Social Hypocrisy

John Podhoretz and other pundits are shaking their heads sadly at the notion that Rick Santorum might take the GOP nomination after all.  He may win the nomination, but he will lose the presidential race, they intone.

“The chief problem with Santorum,” Podhoretz writes, “isn’t his views on contraception or homosexuality or what he might have said about Obama’s religion.   The presumption that Santorum’s social conservatism will hurt him with voters is a media fantasy; the president before Barack Obama won 62 million votes in 2004 running as just such a conservative, and the country hasn’t transformed itself in the years since.

“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.”

No one asked the electorate back in 1973 whether abortion was right or not; it was decided by a Liberal judge.  In 1962, no one asked the people whether they wanted prayers banned in public schools; again, the matter was decided by a Liberal court.  No one decided whether the birth control pill was such a good idea; it was invented, and after some legal and bureaucratic wranglings, prescriptions were approved – for married women.  In the 1970s, it was judged that the Pill should be available to all women.

If the Progressives sneer at us for battling on social issues, they can remember that they were the ones who gave us those social issues.  They may well preen themselves for having the youth vote.  Thanks to the Media, the Vietnam War was painted as a debacle, thereby increasing the demand for a lowering of the voting age to 18.  Now the Liberals have a greater base of ignorant voters, barely out of high school, who are easily plied with drugs, alcohol, and the promise of better grades if they adopt the Progressive mantra.

“A man isn’t worth anything until he’s 40,” went the famous line in Hello, Dolly!.  “Until then, we just pay him to make mistakes.”

The under-30 set is particularly susceptible to group-think and collectivism.  Their high school and college years still cling to them – as well as the effects of drugs and alcohol in which they over-indulged.  The juvenilization of America – programming children to remain children by removing their more assertive tendencies, as dog trainers do – has made a shambles of our federate republic.

“Insulting the electorate”?  Telling slugheaded youngsters that abortion is immoral insults their intelligence does it?  In such cases, there can’t be much intelligence to insult.  Telling them that doing drugs is wrong offends them, as Whitney Houston’s gold-painted hearse navigates the streets of Newark to avoid her fans, does it?  Stating that marriage is a privilege for one man and one adult man and woman is a discriminatory statement in their ears, is it?

Where was the fear of insulting the electorate back in the Sixties and Seventies, when we lost a war we could have won, watched as an elite panel of judges decided on the value of a life, and shuddered as dangerous drugs were decriminalized, reducing future generations to mind-numbed idiots?  And let us not forget the laws, thanks to Barney Frank, that allowed terrorists to wander about our country with impunity and created banks that gave away free loans and mortgages, at the taxpayers’ expense.

But let us not offend the Moderates, the little dears, whose ears must be stinging right about now.  They might put their pert little noses up in the air and stomp off in a huff.  No; Podheretz is right when he implies that elections are not won on the truth.  It would be much nicer if Santorum ended his speeches on a more upbeat note.

He will promise to restore the American family – the nuclear family, with its male husband and female wife, and children – to its proper place at the center of American life.  He will encourage them – encourage, not command – to return to their faith.  American taxpayers will not be forced to underwrite others’ behavior.  He will pay respect to civil rights to a certain extent – with civil unions, homosexuals have all the rights they need.  He will however, pay greater respect to the freedom of religion, and not pass laws that violates the conscience of religious clergy and religious organizations.  He will protect the privilege Americans have of being Americans by vigorously guarding our borders against illegal immigrants whose obvious transgression makes the unsuitable candidates for naturalization.

He will take the step of being negative, yes, indeed, about drugs and encourage stronger laws against both users and sellers.

Finally, he will be even more negative in promoting the U.S. Constitution and its negative liberties.  He will champion the positive liberties of the people over the negative liberties of government.

If young people don’t like it, maybe they need to take a time-out.   The Liberals are confident that their young voters won’t like it, according to Podhoretz and others and that the GOP is gambling on Conservative sentiment, as though the race for the Presidency were a high school popularity contest.  They don’t want us to take away their lollipots.  They want the opportunity to prove how noble they are through their tolerance of homosexuality (which is none of anyone’s business, by the way) up to and including overturning the sacrament (to some) of marriage.

The induction of Liberal clergy, the invention of the Pill and its concurrent result, cohabitation, and the growing sentiment of the “sanctitiy” of gay marriage, and the increase in divorces, have helped lead to the abandonment of churches.  Young people have always been notoriously secular.  They eagerly to seek to sow their wild oats and prove their independence, if not their maturity.  This is the rocky foundation upon which the future of the nation depends.  There was a reason why young people weren’t considered adults until they were 21.

Certainly, it’s poor salesmanship to present a dark future.  That certainly didn’t stop Obama from getting elected, however; that was his whole mantra, denouncing what was actually a good economy, though menaced by the housing crisis, and promising hope and change.  If Santorum or any other Conservative candidate suggests turning back to America’s original values, that we are now on a bad course, that hardly should be surprising, if not very welcome news to the very voters who chose this course we’re presently on.

What is the alternative the Moderates suggest?  To put on rose-colored glasses and pretend that everything is fine?  They don’t have a problem with Romney firing away at Obama’s fiscal castastrophe; just with targeting the social entitlement programs that caused the disaster.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the bottom line.