Well, Rick Santorum’s had a nice media blitz lately: He was on NPR this morning complaining that no one takes him seriously (awww), and defending his "It Takes a Family" trope by, well, arguing that it takes a village to raise a kid. (Point, Hillary.) And then there was the interview on a NYC radio show later today in which he apparently said the following:
"The point of marriage from a societal point of view is not to reaffirmthe love of two people and to make people feel good about who their arein their relationship, but in fact the point of marriage is for havingchildren and raising that [sic] children in the best environmentpossible."
Put simply: It’s not up to Rick Santorum, or Ray Flynn, or Kris Mineau, or Mitt Romney to decide what the point of other peoples’marriages is. It’s just not their business.
I should also call attention to this very astute analysis of Santorum’s brand of illogic, by "sluggo" from the Kos comments:
He is a "true believer", not only in a Religious sense but in aphilosophical sense. There are plenty of Religious believers that havepoor philosophical skills, but still insist their point is right.Santorum has some skills in logical argument, but where he wants to gois not logical.
To take an example; on this radio clip and in his book he wants toargue against any sexual activity outside of marriage, specificallyGay. In order to support this point (and to his credit) he does notjust quote the Bible and say "that’s it; believe or go to hell". Hetries to present an argument. The argument goes something like:
Premise A: non-consensual sex is bad
Premise B: all sex outside of marriage is non-consensual
Conclusion: all sex outside of marriage is badObviously, this is a very poor argument since Premise B has a lot ofcounter arguments. However, most people would accept Premise A (one outof two is good). But the reason he does this is to outlaw Gayrelationships. Since this takes place outside marriage it is bad. Thisis also why Rick bitterly opposes Gay marriage, it removes parts of hisargument.
That kind of argumentation reminds me of Bill O’Reilly, who is able to string you along with partly defensible statements, and then lower the boom with a conclusion of stunning insanity.
Lordy, Jon had a doozy of a clip of O’Reilly on the DS, speaking of the facist windbag. He’s getting WORSE, I swear. And I didn’t think that was possible!The clip of the Douchebag of Liberty was hilarious…Jon almost didn’t have to say anything. The jokes just keep on writing themselves…And WHY the hell don’t they just fire him???
Looking for logic in Santorum’s positions? How about this: He believes that liberal culture is responsible for clergy sex abuse of minors. If society is responsible, then the priesta are less responsible.The idea that criminals are not responsible for their own behavior is too liberal for most liberals. So who is he blaming?