Reverend Santorum


On Friday, CNN reports, Rick Santorum "sought to bring some clarity to his birth control position" by stating in Columbus, Ohio "My position is birth control can and should be available."         Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman at Politico write "while the ex-senator doesn't favor outlawing birth control...."   

So, the ex-Pennsylvania Senator from Virginia doesn't want to ban artificial contraception.      Case closed.

Or not.      In Mckinney, Texas Santorum on Wednesday had maintained  “It’s not because I want to be the pastor of the United States.         I have no intention and no desire to be the pastor of this country."

But in his Friday speech in Columbus the candidate went on to say

The president’s agenda is not about you.    It’s not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your job.    It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology.        Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology, but no less a theology.   

Santorum was not suggesting President Obama is not a Christian, National Communications Director Hogan Gidley comforted us, but rather “Rick was talking about the President’s belief in the secular theology of government — and how believing that theology is dangerous...."

Whether a non-theology, such as secularism, can be (or should be) elevated to a theology is debatable.    But Santorum is positing that Obama subscribes to a secular theology, one which " teaches that it’s perfectly fine (to) take away our individual God-given rights and freedoms," according to Gidley.        Conveniently, his candidate divides the nation into two religions:     real Christians (and Jews, perhaps), who are noble or virtuous; and secularists, who are ignoble or wicked.       And then he says:      "I have no intention and no desire to be the pastor of this country."

Unless Rick Santorum holds to an idiosyncratic definition of "pastor," he is being dishonest or, as the media likes to picture him, refreshingly candid.

When Santorum says "my position is birth control can and should be available," he is being similarly mendacious.      This is no libertarian, who might hold to a reactionary point of view but is fundamentally, philosophically opposed to government action.        This is Rick Santorum, who has asserted "I am not a libertarian, and I fight very strongly against libertarian influence within the Republican Party and the conservative movement."

Santorum is not a libertarian, and in some ways that's reassuring.       But when it comes to your most personal beliefs and values, including sexual mores, Rick Santorum is an authoritarian, and that is not reassuring.
      

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