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Jonathan D. Moreno

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George Orwell and the Values Speech That Rick Santorum Would Like to Give

Posted: 02/19/2012 5:47 pm

I'm Rick Santorum and I'm running for president because I'm deeply concerned about our country's future, which I believe is deeply tied up with our sexual values. When people think of a cultural conservative like me, especially one who's Roman Catholic, they tend to think about abortion, but that's only part of the story. Sure, I've had plenty to say about why I think Roe v. Wade should be overturned and why, at the very least, the abortion issue should be turned back to the states. Obviously this issue got plenty of attention in the last few weeks in the controversy about the Susan G. Komen breast cancer foundation and its relationship with Planned Parenthood.

But -- and this puzzles a lot of people -- I can't stop talking about contraception and my worries about family planning. It's not only about the moral value of the human embryo, which is a concern that a lot of people have even if they're pro-choice. What I can't talk about in detail is why I'm deeply opposed to birth control, not just abortion. Though I've referred vaguely to "the whole sexual libertine idea" and the way that contraception aids and abets those misguided societal values, I've also had to add that this is a personal opinion and that I'm not opposed to people having access to birth control as a matter of public policy.

However, if I'm president I will do everything I can to discourage the threat to our very social fabric that contraception represents. I can't say this too explicitly because over the last 50 years so many Americans have come to expect sex without responsibility, and though a pro-life candidate can be elected (Reagan and both Bush's did), I'm afraid an anti-contraception candidate can't. So I have to conceal my true concerns that are starkly reflected in recent data: More American couples than ever are living together out of wedlock, and the birth rate without benefit of marriage is soaring. No society can long continue to prosper without a strong basis in the traditional family. It's blindingly clear to me what's happening, and the cultural radicals like Barack Obama have chosen to ignore it for reasons of political convenience.

Making it even harder for me to accomplish my goal, the recent work of Charles Murray at the American Enterprise Institute shows that it is working class whites whose values have deteriorated the most in recent years, with fewer nuclear families, declining church attendance and a poor work ethic. Yet these are exactly the voters I'm supposed to be able to appeal to better than Obama or that phony Mitt Romney, (who's not a real conservative but subscribes to a religion that believes its followers will become gods and godesses after they die; it really annoys me how he is trying to get away with this but I'm pleased that true conservatives see through him). So I need to save these white working class folks from themselves in order to save the country, but they've gotten used to the opiate of birth control, too, which is one of the big reasons I can't give this speech.

Now that I'm getting serious media attention, it helps that people can see I'm a nice guy who's the real deal about this, like my obvious love for my wife and my kids. I even left the campaign trail for days when our disabled little girl was very ill, and I didn't make a hypocritical show of it. Over the next few weeks my wife will be more visible, a great way of reminding people what kind of person I am. In the White House our whole family will lead by example.

Of course, I'd like to use the power of the presidency to get our nation back on the right moral track in more direct ways as well, like Supreme Court appointments. I expect there will be at least one in the next few years and that will rectify the remnants of a court that is still too tilted toward the cultural left. There will probably be other things I can do as well, like using the presidential bully pulpit to support state laws that find ways to undermine access to contraceptive measures that I believe are often abortifacients, like IUDs.

So I haven't said yet exactly why I think the issue of sexual values is so critical for our future, but I really do think we could go down a path that leads to some form of fascism or socialism in which the government uses its power to align itself with forces that discourage people from having children unless they meet certain imposed requirements, in effect a new kind of eugenics.

Just think of George Orwell's novel 1984. You might think I'm crazy but Orwell didn't just describe the Stalinist Soviet Union. Years before that in his other writings he expressed frank disdain for free love, family planning and abortion. Even though he wasn't a religious person, Orwell understood that there's a deep connection between true freedom and humanity and enough confidence in the future to allow destiny to shape our children, and how important it is just to allow ourselves to have children and not to be slaves to materialism and the easy pleasures of new technology, what he called "machine progress."

That's what I can't talk about, saving America from the genuine threat of descent into an Orwellian nightmare. I'm Rick Santorum, and that's really why I'm running for president.

 

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I'm Rick Santorum and I'm running for president because I'm deeply concerned about our country's future, which I believe is deeply tied up with our sexual values. When people think of a cultural cons...
I'm Rick Santorum and I'm running for president because I'm deeply concerned about our country's future, which I believe is deeply tied up with our sexual values. When people think of a cultural cons...
 
 
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
sallybutt45
To thine own self be true.
03:15 AM on 02/21/2012
Wonder how much he got paid, and by whom, to type out that tripe.he's not moralizing,he's "suggesting" the way things should be-----in a perfect world!!
01:10 PM on 02/20/2012
Very interesting take, trying to channel him without making it a caricature. For those who disagree with him, it's crucial to understand one's opponent.
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
kathy smelser
12:59 PM on 02/20/2012
so now he is saying that he is not apposed to BC but will let the states do his dirty work for him and for all their effort they will get special pork projects ....a new low
12:07 PM on 02/20/2012
Life is sacred for a fetus, but once breathing, you're on your own, no longer of political value.
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jahzilla
Life would be perfect if bacon grew on trees.
12:05 PM on 02/20/2012
Keeping people in perpetual, yet (self-unrecognizable) fear, by catering to already stacked layers of (patriarchally wielded) multi-generational emotional and intellectual programming, is and has been the most effective tool in distinguishing and maintaining the flock from the herder.

Whether used as a religious or political construct for purposes of rationalizing a controlling governance, there has been no point in "civilized" man's existence that hasn't used this most effective form of manipulation to either maintain or advance some agenda that couldn't stand on it's own merits, without the invocation of such Machiavellian techniques.

The GOP are masters, but the Dems are quick learners due to the fears they (ironically) feel they must respond to, due of the artful proficiency by the former.

Such is the reliability of the seeming infinite energy propelling that distasteful and ruinous perpetual motion machine.

Education, at far deeper levels than the American and global constructs require in order to support virtually all of 'their' many illusions, is really about the only way to slow that "slave train" down.
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
bzimmerman
11:57 AM on 02/20/2012
We must simply improve on DOMA. Make it law that all girls must be married by age 15. If any woman becomes pregnant and is unwed, she and her child should be put to death. She, because she is a harlot, and the child, because it was born out of wedlock.
We must codify "One Father, One Mother".
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
wallyone
11:57 AM on 02/20/2012
I suppose married women should have a child every year during their child bearing years. What a great plan that is for the country. Other options are off the table for most couples who want to remain intimate.
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Robert Frano
‘Plausible Deniability’: NOT A FAMILY_VALUE!!
11:51 AM on 02/20/2012
Re: "...However, if I'm president I will do everything I can to discourage the threat to our very social fabric that contraception represents..."
Time & again, the point IS made: INCREASING the availability of safe, competant birth control & abortion services is a 'vote-getter' among American female voters, an all-important 'demographic'!

Yet the republicans want to make sure every last human knows they'll fight AGANIST this important health care issue!
Other republican / christian / 'prolifers' went to war, causing 1-2 million dead men, woman, children & foetels, (wanted & unwanted), without so much as a ‘farthing, given’ over the collective-lack-of-morality known as the ‘hunt’ for (imaginary) W.M.D.-National.Security threats...
So...
How can republicans call themselves 'conservative', or 'prolife' with straight-face?

Why am I, like, totally un-surprised when Rick Santorum & other ‘public-morality-posturing’ religio-politicians run his/their pie-holes about equally non-existent domestic-national-security threats?

Santorum CAN'T run on ‘increasing jobs’, or ‘fixing’ the 'fraud-wrecked' economy!
That would remind everyone how the Bush administration created/nurtured the ongoing effort to downsize/transplant/export every U.S job they could find, while allowing/encouraging every undocumented-foreign-economic-refugee, (aka, ‘Illegal Immigrant-lawbreaker’), into the U.S. they could find, cajole, threaten, push or otherwise include…

Hope B.O’Bama has a competent 'repetitive-motion-therapist' to help him, post.signing all those
“Thanks! Couldn’t have done it without your dedication! Thanks, again!” reelection notes, especially the hundreds sent to the ‘Republican.2012-Also.Rans’!
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Mark MacDonald
Pass the Scotch
11:33 AM on 02/20/2012
The number of children living without the benefit of a loving father is not something politicians want to talk about. After all, how can any government, large or small, reverse this trend?
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Alice Ferrell
Somedays I'm the windshield, somedays I'm the bug
12:07 PM on 02/20/2012
We can start with Senator Joe Walsh, he owes $117,000 in child support. That would be a good example to the rest of the deadbeat fathers.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
astraia
Romney: NONE & DONE!
01:02 PM on 02/20/2012
right, "family values" fright wing style. fav'd and fanned you right back!
ByAndForThePeople
and corporations aren't people!
01:30 PM on 02/20/2012
Walsh is living evidence of the fact that, to extreme conservatives, all human rights are terminated at birth.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
cheryl tobin
Alpha Dog with my pack!
11:30 AM on 02/20/2012
Listen up, all everybody needs to do is stop having sex unless you are making a baby. Got that Americans! Now carry on.
11:26 AM on 02/20/2012
I remember when JFK was running for President and the rumor was that he shouldn't be elected because he would force everyone to be Catholic. Oh how times have changed.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Alice Ferrell
Somedays I'm the windshield, somedays I'm the bug
11:22 AM on 02/20/2012
I got a church, I got a bible and I have family values. What else do you have to offer? For decades now people have been voting for the GOP to get Roe v Wade reversed. How has that been working for you?The GOP wants abortions stopped but then wants to remove prenatal care. They care about the fetus, but not about the person. Tell me Rick,,,what else do you have to offer? Got any ideas on jobs?
HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Robert Frano
‘Plausible Deniability’: NOT A FAMILY_VALUE!!
12:07 PM on 02/20/2012
Re: "They care about the fetus, but not about the person. Tell me Rick…what else do you have to offer? Got any ideas on jobs?" {Alice Ferrell}

There go those dang liberals again, with their phony, 'republicans aren't prolife nine months later!' claims!
The republicans are very concerned about birth-to early-20's Americans’!

With all the politicians & their kids, who bail-out when it comes to goin' winnin' ‘hearts-‘N-minds’ overseas, (during the never-ending-econo-pillages), Republicans are VERY concerned about having enough 20-smethings to crew all those tanks, planes & ships!
...Purchased to avoid spending money on (‘minor’) domestic issues like infrastructure, full-employment, housing, health-care, etc.
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Pavane
I pick my battles and walk from the rest.
11:07 AM on 02/20/2012
Santorum maintains that: Sex should happen only to make children or the "special bond between men and women is broken?"

Does anyone believe this?
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Pavane
I pick my battles and walk from the rest.
11:02 AM on 02/20/2012
What's Orwellian is Stantorum's need to control the sexual lives of people. Nothing like creating more intrusive BIGGER government.

Where are the men in this? If Santorum got his way, men would have it really tough. There'd be no more sex - women couldn't afford it. And, men would be forced to pay for a LOT of children they didn't want.

In the face of growing US poverty and high unemployment along with the regressive desire to cut education and safety nets, creating more children makes NO sense. But Santorum says anything other than this is Orwellian.

I think Santorum is Orwellian.
05:30 PM on 02/20/2012
As usual men aren't paying attention to this issue, and what would happen to their sex lives if women couldn't get birth control. I'm sure Rick wants to take their condoms too.
11:00 AM on 02/20/2012
Its really strange that the Church exalts the Virgin Mary and chattels women. There would be no Jesus without Mary, but by golly Joseph didn't get her pregnant. Doesn't this emasculate males? I believe there is a God but it didn't happen like this. When people put their faith in God it does not mean they put their faith in the church. Apostle Paul never married and he partied until he was almost 60 when he met Jesus. He told young men not to marry. Maybe he hung out with the wrong women, but that too was of his own making, and don't think it was just for dinner and a glass of wine. Women are not given a fair shake in the Bible and they never will, as they were considered by men to be "at their service" during biblical times. That's why confusion reigns in organized religion, males are emasculated and women are for breeding. But people like Santorum never question the theology of it at all. They accept what Priests wrote down and we know how they love boys. Come on folks! If America wants to have a religious war I think organized religion would lose, but God won't.