The Grating Santorum
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 7, 2012
MANCHESTER, N.H.
“RICK SANTORUM was locking down the youth
vote….
“Serving
in the military is not an unalienable right, it’s a privilege, you’re
selected,” replied the candidate, who wants to restore “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
He also called marriage “a privilege, not a right,” for the purpose is
procreation…
Rick
Perry baits gays because it’s good politics; Santorum sincerely means it. His
political philosophy is infused with his über-Catholicism but lacks humanity…
Santorum thinks he’s a bold color and Romney’s a pastel. But the
whole Republican field seems ensconced in a black-and-white ’50s diorama. It’s
like they’re running for president of Leave It to Beaverland.
As Tony Soprano told Meadow, “Out there it’s the
1990s, but in this house, it’s 1954.”
Reversing JFK: Santorum’s bid to marry faith and politics
“…Many politicians have ideological concerns
about issues like abortion or gay marriage, but “in Santorum’s case, it’s
fundamentally religious,” says Richard Land, public policy chief at the
Southern Baptist Convention. “That’s the genetic code of his life.”
it was a conventional American
Catholic upbringing in the 1960s and ’70s: The Santorums said grace before
meals, sent their kids to Catholic grade school and spent absolutely no time
discussing how religion influenced their public policy views.
American Catholics at
the time were living in the shadow of John F. Kennedy’s famous 1960 speech in
which he insisted that neither his faith nor his church would have any
influence on his presidency…”
Santorum
would spend his political life trying to reverse the effects of Kennedy’s
pledge. He argued that Kennedy “sealed off informed moral wisdom into a realm
of non-rational beliefs that have no legitimate role in political discourse.”
Cassi Creek: When it
comes right down to brass tacks, there is little more that needs to be said in
amplification. Kennedy was first an
American and then a Catholic. He did his
best to keep his faith out of political affairs. Santorum, should he be elected POTUS, would
do everything in his power to roll back the status of Americans to the days
when the Vatican ruled politically and culturally. This was unacceptable then and is even more
so now.
Notes from
Saturday night recycled.
1937 Saturday
night finds me sitting in the Jonesborough visitors’ center, dancers on my
left, shoes on my right. The Historic
Jonesborough Dance Society chose to collect shoes for a charitable group of
some sort. Dancers have been bringing in
shoes all evening and dropping them against the wall. A group of women is hard
at work pairing, repacking paired shoes, and discarding boxes and single shoes.
Both doors to
the dance hall are wide-open, funneling footsteps, conversation, clapping, and
music outward. It meets with the shoe
processing chatter and clatter. It makes
it very difficult to hear voices at what passes for an admission gate.
The charity
involved is “soles4souls” It is
headquartered in Nashville, which suggest some affiliation with a Baptist
organization. Their literature lists a
whole series of nations where it is active.
All the new world nations listed are, not surprisingly, officially
Catholic in nature. The other nations,
old world, are officially, and most likely happily non-Christian. I have the
unshaken belief that no one gets shoes without mouthing the requisite prayers
and singing the requisite songs.
We brought in
quite a few pairs of shoes to donate. We
aren’t wearing them and we don’t mind seeing them recycled. The parent charity’s nature can be overlooked
tonight. We recognize that our
contribution is Tzedakah at some level
The drive in
to the dance was made on wet roads with patchy fog. For some reason fog lights seem to be wired
in so that the headlights remain on along with the fog lights. This presents a
wider glare field and tends to mask the edges of the road. There are almost no shoulders to the
roads. The rain rate was just high
enough to require wipers and just low enough to assure a streaked
windshield. The drive home will most
likely be much the same. It is always a
relief to pull into the driveway. All
other roads between here and home are subject to drunken/impaired drivers.
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