Never one to let pass an opportunity to remind us once again why our founders probably got it right when they warned against the risks of mixing religion and politics, Rick Santorum did it again, this time blaming gay marriage (and presumably absence of forced prayer in school) for the 2008 financial crisis:
This is one of those jaw-dropping pontifications so full of moral, logical, and empirical flaws, that I was forced to number my responses to the good senator, the first choice apparently of those god-fearing Iowa primary voters:
First, what "family" has been allowed to break down (besides 2 of Newt's) and is he then advocating a strong GOVERNMENT role, perhaps a new set of REGULATIONS to PROHIBIT DIVORCE? Does Santorum believe a government bureaucrat knows better than a battered woman, let's say, when it's time to call it quits? Is Santorum aware of data that show that children who come from homes in which their parents divorce do no worse long term, and some studies say better, than children who come from homes where the parents remain nominally married, however much they may hate each other, however bitterly they may fight?
Second, if "this whole redefinition of marriage debate" is causing a "family break down" - a rather strange charge since allowing two loving adults to marry and legally adopt children would increase the number of loving, intact families - why is this not showing up in any divorce statistics, which have remained relatively constant, even dipping a bit SINCE the gay marriage prohibitionists such as Santorum have been more openly and successfully challenged. No one is redefining the family as much as making it more inclusive, legally admitting a reality that for millions of Americans arrived decades ago.
And how on earth can allowing two consenting adults who love each other to marry threaten my heterosexual marriage? Do I say to my wife, "Honey, I would love to stay married to you, but this here business of Fred marrying Frank has weakened the bonds between us in some weird way I can't describe and has made my secretary appear ever so much more attractive. See you!" Or will there be an exodus of unhappily married men into same sex relationships, figuring that based on what they saw of heterosexual marriage, same sex marriage couldn't possibly be any worse? The divorce rate was high long before gay marriage was ever a wedge issue in Karl Rove's beady little eyes (remember 2004 with all that election hysteria about America being under threat from "gay married terrorists"?).
Third, why on earth would anyone who wants to win converts to his argument use a word with such unintended negative associations as "nuclear"? When Santorum says nuclear, my first images are of Japan after the 2011 earthquake or the dropping of 2 atomic bombs by Santorum's god-fearing America of yesteryear (you know, the kind that taught "moral values and the important role of faith in the public square"). My second association is (unfortunately) of Bush and Perry mispronouncing it (nukyeler). My third is of CERN and the random interaction of all the nuclei that make up our universe. A fourth and distant association comes from demographers who distinguish nuclear families from extended (why does he hate extended families) or fragmented ones. And by the way, a "nuclear" family, depending on who is defining it, does not assume that the couple is either married or of opposite gender. It certainly doesn't assume they are Christian. Or happy. Or non-abusive. If an elderly grandparent moved in, the family would no longer by nuclear: does Santorum oppose extended families on principle or does he just not like old people?
Third, if he believes our "society" is "broken" why does he not move to a country that has already put in place the sorts of "faith in the public square" notions he loves? Iran and Saudi Arabia come to mind. If he espouses such anti-American views (Osama bin Laden held similiar, albeit more violently expressed, contempt for American society), does he really believe he is best qualified to lead this country or should he yield to someone who has not already given up on it as "broken"?
Fourth, I had no idea that Santorum opposed capital punishment or war, but it is heartening to hear him condemn a "society that kills our [sic] own."
Fifth, I was unaware that our country, unique among advanced democracies in insisting that its leader be married, heterosexual, and have a telegenic, beaming family always ready to be trotted out on stage for our approval, "disregards the family and the important role it plays." When I claim thousands of dollars every year in tax exemptions and deductions simply because I am married and have children (a "family" even according to Santorum's limited definition), I do not feel that my government is disregarding my family so much as encouraging it, almost inviting me to breed even more.
Sixth, he's a bit sneaky here, but Santorum clearly is trying to equate teaching "time important role of faith in the public square" with being "good, decent, and moral" and seems to imply that if our CEOs had just been forced to pray in school, let's say (even though many are of a generation that was) or say the Pledge of Allegience complete with the McCarthy-era addendum "under God" (still compulsory), they wouldn't have cheated shareholders, workers, and taxpayers out of trillions of dollars. I would love to see the data showing that religious affiliation and daily reminders of the importance of the family and faith decrease sociopathic behavior. As I recall, Jack Madoff was a very religious man, even orthodox, as was Abramoff. Tom Delay told us at every opportunity he could that he was a born-again Christian, as did George Bush, yet religious affiliation prevented neither man from engaging in massive fraud. If there is a link between religiosity and morality, Santorum had better not encourage us to examine that link too closely or we might, as did the men who founded this country, believe it is a dangerously negative one. If religious affiliation is association with preservation of the nuclear family Santorum claims is the main thing keeping us from the next financial crisis, then why is it that Southern states, especially those in the Bible belt, have a higher divorce rate than Northern ones, especially in the "liberal" Northeast where same sex marriage was first legalized?
Seventh, I am glad to hear Santorum admit (as so few Republicans do) that one need not approach capitalism amorally. It is neither naive nor anti-business to insist that people engaged in commerce not lie, cheat, or steal, that checks be placed on greed. My approach differs from Santorum's however. Instead of forcing children to pray in school then hoping for the best when today's Kindergartners become CEOs in half a century, why not fully staff the enforcement mechanisms we have in the SEC so that even if people WANT to act immorally, they CAN'T or are powerless to do as much damage as they have done, or at least will be confident in doing a long prison sentence afterwards? Let's not forget that the inventor of the "invisible hand" and the whole school (I will not call it a science) we now call economics was deeply interested in morality; Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was only written as an aside in a life devoted to teaching and exploring morality at the individual and social level.
Every executive I am aware of who engaged in massive fraud came from nuclear families, all headed by opposite-gender parents, the majority of whom were Jewish or Christian and more likely to be religiously observant than the general population. So if nuclear families and expressions of faith in the public square are so wonderful, why did they fail so miserably here? Also, statistically speaking, those engaged in the financial crisis were far more likely to be Republican and conservative and to have supported candidates who opposed all those "evils" Santorum feels were really to blame for their sociopathy. Since these men (and most were men) did not endorse these more progressive ideas Santorum feels threaten our society, what was the mechanism by which gay marriage and opposition to compulsory school prayer made them do what they did? Maybe they were just really, really mad and figured if America is already going to hell anyway, they might as well help themselves to as much loot as possible along the way, sort of like raiding the liquor cabinet of the Titanic. Fair enough, but doesn't this argue for recruiting CEOs and business executives who have not given up on America and do not share Santorum's fatalism (and moral determinism), that is those who support rather than oppose marriage equality and separation of church and state? It's hard to understand why we should trust someone to run our country (or its businesses) if that person believes, as Santorum puts it, that our society is "broken."
Santorum may sincerely believe what he says and his antipathy toward gays and gay marriage, however difficult to articulate or justify based on reason, facts, logic, or analysis, maybe sincere. He may even believe deep in his heart that the financial crisis really was a result of expanding marriage equality. This is the man, after all, whose main criticism of the Catholic church abuse scandal (Santorum is Catholic) is that the sex acts were "homosexual" which he went on to equate with incest and bestiality, and blamed the scandal on the loose morals of a liberal society. His ideas about the "sanctity of [prenatal] life" are so extreme that he insisted on bringing the corpse of his 2-day-old son home from the hospital to introduce to his other (living) children: "This is [your] baby brother, Gabriel." (See Michael Sokolove's excellent New York Times profile describing this and other moments in Santorum's life, "The Believer", May 22, 2005.) He also insisted that the 2001 No Child Left Behind bill had an amendment inserted that creationism be taught alongside science when evolution is discussed.
But many who do not personally share Santorum's homophobia may use it as a cynical ploy to delay or defer the type of financial reform required to make another act of massive fraud and its disastrous consequences less likely. In these times, we simply do not need yet another reason from the Party of No to do nothing to fix what is truly broken in our society. I agree with Santorum that morality must be a necessary component of any successful, thriving society, especially a capitalistic one. I disagree that teaching our children to pray to the right god or marry the right person is going to prevent sociopaths from causing the next financial catastrophe. Praying and hoping for the best is simply not a viable strategy, certainly not one our founders would have endorsed. Putting a referee in the game, a fully-staffed SEC with the power to send perpetrators to prison or put them out of business for life for egregious acts of fraud, is the type of solution those of us in the reality-based community should embrace. As Madison might have put it, let's assume there will always be cheaters, and that greed for money will be as intoxicating as greed for power, then work backwards, setting up the system to reflect the world we actually live in, not the one we fantasize about from Father Knows Best, a world that never really existed anyway.
Letting the family break down and in fact encouraging it and inciting more breakdown through this whole redefinition of marriage debate, and not supporting strong nuclear families and not supporting and standing up for the dignity of human life. Those lead to a society that’s broken.
…
If you think that we can be a society that kills our own, and that disregards the family and the important role it plays, and doesn’t teach moral values and the important role of faith in the public square, and then expect people to be good, decent and moral when they behave economically, if you look at the root cause of the economic problems that we’re dealing with on Wall Street and Main Street I might add, from 2008, they were huge moral failings. And you can’t say that we’re gonna take morality out of the public square, morality out of our schools, God out of our schools, and then expect people to behave decently in a country that requires, capitalism requires some strong modicum of moral consciousness if it’s gonna be successful.
This is one of those jaw-dropping pontifications so full of moral, logical, and empirical flaws, that I was forced to number my responses to the good senator, the first choice apparently of those god-fearing Iowa primary voters:
First, what "family" has been allowed to break down (besides 2 of Newt's) and is he then advocating a strong GOVERNMENT role, perhaps a new set of REGULATIONS to PROHIBIT DIVORCE? Does Santorum believe a government bureaucrat knows better than a battered woman, let's say, when it's time to call it quits? Is Santorum aware of data that show that children who come from homes in which their parents divorce do no worse long term, and some studies say better, than children who come from homes where the parents remain nominally married, however much they may hate each other, however bitterly they may fight?
Second, if "this whole redefinition of marriage debate" is causing a "family break down" - a rather strange charge since allowing two loving adults to marry and legally adopt children would increase the number of loving, intact families - why is this not showing up in any divorce statistics, which have remained relatively constant, even dipping a bit SINCE the gay marriage prohibitionists such as Santorum have been more openly and successfully challenged. No one is redefining the family as much as making it more inclusive, legally admitting a reality that for millions of Americans arrived decades ago.
And how on earth can allowing two consenting adults who love each other to marry threaten my heterosexual marriage? Do I say to my wife, "Honey, I would love to stay married to you, but this here business of Fred marrying Frank has weakened the bonds between us in some weird way I can't describe and has made my secretary appear ever so much more attractive. See you!" Or will there be an exodus of unhappily married men into same sex relationships, figuring that based on what they saw of heterosexual marriage, same sex marriage couldn't possibly be any worse? The divorce rate was high long before gay marriage was ever a wedge issue in Karl Rove's beady little eyes (remember 2004 with all that election hysteria about America being under threat from "gay married terrorists"?).
Third, why on earth would anyone who wants to win converts to his argument use a word with such unintended negative associations as "nuclear"? When Santorum says nuclear, my first images are of Japan after the 2011 earthquake or the dropping of 2 atomic bombs by Santorum's god-fearing America of yesteryear (you know, the kind that taught "moral values and the important role of faith in the public square"). My second association is (unfortunately) of Bush and Perry mispronouncing it (nukyeler). My third is of CERN and the random interaction of all the nuclei that make up our universe. A fourth and distant association comes from demographers who distinguish nuclear families from extended (why does he hate extended families) or fragmented ones. And by the way, a "nuclear" family, depending on who is defining it, does not assume that the couple is either married or of opposite gender. It certainly doesn't assume they are Christian. Or happy. Or non-abusive. If an elderly grandparent moved in, the family would no longer by nuclear: does Santorum oppose extended families on principle or does he just not like old people?
Third, if he believes our "society" is "broken" why does he not move to a country that has already put in place the sorts of "faith in the public square" notions he loves? Iran and Saudi Arabia come to mind. If he espouses such anti-American views (Osama bin Laden held similiar, albeit more violently expressed, contempt for American society), does he really believe he is best qualified to lead this country or should he yield to someone who has not already given up on it as "broken"?
Fourth, I had no idea that Santorum opposed capital punishment or war, but it is heartening to hear him condemn a "society that kills our [sic] own."
Fifth, I was unaware that our country, unique among advanced democracies in insisting that its leader be married, heterosexual, and have a telegenic, beaming family always ready to be trotted out on stage for our approval, "disregards the family and the important role it plays." When I claim thousands of dollars every year in tax exemptions and deductions simply because I am married and have children (a "family" even according to Santorum's limited definition), I do not feel that my government is disregarding my family so much as encouraging it, almost inviting me to breed even more.
Sixth, he's a bit sneaky here, but Santorum clearly is trying to equate teaching "time important role of faith in the public square" with being "good, decent, and moral" and seems to imply that if our CEOs had just been forced to pray in school, let's say (even though many are of a generation that was) or say the Pledge of Allegience complete with the McCarthy-era addendum "under God" (still compulsory), they wouldn't have cheated shareholders, workers, and taxpayers out of trillions of dollars. I would love to see the data showing that religious affiliation and daily reminders of the importance of the family and faith decrease sociopathic behavior. As I recall, Jack Madoff was a very religious man, even orthodox, as was Abramoff. Tom Delay told us at every opportunity he could that he was a born-again Christian, as did George Bush, yet religious affiliation prevented neither man from engaging in massive fraud. If there is a link between religiosity and morality, Santorum had better not encourage us to examine that link too closely or we might, as did the men who founded this country, believe it is a dangerously negative one. If religious affiliation is association with preservation of the nuclear family Santorum claims is the main thing keeping us from the next financial crisis, then why is it that Southern states, especially those in the Bible belt, have a higher divorce rate than Northern ones, especially in the "liberal" Northeast where same sex marriage was first legalized?
Seventh, I am glad to hear Santorum admit (as so few Republicans do) that one need not approach capitalism amorally. It is neither naive nor anti-business to insist that people engaged in commerce not lie, cheat, or steal, that checks be placed on greed. My approach differs from Santorum's however. Instead of forcing children to pray in school then hoping for the best when today's Kindergartners become CEOs in half a century, why not fully staff the enforcement mechanisms we have in the SEC so that even if people WANT to act immorally, they CAN'T or are powerless to do as much damage as they have done, or at least will be confident in doing a long prison sentence afterwards? Let's not forget that the inventor of the "invisible hand" and the whole school (I will not call it a science) we now call economics was deeply interested in morality; Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was only written as an aside in a life devoted to teaching and exploring morality at the individual and social level.
Every executive I am aware of who engaged in massive fraud came from nuclear families, all headed by opposite-gender parents, the majority of whom were Jewish or Christian and more likely to be religiously observant than the general population. So if nuclear families and expressions of faith in the public square are so wonderful, why did they fail so miserably here? Also, statistically speaking, those engaged in the financial crisis were far more likely to be Republican and conservative and to have supported candidates who opposed all those "evils" Santorum feels were really to blame for their sociopathy. Since these men (and most were men) did not endorse these more progressive ideas Santorum feels threaten our society, what was the mechanism by which gay marriage and opposition to compulsory school prayer made them do what they did? Maybe they were just really, really mad and figured if America is already going to hell anyway, they might as well help themselves to as much loot as possible along the way, sort of like raiding the liquor cabinet of the Titanic. Fair enough, but doesn't this argue for recruiting CEOs and business executives who have not given up on America and do not share Santorum's fatalism (and moral determinism), that is those who support rather than oppose marriage equality and separation of church and state? It's hard to understand why we should trust someone to run our country (or its businesses) if that person believes, as Santorum puts it, that our society is "broken."
Santorum may sincerely believe what he says and his antipathy toward gays and gay marriage, however difficult to articulate or justify based on reason, facts, logic, or analysis, maybe sincere. He may even believe deep in his heart that the financial crisis really was a result of expanding marriage equality. This is the man, after all, whose main criticism of the Catholic church abuse scandal (Santorum is Catholic) is that the sex acts were "homosexual" which he went on to equate with incest and bestiality, and blamed the scandal on the loose morals of a liberal society. His ideas about the "sanctity of [prenatal] life" are so extreme that he insisted on bringing the corpse of his 2-day-old son home from the hospital to introduce to his other (living) children: "This is [your] baby brother, Gabriel." (See Michael Sokolove's excellent New York Times profile describing this and other moments in Santorum's life, "The Believer", May 22, 2005.) He also insisted that the 2001 No Child Left Behind bill had an amendment inserted that creationism be taught alongside science when evolution is discussed.
But many who do not personally share Santorum's homophobia may use it as a cynical ploy to delay or defer the type of financial reform required to make another act of massive fraud and its disastrous consequences less likely. In these times, we simply do not need yet another reason from the Party of No to do nothing to fix what is truly broken in our society. I agree with Santorum that morality must be a necessary component of any successful, thriving society, especially a capitalistic one. I disagree that teaching our children to pray to the right god or marry the right person is going to prevent sociopaths from causing the next financial catastrophe. Praying and hoping for the best is simply not a viable strategy, certainly not one our founders would have endorsed. Putting a referee in the game, a fully-staffed SEC with the power to send perpetrators to prison or put them out of business for life for egregious acts of fraud, is the type of solution those of us in the reality-based community should embrace. As Madison might have put it, let's assume there will always be cheaters, and that greed for money will be as intoxicating as greed for power, then work backwards, setting up the system to reflect the world we actually live in, not the one we fantasize about from Father Knows Best, a world that never really existed anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment