Friday, March 16, 2012

Santorum's latest comments show why I could never vote for him.

For those who are newcomers to the blog I am a Republican.

Rick Santorum's latest comments on pornography show why Obama would destroy him in the general election. The key concerns for Americans are - the economy, jobs and rising health care costs. Very few people really care if the guy next door wants to watch porn. In a free society the boundary between the private choices of an adult and the encroaching reach of the government must be strictly defined and from a Republican point of view - strictly limited. As a Republican, I cannot support a candidate who believes that two consenting gay men should not be left in privacy in their own home, or that contraception should be banned, or that (all stage) abortion doctors should face criminal charges. These policy proposals are the product of a mindset that begins and ends with the strict contours of a personal religious interpretation and is rendered absurd by its natural hypocrisy... Santorum opposes the catholic contraception mandate (freedom of religious beliefs*) but supports banning contraception all together (no freedom of individual beliefs). 

In the end, the critical point is that Santorum believes that his views must actively and absolutely trump the perspective of all others, even when the debate concerns the most intimate of issues (sexual conduct) and the most private of areas (the home). Waging this kind of a war on individual freedom is fundamentally incompatible with conservative values of freedom.


* - I oppose Obama's mandatory contraception coverage requirement. My reasoning - Contraception is a personal choice and is cheap to acquire. If made mandatory in health care plans, the mandate would serve to retrench private health care into an increasingly rigid system. An industry with a focus that goes far beyond that of critical health care coverage. It's evidently incompatible with the Catholic faith that their institutions be forced to provide contraception as part of their health care plans. Nothing prevents their employees from private purchases.

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