and they have to start losing their jobs, because if a third of the people in America say, I’m not going to tolerate this anymore, guess what? They’re not going to fire a third of the people in America.

Dr. Jeff Myers (07:35):
They have more power than they realize.

Rick Santorum (07:38):
We have been convinced that we can go along and everything will still be okay.

Dr. Jeff Myers (07:46):
Yeah.

Rick Santorum (07:47):
That the country’s going to remain free and prosperous. I’m going to be able to go to church and that I can still keep my stuff. And this is what I’m going to talk about tonight. I am giving a speech tonight here at the conference, and I’m going to say the biggest problem that we have in America today is we just have so much.

(08:10):
And the Bible says it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle for the rich man to enter heaven. Why? Because you don’t want, you just get attached to your stuff. And so people don’t want to lose their job. You say, well, it’s my job. Many jobs I’ve lost. I mean, I’ve been canceled by CNN. I’ve been defeated in elections, and I mean, I’ve lost a lot. And every time I lose, if you lose because you stand up for what? God’s principle, you really think God isn’t going to honor that. Wow. Incredible. You think God’s going to say, oh, okay, you tried to support me. You’re out of luck. I’m walking away. You’re on your own. No, of course not.

But people talk about leaps of faith. Is it really a leap of faith that if you stand up for God’s word and you stand up for what’s true and right and beautiful and good, that God’s going to abandon you? No, I see it now. You may not see it right away. There may be a hard path, but remember I go back again. He didn’t say, pick up your six pack and follow me. He said, pick up your cross. This is going to be a struggle, and nobody gets out of here without it. And so if you’re not going to get out of this world without a struggle, then at least stand for the right things while you’re here.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:24):
Yeah. Yeah. I went through a cancer battle this last year, and in the process of that, I felt what you’re saying, you realize, okay, what’s the worst thing you could lose? You could lose your life. But then when you realize I could, I could.

Rick Santorum (09:40):
That’s gain, right? That’s gain. That’s gain.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:44):
All of a sudden, every day becomes a gift and fear begins to melt away.

Rick Santorum (09:49):
Yeah. I mean, again, I understand because the world has convinced you that things of the world are the most important. I mean, we are convinced of that, that we are important, that we’re all special and we’re all the best, and everybody gets a prize and that all these material things are what makes you happy. Well, there is no country in the history of the world that has more material things than we do in America, and we have the highest rates of depression. We have the highest rates of suicide material. Things do not make you happy.

You talk to people who are super wealthy and I know a bunch of them, and they go after more and more money and they’re billionaires. You say, oh, wow, they should have everything. No, they want 2 billion. Why? I mean, is there something you can’t buy already? Is there something you can’t have? No, because we’re convicted that somehow or another, if we keep accumulating stuff that it’s going to make us happy someday. And it’s a lie. It’s one of the great lies the devil tells.

Dr. Jeff Myers (10:51):
Yeah. Rick, how do you communicate this to your children? You’ve got seven children. You’ve written about the family. In fact, that was one of the first things I’ve learned about you is reading your book. It takes a family. How do you communicate what we’re talking about right now to your kids? Because I’m trying to think about how I’m going to communicate this to my kids.

Rick Santorum (11:14):
You’ve heard this saying too, which is, preach the gospel and if you have to talk, and I think my kids have seen, they’ve seen me out there in the arena. I’m very blessed. I have an amazing wife. We homeschooled our kids, so she formed them at a very early age. I mean, I helped, but look, I was the United States Senator, so I wasn’t there a lot, but I was there and certainly I supported that.

So the first thing is you got to get kids early and you got to keep them out of schools. You just got to keep them out of school because at the early age, public schools are indoctrinating with lies at an age when they’re most impressionable. And so if you can get your kids out of the public school system, or you’re either on the school board and you’ve actually read every bit of curriculum that they’re going to have and you’ve met every teacher they’re going to be in front of, and you feel comfortable that they’re not going to be imparting lies and deception in them, then fine, you can keep them in that school.

(12:17):
But it’s not what it was like when you and I were growing up where the world was safe. The world is not safe. Schools are some of the most dangerous places in America right now for children, and it’s not because of coronavirus, it’s because of the virus of the left progressive ideology. And so we realized that early on. I mean, I wrote my book talking about how the left has taken over all the institutions of America except the church and the family, and over the next 20 years, they’re going to attack both. Well, guess what they did?

Dr. Jeff Myers (12:50):
Wow. You’re right.

Rick Santorum (12:51):
With marriage and all this sexual revolution that has gone on steroids now with all these different genders and now transgender, I mean all of this, I laid out why, because God’s given me a few gifts, and one of them is I can read things that are pretty easy to read, and a lot of people just ignore it. There’s a sign up ahead. You’re looking at it and you say, oh, that can’t be real. And I say, well, just like people didn’t believe Vladimir Putin when he said, I’m going to take over Ukraine. Sometimes you have to listen to what the enemy is saying and believe it. And so I’ve identified.

Dr. Jeff Myers (13:30):
The best thing you can do is if somebody says they want to kill you.

Rick Santorum (13:32):
Take them seriously.

Dr. Jeff Myers (13:33):
They probably do.

Rick Santorum (13:34):
They probably do. So the bottom line is we have these institutions that are now governed by the left, and we cannot, I look at it this way, conservatives, people of faith are having many more children than people who don’t have faith. So why aren’t we becoming more conservative? Why? Because we turn those children over to the left to indoctrinate them. Now, is it harder? You could say, well, I’ve got this job or that job and I’d have to give up this stuff. You’re putting stuff over.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:07):
It comes right back to where we started the show.

Rick Santorum (14:08):
Your children don’t need more stuff. They need you. They need truth. They need a solid foundation and stop thinking that somehow they need a nicer house or they need to be in a nicer neighborhood. They need the truth.

(14:25):
And everything you think you’re doing at home is being undermined at school right now or on media. If any of you parents out there have a child under the age of 16 with a smartphone, you’re committing a crime in my mind. You’re committing a sin. You’re opening up a world to your children that they don’t need. You can say, oh, well, in case of emergency, my kid has to have a phone. Do you know how many other kids have phones?

I mean, do you really think your kid needs to have a phone? There aren’t enough phones to call? I mean, it’s not like you have to go to a payphone anymore. Everybody has phones. Your kid doesn’t need a phone because a phone is just a Well, they won’t fit in again, fit into what? Fit into a culture that’s going to destroy them and rob their soul and lead them to hell. No thanks.

Dr. Jeff Myers (15:14):
Yeah. When you start asking those questions and putting it that way, you realize everything comes back to stuff. Stuff. Yeah. Okay. We’ve got a few minutes left in our conversation, and I don’t mean to just turn a sharp corner here, but I’m going to the Convention of States.

Rick Santorum (15:29):
Yeah, that’s not a sharp corner. And the reason it’s not.

Dr. Jeff Myers (15:32):
Okay, tell me, let me first of all explain the Convention of States is a project that you’re involved with. It’s something I’ve been wanting to ask somebody about for a long time. And so here you are. Tell us what it is and why it’s not a sharp turn from the conversation.

Rick Santorum (15:47):
We’ve been having so far. So one of the things that I fought my entire life and believe is one of the core problems that face us in our society and is leading us to where we are, is we have a group of progressives on the left who are trying to change our culture, change our country, and by using the levers of power in this country, but none more than the federal government, and using the federal government to instill an ideology where they demand uniform conformity that everybody has to not just accept, but they have to conform to.

You have to applaud all of these things that you think are sinful and hateful, but you have to applaud it or you get canceled. One of the principal vehicles of that is the federal government, our founders understood that this type of authoritarianism is a natural progression for any country.

(16:38):
Eventually the country becomes more centralized and increasingly centralized into one individual. Every republic ended with an emperor or a king or somebody who is going to enforce their will on the public. And so what they did is they created an article in the Constitution. They wrote it in the Constitution that allows for amending the Constitution. One that we’re all familiar with is allow Congress to do it, and two thirds of the Congress proposes an amendment. It gets sent to the state legislatures and the three quarters of the state legislatures or 38 states has to approve them.

(17:14):
But the other thing they did was to give state legislatures the power to call a convention to propose changes to the Constitution. Why? Because they thought these people who are not at the center of power, who are not in Washington DC who have had their power stripped from them and centralized in Washington, should have the opportunity to pull that power out of Washington to stop this authoritarianism, to not give them the power to say, everybody has to live the way we want to live because you no longer have the authority to do that.

And that’s what the convention of the States is all about. The reason our country has survived as long as it is, is because, well, for the first 150 years, Washington was a non-entity in the country. People don’t, obviously nobody’s alive from back then, but if you look at the size of the federal government, it might’ve even been smaller than the size of several state governments.

Dr. Jeff Myers (18:14):
That’s right.

Rick Santorum (18:15):
Okay. It was tiny, and it was supposed to be that way. The power is supposed to be closer to the people. Why? Well, because we want more. No, the principle reason was that we knew that people are different, and the different ideologies and different movements would come about, and we wanted that freedom for those movements to thrive if they were successful, and if they were bad, they would have their opportunity to rise and then eventually fall. But it didn’t infect the whole country.

So if California wants to go left wing, progressive, crazy, let them, they want a single payer health system. Fine. They want to indoctrinate kids in CRT. Horrible, terrible, but let them do it. But don’t give California through Washington the ability to force it on everybody else. Federal.

Dr. Jeff Myers (19:09):
So Federalism says that Kansas is just as important of a state as California.

Rick Santorum (19:14):
Exactly. And Wyoming is just as important as Oregon. And if you don’t like what’s going on in California, which a lot of people don’t, you leave and you go to a state that shares your values, and you can say, well, how does a country hold together? Because we have certain principles that hold us together. And then we say, we allow diversity as much as the left talks about diversity, they’re against therefore hegemony.

They want everybody to be the servant to their master ideology, which is, and what we’re saying is if you want to live that way in Connecticut, go ahead. You’re going to fail, you’re going to crumble, you’re going to deteriorate, but at least the rest of the country isn’t going to be subject to it. And so, Convention of the States is, I always refer to Article five of the Constitution, founders wrote as sort of the emergency clause of the constitution in case of emergency break glass and do this.

(20:11):
And this is where we are right now. I think when you’re $30 trillion in debt, and when you’re seeing this authoritarianism rise up in Washington, dc particularly in the president of the United States, and I hate to say it in some cases in both parties, then we need to start pulling back some of this authority out of Washington dc. And there’s only one way to do it. Washington is not going to fix itself. It’s not going to limit its own power. It’s impossible.

They gave us this opportunity, and that’s why it’s just, there’s nothing more important I think we could do as a country than empower the state legislatures to have the opportunity to offer amendments, to strip some power in jurisdiction from the federal government. Now you can say, well, you need 38 states to ratify that, and there aren’t 38 conservative states. No. But once you have a convention, it’s a national convention.

(21:04):
And the whole country’s going to be listening in and involved. Actually, schools are going to have to teach about the constitution and what federalism is. We’re going to have a national debate. We’ve never had this debate. It’ll be an unprecedented time in our history. And you know what? It’ll do more than anything else. It’ll shoot an arrow across the bow of Congress and the President and say, you know what? We are the ones actually in charge of this. We can actually do something. And now we might not be able to get something done right now, but now the country’s sort of tuned in that this could happen, and all of a sudden the game may start to change.

Dr. Jeff Myers (21:34):
Yeah. I think some people have worried that it could turn out worse, that if you called the convention that it would turn out that states like California, for example, I live in the state of Colorado, state of Colorado. The governor basically does whatever the governor of California tells him to do. And there are lots of Western states where that’s the case. So I think there are people who are concerned.

Rick Santorum (21:57):
Well, so the convention is called automatically if 34 states passed this resolution, which now 18 states have passed, and soon to be 19, we have another state that has the votes and it’s going to get run. So we’ll be at 19 states. Hopefully by the end of this year we’ll be over 20 and we need 34 to pass it. Now, overwhelmingly, Republicans support this and Democrats do not. Once the convention is called once we get to 34 states and you say, well, that’s so far off.

Well, 31 state legislatures right now are controlled by Republicans, and one state will flip this year, Minnesota will become a Republican state. I believe there’s one or two others like Washington and Nevada and Maine that could flip. And you say, well, that’s those states. Yes. I mean, this is going to be a Republican wave year.

(22:45):
And we have very competitive races in all of those states, and we have good candidates running for statewide office in all of those states. And then in next year, Virginia, one house will, I think, most decidedly flip the other, so we can get to 34 within the next year or two. And what does that mean? That means if all Republicans vote for this, we’re going to have a convention and 34 of those states will be controlled by Republicans and they’ll be appointing the delegates and every state at a convention under the rules of the convention get one vote. Why? Because every state’s a sovereign entity. That’s right.

And so what’s going to happen when 34 of the 50 states have delegates appointed by Republican legislators? What bad thing’s going to happen? And then let’s assume that George Soros poisons everybody and infects them, their minds with some liberal craziness and a convention goes off the rails. I mean, these are the crazy ideas that people come up with. And I said, okay, fine. We have some crazy revolt of Republicans who decided they’re going to become progressives while the nation is watching. Right. Okay, let’s take that crazy idea. It still takes 38 states to ratify.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:57):
Right.

Rick Santorum (23:57):
Okay. And so the argument, the better argument is not that there’ll be a runaway convention. The better argument is maybe not too much will pass or get ratified, but again, doing it is just as important as what happens, because doing it sends the signal that we’re in charge, not them.

Dr. Jeff Myers (24:16):
That’s right. So if somebody wants to find out more about this, do they Google Convention of States?

Rick Santorum (24:20):
Convention of States Project. Yep. Convention of States Project. Yep. It’s there.

Dr. Jeff Myers (24:23):
But the key is this is something we need to really take a look at. This is fascinating.

Rick Santorum (24:28):
It’s now. People don’t realize how much is going on right now. I mean, this is an active debate in almost every state legislature, and thankfully the news media and Washington hasn’t figured it out yet. But they’re going to, and once we get closer to 30, all of a sudden this is going to become a nuclear issue for them because they will be scared to death of this. That’s why I find it remarkable that some conservatives who say they’re conservatives oppose this because of fear. Well, here’s what I say to them.

Thank God you weren’t here in 1787. Thank God you weren’t here because we’d still be singing hail to the Queen because they just didn’t trust the people enough. Oh, we can’t trust these legislators. Okay, fine. Then trust Washington to fix this for us. I mean, it’s insane. I hate to say it, it’s an insane position. I can tell you maybe they haven’t experienced Washington enough. Maybe they have a lot more trust in Washington than I do. I’ve been in Washington for 30 years, and I can tell you without question, do not trust them.

Dr. Jeff Myers (25:29):
Wow.

Rick Santorum (25:30):
They’re not going to fix this. And you can say, well, there’s a risk. Well, yes, there’s always a risk anytime you do something, but here’s what I know. If we don’t do something, I know what’s going to happen and it isn’t good. That’s right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (25:42):
Well, we’ve got to look into this. I’m glad to, and thanks for coming on to talk about it. My pleasure. I’ve been wanting to ask somebody for quite some time. So you’re the guy, Senator. Thanks for coming on the show today.

Rick Santorum (25:53):
My pleasure, Dr. Jeff. Thank you.

Dr. Jeff Myers (25:54):
Thank you to my guest, Rick Santorum, for appearing on the show today. You can follow him on Twitter at Rick Santorum and visit PatriotVoices.com. You might also want to check out the Convention of States project that he mentioned on the show. The scripture says, speak up and judge fairly defend the rights of the poor and needy. We need to consider how we defend the defenseless in our communities. We need to overcome fear so that we can stop the reign of unchecked power. Thanks for watching and listening to the show today, and we’ll see you next week.

Ryan Dobson (26:26):
Hey everyone, thanks for listening to the Dr. Jeff Show. And don’t forget about our discount. If you sign your child up for an in-person conference at summit.org before March 31st, you get $200 off the summer program, and if you use the code, Dr. Jeff 22, you get another hundred dollars off the summer program. Go to summit.org and sign up today. God bless.

Dr. Jeff Myers (26:52):
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