Santorum's Nightmare Vision for America

I thought this was a very good look at Rick Santorum's vision for America.  Be afraid.

By Lawrence Davidson via Alternet

Santorum's vision for America would combine a moralistic theocracy with free-market capitalism and perpetual war.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is a Republican presidential candidate who is fast coming to the fore. He won the Republican caucuses in Iowa (albeit by only 34 votes) in early January and in February won contests in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota. So, as the question goes, who is this guy?  Santorum is a self-styled “true conservative,” right-wing, Christian fundamentalist of Catholic background. In 2005,Time Magazine called him “one of America’s 25 most influential evangelicals.” That is still certainly true today. Santorum believes that religious values (at least his religious values) should play a large role in shaping government policies. For those not sure what this means, Santorum has a list of examples:

1. Santorum wants “a blanket ban on abortions.” The fact that the U.S. had this very same prohibition up until 1973, and the result was black-market abortions that killed not only fetuses by also lots of pregnant women, seems to have escaped the former senator’s attention.

2. Santorum wants a ban on gay marriages. He would likely bring back antiquated anti-sodomy laws as well. “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have a right to bigamy, you have a right to polygamy, you have a right to incest, you have a right to adultery. You have a right to anything.” When Santorum gets on the subject of homosexuality, one can’t help noting a tinge of hysteria, along with a generous helping of illogic and exaggeration. Santorum would probably try to ban other related activities, such as the use of contraceptives to prevent pregnancy. He certainly wants to get rid of Planned Parenthood. What this adds up to is that when Santorum says religious values should play a greater role in government policy, he means that there should be lots of laws regulating your personal life, particularly your sex life. This is pretty typical of religious fundamentalists, particularly American Christian ones. They just can’t leave other people’s bedrooms alone.

The Economist

On the economic side of the ledger, Rick Santorum takes a slash-and-burn approach.

1. There should be a $5 trillion cut in the federal budget (but defense spending would be held at present levels). In order to realize this, Santorum would do away with, greatly reduce or freeze the Environmental Protection Agency, healthcare reform and Medicaid, subsidies for housing, food stamps, job training, energy and education. He would “reform” Medicare and Social Security in draconian fashion and pass a balanced budget amendment. One might agree that the present U.S. federal deficit verges on the insane and still find Santorum’s cure equally crazy. For instance, just about holding exempt defense and “security” spending — when combined they make up 20 percent of the budget and are notorious for waste, redundancy and corruption — makes no sense.

2. According to Santorum, there should be an elimination of financial and other regulatory laws. This is true insanity. Regulation is the only thing that makes capitalism an enduring system. Eliminate it and you have financial crashes, dangerous sweatshop working conditions, falling wages and benefits, runaway corruption and theft and, ultimately, depression. That Santorum cannot understand this suggests that he has substituted a discredited free-market ideology for history.

3. Santorum says that as a nation Americans should “live within our means” and if we do so “future generations will have a brighter future unburdened by oppressive debt and high taxation.” These are fine slogans, but in practice they probably spell eventual revolution in the streets. If you reduce the debt by slashing expenditures Santorum-style while refusing to increase taxes, you will eliminate almost all of society’s safety nets. That means increasing poverty and all its attendant miseries. You will also make infrastructure maintenance much more difficult. Someone should tell Mr. Santorum that the U.S. population is not over-taxed. Out of 62 industrialized countries, the U.S. ranks 28th in terms of its income tax rates. It is, of course, possible to over-tax a people to ruination. It is also possible to under-tax a people to ruination – to tax so low that you can’t assist the less fortunate or fix the pot holes and keep the bridges from collapsing. If Santorum was to get his way the nation would not have his predicted “brighter future.” More likely it would be a future of more poor and more pot holes. That might well lead to disillusionment with the capitalist system among both the lower- and middle-classes. (Personally, I have no objection to such growing disillusionment. I would, however, like to minimize the suffering and violence that surely goes along with it.)

Foreign Policy

When it comes to foreign policy, Santorum is a warmonger plain and simple.

1. As to Iran, Santorum would “work with Israel to determine the proper military response needed” to put a end to that country’s nuclear weapons program. It seems not to matter to the former senator that every U.S. intelligence agency that has ever investigated this issue has determined that there is no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

2. As to Syria, Santorum would go after the strongman (Bashar al-Assad) “covertly or otherwise.” Does that mean that Santorum act-alikes at the helm of other nations could use the same logic to go after a U.S. president?

3. As to Iraq, Santorum would “continue to stabilize Iraq” presumably by re-invading the country. This belies the fact that it was the American policy of draconian sanctions and ultimate invasion that destabilized Iraq in the first place.

4. As to Afghanistan, Santorum would set no time lines or limit resources “in the war effort.” Yet, if al-Qaeda is as weakened as Washington claims, there seems to be little point in more war. If a stable and competent Taliban government reappears in Afghanistan, it is unlikely to invite future attacks by providing a haven for terrorist organizations. On the other hand, this on-going war is almost certainly providing a breeding ground for more terrorists.

5. As to Islam, Santorum believes it is a religion that is “stuck in the seventh century.” With rare exception, such as Saudi Wahhabism, this is untrue. Actually, it is Rick Santorum who is stuck in the past. It is he who, like some political ecclesiastic, wants to regulate everyone else’s lives. If Mr. Santorum simply changed hats – from Christian to Islamic – he could be a Saudi cleric. Compared to people like him, most Muslims are much more tolerant and contemporary.

6. As to Israel, Santorum takes an uncritically approving position on the Zionist state. This makes sense when you realize that Israel is essentially a religious state – a nation on the brink of becoming a theocracy, which is where Santorum presumably would like to steer the United States.

Rick Santorum is a religious ideologue. He wants to turn the U.S. into a “faith-based” Christian country through the imposition of those “family values” he personally has decided are God-given. He believes that America’s Founding Fathers would agree because they were, supposedly, men of faith just like him.

Quoting the Declaration of Independence to prove this point, Santorum reminds us that it says that people “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” From this he concludes that rights come from God and not from government. Government’s role is simply to implement and protect those divine rights. The truth is that the man who penned the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, was nothing like Rick Santorum. He wasn’t even a Christian. He was a Deist. Jefferson’s phrasing was meant to impress a wider world in an age when religion was interpreted in a more literal fashion than it is in today’s United States. Jefferson certainly did not mean for Americans to take the notion of God-given inalienable rights literally. After all, he was a slave-holder.

The number of Americans who respond positively to Rick Santorum’s message is probably in the range of 20 percent. In terms of the Republican Party, they probably represent about one-third of the membership. Being ideologically driven, these people are motivated to vote. And, that is significant in a nation where voting turnout is traditionally low.

So, Rick Santorum is certainly representative of a politically active part of the U.S. population – a dangerous, intolerant, noisy, in-your-face part. If we let him and his followers get their way, the result will be ever greater divisiveness and decline at home, and war abroad. That is a choice for the rest of us.

The Week That Was...Mixed Messages 11/1-11/8 2009

Women’s reproductive rights are under attack by letting the Stupak Amendment be slipped into the House bill on health care reform. The 33 year old Hyde Amendment which was slipped into an appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services already disallows public funding for abortion, but this amendment goes one step further by denying women who are paying for their own insurance through private insurance the ability to access this legal, I repeat, legal medical procedure by forcing them to buy an additional separate, single-service rider. While we all know that no Republicans have any respect for any woman to make a decision about her own body, it’s now clear that the male Democrats feel the same way. Another thing bothering me is that this amendment was brokered in part with Catholic Bishops! When do we go back to seperation of church and state? Any church involved in policy should be stripped of their tax exempt existence.

Which brings me to the Catholic Churches assistence in repealing same-sex marriage rights in Maine on Tuesday…you know the state that claims “live and let live” as it’s motto. It’s now crystal clear that they’re just another bunch of hypocrites whose prejudice came out loud and clear. Live and let live, unless you’re gay, then tough luck, your human and civil rights do not supercede the homophobia of the masses. The fact that the same-sex marriage rights campaign failed to use a winning strategy bothers me as well, since I would’ve thought the Prop 8 defeat in California would have been the model of what went wrong and not repeat it. Yet, my understanding is, they never fought back forcfully enough, particularly the lie that same-sex, sex would be taught in school. Who would actually believe that?! Apparently 52% of Mainiacs. The high five the Catholic Church received is another reminder of how they should be strpped of their tax exempt status, along with the Mormans who heavily funded Yes on 8 in California.

Quick Thoughts: That wild and "carazy" Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann from Minnesota with assistence from Faux Newz rallied thousands of teabagging hillbillies to the Capitol on Thursday to voice their displeasure of a bill designed to help them. They want no part government run healthcare, but don’t even think about taking away their Medicare! All in all they had a good day. Think about it, a free bus ride to Washington D.C. and donuts supplied by multi-millionaire David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity……Also that day, I thoroughly enjoyed Ohio Republican John Boehner proudly holding up “his copy” of the Constitution and then reciting the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. The best part was, Bachmann mouthing the incorrect words right behind him! Then there was Missouri Republican Todd Akin stating that saying the Pledge of Allegiance “drives liberals crazy.” Then of course, stumbling over the words, it doesn’t get any better than that!......Also love the firestorm about the Republicans winning two Governorships. I wouldn’t have voted for weak Democrat Creigh Deeds who ran a terrible campaign in Virginia either, nor would I have voted for the Republican which is how he won, Democrats stayed home. In New Jersey, Jon Corzine’s approval ratings going into Tuesday were abysmal and he still nearly won even after breaking his promise to lower property taxes in his state, which he never delivered on. NY-23 is the most amusing in my mind. Apparently, moderate Republican Dede Scozzafava who believed in a woman’s right to choose and same-sex rights, yet was a fiscal conservative got tagged as a “radical leftist” by far, far right winger Michelle Malkin. In the Republican’s quest to “purify” their party and turn it into a bunch of far right teabagging anti-woman, anti-progress radical Neanderthals, they called on ultra conservative and creepy businessman Doug Hoffman to run against her and Democrat Bill Owens as a Conservative Party candidate even though he didn’t live in the district. With the endorsement of celebrity serial quitter Sarah Palin and Tea-Bagging extraordinaire Dick Armey of FreedomWorks, they knocked Scozzafava out of the race and were celebrating the fact that no Democrat has held that seat since 1872 so clearly, the purification had begun! A funny thing happened on the way to the polls, Scozzafava backed Owens and the voters actually chose to elect someone based on his knowledge of their local concerns as opposed to sending a message to Washington. Elections do have consequences!

That’s it for now, until the next time, stay safe, think forward!