Politikos No. 3
February 28, 2012
This is about the medieval turn in US politics today…largely spurred by Rick Santorum’s extraordinary remarks about the role of religion and of education.
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First, our presidential candidate running for Ayatollah rather than President, said that he almost threw up when he heard President (then candidate) Kennedy’s speech in 1960 about the role of religion in American politics. Kennedy, a Catholic, had to refute the idea that an American Catholic President would be taking orders from the Pope. That idea has been bruited about since Al Smith, Governor of New York State, won the Democratic nomination for President in 1928, and was the first American Catholic to run for that office. Santorum distorts Kennedy’s position by stating that JFK ruled out the idea that a person of faith could be President. What Kennedy did was re-state the idea that a candidate’s faith should not dictate his policies. Santorum seems to believe that faith directs politics. Goodbye contraception. Hello vouchers.
Santorum also called President Obama a “snob” for touting the government’s support for opportunity for higher education for all. I suppose I can understand that. University faculties in the US do harbor more liberals than conservatives in their professoriate. Santorum is famous for home schooling his kids. Are you betting he will advise them to be “regular folks” and not snobs, by avoiding college?
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It also appears that Santorum would like all families to home school their kids; wives would not seek careers, they would supervise their children’s education. “Kinder, kuchen, kirche,” as the Germans used to say. Papa would help with homework after he came home from the shop or the coal mine, and help the kids get a job at seventeen or eighteen, close to home. On Sunday, the family goes to church and listens to the life advice of the priest or minister. That’s the America Santorum wants to restore.
So is this a campaign for President, or is it an invitation to elect our own Ayatollah?
But something more seems to be involved. I want to quote from Bonnie Squires' fine column of February 27 in Main Line Media News: “When ministers and elected officials are still, three years after President Obama’s inauguration, challenging his citizenship and his Christianity, it just seems to me there must be another reason why their hatred of our president is almost palpable. And the only thing I come up with each time is: he is an African-American, and they can’t stand it.”
Yes, something else is going on out there. A minority of angry, prejudiced Republicans are acting out, and these Republican Party primaries offer a national platform to trash tolerance, communitarian concern for the disadvantaged, and indeed the social progress we have made since the 1950s.
