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No one had to dig it out of the CSPAN archives. Rick Santorum said it last week in South Dakota.
The offending sentence: “I don't think God will continue to bless America if we continue to kill 1.2 million children every year.”
This morning John Podhoretz claimed that the man who uttered that sentence cannot win the American presidency.
Podhoretz put it nicely. Americans do not elect presidents who do not believe in America. They are loath to elect people who are, in Podhoretz’s word: sourpusses.
Podhoretz explained:
He [Santorum] believes abortion is murder, and therefore that mass murder is taking place in the United States — and that a country whose legal code condones mass murder will be judged for its sin the way Abraham Lincoln suggested in his second inaugural address that the Civil War was God’s judgment on America for the sin of slavery.
All this suggests that Santorum is animated and motivated by an unpleasantly bleak outlook on the morals and manners of the country he now says he wishes to lead.
Like many culture warriors, he is disappointed by America and its failings, which — as his controversial views on the morality of birth control demonstrate — he believes stem from an excess of self-indulgence and the elevation of sexual appetite over self-restraint.
There is no way that a man who expresses such a dark view of the American national character can win the presidency.
Remember: This entire process is a job interview in which the candidates are trying to get hired by the electorate. Insulting the electorate and accusing it of spiritual weakness and sinfulness are not the ways to get yourself the job of president.
If Santorum were merely arguing for self-discipline over self-indulgence he would be presenting a viable political and cultural argument.
Unfortunately, that is not what he said. He declared that more than a million American women murdered their children last year. How many of them do you think will be voting for Rick Santorum?
Podhoretz correctly says that presidential campaigns are like job interviews. How well do you think you will do in a job interview if you condemn the company you are interviewing for having committed evil acts?
Since 1973 American women have undergone over 40 million abortions. How many of these women—most of them, I daresay, mothers—will consider voting for a man who considers them child-killers?
Can you cast a worst aspersion at a mother?
When you call that many women baby killers you have effectively passed beyond being a sourpuss or a moral scold. If Santorum believes what he says, would it not follow that he would want to criminalize abortion? His opponents will accuse him of it. When they do, how will he defend himself? If he would not, then why is he saying that these women have committed a crime?
With his statement Santorum has expressed his moral contempt for a large percentage of the electorate and has, effectively, stated that they are condemned to rot in Hell.
He almost sounds like the Maxine Waters who famously proclaimed: “the Tea Party can go straight to hell.”
11 comments:
he didn't call them murderers ... you have changed what he said into something else and then beat him over the head with your false characterization ...
That said he is being a scold ...
but then again those babies are dead ... someone killed them "in self defense" ...
he did assign responsibility for the deaths ...
Just for clarity, killing doesn't make you a murderer ...
How many people do you think are going to make such a fine distinction.
Killing does not make you a murderer in the legal sense of the term... granted... but he didn't just say that the babies are dead and he certainly didn't say that they were killed in self-defense.
I was talking about how the statement will play politically... and I still don't think it will.
So, what you're saying is that we will never elect someone who tells us the truth.
Instead, our votes will go to the one who tells us the sweetest, most flattering lies.
Apparently we don't want leaders, we want sycophants.
Not exactly... I was saying that the way Santorum framed the issue was not going to help him get elected. In all likelihood it would make it impossible for him to get elected.
Ever since Rowe all Republican candidates have been against abortion. But they have criticized the decision on the grounds that it should have been decided by the states, not by the Supreme Court.
They have not gotten elected by saying that women who have had abortions were killing babies.
the self defense argument is what pro-choicers frame it as ... (when you boil it down)
leaving it at the status quo ...
babies are dead and nobody is "responsible" in anyway is pretty sad isn't it ...
What do you all think of William McGurn's view, in his Wall Street Journal column today: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204909104577235471075318762.html
McGurn has an excellent point about the double standard. I am not a political pro. His advice sounds good, and if Santorum were to follow it I would find him more appealing.
I an unhappy with all the Republicans left in the primary... I'm voting against Obama in any case.
He can certainly stand to frame his arguments differently. The so-called "social" issues are derivative of the two observable orders in our world: natural and enlightened (i.e. conscious). The first defines evolutionary fitness (i.e. human viability). While the second is axiomatic and confers dignity to each human life. Each is corrupted as we reconcile with the limitations of reality and with each other's perceptions and expectations.
I have often used his analogy between slavery and abortion. The first was concerned with the assignment of universal dignity. While the second is concerned with when that assignment should occur. The only objective identification of human life occurs from conception.
The response to each moral transgression is ostensibly challenged by our separation from the individual. The slave, other than a combination of distinguishing incidental features, was at least tangible and identifiable as human. The developing human life in the womb is often neither. A progressive personal detachment from each life promotes empathetic dissociation.
The realization of the first moral imperative required the sacrifice of several hundred thousand lives. The realization of the second moral imperative is unlikely to be so easy, and it, in fact, has not been.
It is society's responsibility to promote behaviors that will sustain it. It is unlikely that a correction will be sustainable when effected through coercion and the victim is inherently incapable of self-defense in action or word. Still, while individuals will need to reconcile the conflict between principles and dreams of instant gratification, it would be in society's best to normalize behaviors which engender positive progress.
If individuals choose physical instant gratification rather than responsibility for human life they voluntarily create, then there is no reason to believe they will not also maintain other dreams of instant gratification. If these individuals are in the majority, the not only is Santorum not electable, but neither is anyone else who would harsh these people's mellow.
The issue is principally concerned with individual dignity and valuation of human life. When either and especially both are no longer principles that direct a society, then fundamental corruption (i.e. redistributive and retributive change) will become a de facto normal. The prerequisite for liberty is individuals capable of self-moderating behavior.
We should be careful with our dreams. If we are ever disposable then we are likely always disposable.
There is no equivalence between Waters and Santorum. Waters is an advocate for redistributive and retributive change (i.e. progressive involuntary exploitation). This was the justification for her incredulous indignation with the concerns of the TEA Party. In short, she does not respect individual dignity and her motivations are immoral. Not to mention her ideology is a principal sponsor of progressive corruption. Santorum on the other hand, to take a phrase from the empathetic left is giving voice to those without.
If anything, Waters is not deriding the TEA Party, but inviting them to join her.
I have a dilemma that is challenging to resolve. I am essentially "libertarian" in my outlook. However, the principles I have identified, from which I argue, and which have so far proven to be highly self-consistent are not.
I consider the pro-choice position as it pertains to abortion, then I apply it to something analogous, slavery, which has been nearly universally rejected, and I realize that there is an inherent inconsistency. So, I have no desire to resort to coercion, and recognize that only voluntary compliance will produce a sustainable outcome. However, I must be consistent, and acknowledge the present situation is, in fact, not only analogous, but arguably a greater threat to the principles I [strive to] adhere to.
I know what is an objective faith. It is necessarily constrained to a limited frame of reference, excluding any occult knowledge which I do not enjoy. The rest is inference or subjective faith, or philosophy. When I apply this standard to human life, then I must declare that objectively it begins from conception. Any speculation beyond that is based on speculative and arbitrary standards derived from our present and, likely, permanent lack of knowledge.
So, here's the challenge. There is no reasonable means to enforce an abortion ban throughout the period of development inside the mother's womb. Any ban would have to be reconciled with the preservation of individual dignity. In the case of procreation, there is the life of the mother and her child; and the father which was a partner in conceiving this new human life. The child is an innocent life incapable of defending its dignity.
At least with slavery, the people who suffered from involuntary exploitation and constrained liberty had an opportunity to defend their dignity. With abortion, that defense is unequivocally not within the purview of the affected individual.
You would think this vulnerable position would be defended (and exploited) by civil and human rights advocates. The only explanation is that their concern is selective and serves their dreams of instant gratification (i.e. corruption). Well, that, or their "objective" faith is, in fact, selective, and regularly exceeds the constraints of its domain.
Anyway, I think my characterization of the situation is correct; but, I have no desire to enforce or force the logical conclusion. Then I think of the original moral imperative, and pro-choice seems such an objectionable position to claim.
We may lose, because a majority will not reject their dreams of instant gratification without consequence; but, it seems that this is the good fight worth fighting.
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