James Taranto stops to actually think about some of the things that Rick Santorum has been saying about contraception - rather than reflexively engaging in knee-jerk condemnation - and finds that while Santorum may be wrong, the points he is making have substance. Taranto also considers why there is such a knee-jerk reaction against Santorum among the center-right and discovers the fact that they are "liberal totalitarians":
Rubin proclaims herself puzzled as to how Santorum can "square" his attitudes toward birth control, on which he would not impose his religious views through legislation, and abortion, on which he would. But Santorum explains that right off the bat: The latter but not the former, in his view, is "the taking of a human life." That's Romney's position too, and the position of every Republican presidential nominee since Reagan.
In the video Rubin scorns, Santorum actually makes an entirely reasonable and fairly sophisticated argument, and he says nothing cringe-worthy. He doesn't appeal to the authority of the church or "family values." He doesn't say that people who fornicate are going to hell or ought to be ashamed of themselves. Nor does he deny that it is prudent for them to use birth control.
What he says is that birth control has greatly expanded sexual freedom, and that sexual freedom has had consequences that are harmful to society and to women in particular. Again, one may disagree whether, on balance, these harms outweighed the benefits. But what is so upsetting about the idea that they might have? What in the world explains Friedersdorf's and Rubin's overwrought emotionalism?
Here's our attempt at an explanation: In liberal metropolises like Los Angeles, Washington and New York (homes of Friedersdorf, Rubin and this columnist, respectively), a high proportion of conservatives have internalized the assumptions of feminism. One of those assumptions is that female sexual freedom, an essential component of sexual equality, is an unadulterated good. Santorum's statements to the contrary challenge this deeply held view.
Furthermore, contemporary feminism is, as we recently argued, a totalitarian ideology, by which we mean one that tolerates no divergence between the personal and the political. If you are not a feminist, you can enjoy a lifestyle of sexual freedom and also take seriously the idea that sexual freedom is bad for society. If you are a feminist, that is a thoughtcrime. Thoughtcrimes are enforced through cognitive dissonance, which produces the departures from rationality that we have seen here from Friedersdorf and, to a lesser extent, from Rubin.
We say "to a lesser extent" because Rubin's bottom line, that Santorum's personal opinions about birth control make him unelectable, is not outlandish and could be true. But to the extent that Friedersdorf and Rubin support that hypothesis, it is by example rather than by logic. That is, if their emotions are typical of those of independent voters in swing states, then Rubin's conclusion is probably correct. But like this columnist, they are members of a rarefied class--media professionals living in highly Democratic areas--so the premise is counterintuitive to say the least.
Totalitarian ideologies sustain themselves in large part through fear, and feminism has been particularly fearsome of late, as the Susan G. Komen ladies and the Catholic bishops can attest. But our intuition is that this is a sign of weakness, not strength. The fearful reactions to Santorum's heresies against sexual freedom reinforce that sense.
This column has its differences with Rick Santorum, but we admire him for his fearlessness in challenging feminist pieties. "One man with courage makes a majority," Andrew Jackson is supposed to have observed. Is Rick Santorum such a man? If not, let's hear a reasoned argument to the contrary.
A "reasoned argument"...now there's an idea.
A "reasoned argument" was all I was looking for from Dude 1, and a "reasoned argument" was the one thing missing from his responses.
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