Have you noticed that so many of the pieces written against Rick Santorum aren’t really about Santorum’s views. So often what you hear is disbelief and horror that Santorum actually believes in his Catholciism.
Richard Cohen’s latest column is a nasty piece. Because of Santorum’s Catholicism, Cohen says he’s in the wrong century. But that’s not even the really offensive stuff. Look how he starts his latest column:
Mullah Rick has spoken.
He wants religion returned to “the public square,” is opposed to contraception, premarital sex and abortion under any circumstances, wants children educated in what amounts to little red schoolhouses and called President Obama a “snob” for extolling college or some other kind of post-high school education. This is not a political platform. It’s a fatwa.
Oddly, Cohen doesn’t seem to have any problems with Obama’s voting to allow infanticide. No terroristic metaphors for infanticide in his Muslim metaphor handbook, I guess?
The interesting thing is that Santorum has made it clear that he would not impose his religious views on contraception and premarital sex. Obama, on the other hand, decrees that all must follow his belief in contraception and he uses taxpayer money to fund it.
Cohen calls Santorum’s approach “perilous and divisive” and warned that his dragging religion into the public sphere could lead to “beheadings and the like.”
Beheadings?!@!
This kind of personal attack is just shameless. This, of course, is the same Richard Cohen who reportedly had a long affair with Peter Jenning’s wife and reportedly admitted to “inappropriate behavior” with a younger female staffer by telling her to “stand up and turn around.” So in reading Mr. Cohen’s personal take on Santorum, just wonder about the source a little bit.
Cohen recently wrote a column saying “The GOP is brain dead.” That wouldn’t be so bad except I know what liberals want to do to brain dead people.
The funny thing is that I kinda’ expect liberals to be pretty irate that Santorum was compared to the fatwa delcaring mullahs. They’ll see it as an insult to the mullahs. Maybe Obama could apologize for that too.
February 28, 2012 at 7:24 am
While I agree with the spirit of your article, I object to your statement as Obama doesn't decree that "all must follow his belief in contraception". He is not forcing anyone to take contraception, but (wrongly) trying to impose coverage of it IF someone chooses to use it. If you want people to take what you write seriously, you should refrain from such…hyperbole.
February 28, 2012 at 9:34 am
Ad hominem attacks against those who do not accept their own materialistic, atheistic ideology, is what those pseudo-journalists do, while shunning impartial reporting. Anon, above: compelling persons to insure others for contraception, abortion or sterilisation is compelling one to provide those things, as and when someone wants them. Forcing a person to provide for such things against their moral reason is incontravertibly unjust and State abusing its power to contravene basic human rights (totalitarianism).
February 28, 2012 at 11:09 am
Anon, you are wrong in your criticism. Santorum believes that providing contraception is wrong and wants to maintain religious liberty for exemption from such a law. Obama believes that providing contraception is right and wants to force it on the nation as a whole. The issue (in this particular case) is not using contraception, but rather forced coverage, which is also an evil because it directly promotes the usage.
February 28, 2012 at 2:02 pm
It's not even a good ad hominem. It's just the lowest form of bigot-baiting—honestly, change a few of the buzzwords and it would sound perfectly natural from a guy in a white hood.
Oh wait, they're Democrats too.
February 28, 2012 at 3:06 pm
Also interesting that the libs so uncritically support the Muslims at every turn. And yet, Islam opposes birth control, for the most part, denies the possibility of overpopulation, and exterminates homosexuals.
February 28, 2012 at 4:28 pm
See, this pagan Roman practice of elections and reverence for the Republic causes all sorts of unhealthy circumstances. You are reading Richard Cohen?
You should not pollute your mind with such things.
February 29, 2012 at 2:11 am
Fatwa? This is really ridiculous… so much so that the regular fellow knows its a pile of hooey. Such big lies smack of desperation and panic. I like. I like. Keep it up, left wing nut-jobs. You sound like wear tin-foil hats.
February 29, 2012 at 3:17 am
Well, Romney wins Michigan. Time for folks to face the very sad fact that the Republican establishment has once again succeeded in forcing another neocon down our throats, as Romney is going to be the nominee for 2012. Thanks to the Republican establishment, looks like I'll be voting third-party again this year.
February 29, 2012 at 5:12 am
@ August: the conceptions of voting in American culture originate in the Catholic Middle Ages. America inherited it from England, which was the least affected by Renaissance paganism of Western countries—hence why they use common law rather than civil law.
Libertarianism, on the other hand, is founded on the "right of both use and abuse" of the Roman civil law. The authentically Catholic conception is that of common law, that one only has the right to the proper uses of things.
The autonomous individualism of libertarianism is a purely Roman concept—albeit from Rome's most decadent period, when the "citizen" had degenerated from a position of dignity and obligations, to a position of privilege and indolence that had Visigoths do all its fighting.