Former Pennsylvania senator, Rick Santorum, is running for the presidential nomination from the GOP. And he scares me. More specifically, his politics scare me. His religious persuasions scare me. His rationalizations that are drawn from his religious persuasions scare me.
The only thing that he has going for him is that he appears to be determinately consistent in what he says (but based on what he is saying, this is only another reason for me to be scared).
Like all of the GOP contenders, he supports a personhood amendment (either to individual state constitutions or to the US constitution). This is problematic in its extreme, since such a bill would make natural abortion tantamount to manslaughter. It would make taking the morning after pill tantamount to murder. It would, in essence, make a single cell equivalent to a human being. And that's not just ludicrous, but it's also scary when you map out the implications.
Like all of the GOP contenders, Santorum is against Obama's healthcare reform law. He has many reasons for why he's against it, but - like with many things - he turns it toward social reasons, citing the recent Obama compromise with Catholic institutions (not the Catholic churches, but the not-at-all-a-church institutions that Catholics run) with regard to birth control as being an over reach and a destruction of the separation of church and state. He doesn't either realize (or agree) that the church isn't a flesh-and-blood person, and that the constitution is meant to protect the people and not institutions (like religions and corporations). The rights of the individual citizen ought to trump the rights of a foreign organization.
Like many of the GOP contenders, Santorum supports the continued use of what all of our allies call torture. He doesn't care that there is no empirical evidence to show that torture might work (there isn't any). He doesn't care that it's illegal. He doesn't care that it destroys our credibility in the international arena. He doesn't care that it's also against the teachings of his Catholic church.
Like many of the GOP contenders, Santorum isn't only against abortion - at any stage, including (presumably) when the zygote is only a single cell - but he is also against birth control and against sex education in schools. Now try to figure that one out: if you don't want abortions, then you should teach people how to not get themselves into a position to have an abortion (which contraceptives and sex education that includes the proper use of contraceptives) would include. However, Santorum apparently believes that sex should only take place in a marriage and should only take place for the purpose of creating babies. (Never mind that other religions might disagree with his take on Catholicism. Never mind that non-religious people might disagree with his take on Catholicism. Never mind that it's not his business what happens in the bedroom; and if his god were so worried, then his god will have the final say anyway.) This position is worrisome, since it is not only openly based on having the government impose his religious convictions on the people, but it is also a fundamentally unconstitutional position to take, based on the fourth amendment.
However, Santorum seems to take the extremism even further. He rails against colleges and universities as being the locations through which Satan works his destruction on the nation. He says that a liberal arts education will destroy America. (He obviously is confusing "liberal arts education" with "liberal politics"; he should read an encyclopedia about it.) And why is he against higher education? Apparently it's because people become less religious after going to university. Well, to me, that merely points to finger to potential problems of religion, and not problems of education. However, would he take his personal feelings about the moral problems (as he sees them) of universities and start to slash any university research? Will he remove all funding for university loans? What about education funding under the GI Bill? Never mind that such actions will destroy any chance that the US has in maintaining its standing in the world as a center for higher education, scientific research, and technical training.
Also, Santorum says that he is for "stewardship" of the environment, but doesn't apparently know what that word means, since he doesn't apparently want to protect the environment, saying that doing such things is part of a "radical environmentalist" agenda "that puts the environment before man." Again, this is problematic for a few reasons. Let's start with the religious reason: such a form of convoluted logic seems to stem from a very particular reading of the Christian Bible that says that God - and God alone - will be the force that brings about the end of the world; ergo humans cannot bring about the end of the world. If this is the guiding force for such statements, then his perceptions on what can and cannot take place in the environment that is shared by all citizens (and globally by all humans and all living things) will be governed by his personal religious conviction that the world won't end because of human activity. Which means that global warming isn't being caused by humans (and if it is, then it must be God's will). It means that species extinction isn't a problem (because it is God's will). It means that dropping aquifer levels aren't a problem; salination of cropland due to over-irrigation isn't a problem; heavy metal exposure isn't a problem: it's God's will. In such a world view - one with a complete devotion to what he sees as God's will - why would one worry about environmental regulation that protects people's health and allows for future growth of a population? After all, God will provide...
Santorum is also consistent when it comes to his vehement stance against all abortions. When asked about whether he would allow for abortions in the case of rape or incest, he said that he was against that, too, using the analogy that all life is a gift from God and that we need to accept all his gifts, even the ones that aren't perfect. It's for this reason that he also is against pre-natal screenings. In his mind, these lead to greater levels of abortions, since people will choose to make a decision that they don't want a child with developmental diseases or wish to carry through with a pregnancy that may be physically harmful to the mother. It's all against God's will, and therefore they should be banned.
Santorum apparently doesn't care about the US Constitution or the interpretation of the constitution by the Supreme Court over the past several decades. Either that or Santorum has never read the US Constitution. Or he just fails utterly to understand what the words mean. If he was a laughing stock candidate, rated at the bottom of every poll, I would be worried, but not scared. That he is currently vying for the candidacy of his party is what worries me and what scares me.
... or what Andrew Sullivan writes here.
No comments:
Post a Comment