No sooner had the news hit that Rick Santorum had finished in a virtual tie with Mitt Romney in Iowa than the sexual liberation emergency alarm system sirens began going off throughout the land. A columnist at Salon.com screeched that "Rick Santorum is coming for your birth control." At National Review, another columnist shrieked back that No he isn't. In fact, Santorum himself screamed (okay, not literally) to Bill O'Reilly that he didn't want to illegalize contraception:
Someone asked me if the states have the right to do it? Yes. They have the right to do it, they shouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t vote for it if they did. It doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to do it. As you know, Bill, you’re a Catholic, [the] Catholic Church teaches contraceptive [sic] is something you shouldn’t do. So when I was asked the question on contraception I said I didn’t support it.It's easy to get lost in all the "its," isn't it? The first 'it' presumably refers to a hypothetical state attempt to outlaw birth control, which I take Santorum to mean that if it happened in his state, he would oppose the effort. The second 'it' probably refers to the use of such control, which Santorum doesn't support because of his Church's prohibition of 'it.' (To which the Catholic Bill responded that this prohibition was "made by men," bringing to Santorum's face a look of incredulity but no interruption.) The third 'it' is the 1965 Griswold decision itself, which Santorum does not support, believing that the Supreme Court made up a new constitutional right to privacy not previously known to exist outside the emanations of the penumbras which point to 'it.'
Now, a president cannot outlaw anything all by his lonesome, so I presume what really exercises the liberals at Salon and the HuffandPuff Post is not that he could actually effect such a ban but that he thinks it would be a good idea. They wish to marginalize him by characterizing him as an extremist. No right-thinking American of any political persuasion can possibly believe that artificial birth control is anything but a blessing to the integrity of the American family, and especially to the hopes for happiness of all those poor people whose rates of reproduction left Margaret Sanger aghast.
But I think they're misreading Santorum. If they really want to take advantage of this political opportunity, they should label him not only 'extremist' but also 'hypocrite.' He thinks Griswold was wrong, but he wouldn't vote to outlaw contraception? We already know that he thinks Roe v Wade wrong and would vote for any restriction on abortion up to and including its eradication. Why not the same with the use of contraception, which many moral conservatives have argued bears a straight line, cause and effect relationship to the abortion liberty? Charles Cooke, the NR columnist, offers Santorum assistance with his rationale: that "to acknowledge that one’s legal opinions can be separate from one’s moral convictions" is not hypocritical but sophisticated; that "Santorum’s true position demonstrates that it is eminently possible to argue for public policy that yields outcomes of which one disapproves;" that, as "William F. Buckley Jr. famously argued, what 'is legal is not necessarily reputable;'" and finally, that, "while he may well believe that the states have the right to ban condoms and sodomy, that is not the same thing as advocating that they do so."
Voila, some might say, problem solved, while others, like me, see only a perpetuation of the hypocrisy, since separating "one's legal opinions...from one's moral convictions" sounds like what we conservatives say about liberal Catholics all the time, and inclines us to ask, "Why can't we ban condoms and sodomy? I mean, we did ban them once upon a time. What's so obviously legally and morally superior about the current, and very recent, state of affairs?
As suddenly as Mr. Santorum rose to prominence, he may quickly fall back into obscurity. But just for fun, let's pretend that his ascencion continues, and that his nomination for the presidency pans out. He will then find himself in debate with Mr. Obama, assisted by his sycophants among the media moderators, who will ask Santorum the following question:
"Senator Santorum, it has been noted in various press reports that you believe the Griswold and Roe v Wade cases were wrongly decided by the Supreme Court. Is it true, as some of these reports claim, that you would advocate outlawing American women's access to all forms of artificial birth control, and to their right to abortion, even in cases of rape, incest, and fetal deformity, and thus that your desire is to meddle in the very private lives of American citizens - to bring into their bedrooms, no less, the police power of the American government? Your opponent in this election, most Americans, and even some in your own party, say that these are very extreme, even draconian positions, verging on the totalitarian. How would you respond?The question is mildly loaded, but that's only what Santorum expects. On the supposition that he would not immediately run for butt-cover as he did with O'Reilly, he might try the following response, which I offer free of charge. He will need either to memorize it or use note cards. A teleprompter is acceptable:
Totalitarian? What an absurd charge. Contraception was once illegal in this country and no one called us totalitarian, but rather a nation striving to meet our virtuous ideals. Abortion was once illegal in this country, and no one called us totalitarian or draconian, but rather a nation of exceptionally humane concern, in our love for those least among us, and who remain most dear to us, even while hidden in their mothers' wombs. There was a time when the fruit of the womb was our future. No longer. Now our future ends with ourselves, for we have granted that self, not God, power over the life and death of the most innocent. If I am draconian, how would you characterize my opponent, President Obama, who would not vote to pass a born alive infants protection act when he served as senator from Illinois? He gave what he hoped were good reasons, about which he was later found to be dissembling. President Obama did not feel it necessary to compel, by law, medical personnel to try to save the lives of babies who survive abortions at whatever stage of development. Yet I'm draconian.He won't get elected after giving this speech, but it will have the benefit of consistency, and he will be able to go home with his principles intact.As to my "extremism" regarding contraception, let me repent by singing its manifold praises, and delineating in brief what it has done for us. Between 1965, the year of the Griswold decision, and 1980, the divorce rate in this country more than doubled. How can this be, since the justices based their decision on a wish to enhance the stability of marriage? How can it be that no sooner do the judges start enhancing than marriages start falling apart? It couldn't be - could it? - that once you make cheating easier, a bunch of people might decide to give it a try. Let me also praise the increased incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancy, which, among the black population, rose from 26.3 percent in 1965 to 69 percent in 2000, and among the white population from 4.0 percent to 27 per cent. But don't worry about all those children born into fatherless families.. Most will adjust, some by joining gangs, others by repeating the pattern in their own lives. And some will be aborted to preserve the mother's life, health, financial viability, and her figure in a swimsuit, though that seems to me a rather "draconian" way of coping with the difficulty.
At first thought, a premarital pregnancy might seem to signal a failure to use contraception, and often it does. (People are foolish, aren't they?) But back in our extremist days, premarital sex often meant exactly that - sex before marriage. It doesn't anymore. Back then, a girl would ask of her one true love, "What happens if I get pregnant?" And he'd reply, "Why, I'll marry you, of course." And often he did. How do I know? The leftyish Brookings Institution tells me so: "Until the early 1970s, shotgun marriage was the norm in premarital sexual relations." Now, we're lucky if the question even comes up, because the girl is as likely to be having sex with someone she hardly knows as with her future husband, which makes what they're doing not really sex before marriage but sex before morning.
Does this mean that there has, on the whole, been an increase in the percentage of young single people, from teenagers on up, engaging in premarital sex? Just based on my observations of human nature, I'd bet real money the answer is yes. If you make it easy for people possessed of poor impulse control not to control their impulses, my guess is they won't. And if we bother to look it up, we find out that "The percentage of white women married from 1960-65 who were virgins was 43," which is, I admit, not a good figure from an extremist's point of view, but then you'll be comforted to know that in our more normal times the figure has dropped to 14%. I forgot to mention that there was another Supreme Court decision extending the contraceptive liberty first to single people and then to very young single people, even to minors, and without their parents' permission. But don't be alarmed. This is just normal behavior. Why? Because only 35% of the people in the country think that such sex is always wrong. About 75% have sex before marriage.
I sometimes wonder what our country could have been thinking back in those days of Comstock laws and illegal contraception. It was illegal under those laws because contraception was considered one of several "obscene" materials that were not allowed as legitimate items of commerce or education. Those laws must have been the relics of Luther, Calvin and the Catholic Church, all of whom thought the frustration of fertility an abomination. (Those entities still do; it’s only individual Lutherans, Calvinists and Catholics who do not.) I wonder what those judges of the Connecticut Supreme Court were thinking when they overruled a lower court in 1939 that had tried to nullify the prosecution of two doctors and a nurse who ran a birth control clinic. Well, they were thinking that "The police power could be employed 'in aid of what is ... held by the prevailing morality to be necessary to the public welfare'." And further:
"[w]hatever may be our own opinion regarding the general subject, it is not for us to say that the Legislature might not reasonably hold that the artificial limitation of even legitimate child-bearing would be inimical to the public welfare and, as well, that use of contraceptives , and assistance therein or tending thereto, would be injurious to public morals; indeed, it is not precluded from considering that not all married people are immune from temptation or inclination to extra-marital indulgence , as to which risk of illegitimate pregnancy is a recognized deterrent deemed desirable in the interests of morality."
In fact, the extremist Connecticut court "quoted with approval" a similar case from Massachusetts in which it was made clear that the "plain purpose behind restrictions on birth control" was (prepare yourself):
"...to protect purity, to preserve chastity, to encourage continence and self-restraint, to defend the sanctity of the home, and thus to engender ... a virile and virtuous race of men and women."
My, such language issuing from a court in our land, such deference to the legislature. But don't worry. It's all gone now. The Court rules and Griswold is revered precedent. You get to keep your birth control. We - the vast majority of Americans - have separated sex from the having of children and from the confines of marriage, and yet some of us bother to complain about this newly respectable, sterile concoction called "same-sex" marriage. We have lent lust a new legitimacy, and yet we complain that with a click of a mouse our children can access its pornographic simulation in living color and high definition, all the while maintaining our intellectual self-respect by abhorring censorship. We hold in high regard our notions of a right to sexual autonomy, but are horrified to find that our sons and daughters are living in sin at best, are sluts, rogues and cads at worst. Our national womb is barren, yet we complain that our Social Security taxes might be raised, our retirement age postponed, and the whole program might go bust because there won't be enough children around to foot the bill. We have turned our bodies into amusement parks, the romping grounds for a society of playful hedonists whose understanding of what sex is really for got stuck at the stage of juvenile delinquency. We'd get hauled into court if the judges weren't in on the scam.
So, yes, if all that's normal, I'm an extremist. If I were president and the congress sent me a bill proposing to outlaw contraception, I'd sign it. But we also know that that will never happen. We love our contraception too much because we love our childless sex. We are a dying society, soon to be rotting in our graves. On our tombstone someone will inscribe an ancient wisdom, that the circumstances of sex ought to be swallowed up in the permanence of love, that it is a sacred thing because so too is the life that comes from it. But it won't matter because when you're dead it's too late to learn.
But be of good cheer and vote for me anyway in November. I may be an extremist, but whatever you get from me can't be any worse than what you've got now.
Comments (25)
Isn't your charge of hypocrisy the same thing as, "If you all weren't hypocrites on abortion, you'd advocate charging abortionists and the women who hire them with first degree murder"?
I skimmed through Santorum's long hypothetical speech (Edit! Edit!). It could be approached two ways, as reasoning and as rhetoric. I'll just look at it the first way. First of all, it relies on the usual post hoc ergo propter hoc thingy, beloved of liberals and conservatives alike. Second, it advocates breaking the law, at least as I and probably most people here understand the law (the Constitution), by promising to sign a federal law to ban contraception. Third, it falls into the same category as charging abortionists and their clients with first degree murder, with all that entails.
Posted by Aaron | January 14, 2012 1:20 AM
Sure, you can ban contraceptives... if you want to start riots.
Posted by John H. | January 14, 2012 1:50 AM
The way I read it, the Salon article is another exercise in portraying social conservatives as the justifiably hated "Other." William Saletan at Slate did something similar during the last election. He made some hysterical comments about Christine O'Donnell's personal view of autoeroticism, which happens to be the historically Orthodox view among all the monotheistic religions. Saletan went on and on about how dangerous O'Donnell is because she doesn't "respect our private choices." I remember thinking, "does he really think that she is going to propose that we regulate this? He has to know better! Is he is that paranoid?!" Of course, Saletan did know better. He was just dog-whistling for his urban white liberal readership, saying in effect: "Everybody look how evil and backward and repressed and just plain icky these social conservatives are! They have no right to govern." Of course, he couldn't say it that plainly, and so he presents it as if there was some legitimate concern about the criminalization of private sexual activities, or whatever.
The genius of the social left is that it adopts the postures and attitudes of an embattled fringe even though it is thoroughly and immovably entrenched as the establishment. We live in a majority Christian nation, and yet the left can successfully portray Christian morality as some kind of alien, sinister, threatening force.
Posted by Untenured | January 14, 2012 7:14 AM
Aaron, is it inconsistent to say that the state has the authority to ban contraceptives (contra Griswold), and to say that the state shouldn't do so, for the sake of the common good in the conditions of here and now, (even if under other circumstances the state should do so)? I don't see how those are morally or logically inconsistent.
Bill, I don't know why you would want Santorum running for federal level office to say that he would sign a federal law banning abortion, wouldn't that run afoul of state's rights?
Posted by Tony | January 14, 2012 10:29 AM
A federal statute prohibiting all abortions performed anywhere in the country would probably not be a valid exercise of Congressional law-making authority under Article II. At least, it would not be if we were to remember that the federal constitution does not say anything about it. That said, there are plenty of ways in which Congress could pass laws prohibiting abortion or contraceptives: in federal facilities, in federal territories, using the implements of interstate commerce, requiring under the 14th amendment that states not use their laws to promote or provide abortion, etc.
That said, Santorum's statement is not necessarily hypocritical. One could say "the states have the power to do X, all things being equal X would be a good thing, but since all things are not equal at the present time, it would be an unwise allocation of resources to attempt to adopt and enforce X at the present."
Besides, he would certainly take a stronger line in battles still being fought over unfettered access to minors, etc. than many of his fellows.
Posted by Titus | January 14, 2012 12:10 PM
Tony, apparently I didn't present my analogy clearly. I'm saying that it is neither hypocritical nor inconsistent both to believe that abortion is murder, and to oppose prosecuting abortionists and their clients for first degree murder (at this time).
Analogously, it is neither hypocritical nor inconsistent both to believe that contraception is a grave sin and danger to society, and to oppose laws banning contraception (at this time).
The two so-called "hypocrisies" have basically the same justification.
Posted by Aaron | January 14, 2012 12:40 PM
Unfortunately, Santorum, like many others, is afraid to admit that the only difference in his treatment of abortion and contraception is feasibility. Feasibility is what separates outlawing all abortion or providing a rape exception: "well, the population is simply too opposed to abolishing the rape exception, so that's where I draw the line."
Posted by Michael Carper | January 14, 2012 3:06 PM
Bill, I don't know why you would want Santorum running for federal level office to say that he would sign a federal law banning abortion, wouldn't that run afoul of state's rights?
Assuming I understand the question, I would say that it doesn't fall within a state's rights to legalize murder.
We live in a majority Christian nation, and yet the left can successfully portray Christian morality as some kind of alien, sinister, threatening force.
As usual, Untenured says something interesting. Someone should write an essay about why a Christian nation sees its own morality as alien and sinister.
Both Aaron and Titus agree that Santorum is not hypocritical. I, of course, disagree. He should say outright that he'd vote to outlaw it, while at the same time acknowledging that the circumstances making this possible are extremely unlikely. I don't know how he can say that Griswold was wrong yet simultaneously protest that he would do nothing to be rid of it should the opportunity arise. Unless he thinks the effects of widespread contraceptive use in our society have been trivial, in which case he'd be a different candidate. I assume he believes those effects have been quite serious indeed.
Posted by William Luse | January 14, 2012 4:07 PM
Actually, that's not difficult. The constitutional legitimacy of Griswold is a question of the meaning of the constitution and whether or not the constitution contains a "right to privacy" that would prohibit the states from having such a law. You're (no doubt quite correctly) inferring Santorum's position on contraception from his references to the Church's teaching and his agreement with that teaching. That position on the subject of the law doesn't follow from the position that Griswold was wrongly decided.
Posted by Lydia | January 14, 2012 4:37 PM
Bill, the Constitution doesn't give the _federal_ government the authority to fix, or stop, all evils, only some. Some powers are strictly left to the states, and whether the state uses that power to right such a wrong is out of the federal government's hands. It would be problematic to say that a certain matter is "left to" states' powers, but then say that if the state doesn't act, then the feds can take over. That's not consistent with subsidiarity, and hence in the long run it will damage other parts of the common good.
I agree with you that in moral terms, no state has a right to ignore abortion, because in no state is the common good served by ignoring abortion, and in no state is it right to not serve the common good. But the fact that a given state fails to address an element of the common good within its borders doesn't make that issue a federal issue: sometimes, the federal level has to permit an evil even though it knows _how_ to stop it.
My wife uses an analogy with child-rearing: we have seen a neighbor royally screw up dealing with a child's bad behavior. We may know how the parent ought to deal with the situation, but nothing gives us the authority to walk in and take over the situation.
St. Thomas also teaches that the state should not use law to criminalize all acts of vice, and this is for the sake of the common good. The state should not outlaw every act of vice, for 2 separate reasons (at least): not all men can refrain from all acts of vice, and the law should be limited to those things that all men - relatively speaking - can achieve, even those morally weak. Secondly, the state cannot catch and punish all acts of vice, and having a law that is unenforced undermines the force of law generally. Therefore, (my conclusion) there is always a fundamental gray area, which evils the state should address, and which ones it should let alone, because of the variations in peoples and the capacities of the state: people who are more given over to vice may need to have more permissive laws for a time, for example, while you work to unravel their degenerate customs.
Posted by Tony | January 14, 2012 5:13 PM
The legally sophisticated argument that the federal government may outlaw abortion uses the word "person" in the fourteenth amendment to argue that if the states forbid the murder of born people and allow the murder of unborn people they are denying to the unborn the equal protection of the laws. It would take us pretty far afield here to debate the merits of that argument, much less to discuss the mind-boggling legal logistics of applying that argument in the courts. (Would a federal court *strike down* as unconstitutional a state law against the murder of born people on the grounds that it did not include unborn people? Would the same federal court provide a new model law to the state that included unborn people as well, written by the court? Would murders of born people be permitted in that state until such a new model law was passed?) Suffice it to say that, from an originalist perspective, the framers of the fourteenth amendment probably did not intend to include unborn persons in the ambit of what they wrote. But if one wished to argue that the federal government already has (even without a further constitutional amendment) the prerogative to force states to outlaw abortion or even to outlaw abortion at the federal level, that would be probably the most promising route to go.
That, of course, does not provide an argument for a federal prerogative to outlaw contraception.
Posted by Lydia | January 14, 2012 5:25 PM
We are a dying society, soon to be rotting in our graves.
No we aren't, we are a dying empire. Those are entirely separate problems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
Posted by Step2 | January 14, 2012 5:45 PM
Well, Step2, in some ways we are a dying society as well. Certainly the 60 million unborn aborted point to a dying society. That doesn't begin to count the more millions killed by abortifacient drugs. In addition, we are a society that is intentionally limiting our fertility: total reproductive rates inside these borders would be below replacement levels without the immigrants, and since the immigrants are putatively not regenerating _our_ society...
It is doubtful that a society that cannot figure out how to pass its morals (which is a critical, fundamental part of culture) along to the next generation, can have later generations that ought to be rightly understood as the "same" society, even if they happen to have the same last names.
Posted by Tony | January 14, 2012 6:56 PM
Lydia, there is another interesting aspect of having state-level rules for this. If the Iowa ruled that the unborn was not a "person" for purposes of murder and abortion law, and Nebraska ruled that the unborn _was_ a person for those purposes, what would happen when a pregnant woman went from one to the other? Could the meaning of the 14th amendment be pushed to imply that an unborn passing from Nebraska to Iowa cannot "lose" personhood status absent (say) his own free act. The conundrum is faintly reminiscent of the question about slaves: if a southern slave owner traveled into Illinois with his slave, when Illinois law declared nobody can be slaves, does the slave simply become a free man?
The 14th amendment has an awful lot of problems in sorting out what it meant (back then) and what they should have meant had they been more foresighted. Perhaps it should be fixed?
Posted by Tony | January 14, 2012 7:03 PM
I guess everyone's against me. I'll just reply in general to the jist of things and say that the federal government, in grave moral matters, has the authority to overrule the states. It can overrule them on contraception or abortion in the same way that it overruled them on slavery. The only reason this wouldn't apply to contraception is that one did not think it a sufficiently grave evil, or even an evil at all. I assume Santorum thinks it's a quite terrible evil and ought to stick by his desire to have it done away with.
Tony mentions that "St. Thomas teaches that the state should not use law to criminalize all acts of vice," and this is true but surely there are some that it must if they pose a serious threat to the society's moral integrity. He (Tony) also says that "having a law that is unenforced undermines the force of law generally." I don't buy that. That's exactly the argument NR made prior to Lawrence. There's a difference between criminalizing an act and punishing its perpetrators. Until recently, sodomy was criminal but its practitioners almost never punished. So desiring to punish a particular act isn't the only reason we have certain laws on the books. It is also a legitimate way for a society to make a statement about its moral norms and expectations, and thus aids those who practice those norms in keeping its violators in a state of social quiescence.
Posted by William Luse | January 14, 2012 8:11 PM
"That's exactly the argument NR made prior to Lawrence. There's a difference between criminalizing an act and punishing its perpetrators. Until recently, sodomy was criminal but its practitioners almost never punished. So desiring to punish a particular act isn't the only reason we have certain laws on the books. It is also a legitimate way for a society to make a statement about its moral norms and expectations, and thus aids those who practice those norms in keeping its violators in a state of social quiescence."
Sodomy laws weren't passed as "statements", they were once enforced but enforcement declined as attitudes changed until some states repealed them and Lawrence finally took care of the rest. Of course, it can be argued that their imposition was a mistake in the first place that was slowly corrected, going from an often capital crime to a misdemeanor to disuse and finally elimination.
Same thing with contraception.
Posted by al | January 14, 2012 9:32 PM
We amended the constitution to forbid slavery. The federal government didn't just up and pass a law forbidding it throughout the country because it was a grave evil. Most of the very gravest evils are addressed and punished by state law--child rape, just to name one off the top of my head. Unless the child is taken across state lines in a kidnapping, the crime is not a federal crime and is not addressed by any federal agency. Kidnap, torture, murder, rape, etc.--the most horrific things you can think of--are punished according to the law of the state in which they were committed. The fact that something is a horrible, grave evil does not in the United States automatically make it a federal crime. And it never has.
Posted by Lydia | January 14, 2012 10:54 PM
But it did overrule any state laws allowing slavery, right? Which was the point. Last I heard, amending the constitution requires the action of a federal branch of government. Your examples would be relevant if a state declared, e.g., child rape to be legal as a matter of personal choice as it has with abortion. Then I presume you'd favor federal action.
It's been rewarding to see your reaction to the themes in the main post regarding, say, the fact that our laws once considered contraception obscene, or what contribution Griswold might have made to our current moral pathologies, or that a politician who really does think it obscene ought to to be consistent by saying that he'd like to make it illegal if he could even if he doesn't think it will happen. Instead, it's all about process. I think Zippy was right. Current conservatism is really just the stodgier wing of liberalism.
Posted by William Luse | January 14, 2012 11:54 PM
Well, no, you wanted Santorum to say that right now he would *sign a law* on those subjects. By the way: The President has no role in the amendment process, by either method. If you're talking about an amendment, there would be nothing for the President to sign.
Not by the second method. No amendment has ever passed that way, but an amendment can be passed by sufficient action by a sufficient number of states.
Look, I wouldn't even support the President's just "signing a law" for abortion. I would want at least a federal amendment, first. And frankly, I would worry that a federal amendment wouldn't do a good enough job in our current milieu and would tie the hands of the states (e.g., would enshrine a rape exception as having to be there for all abortion law throughout the country). Some issues really are best dealt with by detailed legislation, hence at the state level.
Posted by Lydia | January 15, 2012 8:54 AM
And you can call me a liberal all you like, Bill, but I think it's a very important thing that conservatives ditch the _liberal_ idea that "if it's really important" it's automatically and immediately a federal issue. That's a major confusion that needs to be cleared up. Important civics. There is no "seriousness" clause in the Constitution. "Congress shall have power to pass laws on x, y, d, etc., and anything else serious that the states aren't doing a good enough job on." No, no, and no.
Posted by Lydia | January 15, 2012 8:56 AM
Not sure where you're going with that. If we passed the amendment I think we should, the STATES (either 60% or 66%, but less than the 75% plus Congress needed for an amendment) would be able to undo Griswold and Roe, and Lawrence. And I think that at the time these decisions passed, we almost certainly could have gotten 60% for 2 out of 3 of these, almost certainly could have gotten 66% to undo Lawrence. It is _definitely_ the case that court decisions and changed laws affect the mores and the sensibilities of the people. In these cases, much for the worse.
In a better environment, a leader would be more willing to speak his FULL mind on an issue, even if that would not win him any votes. In the current environment, if a politician (as distinct from a leader) speaks his full mind on controversial issues, and thereby loses votes that he might otherwise have gotten by keeping some parts of his underlying thoughts obscure, he fears losing his election and thus having no effect on the direction of the government / the republic. Is this a valid worry? Well, it isn't COMPLETELY invalid. Christ tells us to be "as cunning as serpents" in pursuit of the good. There can be a legitimate reason in some circumstances for not trumpeting from the rooftops your full thought. Is one of those circumstances a vicious people who won't listen to exhortation to virtue? Well, it constitutes a kind of prophetic role to go telling people what they don't want to hear, to do it repeatedly, brazenly - and look what happens to prophets. It might be that God is calling some leaders to be those prophets, those lightning rods of truth, while others He is calling to other forms of leadership. I would hesitate to call a politician a weasel or a snake simply for leaving unspoken "what he would do if X" when X is outside of the specific role he is running for. Yes, there are lots of politicians who are snakes, but there is so much deliberate lies and misinformation in their mouths that it hardly pays to go scrounging around in the murk of the few who merely keep silent about some truths to "out" them.
All that said, I really doubt that someone like Santorum is going to do a whole 10 months of campaigning and still keep obscure what he REALLY thinks about abortion. My preference would be for someone of his stripe to step forward and say something like:
Posted by Tony | January 15, 2012 12:48 PM
Bill,
While I agree with you in spirit, I don't think Tony's and Lydia's objections are just about "process". There is something profoundly conservative in wanting us all to respect the U.S. Constitution (which liberals decided long ago was a conservative document and therefore they would use judges to disrespect it).
Anyway, I thought you would find this recent post from Bruce Charlton about contraception interesting (be sure to read the comments -- Jim Kalb turns up with some good points):
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2012/01/contraception-and-roman-catholic.html
His point about the Mormons is worth reflection.
Posted by Jeff Singer | January 15, 2012 4:58 PM
That is an interesting thread, Jeff, mostly because of the host's incomprehension of the issue, which I trust you as a Catholic see. Kalb's comments are not merely good but extremely insightful. I don't see of what benefit the host's "point about the Mormons" could be to a Catholic.
Posted by William Luse | January 15, 2012 6:30 PM
Titus writes: "A federal statute prohibiting all abortions performed anywhere in the country would probably not be a valid exercise of Congressional law-making authority under Article II."
Not so. The federal judiciary has made it a federal issue. So, one cannot say that it is both not a federal issue and a federal issue at the same time. But most importantly, Congress can ban abortion based on its section 5 power granted by the 14th amendment: "The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article." This article includes this: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Congress can pass a law that would declare an unborn child a "person" under this amendment. This, it can do. It doesn't even need the commerce clause.
Posted by Francis Beckwith | January 16, 2012 3:54 PM
post hoc ergo propter hoc thingy
Is a logical fallacy in the sense that it is not always the case that because one thing occurred before another, it is therefore the cause. Merely occurring before does not prove the cause.
It does not mean, however, that the one thing that occurred before cannot be the cause. In fact, in our collective experience, only those things that occur before can be the cause. The timing is certainly evidence in favor of being a cause (which brings up another point - there is difference between logical fallacy and evidence - pheph may be a logical fallacy, but it is valid evidence).
Posted by c matt | January 25, 2012 10:13 AM