Rick Santorum has a message for President Obama: Despite what you may think, America was pretty awesome before the mid-60s.

Santorum is one of two presidential candidates speaking during the Saturday sessions at the Faith and Freedom Conference in downtown DC. At home before the social conservative crowd today, he offered up a ripping speech that touched on his long history as a national culture warrior.

As is so often the case in a Santorum address -- or a speech by virtually all of the Republicans in contention for the presidential nomination these days -- the subject of American exceptionalism came up. Sanoturm has woven this into his foreign policy speeches before, but today he raised the idea in the context of the entitlement fight.

Obama, Santorum said, thinks that it's the nation's safety net that helps to define America's greatness. This is an example of Obama missing the point about America's inherent exceptional nature, Santorum said. Social conservatives know that America had it goin' on before there was a social welfare system.

"There's one statement that everyone in this room should remember that the President of the United States says, that sums up how the President looks at America," Santorum said. "He said it about 6 weeks ago." Read on...