Sean Penn: Rick Santorum Is 'Anti-American' - 'Did Not Read the Constitution'

April 23rd, 2012 10:14 PM

Sean Penn on Monday said former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) is "anti-American" and "did not read the Constitution."

Rather hysterically, the Oscar-winning actor also told CNN's Piers Morgan, "I am very pro-American in the sense of a Constitutional America" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

SEAN PENN: What happens is that people become pawns, become sheep of movements of comfort, those things that will keep them out of either complicated thought that they don’t aspire to, or out of a kind of tolerance that they don’t understand. To become a polarizing figure, you’re polarizing for those who are self-polarized, and I think that what we want to see and what I can’t do, what young people can do with each other is where the movements will always be because it’s in that that those things will be given greater breadth, and the lessons and the education will infuse itself into that. It’ll be a human education.

At the same time, we do know that the country has been swinging, you know, in terms of the polarization on the Right to incredible kind of fundamentalist situation where you have people like – we talked about Rick Santorum – where, where actually they are virtually contradicting all the Constitutional principles in their rhetoric. And so you say, “Well look, okay, you can believe that, but you cannot equate that with this Constitution. That’s not an interpretation issue. It means that you did not read the Constitution, and indeed you are anti-American.”

I am very pro-American in the sense of a Constitutional America, and I’m very pro-American in terms of a diverse America and one where we do reach out and understand that to be too mono-cultural is to limit ourselves and create the insecurity that we’re currently facing.


Readers are advised Santorum has an M.B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and a law degree from the Dickinson School of Law. He served two terms as a United States Senator and two in the House of Representatives.

By contrast, Penn never attended college and has held no elected office.

Maybe he needs to go back and get some more lessons from Mr. Hand.