GROVE CITY — Rick Santorum divides American institutions into two groups, the “bigs” and the “littles.”

The “bigs” include institutions that he said are under the control of the political left, such as big business, big government, universities, Hollywood and the media.

He said the only “littles” remaining are the family and the church.

“Both are under assault,” Santorum told 200 people Thursday at Grove City College’s 10th annual Vision and Values conference.

Santorum represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. House from 1991 to 1995 and in the U.S. Senate from 1995 to 2007. He ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

He spent 10 years in Butler in his youth while his parents worked for the then Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He left in 1975 after his junior year at Butler High School when his parents moved to Illinois.

In his speech, Santorum said French thinker Alexis De Tocqueville wrote that the U.S. is different from any other country in the world because, rather than being racially or ethnically formed, it was created by founding documents which specifically said rights come from God.

However, he said faith is under attack in the U.S.

He said the Department of State for the past few years has been referring to freedom of worship rather than freedom of religion. Freedom of worship allows people to practice inside a church, but he said freedom of religion allows people to carry faith outside churches.

Santorum said the attack has been happening for decades. As an example, he said that the Bible, which he said contains moral lessons and history, is not taught in schools.

“It is the foundational document of western civilization. But it is not taught,” Santorum said, “because you stopped fighting.”

When conservatives are defeated, he said they stop. When liberals are defeated, he said they keep fighting.

“We’re losing our religious liberty because we’re letting them take it away from us,” Santorum said.

He said Democrats often criticize the Republicans for not being a big tent party. But he said Republicans are diverse, featuring different groups such as libertarians and social conservatives.

The Democrats, he said, are a “monolith.”

“There’s no dissent because they don’t allow it,” Santorum said.

He cited polls that say the U.S. population is 40 percent conservative and 80 percent religious, but only 17 percent to 20 percent liberal.

Santorum said the right needs to energize and fight through the courts, through protests and through politics.

He said the founding fathers won the American Revolution not because of their army, which was smaller and had less supplies than the British army, but because “we wanted it more than they did.”

He said speaking Biblical truths someday will be considered hate speech. He quoted something Chicago Cardinal Francis George said in 2010.

“(He said) I expect to die in my bed. I expect my successor to die in prison, and I expect his successor to die a martyr,” Santorum said.

He said the right has to be intolerant of intolerance, and he challenged conference attendees to “do something” to change things, such as challenging policies at schools and workplaces. The right also can get involved using social media, he said.

“There’s no excuse not to be engaged. There’s no excuse not to try,” Santorum said.

He said the Republican Party too often puts up moderate candidates for president, who he said too often come off as insincere when discussing conservative positions they do not hold or cannot articulate. That turns voters off.

Santorum said liberal candidates often attack conservative candidates for having the more extreme positions on social issues. He said the left feels that abortions should happen any time.

“That’s not where America is,” Santorum said. “They are the extremists.”

A member of the audience asked how people can separate which rights come from God and which do not, mentioning the right to health care.

Santorum said rights from God, such as the right to life, are inalienable and people are born with them.

Other rights require people to act to have them. He said these rights may be desirable, but they are not inalienable. When the government creates rights, he said it can take them away or dictate how to exercise them.

“That’s the slippery slope you get when you throw around the word ‘right,’” Santorum said.