Santorum is a rather grotesque anomaly, not natural at all.

Rick Santorum claims he believes in small government. What he means by that is he doesn’t think the government should do very much to help the poor and the middle class. He’s one of those conservatives who thinks we should give tax breaks to the rich and the wealth will magically trickle down to the rest of us. Never mind that we’ve been hearing about supply side economics for over thirty years and there’s no evidence that it works. The rich in this country are doing fine. They’re better than ever. And they’re paying less in taxes now than they have in decades. So where are all these good jobs they’re supposed to produce?

It’s rather hard to believe Santorum actually believes in small government when he starts talking about how he wants to use the law to restrict the private, personal behavior of Americans. He wants to shove his morality down our throats. And he aims to get around our guarantee of religious liberty by calling what he preaches “natural law.” In the history of the world there has never been a more brain dead school of ethics than natural law, or at least the kind of natural law that Santorum talks about. What a proponent of natural law like Santorum claims is natural is often just a reflection of the proponent’s preferences and prejudices. Santorum doesn’t know what comes naturally to me or anyone but himself, and even that is debatable. If you study the various species on this planet, you will find an almost unlimited variety of behaviors. And even if you focus your study on humans, you’ll discover that we are nothing if not unpredictable.

What is natural, what is not? What is advantageous, what is not? It’s a matter of opinion, and there’s generally not a one size fits all answer. We live in a democracy in which public policy and private morality are always being debated. And the cultural consensus as to what is good, acceptable and decent shifts and changes with time. But Santorum would have us believe that it’s all plain and obvious. This dweebish little busybody who likes sweater vests wants to convince us that he has all the answers and that we should start living according to what he thinks is natural. Well, I’m not interested. I think Santorum is a rather grotesque anomaly, not natural at all.